Fast Forward, Part 1

There were other things that happened over the next several years-- other symptoms, other events-- that I could link to the accident and see as outcomes.

For example, my body never really recovered. Despite two decades of intermittent physical therapy, chiropractic work, network spinal analysis, yoga, trigger point massage, accupuncture, laying of hands, rolfing, reiki, wiccan spell-casting (let's just say that in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are many, many paths to the waterfall), I still struggle with neck, back, and knee pain that leaves me immobilized at worst, and, at best, in constant mild discomfort and with what feels like the agility of a 75-year old woman. 

I have also suffered from chronic, often debilitating migraines for the past 14 years. They have come at least once a month and last anywhere from one to five days. They didn't start until several years after the accident, but I've always known there was a connection. The migraine pain follows a classic pattern: it begins as tension in my neck and shoulders, then creeps its arms upward over the top of my head and anchors itself above my right eye, in the seam of awkwardly-mended bones that you can still feel if you press your fingers there.

These and other stories, I'll tell later. They sit within a history that is being recast in a different light, and I understand now that there were many, many more symptoms after the accident that I didn't connect at the time. That no one connected. That could maybe have been changed, then, and that are definitely being changed, now. 

So. A lot more to tell, but it's getting hard to talk about without first telling you about what's happening in the present, and how it has led me here. This is not a story about a car accident. It's not a chronicle of loss.

This is a tale of survival.

About a year ago, in September 2010, I decided to find a new therapist. I'd been thinking about it for a while: I'd seen two other therapists in the past 10 years with excellent results. I have struggled with major depression off and on for many years, and while the birth of my twins in May of 2009 had not, as I'd feared, brought on postpartum depression symptoms, I had been noticing some things that needed addressing.

Most alarming were the hallucination-like attacks of claustrophobia I'd been having for the past several months.

I'd be sitting on the couch, folding laundry or watching TV or eating dinner, calm, normal, going about my business, and then in the next instant I'd be FALLING! Down down down a well, a crack, a hole in the ground; light fading above, walls closing in, arms held tight to my sides, trapped, trapped, chest compressing, breathe, breathe, can't breathe, can't BREATHE! 

I'd jolt into hyper-awareness, suck in a gasping breath, I can breathe I can breathe; shoot my arms out from my sides to feel the empty space there, I can move, yes, I can move; plant my feet back on the floor to feel its solidity and bring me back to here, now, and go about the business of doggy-paddling my head back above the murky water of whatever that was.

Away, away, away, I'd tell myself... away from what, I didn't know... and my thoughts would drift back to the laundry, the TV, the babies, the couch.

All this would take place within 5-10 seconds. It was a familiar feeling, familiar fear. It had happened occasionally over the years since the accident, its obvious inception. But in recent months it had gone from happening so infrequently that I could barely remember the previous incident to happening several times a week. And then it was happening several times a day.

It was getting weird.

That, along with that "Girl Who Lived" comment on my Facebook page and the knowledge born of experience that this sort of weirdness and discontent doesn't, in fact, go away by itself, compelled me to finally pick up the phone and make some calls. It took longer than it should have. Things required for self-care usually do, with me.

Turns out there's an explanation for that in all of this, too.

Anyway, when I told my husband what I was going to do, he suggested, not for the first time, that I look for someone who practiced EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, a therapeutic technique used for trauma victims), and that I consider all of these symptoms as offshoots of my car accident all those years ago. I'd thought this sounded just a little too... Berkeley... for me in the past, but the claustrophobia stuff was getting worse and as I hadn't been claustrophobic before those terrifying months after the accident, I figured it made sense to connect them. It was worth a shot.

And get this: the only therapist close to my house who had evening appointments and accepted our insurance was an EMDR specialist.

So I went. Things began as they typically do, and spent the first several months talking about typical stuff, building the relationship, figuring out how to proceed.

And then one night in April, in the middle of a session, something happened.