Giving Up Nicotine

Image credit: Ferran Jorda/Flickr.com

It’s day four and I admit it’s more of a struggle than I expected.  I am armed with nicotine patches and am determined to stop smoking… again.  I started up again two years ago when the earthquakes were at their worst, but it’s time to stop… again.

I was a late starter when it came to smoking.  As a child I loved the smell of my grandfather’s pipe and was fascinated by all he did to prepare and then smoke it.  But that was it.  As a teenager I had no desire to try a cigarette (probably because my first boyfriend smoked) and it wasn’t until I was in my early thirties that I took up the habit.

Why?  The straw the broken the camel’s back was my husband of the time, trying to prohibit a dear friend of mine coming to our home while he was at work.  His objection to her was that she was gay and she was a smoker.  I’m still not sure what offended him most, or what he thought might happen if she was in our house with me.  But I decided then that I no longer wanted to be seen as a ‘good Christian’  (like him) who might have such arrogant and ignorant rules for themselves.  It was only a few days later that I was smoking, and let me be clear that my gay, smoking friend did not aid me in my ‘downfall’.

Actually to top it off about eight months later when I left my marriage my husband laid down the ultimatum that I couldn’t come back unless I stopped smoking.  There were a few other conditions too, but what he failed to realise was that I chose to leave and I had no intention of returning.

I continued to smoke and actually my psychiatrist encouraged me too.  Nurses considered it good stress management but I think the psychiatrist knew it was my way of saying “F%^k the World” (or at least a small part of the world).

Eventually, when I had taken up long distance running, I realised that my stance was getting in the way of my health and so I stopped, cold turkey, and went two years without a cigarette… until the earth started to shake, rattle and roll in my parts.  And the stress got too much.

As my mental health has been improving, and the quakes have been slowly decreasing I have had a growing sense that it was time to stop again, and I chose the day after my birthday as a good time to stop.  Unfortunately I didn’t factor in one thing.

By yesterday I was feeling pretty unwell and in a lot of pain, which I just put down to being a fibromyalgia flare.  That is until I happened to read Fibromodem’s recent post about smoking.  It indicated to me something that I hadn’t stopped to think about.  That nicotine has an impact on pain, and so I went off and did some research.

What I found, and what I wish I’d known before I started, is that nicotine can have some analgesic affect on pain, and what’s more that

“nicotine withdrawal could increase a smoker’s
perception of pain and
even the intensity of chronic pain” 

So, please why did I not see this highlighted in red before I chose to withdraw the nicotine from my system?  As it is I am just glad that I chose to use patches this time and so have some nicotine still in me, because today I have been in more pain, and a great deal sicker than I have been for a long time.

The easy thing of course would be to get myself a packet of cigarettes and start smoking again.  Give up on giving up.  But my brother (who I love dearly, so I allow him to say such things occasionally) pointed out to me a few weeks back that I am one stubborn person.  Actually I think he’s right (not that I’ll be admitting that to him unless he’s keeping up with my blog and reads this).  Because the easy thing would be to smoke again…   but I’m not going to.

I’m no expert, and I’m only relaying what I read but I did learn that in the long run not smoking will be better for my fibromyalgia.  It should make the pain less eventually.  In the meantime though, it is hell.  Today has really felt like I was going through some heavy-duty drug withdrawal.  Absolutely not pleasant, and writing this post is actually all I’ve managed to achieve all day.  Right now though, I’m pressing on.  I can, and I will do this.

PS.  And actually the positive of feeling so sick and in so much pain has been that there hasn’t been the urgent craving for a cigarette (well, not all the time anyway).  So yet again, good comes from bad.

“There are some circles in America where it seems to be more socially acceptable to carry a hand-gun than a packet of cigarettes.” 

~Katharine Whitehorn

Related articles

• Smoking and Chronic Pain: A Real-but-Puzzling Relationship (minnesotamedicine.com)
• Smoking Hot! (fibromodem.wordpress.com)

Dona Nobis Pacem – 9/11

Image credit: Shannon’s Moments of Introspection
http://peaceglobegallery.blogspot.co.nz/p/who-we-are.html

As I write today, it is actually September 12 in my part of the world, but I want to recognise that in the United States and around the world, 9/11 is being remembered again today.  As I wrote yesterday, 9/11 also marks my birthday, and while this year I have finally been able to celebrate that fact again, I admit that celebrating anything on this day just doesn’t seem quite right anymore.

