This post was removed on 30 December 2012.
But I still want to finish with a wonderful piece of music, shared with me by my good friends at Bullying Is For Losers It’s a message I needed to hear yesterday, and will probably need to keep listening to. I’m not going to hide my True Colours. Somehow I’m going to find a way through this.
‘Healing of the Paralytic’ Image credit: Wikipedia.com
In a random moment, of completely unrelated thought, it occurred to me that it is exactly twenty years since I packed up all my possessions, put most of them into storage, rented out what I considered my modest, dream home that I’d only bought a year earlier… and shifted cities, from Wellington to Auckland (8 hours north). Twenty years! Wow! No one could have predicted was what to follow next.
The reason this is significant to me is that this shift spelt the end of the trauma I experienced from being stalked (you can read more about that in Stalked… But Still Hiding Some Of Me). The journey wasn’t over, but I was finally doing something people had advised me to do for years.
Leave town. The reason it took me so long to leave town was that I am stubborn, very stubborn. And I didn’t want the two stalkers to win. I felt that if they drove me from the city where I loved living, and away from my friends and family, then they would have won somehow. I resisted what seemed like the easy option for a long time… until it simply got too much, and I couldn’t take living my life in hiding and a kind of raised alertness anymore.
What I had no awareness of at that time, but now completely understand, is that when the trauma ends, the journey is only just beginning. I beg to disagree with people who might tell you that now it’s over you can simply get on with living. It’s finished.
Actually it’s not. It’s simply a corner I had turned towards recovery. But the journey would continue to be just as painful for a long time to come.
When I no longer had to keep looking over my shoulder to see if they were there watching, I could relax (actually I had to learn how to stop looking over my shoulder). And when I relaxed, that’s when the fear struck home. For nearly 14 years I had lived with the reality, but I couldn’t afford to let myself feel fear. I couldn’t for many reasons. Partly I had to remain alert of danger all the time. Somehow I had to tell myself that I could cope with this, because if I didn’t I would crash, and be vulnerable, not just to the pain, but to the stalkers themselves. It was a risk I couldn’t take. It would destroy me.
Now that I was away from the stalkers, it was safe to let my guard down… and weep. Actually even then it took a while to happen.
I was in a new city, with a great new job. I was catching up with old friends and making new ones. For 10 months I was great, and then sickness (Glandular Fever or infectious mononucleosis) struck and then, because I was vulnerable, my mental health completely fell apart. The defenses I had built up over so long could no longer carry me.
I had to think long and hard before writing this post. The last thing I want to do is discourage others who are fighting their own battles. Twenty years is a heck of a long time. I know. I lived it. But I think we need to be realistic too. And to know that taking time is okay.
After all the damage that may have been inflicted on us in a variety of means of abuse, perhaps over a long time, it is going to take time to heal. The damage probably wasn’t done overnight, and we’re not going to heal overnight. Just because the abuse (of any kind) is over does not mean the pain comes to an end. Actually for me, it was only just beginning.
I hasten to add that I haven’t spent 20 years continually trying to get over this, and actually it was about four years before anyone started to use the words Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). What could be seen was Depression and Anorexia, but unfortunately no one stopped to pay attention to the trauma I had faced for so long. And actually I was pretty much too traumatised to be able to talk about it.
When a therapist started to talk in terms of trauma, I knew I had finally found someone who ‘got it’. That was a life changing event, if ever I had one. This man understood me. Unfortunately this was in a final interview with him, as my then husband and I were on the move again (actually back to Wellington). I never had the opportunity to speak to this man who ‘got me’ again.
For the first few years I was being treated for Depression and Anorexia, although it was continually said that I wasn’t responding to treatment, nor did I fit what was seen as classic profiles for these issues.
Cover of A Path Through the Sea
About six months into my treatment, my eldest brother who has always been great at supplying me with books to read, sent me one about Depression. A Path Through the Sea by Lillian V. Grissen. It was a very good account of the author’s journey through Depression, and was the first book I read which was a personal account. It is written from a Christian perspective – she was a missionary – and if that’s your thing you might find it interesting. I did at the time.But I was also completely mortified by her account. She was depressed for two years! At the time, I had been unwell, and being treated for depression for six months. The thought of two years of this was completely beyond me. I just ‘knew’ I couldn’t do two years of this hell.
You can probably guess why I mention it. Because it is now 20 years on. What more can I say, without depressing every reader?
I took this opportunity of realising the anniversary to ask myself what impact the trauma I experienced was still having on my life. The first thought was that I still am somewhat scared of the dark and I still clip my bedroom curtains closed at night, so that they can’t fall back leaving a gap. My cat used to jump up on the window sill during the night and move the curtains. In the morning I would find a gap and be terrified that someone had been watching me through the window as I slept. I know it’s a little odd, but I can cope with needing to do that still. If I continue to need to do it all my life, so be it.
What disturbs me much more is the realisation that in spite of all the therapy and healing, every connection with another human being has me (usually unconsciously now) fearing that the result of knowing that person will be more stalking. Basically I view everyone as a potential stalker. It’s one of the reasons I married my ex-husband (18 years ago). As it was, when we divorced some years later, he proved me wrong by not going on to stalk me. It was only then that I could breathe peacefully.
I hate that I still fear the result of a relationship (of any kind) will be more stalking. I feel angry that after all this time, it still has such a big impact on me. I feel angry at the men whose actions taught me react in this way.
That said, I know that being angry isn’t going to help at this point. I have done the angry thing and I don’t believe it’s what I need right now. That trauma happened across a lot of years and I built up defenses to protect myself for very good reasons. Some might say “get over it” but that won’t help me either. What I need is to be gentle with myself. What I need is to give myself time. What I need is to say “it’s okay“.
I’m not saying that healing needs to take 20+ years after significant on-going trauma, and I’m not convinced that it needed to take me 20+ years. It’s just that for a large chunk of that time I was on a self-destruct mode that really didn’t allow for healing to take place. There were other things going on too, and there are for most of us.
