Fiddler crabs to the rescue
I went to see my regular doctor, desperate for any kind of help. Whereas in 1978, I had refused to take the Librium the doctor gave me because I viewed it as a failure to use them, now I had no such illusions. He did give me a prescription for Prozac, but I later learned it was such a low dose it wouldn’t have done anything for me. And he wouldn’t consider increasing the dose or changing the med.
The only other thing he offered was some Ambien or Lunesta for sleep, and some Xanax for anxiety. I didn’t want the Xanax. I had used it once in the past, and I feared its addictive powers. So I tried the sleep meds.
To me, those seemed “odd.” Yes, I “slept.” But it was more like just flipping switches on and off. I took them, they’d hit, and shortly I’d be “out.” Then, when they wore off, it was like flipping the light switch back on, and I was conscious. But not rested. It wasn’t “sleep.” More like “suspended animation.” I am sure they are helpful for others, but they just didn’t work for me.
I was so desperate, I even looked up one of my old gynecologists. She had the same last name as my dead aunt, who had been a nun. Could that be a sign from heaven? However, she didn’t have anything else she could offer me other than possibly some estrogen.
In an effort to find SOMETHING to give me a purpose and focus, I tried to stay busy. And to write. Somehow, I pulled myself together enough to try writing articles, and even a story about the abuse. While nothing came of it, it gave me something to do.
I also kept hearing about people doing blogs. That seemed like a possibility, a sort of “online journal.” In early 2008, I decided I would create one for me, my “online journal” of sorts. I had no idea how to set one up, but my husband said he would help me. But what should it look like? What would it be about?
One day, on a visit to the NC State Museum of Art, I spotted a beautiful Roman mosaic floor on display. And it hit me. That was my theme – mosaics.
So I shot photos of that floor from several angles until I got one that looked like eyes looking back at me. That became the site photo. And given the “mosaic” image, and that I wanted the blog to somehow reflect my soul, I called it “Soul Mosaic.”
Lastly, I gave it the subtitle that summed up my life:
“From all the broken, mismatched, unwanted pieces of life, the soul builds its beautiful mosaic.”
I wrote about a variety of things, anything that caught my interest. Anything to keep me focused, engaged, and distracted from my anxiety. And one of my main topics at that point tapped something that I was already involved with: Fiddler crabs.
That January, I had decided that maybe if I had some pet, it would help. I didn’t want a dog because that just felt like “too much.” But I’d always loved sea creatures. And I wanted something unusual. Wandering the pet shop, I spotted fiddler crabs. They were supposedly easy: a freshwater tank, nothing complicated, minimal care.
I will simply give the short version here. In a matter of a month, I learned exactly what species these crabs were and that they were, in fact, NOT freshwater. To keep them in fresh water was slowly killing them. I could hear their silent screams. So I went on a mission to find out exactly what they needed, which was brackish water, halfway between fresh and saltwater. And I began a yearlong hobby that would end up with three tanks, a logbook of water chemistry tests, and fiddler crabs that bore the names: Rhett Butler, Admiral Byrd, Melanie Hamilton, Scarlett O’Hara, and The Muses.
People would visit my posts and tell me that I had the best information out there on how to raise these crabs. And my son came home from college and joked that he had been replaced by a bunch of tiny crustaceans. But what they were was actually a lifeline.
My blog still has all the entries, so if that is your joy, check it out!
What about work?
From 2004 to 2008, I’d been volunteering at the high school library. That had been fun for the years our son was still a student there. During my last year there, I had tried to get a job as a library aide – something not too stressful, and it was working with the kids and the books. Both loves of mine. However, that did not pan out. And when the two librarians I loved working with retired, I left too.
The next thing I did was to try for a volunteer position at a local science museum. I wasn’t sure I was useful for anything anymore, but at least I could clean fish tanks. It was humble and useful — the fish needed clean tanks. And given my fiddler crab hobby, it felt familiar. I’ll come back to the museum work later. But for now, I at least had something I could do to get off the couch. And even though I was still terrified to go out and be seen, I made myself do it.
Another thing I tried late that fall was volunteering at a local dementia care center, doing recreational activities. I’d always loved visiting my grandmother and the other residents at her convalescent home. Perhaps, a job with meaning, giving love and care to people others didn’t want to be around, might be just the thing to pull me out of my spiral downward. But after a month or so, there I finally had to stop. Unlike the past, where I felt connected to the older people, at this point in my life, it felt like it hit too close to home. I was surrounded by people who had been amazing individuals all their lives, and now they were “gone.” If my anxiety was bad before that, it was screaming now.