I find myself almost being apologetic when asked when my birthday is, and I know that I am not the only one who feels this way about having a birthday on such a day.  The other thing I note is that until 2001 my birthday was always 11/9 because that is the way we write the date in my part of the world.  Now it is so much easier to say my birthday is 9/11 and still know that people won’t think my birthday is November.

But one day on is actually what I remember.  It wasn’t September 11 that the world seemed to fall apart in New Zealand, but rather it was waking up on September 12 that I heard that the planes had flown into the World Trade Center towers, (as well as the horror in Washington DC and Pennsylvania), and it was for the rest of that day that we followed the terrible news.

I was in hospital at the time and my favourite nurse woke me saying that the world was ending (that’s not what you need when an inpatient in a psych hospital).  I had no idea what she was talking about but in my very unwell state assumed I must have done something really bad.  In the next weeks I battled between reality and some sort of depressive delusional fantasy.

I was far from well and it wasn’t long before doctors decided that I was a candidate for more Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT).  Lucky me.  I was well enough to sign on the dotted line but I knew little else except for concluding by then that 9/11 was all my fault.

The road to recovery has been long but one of the things that has become more important to me is the need for us to work towards peace.  There is too much hate, too much bloodshed and too much war in my mind.  It’s not something that I feel at all comfortable about, and the need for us to love our brothers and sisters seems increasingly urgent in my mind.  Why can’t we stand side by side?

In line with my thoughts on the need for peace, I have joined Blog Blast 4 Peace, a movement of bloggers blogging for peace.  This is a group that has been running for six years now and on November 4, there will be a commitment from involved bloggers to write that day for peace.  The images included on this post come from that source.

Peace means a lot of different things to me, and it is my hope to explore what it is that I wish for.  I have written before about my desire to see Peace Not War, as well as that I admit to being An Idealist.  I don’t pretend to think that everyone will agree with what I might think, but isn’t it time we were talking about what we mean by peace and how we can achieve it?

No one wants another 9/11 and while the world has changed much in 11 years, there so much more that is possible so that we can learn to live alongside one another.

There was an excellent post by Ruby of A Canvas Of The Minds a couple of days ago to mark World Suicide Prevention Day, in which she promoted the idea of:

“One hand holding on to another.  One human telling another human that they aren’t alone.  One person sharing their strength and understanding with another person.”

I like this a lot, and while Ruby wrote it in connection to suicide prevention, I see it as something that peace can also achieve, so hopefully Ruby won’t mind that I borrowed it.  It applies so well to peace, whether it across the world, in our local neighbourhood, or simply peace of mind for each of us.

Dona Nobis Pacem (Grant Us Peace).

“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” 
―    Mahatma Gandhi

“World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.” 
―    Dalai Lama XIV

Related articles

• It’s My Party… (infinitesadnessorhope.wordpress.com)
• Peace Not War   (Passion Profile Challenge #1) (infinitesadnessorhope.wordpress.com)
• An Idealist (infinitesadnessorhope.wordpress.com)
• May Your Light Not Go Out (acanvasoftheminds.wordpress.com)
• Blog Blast 4 Peace (peaceglobegallery.blogspot.com)

It’s My Party…

The line for so long went…

“It’s my party and I’ll cry

if I want to…”

That was then.  This is now…

Image credit: Wikipedia.com

Today is my birthday and for the first time in a very long time, it feels good to celebrate the day I was born.  It didn’t for so long because I couldn’t see anything to celebrate.

My parents were somewhat embarrassed by my birth, just 10 months after my brother’s arrival and have been reminding me of that ever since.  I was three weeks early and even just a couple of days ago Mum told me that she wished I had been born three weeks late instead.  Their embarrassment has always been somewhat of a family joke, only I didn’t find it that funny.  Embarrassment rather than celebration at your birth is not something you’re going to look back on with fondness.  No wonder there is only one photo of me as a baby, and even in that I’m with my two older brothers.   And to be honest, when you’re struggling to find the will to live, it seemed like a perfect reason to stop living.

