Being Vulnerable...Again

[chelseajmunoz]

Ever since I've been back from my vacation I've noticed that I've felt really out-of-place in my apartment. Like, this apartment has always been where I've lived since I've been back in San Antonio (2011 to be exact). However this apartment is not what I think of as home though by any means. It's where I live and I'm proud that i've lived on my own for 6-and-a-half years. Yet that is all I can say for this place: that it's where I've lived and that it has meaning to a certain extent because I chose this apartment. Yet because there have been numerous traumatic experiences that have taken place here (several different men who have violated me physically or made advances with their words that were unwelcome to me and of course my blood relatives coming to this apartment repeatedly to be confrontational towards me). That being said, I've also had some pleasant memories happen in this apartment. Like, for my birthday in October 2017 my friends really made sure that I had an unforgettable birthday celebration. So while I'm grateful to have had some good moments in this apartment I can't wait to live in a place where I actually feel safe. This week in particular though has been a real struggle mental health-wise because I'm sick and tired of being here. I know that things can get better and that there are places in the world where I can feel totally safe. So now that I know those things are possible I want to experience them all the time. Last night I played around with Bookshare's website on my phone because I really wanted to keep reading books using that particular resource. I played and played with Bookshare's website until I finally figured out how I could read another book on that particular company's website. However the way I figured out how to read another book on Bookshare's website was kind of complicated and something that might take me a few times of repeating the gestures, to actually perform the gestures in a manner that eventually becomes second nature to me. I'm just glad to have started reading The Dance Of Anger. I can already tell that I'm going to love that book. This morning when my assistant came to work for me I asked her what the status was of the Library for the Blind's equipment that needed to be mailed back to that particular agency. She told me that her supervisor had brought the equipment to her and that she'd let me know when she'd mailed it to the Library for the Blind. For breakfast she made me fried chicken, corn, mash potatoes and pita bread. I've never been a fan of mash potatoes but the rest of the food I eagerly ate. An hour or so after my assistant had come to my apartment though it was time for me to leave to go to my therapist appointment. Fortunately VIAtrans showed up at my apartment at a reasonable time and the VIAtrans driver took me straight to my destination. Once I'd gotten to my therapist's office it was just a few minutes before my appointment was to start. In this morning's therapy session one of the things I talked about with my therapist was the fact that I'm really happy with the amount of progress I've made in the last few months. I asked her what her thoughts were on EMDR and she said that EMDR is not one of her favorite methods for people to work through trauma he or she's endured. She also encouraged me by saying that I've done a lot of hard work in these last few months that I'll be able to apply throughout my life every day moving forward. I then shared with my therapist that I think continuing to go to one-on-one therapy is a great idea. I also told her that I want to start a group where women can talk about trauma, how women process traumatic experiences that we go through or even how women process the day-to-day goings on in our lives that sometimes just fucking suck! My vision of how I want the group to look is that I want the group to be made up of women who have PTSD (whether it be from having abusive and neglectful family members as I had or another reason entirely). I also want the group to be made up of women who are losing their eyesight and dealing with the trauma that losing one's eyesight brings with it. The reason I'm specific in wanting to also be a soft place to land for women who are losing their eyesight is because although I've always been legally blind I literally woke up one morning to a world that was totally dark. When that particular traumatic experience happened to me I didn't have any resources available that might help me cope with my total vision loss. By that time I'd lost my vision I'd already graduated from the LCB. Yet nothing prepares a person for something so traumatic as losing one's vision. I didn't feel that resources like Blind Services would help me cope with my sudden vision loss because I wouldn't have been able to tell that particular agency that I didn't know whether my vision loss was a temporary thing or whether it was a permanent thing. So I knew that one way or another I had to figure out how I could transfer the alternative techniques I'd learned in Louisiana to my life in Austin Texas. Upon reflecting on going to the LCB though I feel like being a student at that particular training center truly saved my ass when I lost all of my vision. Like, I knew that some way, somehow I'd be okay even after my vision loss. So anyway I want to include women who are losing their vision as a part of the trauma group I want to start because I know that while a person losing his or her eyesight can be scary as fuck because a person has no idea how he or she's going to cope with that particular change. There's another side to that traumatic experience though: the knowledge that a person's life does not have to be meaningless just because he or she was fully sighted and is now totally blind. A person's life can be meaningless if people just don't know how to make a different choice for his or herself. However life does not have to be devoid of meaning. Given that i'm a confident and competent person who has lived with legal blindness since birth I think I'd be the perfect person to help a woman who is going blind or who has recently gone blind understand that she can live a meaningful life as a blind person. She's just going to have to learn how to do many things differently than she did those things as a sighted person. The reason I want to include women in the group who have PTSD or who have been abused and neglected is because as women we're socialized to take care of other people first and foremost. I want to include women who have experienced PTSD or neglect and abuse in the group because I want to show those women that they can use the voices they were given, to stand up for what they believe is right. I want to put the power into those women's hands and help them believe with their whole hearts that they don't have to forgive anyone who has harmed them in unforgivable ways, even though society tries to convince them that forgiveness will restore broken relationships that they have or give their life more meaning than anything else in the world. I want women to embrace the choices they've made even when society would encourage them not to, I want women to be comfortable in their skin and to embrace their brokenness as a healthy, helpful part of who they are rather than something that means they need God in their lives...for him to totally heal them. I want women to know that they are not the reason for the abuse, neglect or sexual assault that they suffered. I want women to know that they are not the shitty things that have happened to them. In short I want other women to experience the things that I've gained through going to therapy and being treated by kind, compassionate therapists. Although everyone gains different things from his or her life experiences I honestly feel that most people would benefit from going to therapy with a therapist who allows the person to speak about things in a safe space with no negative judgment of him or her whatsoever. Personally I enjoy having opportunities to look at myself and to evolve constantly for the better. I know that sort of thing isn't everyone's cup of tea and I'm fine with that. I just know that my recent therapy experiences have really shaped how I'm on the journey of truly finding myself and living according to said truth. While I'm not usually for people segregating themselves, the reason I envision a group of women is because some of the issues that women face, men can't relate to. For example as a single, multiply-disabled woman I wouldn't take Uber during the early hours of the morning (1:00, 2:00 ETC) because it's a huge safety risk for me. Whereas able-bodied guy friends that I have (and even some married women friends of mine) take Uber at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and think nothing of it. Many men I've talked to say that they wouldn't want to go through therapy because they're guys and they don't like talking about their feelings, much less actually getting in touch with their feelings. Whereas women are more likely to talk about things they're experiencing in detail because they want to be heard, validated and made to feel like what they have to say is valued by someone other than themselves. I know that for me personally, when there's something I want to process or something that I've recently worked through I talk to a woman about those things before I'd even consider talking to a man because experience has taught me that for the most part, women usually "get" what I feel, hope for, believe, ETC. Because sometimes, many times, it wares me the fuck out when more often than not I feel like I have to justify why an experience frustrates the hell out of me or why an experience stresses me out so much. For example it gets tiring to explain to people why taking a service like VIAtrans sucks, because people who have never been through that same thing can't begin to understand what it's like to have to depend on unreliable transportation...especially when those people are privileged members of society who drive their car to work every day. Another reason as to why I want to only have women in the group I want to start though is because women need to have a safe space where we can talk openly about whatever women want to talk about as it relates to trauma, without feeling like men want to control the conversation or tell us how they think we're exaggerating when we say that some of us don't trust many men much or whatever else one can think of where men and women differ in how they think and respond to things.