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
A ‘relative’ of Plonker’s Image Credit: thornypup / Flickr.com
I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that people (and animals) come to us at exactly the right time. I have long struggled with the phrase that there is a reason for everything. I knew in my head that it was probably true but there were some things that really stumped me. How could there possibly be a reason for some of the terrible things that happen?
Last year I developed a rather good friendship with Plonker, one of two pigs then living on my brother’s farm. Plonker was named by my nephews. I’m not exactly sure how he earned this name and I can’t remember what his friend’s name was. No doubt something apt to their then, thirteen and eleven year old’s minds.
I admit that I have been known to talk to inanimate objects (selectively) and so to talk to animals is not strange for me. My cat Penny and I used to have long conversations, each taking turns to speak. We didn’t necessarily know what the other was saying but we at least had our timing worked out. And I always felt she understood. So when I met Plonker and his mate it was quite natural for me to strike up conversation with them. One can get a lot of sense from talking to animals. Often much more than humans. For some reason Plonker has a special character and he became very special to me.
The time was the days immediately after our deadly earthquake in February, 2011. I had my parents staying with me, after they had lost their home and belongings in the quake. I had temporarily lost my car (for a few weeks) because it was parked trapped between two damaged buildings in a cordoned off part of town, and so I was reliant on my parents for transport. We were asked not to move around the damaged city if we could help it but because I had no water, no sewage, and for a while no power we opted to go out to my brother’s farm during the days. For some reason my parents wouldn’t go and stay out there. I think they wanted to be near their home, in the hope that they might gain access. That didn’t happen of course, and so for the sake of everyone’s mental health, we went to the farm (where water, sewage and power were operational) during the day and returned back to my home to sleep.
It was very stressful, and that is a big understatement. Actually it was probably the most stressful time of my life. Aftershocks continued, as we listened to news reports of bodies being dug out of collapsed buildings. The personality of both my elderly parents changed markedly at that time (my father died six weeks later as a result of the stress). The change in their personalities wasn’t really any surprise, considering what they were going through, but it was difficult for all of us, grandchildren included, to adapt. It was almost like suddenly having completely different parents to those we had known before. The only one who didn’t struggle seemed to be 10 week old L. She slept on regardless.
I quickly took up walking around the farm to get some space from everyone. It was also a chance to have a smoke (a habit I had taken up again when the quakes started several months earlier) which I attempted to do away from the kids. I regularly went down to the pig’s hangout to visit Plonker and his mate.
Finally someone talked sense. Plonker was interested to know if I had food for him. He would start to get excited about company when he saw me walking his way. I hadn’t completely forgotten that he was a pig but I felt appreciated, especially when I brought food.
I don’t know much about pigs but I understand they are social animals, and so when Plonker’s mate headed for the ‘dinner table’ (my vegetarian tendencies start to struggle at this point), Plonker seemed to be lonely. I used that as an excuse to hang out with Plonker more often. The thing about Plonker was that he had no expectations of me, and what’s more he didn’t seem rattled by the constant quakes. He was in my mind, the perfect company at the time.
Plonker has since made his own way to the ‘dinner table’ sadly. Thankfully I wasn’t told who dinner was until after I had eaten. The thought still leaves me feeling a little unwell, and I admit I haven’t formed such a close attachment to subsequent farm animals. Saying good-bye was not easy and while my nephews laughed at me giving Plonker a leaving present (a bag of fruit purchased just for him), he will always have a special place in my heart.
Plonker saved my bacon (pun intended). Spending time on the farm with him soothed the trauma of everything else happening, and the stress of suddenly finding myself living with my parents again (after nearly 30 years). Plonker was there at the right moment for me.
In the same way there have been special people along my way who have appeared in my life at just the right time. One was my friend A who I came to flat with just months before first getting sick. At the time she was recovering from a two year battle with depression and actually that was significant in helping me accept my own depression that would follow. We were only in each other’s lives for a couple of years and since have gone our separate ways, but I firmly believe that she was there for a reason.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it is more than just coincidence that particular people (and pigs) come into my life. There is a reason for these things, and actually I don’t need to know what that reason is, I simply have to accept them. I’m slowly realising that I don’t have to understand, all I have to do is accept the gift I am offered.
“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel, or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to – letting a person be what he really is.”
― Jim Morrison
In more ways than one!
For the longest time I actually wanted to be sick. I know I’m not meant to say that, but it’s true.
Not more mental illness, I wanted to be really sick. I wanted a physical illness that could be seen and that could be put down to something going wrong in my body. I was tired of this overwhelming sense that my mental illness was my fault, it was all in my head, and so it wasn’t a real illness.
During the time that I have had a diagnosed mental illness, most of that time that illness was described as Major Depressive Disorder. Depression. There was a big part of me that said it was just an excuse. I just couldn’t pull myself together. It didn’t help when people said all I needed was… and that sentence could be completed with a man, a baby, a job…
Seriously people thought that if I had those things, everything would be okay. No wonder I wondered for myself whether this was real. Let me say that had I had those things I suspect I would have killed the baby (yes, really), killed myself to get away from the man (well, yes I tried that more than once), and the job? I couldn’t have got myself a job if I tried.