My argument was if they couldn’t be excited by my birth, then why should I still be so-called celebrating?  It just made no sense.  The severe depression that I lived with for so long just added to it.  I didn’t want to be alive, so again why should I be expected to look happy, blow out the candles… and celebrate?

I went along with it some years but others I refused.  I dreaded them, and I hated them.  I wasn’t going to be happy for me!  There were a few birthdays that were spent in hospital.  A birthday while in a psychiatric hospital doesn’t seem like much to celebrate, especially when most admissions were because I was so intent on destroying myself.

That said, one of the best birthdays in that period was in 1998 when I was living at a residential therapeutic community in Dunedin.  Actually that day I felt pretty close to happy and the friends I had made there made it a very special day.  There hadn’t been one like that for a while.  Perhaps the worst one was to come in 2001 (you can work out the day), another memorable birthday in hospital.  More about that tomorrow (in respect of American time zones).

But this year is different.  This is now, and I very much plan on no tears (unless they are happy ones).  Actually I’m sad that my Dad is not here to see me enjoy celebrating my birth.  It would make him very happy, but I believe he knows where I’m at now and can be happy for me.

So what’s different?  Simply that I am happy to be alive.  It’s simple but radically different for me.  I know that I am loved, and I’m even starting to like who I am.  It’s definitely a journey I am still on, but I have turned the corner.  And while my birth may not have been a celebration for my parents, I am learning to separate myself from their embarrassment.  If they chose to be embarrassed by my birth that was their choice, but I don’t have to apologise for being alive all these years later (and no, I’m not saying how many!).

I’m going to party today and while as well as my Dad, one very special person won’t be here to help me celebrate, I am looking forward to spending some of the day with my favourite kids (J,T & L… and their lovely parents).  This is a day worth celebrating.  Not simply because it is my birthday, but because I’ve finally found reason to be happy about it.

And to finish I send my wishes to my birthday buddies Steve and Rance (who share the same day, just different years and Rance is in a different time zone).  Happy Birthday to both of you.  Have a great day!

“The year you were born marks only your entry into the world. Other years where you prove your worth, they are the ones worth celebrating. 
” 

―    Jarod Kintz,    This Book Title is Invisible

Deceived

“Nothing could be taken for granted. Women who loved you tried to cut your throat, while women who didn’t even know your name scrubbed your back. Witches could sound like Katharine Hepburn and your best friend could try to strangle you. Smack in the middle of an orchid there might be a blob of jello and inside a Mickey Mouse doll, a fixed and radiant star.” 

―    Toni Morrison,    Song of Solomon

I have said before that I spend a lot of my time involved in running two on-line mental health support groups.  This is something I purposely keep very separate from my blogging, so it doesn’t get mentioned very often.  But in order to understand some feelings going down, it is necessary for me to think through some things that happened at the end of last year.  That’s when I was deceived.

Over a year ago I joined a support group for people with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).  It was run by a man who lived on the west coast of the United States.  It seemed a really good, supportive group and I quickly made friends with a lot of great people, including the man who ran it.  Some time later I was asked to become an admin on this, and several other groups the man ran.  I liked what he was doing and felt I was in a good position to do this, and so agreed.

To cut a very long story short, time eventually revealed that this man wasn’t who he said he was.  Actually he was a woman, living in another part of the United States, creating an extremely fanciful, but false story of who she was and why she was running these groups.  Mayhem quickly followed and people who I thought I knew, and people I thought I could trust, suddenly turned against each other, including against me because I was now involved in running the groups.

On top of this I had become (what I thought was very close) to another woman also involved in running the groups.  I had believed everything she told me about herself and we had chatted for literally hours over some months.  Unfortunately I seemed to be perhaps the last person to realise that actually it was mostly lies.  Because I had believed her what she had told me, I lost other friends, some of whom I have since re-connected with.   I lost her frienship, because I couldn’t accept the way that she lied to me.  It turned out that she was in on the whole scam with the original woman.  To my horror, some thought I was in on the scam.  I wasn’t.