What I am saying is that healing takes time. When we’ve been hurt over a sustained period of time, the pain won’t be over when the trauma stops. It takes time. I’m no psychologist to be able to say explain some psychological theory. I just know it doesn’t happen overnight, and I believe it’s important that I be gentle on myself and give myself whatever time it takes. Hopefully those around me can give me that time too.
♦
“And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.”
― Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year
Image credit: Lk1997863064/Flickr.com
I came across these great words from Dawna Markova:
Let me explain why they caught my eye. I’ve spent a lot of years not being fully alive. There are many reasons for that, and one of them sprung to mind when I read this poem. Some years ago I had the unfortunate, and very traumatic experience of seeing another person catch fire, and I was unable to stop it happening or even to help. I’m not going to go into the details because it would be traumatic for me, and maybe for you too, but I read:
You might be able to imagine that after an experience like that, everything about catching fire would catch my attention. It did. Any words about fire tend to do that for me, although I can say that at this stage it’s not the traumatic re-living of the event anymore. Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about it now.
What strikes me is that back when that happened, it affected all of my senses. My sight, smell and hearing all caught their own record of it. What’s more, I could taste the burning in my mouth and I could feel the soot on my clothes. I guess that’s what you could call experiencing it fully, and as a result it was very hard to get away from. Not only were all my senses affected that day but also my heart. The person involved wasn’t someone I knew personally, but a little of the pain they experienced had to touch those who had to watch helplessly. How could it not?
I have lived since then afraid of catching fire, or seeing the experience repeated. I don’t even use candles anymore, even though I consider myself to have largely recovered from the experience. Candles also aren’t such a good idea when you’re living with earthquakes, so again my fear of fire is stashed away with the candles, and I can tell myself that it is ‘sensible’.
I suspect that to some extent I will always be a little fearful of fire, but the thing is that when I start to guard my life from one danger, then it is easy to start building protective barriers around myself from other dangers. I don’t want my senses to be invaded in such a way that they were. And I don’t want my heart to be hurt like it was that day too.
That occasion was thankfully the only time I have had to deal with such an event but my heart has been being hurt, and burnt over and over again across the years. I’m no different from anyone else, and I’m sure most people have had their hearts burnt at times. It’s just that when it happens repeatedly then you gradually shut down from the world, and that’s what I did. I shut down so that no one could get near my heart.
It seemed like the sensible thing to do at the time, but I’m realising that when I shut down my heart then I shut down my life and how it is experienced by all of my senses. I don’t want to die having lived only half my life, and so I’ve come to the conclusion that I have to take a few risks in order to bear the fruit.
I’m not about to light candles because our earthquakes continue (although admittedly they are lessening in their frequency). A damaged house is one thing but a burnt out house would leave me homeless.
But I can consider my risks, and take a few. I want to fly. In any situation that we face there are risks. I’m not blind to that but I think now I’m at a point where I can jump. If I don’t fly, then I know there will be people around me now to make sure I have a smooth landing. I’m still going to be careful. I don’t want my heart burned unnecessarily. And when those earthquakes have stopped, I’ll be pulling out the candles again. It’s time to move on and not be paralysed any longer by my fear of fire. Fire can be a good thing too, and I intend to experience that.
“We are young, but We already know that in life’s great game those who are
most unhappy are those who haven’t taken the risk to be happy.
And I don’t want to be one of those”
― Guillaume Musso, Que serais-je sans toi?
Image credit: cutegirlyquotesandsayings.blogspot.com
Eighteen years ago, this is what I attempted to do. It was my wedding day. You know the one that every little girl apparently dreams of? And every woman remembers back to?
I never really had dreams of what my wedding would be like, and as for remembering back to? Well actually I can’t remember a thing of it. I was so doped to my eyeballs with medication, just to get me through the day, that I remember nothing. All that I have is images in my head, created from photos and a video that was recorded of the day.
The wedding had already been postponed once, when my psychiatrist told me he’d commit me to compulsory psychiatric hospitalisation if I didn’t postpone. That was about the only thing that would have worked, and it did… until I shifted and got a new psychiatrist.
Image credit: Cate Reddell
As regular readers may remember I don’t ever put photos of myself on the internet, because of some very real personal security issues from my past (and not because I am trying to hide anything from you). But I’ve made an exception, partly because 18 years on, this isn’t how I look anymore. I might yet remove the photo from here in a few weeks time, but in the meantime I hope that people will respect my need for this photo not to go any further.
The photo is me and my Dad arriving at the wedding. I look happy enough, don’t I? But moments before the photo was taken, and before my Dad got out of the car, I said to him “please don’t make me go in there.”
I don’t actually remember saying it, but it was loud and clear the day my new husband and I sat down for the first time (several weeks later) to watch the video that a friend had made. Woops!
Dad heard it, but he thought I was joking and I guess that’s a problem sometimes when you’re someone who has a tendency to do ‘silly’. He also didn’t know that I’d said a similar thing to one of my brothers a few night’s earlier. My brother hadn’t known how to respond either. He could see how clearly upset I was but put it down to my mental health at the time. I should say though, that while Dad and my brother heard me say this, I don’t in anyway think they should have done something other than listen, as they did. It was my responsibility to opt out of the wedding. I didn’t.
To cut a long story short the marriage was doomed and ended some years later. It was very painful, but I’ve come to the realisation that it happened, it’s a part of my life, and that’s okay.
What brought me to that conclusion was when my mother was eager to throw out the photos she had of my wedding. We had rescued them, along with many other family photos, from her home that was destroyed by the earthquakes last year. She said to me, “you should have left these ones there, I’ll just put them in the rubbish.” My mother has never been a sentimental person, so her reaction to the photos didn’t really surprise me. But it did make me think.
Yes, my ex-husband and I should never have got married in the first place. I believe that was the first mistake. Actually I seriously doubt I was well enough, and in enough of my right mind, to be signing any sort of legal document. I was very sick with depression, anorexia and PTSD (the PTSD was a lot to do with why I didn’t listen to my feelings).
