Post-Traumatic Stress? Variety Of Torture And Abuse

The first twenty years of my life had a variety of chronic torture & abuse. As a child my home life constantly shifted and alcohol, physical and mental violence was the order of the day. I felt wholly unworthy as a person to be alive. It drove me into drug addiction for eight years. Within the first year, the dealer and his friends cornered me into the back of his shop and raped me, protracting the incident over three days. My addiction exploded and it forced me into dealing with the rapist for a length of time after the incident occurred. I did not develop PTSD at the time, my drug addiction was becoming life threatening and I spent the next twelve years in and out of rehab until I finally one day carved out a functional routine for myself. Life became better, I worked in a shop, got creatively involved and got married (Although I was never able to fall pregnant). Years later we decided to immigrate to Australia. My husband collided with the culture from day one. Within a short period of time he became manic. We had just given everything up and returning back would be security suicide I felt, so I found work, moved us out. My husband tormented me for the next two years until it exploded one afternoon with police coming to arrest him. In the last days of my time in Australia I worked abnormally long hours to pay migration costs, as I wouldn't be able to, once returning to South Africa in an unemployed state.

Landing back in S.A I was hit with the chronic diabetic condition of my mother, who had not gone to one doctor about her condition. I dug in to get her health back to a manageable level for almost a year before I found employment and finally moved out. The nightmare began then. After a court order against my now ex-husband, I landed in a strange town, with new work, where no-one knew me.

Nightmares began to pour into my sleep about the rape that happened over twenty years ago. Functionality levels became dangerously low. I sought help, but without any real finances I was thrown into a system of waiting and small bits of attention here and there. Being alone also didn't help. I had already lost my first job, after flashes bled into my waking hours. A friend came from Australia, three years after my landing back here and saw my condition. These episodes have already taken on a form of torture that has made me terrified to talk about them. Somehow one of the men who raped me, detached themselves into a character that would invade my mind throughout the day and talk to me, telling me of new ways to torture me, that I will never be okay again, that I will always be stuck here. My friend is adamant about me leaving work and seeking help...I am terrified that I will be put away into an institution.