I now run groups away from these original groups, but including some of the people badly hurt by this whole deception.  I set them up because I was concerned about the hurt that people were feeling but thankfully am pleased to say that these groups have now pretty much moved on from the hurt of last year.  Although I think it is fair to say that it made us all more cautious of whose story we believe.

On-line support groups are a very important means of support, communication and connection with the outside world for many people isolated by mental illness.  Unfortunately there will always be bad groups around and it becomes essential that those who join are very careful in who they trust.  The thing is that for many people with mental illness, and especially for those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) who find it difficult to trust people at the best of times, it is already hard to trust.  That’s usually one of the reasons they lost connection with the non-cyber world (I hate the term real world).  The other group that I run is for people working to recover from self harm, and those people also tend to be vulnerable and in need of a safe place where they can be understood.

I am committed to what I do but I have to admit that I sometimes find myself a little skeptical now until someone proves to me in some way that they can be trusted.  I find it sad that I have become that way.  I don’t want to dis-trust people.  I never have.  I hate that I have to try to check people out before they join my groups, but last year’s events aren’t an isolated case.  There are constantly people who want to wreck something that for so many people is a good, and sometimes life-saving thing.

It was a long time ago that a friend gave me some very good advice, which I hold to today.  At the time I was concerned that another friend had been lying to me and asked him how I should treat what I suspected were lies.  He told me to treat the person as if what they say is true, until I had clear evidence that it was otherwise.  It was simple, but very valuable and it has stayed with me for many years.  I have used it in my working life, and in my personal life, and now I try to always use it in the groups I run.

Being deceived can be a sure-fire way of shutting us down and making us refuse to trust anyone.  When I was deceived last year, especially by the second woman who I really thought had become a true friend, it was tempting to simply retract myself from all social media.  Not trust anyone who I couldn’t see standing right there in front of me.

I think now days that I am pretty careful about who I connect with on social media.  I don’t see the point in connecting with total strangers just for the sake of adding more ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ to my list.  I don’t need hundreds of so-called ‘friends’.  I get concerned for people who do.  And I hate how Facebook use the term ‘friend’. While I am fortunate to have many who I know I can trust, I regularly encounter people who have hundreds of ‘friends’ but not one they can turn to in a moment of need.  To call these people ‘friends’ is just crazy.  Facebook is simply fooling people.

How do I tell who is worthy of my trust?  A very unscientific means of gut feeling.  Sometimes that gets it right, a few times it doesn’t because there are constantly people out there who want to deceive.  But I’m always learning and always delightfully surprised when someone turns into a true friend.

I could have turned my back on all this last year, and I know many who did.  Many people were very badly hurt by people they thought they could trust, some to the point of harming themselves over it.  It has been hard to keep going at times, because sometimes instinct tells me to guard my heart and mind almost over zealously.

People will continue to hurt me whether through social media or in day to day life.  Unfortunately it seems to be human nature, but the gains I have made through staying on-line have been amazing.  The good people far outweigh the bad thankfully, and so I choose not to harden my heart but to continue to treat people as I would want to be treated… with the truth.  The good I receive from connecting with people on-line far outweighs the bad.  I choose to be careful, but open to the goodness that comes my way.  And right now, there is lots of goodness.

“What actions are most excellent? To gladden the heart of human beings, to feed the hungry, to help the afflicted, to lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful, and to remove the sufferings of the injured.” 

– Bukhari

Related articles

• Bad Press In Black & White (infinitesadnessorhope.wordpress.com)
• Cate: 1 BPD: 0 (infinitesadnessorhope.wordpress.com)

Rate this:

I’m re-blogging my own post (yes, I must be desperate for you to read) because something went wrong when I published it and no notifications went out. Better luck this time. 🙂

Infinite Sadness... or hope?

“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town” 
―    Anne Lamott,    Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

This is one of those posts that has sat in my ‘drafts’ box for several weeks as I’ve tried to summon up the courage to identify and write about my atitudes.  Then this week rolled around, and in some parts of the world it has been Body Image And Eating Disorders Awareness Week (BIAEDAW), and so I thought it would be good to get it done for that.  But fibromyalgia leapt up and attacked me for a few days this week and I find it is Saturday (in my part of the world) already.  I’m just scrapping in.