At the time we married, I firmly believed that marriage was a ‘until death do us part’ commitment. So I took that to heart when I realised it wasn’t going to work, and tried repeatedly to kill myself. I seriously believed that was better than divorce. Thankfully with some help of a very wise therapist who is now a valued friend, I eventually realised that divorce might not be the ideal, but I needed to do something to remove myself from a situation that was literally killing me.
The marriage was a mistake right from day one, and I’m not going to go into the reasons for that, because I don’t think that is important. What is important though, is what I do with the mistake I made all those years ago. I read a blog recently, where the writer was saying that there are no mistakes in life. I disagree.
I kept calm and shut up… with the aid of a lot of medication. And I kept doing that throughout the marriage because I gave no value to my own feelings. I simply thought I was wrong. I thought I was a failure of a wife, as a woman, and as a person. I even thought I was a failure as a daughter and sister because my family would be so disappointed in me. It wasn’t until someone taught me that my feelings mattered, that I started to see that what I thought and felt was valid, and not to be ignored.
So yes, I made some mistakes… but at this point I can finally say I have no regrets. Yes, it hurt. Yes, it was very painful for all involved. And yes, there are lasting scars for both me and my ex-husband, but I suspect we are both in much better situations now. I certainly am and while we don’t have contact now I know enough to know that my ex-husband is also now in a much better place.
I also know that I learnt a whole lot from going through all those years. That dreadful journey has contributed to the person that I am today, and I know that has to be a good thing.
I encouraged Mum to keep the photos. I don’t know whether she did, but regardless of the disaster the marriage was, it was a significant part of my life. It happened. While it’s not something I think about much now days, I’m not going to pretend it didn’t happen.
Sometimes we do make mistakes, but actually good can come from those mistakes, and for that reason I have no regrets. I need to add though that it has taken a long time to get to this point. I used to feel physically ill when this date rolled around each year. But this year I’ve discovered that dread and regret is past now.
So believe. It does happen.
“Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?”
― Mary Manin Morrissey
“A mind at peace, a mind centered and not focused on harming others, is stronger than any physical force in the universe.”
~ Wayne Dyer
Today (Friday) is the International Day of Peace, recognised each year on 21 September. On this day the United Nations invites all nations and people to honour a cessation of hostilities during the Day, and to otherwise commemorate the Day through education and public awareness on issues related to peace.
I admit that I am less interested in politics in general, and more interested in the recovery and sustainability of people’s mental health, but I have recognised that something that contributes or takes away from my mental health, is when I am disturbed by things I am passionate about. Peace is one for those things for me. And I am convinced that a lack of peace causes great harm to the mental health of so many.
The Secretary-General of The United Nations, Ban Ki-moon says:
“On the International Day of Peace, the United Nations calls for a complete cessation of hostilities around the world.
We also ask people everywhere to observe a minute of silence, at noon local time, to honour the victims – those who have lost their lives, and those who survived but must now cope with trauma and pain.
The theme of this year’s observance is “Sustainable Peace for a Sustainable Future”.
Armed conflicts attack the very pillars of sustainable development.
Natural resources must be used for the benefit of society, not to finance wars.
Children should be in school, not recruited into armies.
National budgets should focus on building human capacity, not deadly weapons.
On the International Day of Peace, I call on combatants around the world to find peaceful solutions to their conflicts.
Let us all work together for a safe, just and prosperous future for all.” (1.)
It is the victims of war, and they can be defined in many ways, are the ones I feel most concerned about because they are usually the innocent ones, the one’s who haven’t chosen war, but get stuck in its path. They are the ones who face years of trauma and pain. I accept that I have never been in a war zone, and neither do I want to be, but I have been in a war zone in my head (and my body in relation to my eating disorder and self harm). I know from that how much damage war does and I believe strongly that there has to be another way to solve conflict.
- George McGovern
And it’s not just men. Only a few weeks ago my country mourned the death of our first woman soldier in killed in combat. Her death was no worse than the death of the two men who died with her, but it somehow hit home to me, particularly when I watched the footage of the all-female pall-bearer party carry her coffin off the plane that brought the bodies home.
I have complete respect for those who serve their countries in war, but I have no respect for the leaders who craft the wars. Those who send soldiers to war and create conflicts where innocent people are killed. There simply has to be another way.
Because of my interest in mental health I keep asking the question, what must war do to the mental health of those involved? We only need to consider for a moment the statistics of suicide and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) amongst soldiers, but we have little knowledge of the impact on civilians. It must simply be enormous, and I don’t believe that this impact on either soldiers or civilians is acceptable.
Image credit: Michelle Frost
Blog Blast for Peace
I am just one person, many miles from the conflicts that are taking place at the moment. I could say, what can I do? I can’t change anything. But I strongly believe that I can make a difference simply by raising the issue, recognising the event today, and hoping for peace. It’s not easy to change our world, but that is no excuse not to try. I am going to continue to write about this, and as I have said before, have committed to the Blog Blast 4 Peace on 4 November. Maybe it’s not exactly what my blog is usually about, but it is something that I feel strongly about because it has an effect on my life (and yours).