I had also been going to a local church on Monday nights where a Buddhist meditation group met. It too was a help in keeping me connected to others, even as I was afraid. A couple of times, I would even meet up with one of the members for morning walks. It was peaceful, and meditation gave me some relief from the anxiety attacks. It would eventually be something I left behind. But more on that later.
The last thing I tried that year but had to pass on was a return to pharmaceutical research work. A friend of mine from the ethics board ran a research services firm and had offered me a chance to work for her. I did consider it, but the intensity of the work and some of the rush deadlines required made it impossible.
Triggering books
Other than my ant movie, there was little escape from the intensity of the fear and anxiety I lived with.
Friends would suggest books. But some of them were about strange and dysfunctional situations. Tales of messed-up marriages, “interesting” relationships, betrayals, and such. One friend said she thought it was good to read these kinds of books to understand and experience these different types of lives. I didn’t.
I had lived “dysfunctional and abusive” all my life. I had no need to experience any more. I had no “intellectual curiosity” for the lives portrayed in those books. And I had no emotional ability to absorb those stories without feeling like, “Why did they give me these books? Do they think I want to live like this?”
Even some of the memoirs and nonfiction history suggested was just too triggering. The bottom line was that all of these were like pouring gasoline on the raging fire of my already overwrought nervous system.
Instead, there were times I just retreated to Nancy Drew. And I read all 18 of the Brother Cadfael medieval murder mysteries. At least I got to explore the world of 1200s Shropshire.
And then there were “those” movies
Around Christmas in 2008, my husband and I tried for a rare moment of connection amidst our both being so distant, by having a movie date. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” was playing and had good reviews. It was about a man who aged backwards. He was born an old man, and by the end of his life, he was an infant. Along the way, he was always out of sync developmentally and in his relationships. That movie set off my nervous system, big time. In an early scene, he was a child playing with his friend, a little girl, but his body was really that of an old man. It was creepy. Then later, as he aged, but his body got younger, his sexual relationship with an older woman almost felt illegal. It was a movie saturated with pain, loss, things that felt inappropriate, and broken relationships.
Looking back, there were so many scenes that no doubt hit nerves in me from my abuse. But at the time, all I knew was that I left that movie theater absolutely terrified and freaked out, and I couldn’t even explain why. While I now know those were emotional flashbacks of my abuse traumas, I didn’t have a clue then.
At the same time, another movie, “Doubt,” came out. That one sent my anxiety levels into outer space. It was about whether a priest in a 1960s Catholic parish was sexually abusing one of the altar boys. The Sister in charge of the school was determined to stop him as she was convinced of his guilt. It is a FANTASTICALLY well done movie, and I will address it in a separate post shortly. But in 2008, I COULD NOT go anywhere near that movie. I was physically repulsed by even the idea of seeing it.
One of my friends wanted me to go see it with her and was actually angry when I said I could not, even though she knew I had been sexually abused. She demanded to know, “What did the Catholic Church ever do to you?!”
It was rare, but I stood my ground. And I am glad. I was never able to watch that movie until 2024, 16 years, and much therapy later.
I will simply say that to this day, I still have to be very careful about the books, movies, and any media that I “put in my head.” There are many that just trigger my PTSD, and so they are not worth it to me to watch, no matter how well done they are. I don’t need any more “reignited traumas” playing out in my mind and body.
Weird friends
My relationships with my women friends were also confusing as hell during this period. Sometimes things seemed wonderful, supportive, safe. But then I’d sense weird energy, particularly off of one or two of my friends. Odd comments and interactions. Conversations that seemed meant to provoke. They were at times almost accusatory in tone, like being grilled in an interrogation. It’s one thing to challenge someone’s belief and ask questions, but these conversations left me feeling like their intent was to prove me wrong or unearth some secret guilt I was supposedly hiding. I only know I always felt “bad” after them.
I could never put my finger on anything concrete, but I just couldn’t shake the vague feeling that there was more operating than what was obvious on the surface. At times, I even started to wonder if some of my friends knew each other. Was I being judged, discussed, or viewed as a problem? Watched?
This all sounds paranoid, and my anxiety level wasn’t helping. In fact, my anxiety level was so high that I could barely function. I had always been able to trust my gut sense in a lot of areas of my life. But with friendships, I was still “learning” and fearful, and with my anxiety, I was hypervigilant. So I couldn’t be sure what the truth of the interactions was. I began to doubt my own sanity. I will share my thoughts on friendships, as well as reflections from things a new therapist would later explain to me, in separate posts.