Body image and eating disorders are hard to write about, and I think the reason for that is that they are so personal.  I also accept for people who don’t suffer from…

View original post 1,065 more words

The Post That Nearly Didn’t Happen

Image credit: Wikipedia.com

“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town” 
―    Anne Lamott,    Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

This is one of those posts that has sat in my ‘drafts’ box for several weeks as I’ve tried to summon up the courage to identify and write about my atitudes.  Then this week rolled around, and in some parts of the world it has been Body Image And Eating Disorders Awareness Week (BIAEDAW), and so I thought it would be good to get it done for that.  But fibromyalgia leapt up and attacked me for a few days this week and I find it is Saturday (in my part of the world) already.  I’m just scrapping in.

Body image and eating disorders are hard to write about, and I think the reason for that is that they are so personal.  I also accept for people who don’t suffer from problems of either, it is hard to get your head around just how much of a struggle it is.  After all, “why not just eat your dinner and be done with it?”  Or “just stop bingeing, stop vomiting” … sure it’s simple.  But it’s not.

What about the view in the mirror?  “Just don’t look”.   That could solve the problem but the reality is I don’t need to look in the mirror to struggle with how I look.  My mere physical existence can be too much for me some days, and it’s not a case of how everyone at some times hates what they look like.  It’s much more than that, and it invades every part of life.

It’s impossible to escape food, and to escape our physical bodies.  If I never had to eat again I think I’d be sorted, but as it is, I have to eat regularly to maintain that physical body I still loathe, and so I can’t hide from either.

One of the things that can be difficult is the normal, everyday task of a trip to the supermarket.  A lot of people struggle with this chore, for a variety of reasons and in the past I too have regularly run from the supermarket crying, leaving half a trolley of groceries standing in the aisle.  It just simply got too much for me.  I know for a lot of people this is about anxiety, but it wasn’t so much that for me.

A trip to the supermarket, or where ever you buy your groceries, can be a great experience (apparently) through to a nightmare, depending on a number of issues.  For me there are two issues that affect my experience.  One is the availability of money to pay for the groceries, but the much bigger issue for me is that of my attitude to food and my body.

For nearly 20 years I have had a diagnosed eating disorder, of varying degrees of severity.   I used to fit (pun intended) into the Anorexia Nervosa category but more recently have been classed as ED-NOS.  That sounds like it should be a food additive on nutritional information labels but actually it means ‘Eating Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified’.  That can be defined for me as having disordered eating patterns and attitudes while I don’t meet the medical category of anorexia anymore because of regulation of menstruation and weight.  So for me it was a good thing.  It was heading towards recovery.

Recently my psychiatrist told me that he didn’t think it was an issue anymore although accepted there were still problems with my relationship to food and weight.  Somehow I suspect it will always be a battle although now that I am committed to life , it makes an enormous difference to putting food in my mouth.

While there are different categories of eating disorders, commonalities can be seen.  But how an individual’s eating disorder plays out is exactly that, individual.

My reaction to walking into a building full of food (known as a supermarket) will have similarities to others with ED-NOS (and other types of eating disorders) but there are also big differences.  I need to be clear in that because what I share here is my experience only.  It is not necessarily the case for anyone else.

Here’s what happens for me when I enter a supermarket, depending on my mood, even down to what I’m wearing, and how physically comfortable I am;

1. I’m going to prove I don’t need/want any of this.
2. I’m going to let myself have whatever I want.
3. There are too many choices and I can’t decide on anything.
4. This food is ‘out to get me’ and make me look fatter.
5. Everyone else in the supermarket sees me as a fat slob who can’t control her desires.
6. I don’t deserve any of this.
7. I can’t afford any of this, and I’m going to deprive myself.
8. I’m going to choose wisely what I need.
9. I’ll choose all this food but then put it in the food bank bin, because they need it more than me, and I really can’t bear to have it in the house.
10. Get me out of here… fast!

It’s a battle of wills (the whole way) between the healthy Cate who knows she needs and deserves food, and the disordered Cate who can’t deal with all the decisions about something she really doesn’t want to think about anyway.