I stopped eating when I became depressed and eventually I was diagnosed with Anorexia. And that actually felt better. It was something that could be seen and it definitely wasn’t something that would be solved with a baby (not possible considering my body weight and lack of ovulation), a man or a job. The weird thing was that even though I was skin and bone (literally), and I looked awful, people continued to tell me how good I looked. The most compliments I ever got about my appearance was while I was Anorexic. There was nothing good about how I looked but some people think any weight loss is good. The only problem is that Anorexia (or any eating disorder for that matter) is not about weight loss. That’s just the by-product.
So I went back to wanting a physical illness. It didn’t matter what. A cast on my leg would do, anything that would show I was sick. It didn’t happen.
Fast forward a few years and I have physical illnesses. In 2010 I was diagnosed with an auto-immune condition, Graves’ Disease, which mostly affects the thyroid, heart and the eyes. That was caused by spending too many years taking lithium, and unfortunately a doctor who forgot (for a while) to check my thyroid and lithium levels. I felt so sick that it really didn’t occur to me that I now had my physical illness.
Then last year came the symptoms of Fibromyalgia. It wasn’t diagnosed until March of this year and one of the problems I had was that nothing could be seen. It wasn’t until I convinced my doctor to send me to a Rheumatologist that I got a diagnosis. Having the diagnosis helped me feel like this was actually real, but still it’s not something you can see, so how would one know whether it was real?
I know it’s real. I know that I am in pain all the time, that I am incredibly tired all the time, that I have unexplained rashes on my body, I am dizzy for no reason and more. There are lots of things I know, but I still struggle to know whether anyone else thinks it’s real and will accept that I am sick.
I read an interesting article from FibroTV called When Emotional Pain Turns Into Physical Pain. It tied up with what I’ve been thinking for a while now. They say that Fibromyalgia is often caused by some sort of trauma, they also say it can be brought on by an auto-immune disease (like Graves’).
So I find I’m back to denying that my emotional pain is of value and is significant. If the trauma theory is correct then I suspect that my Fibro comes from the trauma of our earthquakes in 2010/11 and my father’s death shortly after. It’s interesting that I have never felt so physically exhausted as I did the day Dad died and I had to do CPR on him for 20 minutes, while waiting for the ambulance to get through a city blocked by earthquake damage.
If you’ve ever had to do CPR you’ll know that it is exhausting and that 20 minutes is a long time. I have run 20 kilometres before (several times) and hadn’t felt so exhausted. What I’m driving at is that it wasn’t just the emotional trauma but the physical trauma of that day. But you know I’m still back to the realisation that my physical difficulties from fibro are perhaps caused by emotional pain, and to be honest I hate that.
For those of you that aren’t familiar with the ‘joys’ of fibro, it involves periods of worsened pain, fatigue, and what’s known as fibro 
fog (my brain doesn’t operate properly and feels like I’m trying to move it through a thick fog of resistance). These are called flare-up’s. My experience is that sometimes I can predict these coming on, and sometimes it’s just a case of waking up in the morning and discovering you’re in the middle of one. Interestingly the first flare-up that I had (after I was diagnosed and knew what was going on) was at Easter this year. The significance of it was that it was also the anniversary of Dad’s death. I hadn’t done anything physically to bring on the flare up, like more exercise than normal, for example. I spent the five days of the flare-up adamantly denying that the anniversary had anything to do with it.
Some weeks later I had another flare-up. I crawled to my therapist, determined to keep an appointment I would have to pay for regardless of whether I was there, and came to the eventual conclusion that actually there was some emotional reasoning that could be given to that flare-up too.
As I’ve explained before I am unable to take medication for my fibro, nor am I able to afford alternative treatments. If this pain and sickness, which is far from pleasant, is caused by emotional pain, what I am going to have to do is work through it with my therapist. But to be honest, I’m having a hard job accepting that. If this is caused by emotional pain I trust my therapist to be able to help me but it’s weird. Getting my head around feeling so bad physically because of my emotions is really hard when I’ve spent nearly 20 years struggling to accept emotion anyway.
Does that make sense? It’s like a whole new way of thinking for me. It doesn’t help that I’m looking over my shoulder waiting for my friends and family to say “all she needs is a baby, man, or job”. I’m convinced they’re going to say it. Maybe not the baby. Hopefully they’ll accept I’m too old for that but only recently I was told to get a job and everything would be alright. Somehow I have to accept for myself that actually it’s okay to be sick, and no, I might not have that cast on my leg, but I am in sick.
I’m coming to the conclusion that this attitude of mine is a kind of stigma. Now it’s not just against mental illness but also physical illness. I struggle to accept that it is okay to be sick, when no one can see what is causing the pain. In my head, I can tell myself this is okay for anyone else in the same boat. But accepting it for myself is so hard, but if I want to reduce stigma, I’m going to have to start with myself. I have to accept that it’s not only okay to have a mental illness but it’s also okay to have an invisible physical illness.
“After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues
quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