**
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
- Margaret Mead
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Image credit: Benjamine Scalvenzi via Fotopedia.com
Recently I posted Child-free Emotions and earlier, I’m Not Having A Baby about my choice to not have children. Following my posts, someone who has become a very dear friend discussed with me her reactions to my posts, and I invited her to share those here as a guest post. While our circumstances have been very different, a lot of the feelings she describes echo those I have had on my journey too. Here are her words…
It seems that being single and/or being childless automatically puts you in the category of having “something wrong” with you. In other words, “You must be out of your mind!!” is what people are really thinking. What they also think and sometimes are insensitive enough to say is, “That’s not normal!!” My question to you is, who are you to define what “normal” is for me? Have you ever considered there are “legitimate” reasons why I am single or why I am childless? Or do you just judge me and label me without having a clue to what has happened in my life? For those who consider it their duty to see single people and women without children as not being “normal,” here’s something for you to consider:
I grew up in a time when the “normal” thing for young girls to expect was to grow up, meet someone in either high school or college, fall in love with him, get married, have children and live happily-ever-after. You could have a job before you got married, but once you had that ring on your finger your job was to be a wife and mother. Maybe, if your husband allowed you to, once the children were in school or had left home, you might be able to have a job. Please note that it was a job, not a career. Your career, even when your children were grown and on their own, was still to be a wife and mother . . . or now a grandmother. The only exceptions seemed to be if you’d been “foolish enough” to have chosen a “lazy, good-for-nothing” husband which meant you had to work in order to keep a roof over your heads and food on the table. In which case, it was your fault for choosing the wrong man to begin with!! These “normal” things a young girl was expected to do never took into account the following scenarios:
What if you grow up in a home where your parents despised each other and you thought this was typical of married people? What if you found out this was not typical and not the what you wanted to use as a role model for your own marriage? What if all of your sisters marriages are not ones you want to use as a role model either because one sister, determined not to be dominated by a man like her father, “hen-pecked” her husband and he allowed her to do so; because another sister used sex to get a husband so she wouldn’t have to move where the family was moving and then used sex for the rest of her life to control and manipulate every man she met in order to get what she wanted to out of life; because another sister chose a man just like her father, only angrier, louder, meaner, more demanding, more verbally abusive and who played mind games with everyone he met since he thought he was so much more clever than anyone else? What if the church denomination you grew up in never made allowances for human behavior so that you were told everything was “fine” in everyone else’s home until the day one member of the family finally has the nerve to walk down the aisle for “confession” and every member of the congregation discovers to their horror that one spouse has committed adultery, one child is on drugs, one child is pregnant and unmarried and the couple is filing for divorce? What if, in this denomination, these were all horrible sins and the family members were now torn apart because they were too ashamed to seek help from their “brothers and sisters” because they knew they’d be condemned, as a child you see these once loving and loved people being condemned and shunned — or worse, “disfellowshipped,” which is the Protestant form of “excommunication”?
What if you still believed, despite all evidence to the contrary, that you would one day “meet the right fellow, fall in love, have children and live happily-ever-after” because you’re still naive enough to believe that it could happen . . . until the day one of your sisters brings home a “man” she’s fallen in love with and he starts putting his hands on you when you’re an adolescent? What if you naively believe that since he’s about to become your “big brother” that he’s just showing “natural affection”? What if this touching increases as the years go on until one day this man, being a position of power and authority in your life as he’s taken on the trustworthy role as father-figure since he’s married to the sister you trust the most who has taken on the trustworthy role as mother-figure in your life, convinces your sister to join him in laying a trap for you — a trap you don’t see because you trust these people, especially your sister, with your life? What if that trap is what he wanted from the first time he saw you when you were twelve years old: to have sex with you? What if your sister leads you to his bed? What if he never stops touching you, bothering you, flirting with you, “loving” you or simply letting you alone for the next two decades?
What if you escaped this situation as soon as you were old enough to get out on your own and began meeting men that you were still considering as “marriageable material”? What if you still didn’t know what truly loving someone and being loved by someone meant? What if you discovered that the men you met saw a beauty and a value in you that you never believed you possessed because you’d been told all your life how ugly, fat, stupid clumsy and how much of a bother you were? What if you allowed yourself to believe it for just a bit because you so desperately wanted it to be true? What if things were going along smoothly until he began talking about marriage? What if you began to panic inside because he might find out the bad thing that had happened that had been all your fault and he’d hate you for it? What if you knew that there was no way the marriage would last because even if you were able to manipulate and control everything so that he never found out your horrible secret, you still didn’t know what a good marriage looked like, you had no idea how to make a marriage work and the thought of having children, even though you’d been a great babysitter and were a good aunt to many nephews and nieces, scared you to death for reasons you didn’t understand at the time? What if that panic and fear made you run away? What if you met another man and the same thing happened, only this time you didn’t have to run away because he was transferred overseas, so now you were safe? What if you met another man, one whom you now realized you truly loved but were still terrified he’d discover your secret and blame you and hate you since it was all your fault? What if this man had the same bad characteristics as the bad characteristics of your father and you knew you’d never be able to stand up in “a house of God” and make vows before God, family and friends to do all kinds of things “until death do you part” when you knew you’d want to leave him long before death entered the picture and you didn’t want to end up divorced with a couple of children to raise on your own?
What if you had a miscarriage? What if you later discovered you had several mental and emotional illnesses? What if you’d gone ahead and married that man despite all the red-flag warnings? What if you’d been able to carry a baby to full term, but had a breakdown going through postpartum depression? Would that postpartum depression have caused a breakdown? Would that postpartum depression and/or subsequent breakdown cause you to harm your own innocent baby and/or yourself? Would your new husband, not understanding what was going on, stand by you? Would he seek help for you? Would he stay by your side? Would he divorce you because you’re “crazy”? Would he now hate you for being “crazy” and for putting his child in danger? Would he now discover the secret and despise you on top of everything else? Would he have you committed? Would you have to go to jail and then to prison for acts committed when you were “out of your mind”, because you’d never consider doing such things if you were in your “right mind”?
Now that you’ve considered these things, I hope you’ve really had a chance to think about each question, taking your time to wonder what you would do in each of these scenarios. I don’t have to wonder what I would have done because I’ve experienced every single one of these things, and many more, except that I never carried a baby to full term and I never went through with the marriage. Because of the secret shame and loathing I carried around inside of me for what two people did to me, having cold-bloodedly and pre-meditatively planned to do to me, one of those people being the one person I trusted the most in this world, my sister, I never thought I deserved a family of my own. I thought I wasn’t worthy. I was terrified someone would find out how bad I was, how despicable I was, how dirty I was, since I was led to believe that what happened and continued to happen was all my fault, and I was terrified that if the one man I truly loved ever found out about my secret and forgave me for being such a bad person, he’d go after my brother-in-law and kill him or be killed by him.