Sometimes I can go through the whole store and purposely walk past what looks good and what is my favourite, just to test myself.  And as my eating disorder has always been about claiming control on my out of control world, I can do this really well.  It’s just that I get home and have nothing.  But hey, at least I’ve saved money this week!

Usually I don’t know which of numbers one to ten will be the issue on any given day.  I am getting more aware of my attitudes now and can identify what the problem is.  Sometimes I can now re-think, and sometimes it’s actually just best to go home and try again tomorrow.

Another thing that I struggle with is shopping with someone else.  I hate it because not only am I making the judgements on myself the whole way but I assume the other person is also making these judgments on me.  Last year while I had my parents living with me I struggled with this, and would often end up without the things I needed.  It simply wasn’t as easy as putting the food in the trolley and then paying for it.

My bet is that every person with an eating disorder will battle with this everyday chore.  There is a huge element of ‘I don’t deserve this food’ for many and I know that there will be different issues for every person.  So if you know someone with an eating disorder, spare a thought for them this week.  Everyday, and even mundane, tasks are far from easy.

“I am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed
at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating
ice cream or kissing a boy…” 

―    Laurie Halse Anderson,    Wintergirls

Related articles

• What is the DSM IV Diagnostic Criteria for EDNOS? (eatingdisorders.org.nz)
• People with Eating Disorders Describe Challenges (fox4kc.com)
• Imagined Ugliness (infinitesadnessorhope.wordpress.com)
• Hope For Discarding The Imagined Ugliness (infinitesadnessorhope.wordpress.com)
• The Butterfly Foundation for Eating Disorders (thebutterflyfoundation.org.au)

Good From Bad

‘Good from Bad’ in the form of the new Christchurch CBD shopping area…
created solely from shipping containers.
Image credit: flickr.com/photos/jjprojects/6335876035/in/photostream/

Regular readers will hopefully forgive me for going on again about earthquakes, and earthquake recovery.  I do realise that while it is a very important issue to me, that it is not so interesting to others, especially if you have never even experienced a mild tremor in your lifetime.  I wrote a couple of days ago in In My Corner Of The World… There Is Hope that today is the two-year anniversary of the start of our earthquake nightmare here in Christchurch, New Zealand.

I was thinking, and came to the conclusion that today’s date, 4 September is significant for me in more than just the reminder of the quakes and the destruction.  I realise that it was the trigger to finally beginning my road to recovery from mental illness.

What I have learnt through this nightmare is to take one day at a time.  In so many ways.  People often talk about taking one day at a time.  Actually, it is almost too often sometimes, because it is difficult to understand how that might possibly make a difference.  Let me explain…

Every time an earthquake strikes there is no certainty of whether this will be a tiny shake that you just wonder whether it was actually just the wind.  Or will it go on, and build to a much more traumatic and damaging quake?  Many times I have sat here at my computer as a quake starts and I wait a second or two to decide, do I run for cover, or do I just ride it out?  Sometimes I have run for cover only to feel a little silly when it was just a small tremor.  But other times I have been glad I made the choice to move, as things come crashing down around me once again.

The other thing I don’t know is when the next one will come.  I always knew that after a major quake, smaller quakes called after-shocks would follow, but I had no idea that after-shocks, and then new major quakes could continue on for years.

It’s difficult to know exactly what to do after the quake stops because I don’t know what will follow.  Is it worth putting all the photos back in the shelf?  Should I pick the television up off the floor? (actually we Cantabarians got clever eventually and screwed televisions down.  Actually anything that could be screwed down was)  I have now had one new television courtesy of insurance, but I don’t really want to have to go back for another.  And to be honest there are some things that now live in the floor so they can’t fall any further.

I had heard people say that animals often gave advance notice of earthquakes about to hit, and that the birds went quiet, and the like.  Well my cat Penny lived through a good number of the quakes and never once gave me any warning.  She would look as shocked and terrified as me, except usually she would move a whole heap quicker than me.