2008 therapy
By the fall of 2008, I was in such a bad state that I actually reached out to the therapist who’d helped us with our marital issues years ago. I hadn’t needed to work with the therapist for a few years. At the time, I even thought I was all cured. But now, I knew I desperately needed help with whatever was going on. I felt sure he could guide me back to sanity. But while he was his compassionate self, it wasn’t working.
Maybe he had his own issues. He was older, too. And maybe I just couldn’t communicate it well. But he didn’t seem to be getting just how bad things were.
Up to this point, I had never told anyone what I’d seen in the ER. I had no words. Ed now describes that reaction as similar to a soldier coming home from battle. You can’t speak about it. And that was true for me. But at that point in 2008, I had started to wonder if I’d made a mistake being silent for seven months.
I gently tried to share what I’d seen that night, the blood, Ed turning blue, his blood pressure and heart rate numbers shooting way above 200, the terror. But he didn’t seem to respond much. Kind of blew it off as understandable, but now it was over. I only know he didn’t seem to think it was that big of a deal.
When I tried to explain what I was now seeing with Ed, the flat personality, exhaustion, and emotional distance, the therapist was even less engaged. He knew Ed from the past as being that engineer-mind person, and so again, he disregarded my concerns as “Well, that’s Ed.”
Maybe I just wasn’t expressing myself well enough. I was so emotionally burned out that I just couldn’t convey the intensity of what all of this was doing to me inside. Whatever it was, his failure, mine, both…it wasn’t working.
If I thought that part was ineffective, the results of my attempts seeking guidance with my friendships were even worse. He did lead me through a few “guided imagery” sessions, trying to instill a mental image of myself as centered and strong. The idea was that whenever I felt insecure with friends, I could envision that scared part of me “crossing a bridge” to the love and security of my stronger self on the other side.”
While that can be an effective tool, it did nothing for me. Between the weird things I was encountering with a couple of friends and my off-the-charts anxiety, it was too little for too much.
After one encounter with an old friend that went poorly, he was definitely not happy with me. He chided me with, “Why didn’t you use the imagery we worked on?!”
The energy in that office and in his sessions just seemed “off.” Another day, before my appointment, he stood in the doorway of the waiting room with the other therapist, and they both just stared at me for several seconds, then they talked and went back into their offices. I felt like an animal at the zoo being studied. When I asked later what that was about, he just said he wanted the other doctor’s opinion about how I looked and if that matched what a Vitamin D deficiency looked like. I’d been diagnosed with a really low Vit D and had just started vitamin therapy. It just felt uncomfortable.
So between this, my interrogative friend, another friend who had distanced herself, and my unrelenting terrors, I just felt unsafe, and like I was doing “something” wrong that everyone else saw.
Sometimes you can go back to an old therapist for help, and sometimes you just have to move on. This was the case even as I didn’t realize it. But thank God, he did. He was probably out of ideas for what to do with me. Early that December, he suggested that I see a woman therapist. He gave me a list of 4 or 5 local ones and told me to see if one of them might meet with me.
I clung to that sheet like it was a lifeline. And frankly, it would turn out to be just that. I will share that experience in a separate post.
Our son
The one “good” thing during all of this was that our son was away at college and doing a terrific job. He had adjusted well, had friends, great grades, and was active in a number of things. So I didn’t have to worry about him…except for when he had to navigate a situation where his drug-dealing roommate was being “visited and threatened” at 3 in the morning by his supplier. But that is a whole other story.
Suffice it to say, he wisely managed to extricate himself from that situation.
And the even better news toward the end of his first year was that he was coming back to North Carolina. Because he did so well at the Virginia university he was attending, he secured a sophomore year transfer to his first-choice college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. So he, and we, were ecstatic about that.
Parents?
During this particular year, my parents were almost an afterthought. They’d had no involvement in any of the medical crises with Ed, other than “they prayed.” But that was okay. I had no ability to deal with them in all of this.
And, they were also entering their phase of life that would involve decline and death. My father was showing signs of dementia, and they were not doing much traveling anymore. I will write more about them in a later post.
Simply said, for right now, they did their thing, and Ed and I struggled to survive.
By the end of 2008
By the end of the year, I was emotionally “shredded.” The things with Ed had worsened all year. By December, the unsuccessful therapy collided with my terror over the movies, “Benjamin Button” and “Doubt,” the despair while working at the dementia care center, and everything else.
My only hope was that one of those women therapists listed on that piece of paper I got from my previous therapist could help me.
I called one who was retiring, so that was a no. Another seemed ambivalent about taking me on. Worried because I only had two left to try, I contacted a third.
And she would become the blessing that saved me and helped me turn my life around. More to come.
Soul Mosaic 
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