Once I discovered I had several mental and emotional illnesses, I wondered if the breakdown I had, which came about because I’d kept the secret inside me for so long it was slowly killing me and it had to come out, would have occurred earlier if I’d gone through with what the man I loved wanted and married him. I know we would have had children, if I’d been able to carry one full-term, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would have had postpartum depression. Having heard many stories on the news of women who kill their children during this state of mind, I cannot help but wonder if the mental and emotional illnesses that made the chemicals in my brain unbalanced would have made me join their ranks. If I had survived the inevitable postpartum depression, I would have passed on my inherited mental and emotional illnesses and I would have, as my parents did to me, hurt my children verbally and emotionally — but I pray not physically — because whereas I might have had better parenting skills, having learned from my parents what not to do, I still might not have had enough skills to have known the best way to raise my children.
I still never gave up on the idea of marriage, until I had a breakdown and this illness-I-never-knew-I-had got out of control. In order, subconsciously, to protect myself from ever being sexually abused again, and because the secret had to come out, I began gaining weight in the years preceding the breakdown. Since then, I have gained an enormous amount of weight and have kept it on, except for a short time in my life. When I lost a good deal of weight I began to feel good about myself. I began to feel prettier. Men began to notice me again. I slowly began to panic. Then I began to eat, both for comfort and as a means of stuffing my feelings down . . . and as a safety measure. The layers of fat on my body are really layers of walls that I have built between the real me inside this body and the scary things that men will down to pretty, thin women — especially my brother-in-law who to this day still looks at me with that “knowing” look!! Apparently no matter how fat I am, he’ll still think of me as that vulnerable young girl he wants to have in his bed.
I could never write these things on my own blog because family members who don’t know the truth would be meaninglessly made to suffer if I were to reveal my secret. My dear, kind and generous friend, Cate, has allowed me to take up space on her blog to let my voice be heard. My name is Kathy and I have been the victim of mental, emotional, verbal, physical, spiritual and sexual abuse. Due to this violence against my person and due to the genes I inherited, I now live with many mental and emotional illnesses, the two main ones being bipolar disorder and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder.) I’ve spent the last nineteen years of my life with these illnesses barely under control by medication. I’ve done the best I can with doctors, counselors and my God and Lord, Jesus, the Christ, to overcome my past and to place the responsibility for wrongs done to me onto those who did those wrongs and off of me, an innocent child and young woman. I am still a work in progress, because once a child is harmed the scars are on that soul forever. God, in His wisdom, love, grace and mercy has been teaching me and is continuing to teach me how to live with these things and how to live past these things. I am 55 years old. I am a survivor!! Therefore those of you who know me on WordPress know me as survivor55.
Image via glogster.com
Is it just me? Am I the only one who feels like I’m stalking people? That is probably near the worst of things I personally could do to some other human being, and I accept that my reluctance to ‘stalk’, or even ‘follow’ has been heavily influenced by those who had no hesitation to stalk me.
It’s not a nice experience being stalked. Being followed, watched, talked about, threatened, generally unable to live your own life without knowing full well that everything I do is noted. I had a shadow hanging over me. Actually I had two shadows and that just made the intensity greater.
Image via CrunchBase
Recently I (finally) signed up with Twitter. This is a big step for me. I knew it would be good to get my blog further out into the wider world but had been putting off the big step for a while. It took me forever to join Facebook, as a few of my in-real-life friends can tell you. I only joined because one friend was constantly on at me that this would be a great way for us to stay in touch (we don’t live near each other). The ironic thing though is that it hasn’t really worked that way. Sure, she sees my posts and I see hers, I see what she likes and she (I guess) sees what I like. I see updated photos of her kids and that’s nice. I can’t believe how fast they grow. But that’s about it. We really don’t communicate directly with each other much. And I have to admit that lack of direct communication, coupled with the ability to simply watch is a little off-putting for me. Probably some of that is just that neither of us have the time. I think that’s okay because our lives have headed in different directions that are perhaps hard for the other to comprehend, but I still feel a little sad that it didn’t turn out like it was promised.
Image via CrunchBase
That aside though, joining Facebook was a good thing for me, and as well as putting me back in contact with people from the past, it has also given me the opportunity to ‘meet’ a whole lot of other people who have become very special to me (even though we have never met). It also enabled me to get involved in mental health support groups. This was very important in continuing to work on my own recovery as well as now being able to help others.Unfortunately, because I now run two groups on Facebook, I regularly come across trolls, or people who create a false identity in order to create chaos in social media sites. The chaos that is caused by these people, and I’ve had a few who were expert in their field, puts me off the whole Facebook thing entirely. I’m not about to leave Facebook because the good outweighs the bad, but it reminds me daily that we don’t really know who we are interacting with across the internet. Really nothing much can prove an internet identity and I am constantly wary. Gut feeling counts for a lot but even then, a couple of times I have been badly wrong.
So now I enter into the world of Twitter. Three days on, and I am following 12 people and I am getting tired already of being asked to follow the New Zealand All Blacks (our national rugby team). I’m a rare kiwi in that I am not interested in their every move but I suspect Twitter is going to keep asking me to follow them. No! Back to the point though, I have this feeling in my stomach that I am stalking those 12 I have followed. They didn’t give me permission to ‘follow’ them. I just chose to. I know what it is like to be followed and frankly I’m not comfortable with it.
The other side is, of course, that while only one is following me so far, I am kind of relieved. Don’t get me wrong. If you are a friend I am happy for you to follow me but… maybe if Twitter could just use a different term I might feel more comfortable. There is also a reverse to this that I must confess. One person is following me! Wow! How many people on Twitter have only one follower? How sad is that? I know, I know, I can’t be satisfied either way.
(And don’t get me wrong. I want to interact with both friends and yet-to-be-friends through social media. It’s just that this voice of caution is always sitting on my shoulder. I’m also not afraid of anyone in particular. It’s simply a cloud of, perhaps, irrational fear generated from years of looking over that shoulder.)
I’m going to say this although I fear what your reaction might be. This bind of not wanting to be followed, yet wanted to be followed is something that happens with real stalking too, and I am only too well aware of it. Not for one moment would I suggest that being stalked is a pleasant experience because it’s anything but. Somewhere deep inside, for someone who was full of self hate and doubt, the concept that someone (or two) thought I was worth stalking really did my head in. When I felt unloved by others in my life there was this tiny voice that said ‘well, they will love you’. Sick as it is, and I hate it immensely, it’s just one of the many ways that stalking really gets to you. It becomes impossible to know what is real and what is not. And they didn’t really love me. It was an obsession that was anything but love, but the mind plays powerful games.
