Simon's Cat

It has been almost 20 years, since i was...well something very bad happened to me but it happened almost 20 years ago. Is it possible that i could still suffer from PTSD?

I think I suffer from PTSD, I have no money and no insurance. Is there a way to get through PTSD without professional help?

I think I might have an Anxiety problem....I don't speak outside my home when people ask me questions i clam up, i can't get the words out, i get nervous and sweaty and i feel like i am going to throw up...what can i do?

I take a small dose of Thorazine can that make my muscles spasm and twitch?

I was raped when I was 16 and I still have nightmares not as often but i still get them. I still get nervious and quezzy when I hear his name..and i will fly off the handle for no reason at people and cry and feel worthless, but it happens in stages, for long periods of time I am ok then all of the sudden it's like i'm there or just afterwards....shouldn't I be over this? it's been years...like almost 20years..I never saw anybody for it..and only 2 people in my entire life know what happened. I didn't say anything at the time...to anybody...

I think I have ADD. I was thought to have it when I was a kid but my parents never got me tested..they didn't think I had it...I struggled in school, got into trouble a lot. I used to set fires and i was raped at 16 by a classmate. I also think I have Bpd. i cut myself and have really bad mood swings. I want to know for sure. I want to be tested. I don't have any money or insurance how can someone like me get any help. I live in Portland Oregon, does anybody know of any free clinics in the area?

Well I know I have ADD, lately I have been having exploding rage episodes. My partner doesn't think I need to see a councilor, or join a support group. Says "I don't think it would benefit you, all those groups are, are just social groups." I just want to talk to someone outside my immediate social group to get a different view on things...ahhhh!! what should I do, go behind her back and go see someone? I don't want to sneak around but i really think I should see someone. please help.

Thank You.

I don't think about killing myself I think about how other people will react if I did, is that bad or am I just a stupid nut case....that no one should listen to....?

I feel so disconnected, I feel like i could just go away and no one would noticed. I find myself sitting and staring off into space and when I "come back" it's been like 3 hours! I can't focus I can't think right it's scattered. I have Intense Anger all of the sudden and then I feel invisible, like no one can see me. I hate myself. what's wrong with me? can some one figure this out I don't have $ for Dr. of Therapist. Please be kind people.

Everybody says I should go talk to someone but how do I do that when I feel like nobody wants to listen to me. I can't afford a therapist. I don't know what to do. I have volumes of journals they help for a little bit but then I just feel horrible again.

Seven Minutes

Still

there are days

when there is no way

not even a chance that she dare for even a second

glance at the reflection of her body in the mirror.

she knows why like she knows why

she only cries when she feels she's about to loose control.

Tonight something inside her is breaking.

Her heart beating so deep beneath the sheets of pain

she could give every tear she's crying a name,

a year and a face she’d forever erase if she could.

What would she tell her daughter?

her someday-daughter when she has to

hold her beautiful face to the beat-up face

of this world that hasn't learned the meaning of no.

What would she tell her daughter

of the womb raped empty,

the eyes swollen shut,

the gut too frightened to hold food.

She stopped believing that night,

mistrust became her law,

trusting this world no more than hands

trust rusted barbed wire,

She bolted the doors to her home,

iron-gated the windows of herself.

The police told her it was only seven minutes,

seven minutes of feeling the

five-fingered noose around her neck,

two-hundred pounds of hate digging graves

into the sacred soil of her flesh

she can still hear the broken-record

of the defense: answer the question miss.

She said: I remember how love used to glow like glitter

on my skin before he made his way in,

Now every touch feels like dirty bits of glass

stained with shame. Oh bury me in a blue blanket

so god doesn't know I'm a girl,

cut off my curls, I want peace when I'm dead.

Her Lover knocks at the door:

it's been three weeks,

don't you think it's time you got out of bed.

No. The ceiling fan still feels like his breath.

There are bruises on her knees from begging to forget.

Tonight she is thinking a thousand deaths

with every unsteady breath for him,

with every pore of her flesh and she

knows the war's not over.

Runner

Runners are suppose to be

Twizler legs and noodle arms.

They are skeleton dioramas

plucked from science classrooms,

tossed into shorts made for preschoolers

and launched at the nearest track.

Nobody told chubby girl.

Her first love was French fries,

her second, self-deprecation and

her third, 5k’s. Don’t worry she

still flirts with French fries and sleeps

with self-deprecation.

She can’t look at a mirror

for more than thirty seconds

because she won’t stare down

the monster that is pushing

against her cotton shirt and denim

jeans.

But when she shoves her over-sized,

turkey legs into a pair of spandex

shorts, she is a Goddess.

She’ll tell you she’s smooshy

and tell you jokes about being fat

and fluffy. She never calls herself

an athlete.

But she knows what it feels like

to make rubber sole love to the

sidewalk while the rest of the city

is still trying to pull the moon back

down for one last kiss.

Her concrete lover never cares

about her looks as long as her treaded

steps glide across the asphalt.

Chubby girl has a weakness for

candy bars, feeling bad about

herself, potato chips, squinting down

at scales and milkshakes.

Her fellow food fanatics

don’t understand that her

lust for the street is about

sanity. Too often her week-

ends become adventures

in eating her way through

her apartment. It’s bread and

butter, to brown sugar oatmeal,

to the last chocolate chip cookie.

