Bernie Still Breathes - An Autobiography

Page 1.

The blue in the Southern California sky has always been misleading. For as long as I can remember, Fox 11 News would report it to be 70 degrees, partly cloudy, but when the peak of the day arose, it’d be 80 degrees with rain. When the broadcasters would report light showers, they really meant “light beams of sunshine to be drifted through the bipolar skies”. Nothing has ever been what it seems here and nothing ever stayed as promised. In a similar way, my entire world revolved around misleading information and bipolar scenarios. Scenarios where I thought I knew what was going on but in fact had no idea. So many secrets that shaped the troubles I face today; with family and loved ones. I never knew why people said what they said or did what they did. I was left to dissect certain situations that made no sense at all. Like the Southern California skies, I was, and shamefully still, left with the curiosity of what the weather will truly be once I step outside.

One of my fondest and clearest memories I have as a child is being thrown up into the sky by one of my older cousins, Tony. I must have been around four or five years old because the adrenaline of actually flying raced through my body. I felt invincible for nearly a whole minute, until he put my feet back on the ground. Tony lived in Washington State and it was rare that he would come down to California. The few times I remember him as a child was when something horrible was happening. Situations were always changing in my childhood and now that I think about it, I wonder what traumatic event had happen that incited Tony’s visit. Isn’t it remarkable that when the brain of a traumatized woman cannot think that the possibility of someone visiting from out of town was and is for something positive? There could have been a party, or a graduation going on at this time but my mind instantly tries to recounter “what horrible thing happened that day that I had to shove it to the back of my brain like the rest of the stuff I've had to shove over the years?”

The first therapist I ever had said that it could have been that my mind was filled with distorted and false memories. She concluded that that was the true reason as to why I made myself believe that my childhood was worse than it actually was. The only thing that comment did was make me go into a deeper depression than what I was already in. I did not return to her. I wasn’t familiar with the concept of "therapy" at the time, but somehow, I knew that perhaps that was not the correct diagnosis that someone with PTSD could have received on the first session.