But again, back to Twitter. 
What do I do? I don’t like the idea of people knowing what I’m doing, without me knowing that they are watching. Would I be better forgetting Twitter? Or should I stick it out? Is it just me? Even though I have come a million miles forward to recovery from my lengthy stalking experience, am I just letting it trip me up? If you have any thoughts on this I would love to hear them. I need some rational input into what is perhaps slightly irrational.
Meanwhile, my Twitter account is set up and my blog posts are going there, but do I feel comfortable? Not entirely.
Image via CrunchBase
PS. I should add that Skype totally does my head in too, although I can see benefits. The idea of someone, not physically with me, being able to see me sitting at my computer? No, that’s way to freaky for me. No doubt though, like Facebook and Twitter, eventually I will give in to this when I someone gives me a good enough reason to abandon such founded but still irrational fear.
All that said, I don’t find WordPress is a problem, so maybe it is all just irrational.
I’m re-training my mind!
Image via FB – A Beautiful Mess Inside
Image via thefabweb.com
“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
― Albert Camus
On the surface, everything can look calm, everything can seem okay. But hidden under that calm there are those ever-present Cate’s crocodiles. If you’re not sure what I’m on about this time, check out Crocodiles & Three Wise Men. While I had never stopped to consider crocodiles much before, I find myself drawn to them (well, pictures of them) and there is always a good reason.
My last post Courage Required was a little bit cryptic, and apologise for that. The thing is there is a calm look on my face for anyone who sees it, but my mind is racing at ninety miles an hour (144 kilometres for us kiwis) trying to work some things out. At the time I posted I could get as far as telling you that what I needed to find a healthy dose of courage, but I was unable to do much more. The racing mind had me stalled, flicking through websites aimlessly, not taking anything in, unable to even concentrate to catch up on reading other blogs because I just couldn’t concentrate to do anything but generally looking… calm (to anyone but my imagination).
When I started blogging, I set myself some rules. The biggest being that I would largely leave my immediate family out of my blog. Why? In my desire to do my little bit to reduce the stigma of mental illness I wanted my blog accessible to my friends and family. That kind of changes the focus a bit because family, for most of us, have a pretty significant part to play in our lives now or in the past.
I made the decision to not write anything about my immediate family that they might be unhappy about. This is partly because of a previous disagreement over something I had published in the past. Some parties were not exactly happy with what I had put on the internet, and while I didn’t take it off (because after a lot of soul searching I didn’t think I’d done wrong), I did resolve to be almost over-cautious in what I published in future. So at this point you occasionally might read of my 19 month old niece’s activities, but that is it (and I should say she seems to be quite okay with that).
Now I find myself in a situation that involves my family, but if I don’t find a way to write about it somehow, I risk those crocodiles rising up through the calm and biting me on the arse. So I need to write about what is going on for me, without betraying their confidences. Easy? Not at all! But here goes. Forgive me if there are gaps that mean this doesn’t make sense.
On 22 February 2011 life changed forever here in my corner of the world. It came with an almighty earthquake (that I have regularly mentioned and) that killed 185 people in my city. I knew one of those people personally. My family was lucky to avoid death, but incurred great loss both physically and mentally. An earlier (and larger) earthquake on 4 September 2010, almost destroyed my brother’s business (that he had only bought one month before). In February, my parents lost their home and about 70% of their possessions. They walked away with the clothes they were wearing and it wasn’t until four months later that my brother and I were given a few hours to go into the destroyed apartment and retrieve what we could. By that time, in April 2011, my father died suddenly in my home The cause of death being heart failure caused by stress. My home was severely damaged in February but the three of us had been living here ever since. There was no other option.
Sixteen months on, my parents home is now demolished, and just yesterday I received the offer for my mother from their insurance company. My home is still severely damaged and it is looking like it will be years yet before it is repaired (it seems it’s in the too hard basket and many homes are in that same basket). My brother’s business is still badly damaged and awaiting an insurance decision. He struggles to keep it running. The dream he and his wife had of owning their own business hasn’t quite been what they’d bargained on.
But all these things are the relatively easy pieces of the puzzle. These are the material pieces that can perhaps be fixed with the provision of a cheque, or a builder. It’s what goes on in the minds of the people who live through all this, that is not so easy to fix. We have all changed and are not the people we used to be.
For me surprisingly I think the trauma of everything actually helped me take a leap toward wellness. Like everyone else here I struggled to sleep at night (the first and largest quake happened at 4.35am and that was one heck of a way to wake up), I became super vigilant about not just more quakes but the safety of my family. My ‘performance’ of the past nearly 20 years would have suggested that I would completely crumble at this. When my father died six weeks later and my effort at CPR was unsuccessful, again past ‘performance’ would have suggested that I would crumble. My brother admitted that for a while, when the telephone rang, he would expect it would be a call to say I had been admitted to the local psych hospital… or worse. Actually that was the furthest thing from my mind.
I think I got flung into a position where I needed to take some control, not just for myself but for my parents too. They were never the same again and I almost swapped roles. For years I had been the ‘sick child’ needing to be handled with care in case “she spun out and did something crazy”. Now, from the day in their apartment when the quake struck, and I needed to clear a path for them to get out to the stairway and out of the building, to arranging to replace their necessities and find a new home for Mum. It’s hard to put into words, but it was (and I mean them no disrespect) like we reversed roles. They became the ‘sick children’ and I the ‘adult’.
This week I have been almost overwhelmed by some of the practical issues that this has raised, that no one really has time for but they still need attention. It has been hard, there have been a few tears (I don’t cry that often) and there has been an enormous sense of being alone. I have been angry with my father for dying. He was always the person I could talk my problems through, and I knew that this time he would, again, know what I should do. But damn it, he’s gone. He was my voice of reason (mostly!) but now while I can rant at my memory of him, he can’t respond. And I seem to be finding it harder in the second year since his death, than the first. I realise just how much I, and my family have lost. It’s not just his physical presence but the part he played in our family.