But when Monday morning comes,

she laces her apartment key to her

shoe and lets her headphones drown out

everything but her breath.

She closes her eyes

as she passes by windows.

She refuses run along side

of the reflection she regrets.

She won’t think about the closet full of too-tight dresses.

She won’t think about how her shirts

make her look like she is trying to smuggle

and inner tube out of a water park.

When her feet hit the pavement,

her toes stoking the cement,

she forgets that last night’s

peanut butter binge fuels her.

She’s not chubby girl anymore, she’s machinery,

bones and gears, muscle memory,

respiration, execution, strength.

She is a runner.

Jersey at sunset.

My mother was a crack-whore. I ponder this

as I am tiptoeing through the used condoms strewn

on the piers off the west side highway, sunset behind

the skyline of Jersey.

I walk towards the water with guilt holding

court in my gut, my body high jacked,

eyes swollen, I'm tired.

The river has more colors at sunset

then my sock drawer could ever dream of.

I wake up screaming sometimes because

I know the poison my mother pumped into

her veins like subway tunnels under the Kamikaze

cab wheels of new york, still rushes through me.

I could step off this pier right now,

but I have crap to do an I've an

appointment on tuesday to shed

uninvited thoughts, like shedding layers

of skin over centuries of time.

I'll miss you i say to the water, to

the mother I never knew. I could fall in love

with Jersey at sunset but I leave the view

to the rats and tiptoe back.

Please be kind.

I was fifteen and it’s three am,

the emergency room therapist

looks up from his clipboard

with eyes that are paid to care.

He asks my mother if I see

people who aren’t really there.

She looks up from her salty-crumpled tissue and just sniffs.

I squirm in the plastic formed four legged Chair

which I am sure they make purposely hard.

I want to scream, scream at my mother,

the world, the apples in the trees

in the orchard near my house.

But I don’t scream, I remember, I remember I was twelve

and you were trying to teach me

how to blow smoke rings in that Apple orchard.

The leaves were falling then,

falling like they were falling in love with the earth.

We sat facing each other so close

I could almost reach your heart

and hold it to my ear like a sea-shell

and I would hear the waves of every tear you ever cried.

You put the rolled tobacco to your lips and pull

as a lover pulls at her partner’s clothing in a lust craze.

I watch the nicotine rise from your lips like Halos.

I tried but I never could make dying beautiful like you.

Behind the trees hiding like ghosts

were our rich, beautiful bullies.

They were waiting, sharpening their insults

on the wet stones of their tongues,

waiting to hurl them into our battlefield.

And then they came with force

of feet and mouths full and their

hands full of apples, rain upon

rain of apples.

They flew, flung like missiles,

honed like hornets,

stinging their mark.

We ran, ran all the way to fifteen

but somehow along the way I lost you,

I lost you to the clamor of voices so loud

that god heard but

did nothing.

I am sitting in this emergency room with the therapist,

my mother and memories of you.

I look down, six stitches in my left wrist and one lie.

I wasn’t trying to kill myself,

I just wanted to see what my pulse looked like from the inside.

And inside I missed you.

I wanted to show you my smoke rings.

And when I look at my palm,

my lifelines look like the branches

of those Apple trees.

I am standing ate the edge of 36 now,

at the edge of our orchard.

The Apples and trees and bullies

gone. Picked fences, 2.4 kids

and dogs have replaced our battlefield.

A stray apple rolls to the tip of my shoe as if to kiss it hello.

I pick it up, rub it on my shirt and take a bite,

Its juice runs to the corners of my lips

and I devoure the apple, bite it down to its core.

I eat the tornado of torment, whirling and churning

in the pit of that apple and I walk away.

I have had ADD all my life I was finally Diagnosed with it when I was 18. I get into these really down moods I will cry at the drop of a hat, I will lock myself in my room for days and I won't want to eat. Is this a part of ADD?

I was tormented all through school. I am trying to let it go.I am 36 years old now and it still hurts so much. What can I do to get ride of the hurt?

I put on a happy face so no one worries but inside i feel so sad, i want to cry all the time. i do cry at night when no one can see me. i don't know why.

Recently I have met up with a very dear friend. We had been friends since the 4th grade! we were inseparable. We shared a traumatic event together when we were both about 16 years old. We became very close. After the event. Our parents decided that it would be best to separate us for a wile well I had to move away. We lost touch after high school but recently we have found each other again. I have a wonderful person in my life now and I consider that person my Soul mate. But my best friend, we have a very deep connection at the same level as my lover. is it possible to have two soul mates at the same time?

I came from a pretty good house hold. I wasn't abused. My parents are still married, I don't know why i can't let go of the past. I was raped when I was 16, I never told anyone, anyone at all. i was too embarrassed, humiliated. I hate myself. I hurt myself, I cry at the drop of a hat and I feel like i want to be invisible I want to be alone. But some days I am fine. I don't know what's wrong with me. I thought I handled this a long time ago. any advice? I don't have health insurance so I can't go see a Dr. or get meds.

I am not doing well, I was diagnosed with ADD as a child but my parents didn't believe in medication and they just sent me to Therapy, but stopped when I hit Jr High. and I think my ADD has caused depression and I have been struggling ever since.Is there any free services or cheep services in the Portland Oregon area?