I am the youngest in my family and the only girl, so I always assumed responsibility would fall on my brothers shoulders, particularly my oldest brother. He does not live nearby and circumstances have meant that it is me on the spot, and I find myself having to take on things I never expected. This week it has been hard (as I said) and while I know I have come a long way in my recovery in the last 16 months, I have yet again found myself really struggling with the same old doubts and fears arising. Yet this time, it’s not just me I have to consider. In some ways that’s really difficult, and leaves me in deeper distress, but in other ways it, yet again, saves me. What I need though right now, is a whole heap of patience, and that sure doesn’t come easy with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). I can be incredibly patient with people I don’t know but with my family, it is a whole other ball game.
It’s totally understandable that the rest of the country, and the world, would think we have just picked up our lives and moved on. Unfortunately that’s not true. We live with the aftermath of the quakes everyday, both practically (you should see the state of our roads) but more importantly, mentally and emotionally. We have all changed, and while some of us will pick up our lives and move on, particularly for older people, life will never be the same again. My mother (at 83) lost her husband, her home, most of her possessions, her church (it completely collapsed) and many other friends who have also died in the last year. Again, I mean no disrespect but she is not the woman she used to be… and how could she not be different having lost so much in practically 50 seconds of the quake?
At this stage I have no idea whether my home, and my brother’s business, will be restored in her lifetime. Certainly it is unlikely that she will be alive to see the city restored (80% of all buildings in the central business district have been, or are still being demolished). Mum grew up in this city and, as she knew it, it is largely gone or certainly cordoned off.
It makes me laugh (a slightly skeptical laugh) when I hear that our Government has made provision for five counselling sessions for each resident of the Canterbury area (my guess is that is about 500,000 people). It’s a good start, but five sessions doesn’t give you much when so many have been through such enormous trauma. I suspect every one of my family (that lives in this region) could do with that counselling, but I know it’s not going to happen for most of them. Aside from the ‘stiff upper lip’ mindset, there is also just the enormous need to just keep going, one step at a time. People don’t have time, because the basic necessities of life are what still matters right now. And I can’t imagine that the city has enough suitably qualified people to meet the need anyway.
Image via FB/Soul Speaking
I was lucky to already be in psychotherapy and be able to talk about a lot of this with a therapist I knew and trust. [Unfortunately I am in the middle of a month of my therapist's holiday. Nice for him... but damn him, for having his holiday!] I think many more people will just let the crocodile slide back under the surface and hope it never rises again. I know my mother will. But all you need to do is watch the face of a Cantabrians when another quake (they’re happening all the time) strikes. People are living in fear, because it’s what they’ve come to know. What does that do to their on-going mental health?
I can’t help wonder how other places that have survived such terrible disasters fair. Japan was hit by a much deadlier quake (and tsunami) just three weeks later (March 2011) and I wonder what happens to the emotional and mental needs of all those survivors. Other places like Haiti, Chile and Italy raise the same wondering in me. Actually we were really quite lucky, but still, lives will never be the same. There was an amazing outpouring of support here from other countries, and other parts of this country, but the scale of the distress is so much more than what was seen in the first couple of weeks.
And one final thought? No, I have yet to summon up that courage I need. I guess I am procrastinating, which unfortunately that means the problem does go away.
.
“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.
Or you don’t.”
― Stephen King, The Stand
The ‘Sunshine’ Pill – just what I need
Image(s): FreeDigitalPhotos.net
It was Sunday that my right foot started hurting (more than usual) and over the next 24 hours the pain gradually crept up my body. Fibromyalgia was rearing its head and there is no medication for me, so I just have to ride it out. The electric blanket on the bed is good but I really need another one on top, and then of course there is the slight problem that eventually I begin to cook.
I wasn’t surprised that my fibro flared again. I was upset and not quite myself all weekend. My friend’s death on Friday had hit me more than I expected. Sometimes it really doesn’t do us any good to know it’s going to happen, because we never know how we’re going to react. For me, as I wrote in He Was One Of The Good Guys there were good memories of someone who had been a very good friend but overwhelming me were bad memories and hurt generated by someone who we both knew. That seemed to take over from the grief for lost friend, and to compound it I felt guilty for being stuck in my own memories and hurts rather than taking the time to honour my friend with our good memories.
This time I couldn’t seem to pick myself up, dust myself off and carry on. And that’s okay. What I find not okay is that I have learnt that when I get upset and down, then my body fights back with pain and exhaustion. To the point where I actually have forgotten my emotional pain, because I am now overwhelmed by physical pain. I’m sorry, I may sound down on myself but that it is so not fair.
So for three days now I have been backwards and forwards from my bed, to the couch, to the bathroom (although taking a shower is completely beyond me) and occasionally to the kitchen for more coffee and food supplies to keep me going (not that I have any desire to eat). It’s quite a life I lead. I have hardly even ventured far enough to the computer, and that leaves me feeling like there is something very definitely missing in my life. My ‘virtual’ friends.
Today I ran out of milk (a necessity for the coffee) and I had a birthday present for my (to be) nine year old nephew that needed to be in the post yesterday. I called for help. I find it hard to ask for help at the best of times. The only person I felt comfortable asking was my Dad, but trips to the supermarket from the after-life are, as far as I know, impossible… so that’s not an option anymore.
I got my milk, and J’s birthday present was dispatched (hopefully it won’t be too late) but I got some advice too. The person who came bearing milk knows about fibro and knows that it is fibro that is causing my pain right now. But I got told that when the sun comes out tomorrow (gosh, doesn’t that sound like a song?) I will feel much better. True, not a word of exaggeration.
A while ago I reblogged Robert Kalman’s LETTER TO PEOPLE WITHOUT CHRONIC PAIN and only recently I came across a similar letter, Open Letter to Normals. They are both pleas to people without any sort of chronic pain to not assume they know best and bestow upon us what they consider their wisdom. Lord save us! (BTW I have to say I actually don’t like the title of the second letter because I consider myself as ‘normal’ as the next person, but for now I’ll leave that matter and not get side-tracked.)
It’s simply miraculous how someone with no medical training, not even taking the time to ask me how I am or even what my symptoms might be, can conclude that when the sun shines my pain will be magically gone. My doctor doesn’t even know what to do to relieve me of this, but the assumption that the weather will fix this was too much. She left shortly after (thankfully because if I had any energy I would have got off the couch and throttled her).
I’m not sure what the weather forecast is for tomorrow but it is winter here in New Zealand and so I suspect it will be another grey, cold, damp day. That’s okay with me because I’m not holding out hope that the weather will fix this. But it does remind me that we need to be so careful in how we speak to other people. Regardless of whether that person has a chronic illness, any other sort of pain, or even if they are simply ‘normal’ we (me included) need to remember to put brain into action before putting mouth into gear.
My pain won’t be gone tomorrow, regardless of the weather. I am always in pain now. Maybe it will be less, maybe it will be more. No one understands fibro that well to be able to predict. What is interesting is that after the statement was made I was quickly aware again of the emotional pain I was feeling earlier in the week. Perhaps because I was not understood. And I was not heard.
And with that I’m going back to bed.
I didn’t pick this music because of it being any kind of popular funeral favourite. Not until I read the comments on You Tube did I realise it’s use as a symbol of death. And that almost made me not use it.
Actually I chose it because my friend was a damn, fine guitarist and I wanted to use some music that I related to him.
It’s hard to put reasoning to the death of a friend. I know A’s suffering is over, and whatever you might believe about life beyond death, I have a fair idea of what he believed, and believe much the same for myself. He will be at peace now, no longer in the pain caused by the cancer.
But he was only three years older than me, and I’ve known him for over 30 years. His wife is a year older than me (I have known her for nearly as long). Too young to be a widow. His two kids are just getting their adult lives under way. And now it’s over. It’s just hard to see it all as fair for them. It’s hard to see it as fair for any of us who have lost a fantastic friend.
My friend died on Friday after a battle with cancer. He lives in a city I used to live in, but that has meant I haven’t been able to see him. My brother had let me know earlier in the week that A didn’t have much time left, so I was waiting… but it still hit me as a firm kick in the guts.
A was one of the good guys. Always. He was a lot of fun, he was very talented, he had a heart full of compassion and enthusiasm. I might not have always agreed with his views but I loved the way he was so passionate about what he believed. I always knew with A that it would be safe to give him my life for a week, and he’d take care of it. When I had what I might call a pretty skeptical view of most guys, I knew A was great.
We met in the fourth form. That’s Year Nine in nowadays education language. A’s best friend was my first boyfriend. To make things a little more interesting my best friend was A’s girlfriend at the time. Of course first romances hardly ever last and the four of us went our separate ways, although staying good friends in the same social groups through the local church. Unfortunately my first boyfriend couldn’t hear the word ‘no’ and so set about stalking me for many years. I have written about this in Stalked… But Still Hiding Some Of Me and more in my book Infinite Sadness.
It put my friendship with A in a difficult place, because he became the access point to information about me. But A was a good friend, we did a lot of music together and he wasn’t a friendship I wanted to lose. A went on a few years later to marry another good friend of mine, so there was another connection to me. That said, I am totally confident that A and his wife never compromised my safety. They did absolutely everything they could to dissuade a stalker who was not going to be put off.
To save you from a very long story, I will fast-forward a few years. The stalker was still persistent and actually on at least one occasion I had to sneak out the front door of A’s home while the stalker was knocking on their back door. They held him long enough for me to run to my car and take off.
Even though A and his wife did nothing wrong, never put me in danger, and actually were totally supportive of me, I have to admit that this stalking and some other things happening in my life at the time were literally doing my head in. I also came to the conclusion (probably unwisely) that I would never go back to A’s home. There was too much risk, and while I kept contact with A’s wife, who by now was working for the same company as me, I never went back.
And when I left that job, I decided to cut contact altogether. I decided to leave the city we all lived in, hoping that would end things. I wasn’t cutting contact with A and his wife because they had done anything to upset me but because the danger of the stalker accidentally getting information about me was too great. I also didn’t like my friends being put in this position. In my mind I basically ended the friendship with two very special people because I couldn’t see another way of being safe. We never talked about it, I simply left town. I was desperate to end something that was wrecking my life – the stalking.
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Now? I feel a whole lot of things but find I mentally stop myself going too far with any emotion, I guess because I really don’t want to feel it. There’s a combination of anger directly partly at myself for deserting a friendship with both A and his wife that meant the world to me, but more so I feel angry with the stalker who cost me those friendships. A was a good person, as I said, one of the good guys (when I didn’t think too many existed) and his wife is a truly beautiful person. They never knowingly did anything to harm me. I know that what I did at the time was just about survival, and therefore I can try to forgive myself. But I lost out on their friendship. And that has re-activated the anger I feel to the stalker.
I also struggle with an odd co-incidence. When I was 14 years old, there were four of us. Myself, A, my best friend and the stalker. My best friend died some years ago in a car accident and actually that was the last time I saw A. I ran away from him because also there was the stalker. Now I even find it hard to say but the stalker and I are all that is left of that group. There are all sorts of ‘why’ questions circling in my head. They are impossible to answer.
The irony is that I know if I went to A’s funeral the stalker would be there too. And I simply couldn’t risk that, because I know it’s still not over for him.
It reminds me that stalking is never just a nuisance. And it’s never just a joke. People get hurt, and there is a price to pay for everyone involved. Mostly the experts say that when the target of the stalker is gone then the obsession also goes. This time it didn’t and yes, it hurts. Actually to be completely honest, this has done my head in this time. I actually thought I was through the pain the stalker caused and the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms but the past few days I have found myself right back in the midst of it.
I will get through this and meanwhile I am going to try to remember the good times, for there were so many with A. He had a way of making good times happen, and for that I am thankful.