When you’re in an earthquake zone, like I now know I do, you realise that there is little certainty.  I have learnt to have bottled water on hand, extra non-perishable food, and batteries in the torch and radio.  Actually I know have a solar-powered torch/radio so that solves the problem.  These things are so much more important to me now that I have experienced needing them, but not having them.  Now if I am prepared for that uncertainty, then it becomes manageable.  I know exactly the things I need to do if, and when a major quake hits.  I can just go into that action plan almost on automatic pilot rather than the shock of it paralysing me.  I know what is important.

When I learnt to take one day at a time with regard to my material needs, I started to take one day at a time with my emotional health too.  I have finally realised that worrying about my future, won’t make it any better. Worrying about the past wouldn’t make it have not happened.   I have finally learnt to say what is on my mind because I don’t know if I will get the chance again.

I particularly learnt that with the death of my father.  At the moment he died, he and I were having a very rare argument (about chemical toilets of all things).  Clearly it was heated enough to literally stop his heart, on top of the stress he had already experienced.  What I struggled with afterwards was the fear that in the argument he would have lost sight of the fact that I loved him.  There was no time, it was over in an instant, and if only we had stopped and just appreciated each other rather than arguing.

I should say that I have dealt with that now.  I know my Dad knew I loved him and while it is unfortunate that our relationship ended in anger, I know it is okay.  I feel at peace with that, and achieving that in itself is a very big difference from the person I was, who would have felt bad and guilty for the rest of her days.  I have learnt to say what’s on my mind, at the time.  I will never know if I will have another opportunity to say I love someone.

By learning to live in the moment, and be very clear about my feelings with those I care about, I have been able to correct some of the other things that were screwing me up, particularly in terms of my relationships with other people.

I never want to live through another two years like I have just been through, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.  But good does come from bad.  I have learnt so many things that otherwise might have taken years to discover, if I ever did.  While the experience has been a nightmare, my mental health has strengthened in leaps and bounds, when for so many years nothing seemed able to achieve that.

We usually look at mental illness as being a bad thing, and quite rightly so, when you stop and think of the anguish and pain for the sufferer, and those around them.  Again I wouldn’t choose the last 19 years again.  Not for one minute.  I lost so much, and I know I hurt people along the way.

But the suffering I went through created a new person.  I am not the person I was in the 1990’s, and actually I am quite glad I’m not.  I am a better person.  I have new opportunities because of the person I have become, and so I would go so far as to say that good came from the bad of my mental illness.  I fully expect that some people may have difficulty accepting that, and that’s okay.  I am just saying that for me, there is good as a result of the pain and suffering I experienced.

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.  These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Related articles

• In My Corner Of The World… There Is Hope (infinitesadnessorhope.wordpress.com)
• Leaving My Comfort Zone (infinitesadnessorhope.wordpress.com)
• Anniversary of first quake (radionz.co.nz)

A Long Hard Journey

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

Music has always been a really good way for me to learn.  Give me a song, and I’ll learn is quickly, but trying to learn a poem is really difficult for me.  It’s always been that way.  I can easily remember all the songs I ever learnt.  I can sing perfectly the parts I had to learn for school choir, so many years ago that I’m not saying how many.  But I don’t remember much of what I learnt in classes at school, or even university for that matter.

So it makes sense that the songs I learnt as a child, had their impact.  I still know them word for word.  The songs regularly leap to mind and actually when I think about how I learnt how to live my life, it came from songs.  That can be good, but it depends what those songs were.  And like I spoke of in Happiness Is…, the songs I learnt in Sunday School  made the biggest impact on me.

This isn’t a theological discussion of what children learn in Sunday School, but rather an explanation of my personal experience.  I’m not saying it was wrong to use such songs.  Actually I think music is an excellent tool in such settings.  I’m simply saying that for me, they made their mark.

This is one song that perhaps left the biggest mark.  It was sung to the Jingle Bells music:

J O Y,    J O Y,
This must surely mean
Jesus first, yourself last and others in between,
J O Y,    J O Y,
This must surely mean,
Jesus first, yourself last and others in between.

Note that I didn’t have to go looking for lyrics.  I know this one perfectly so many years later.  Whether or not this is my, or your, interpretation of what joy might be is not what message I got from singing this repeatedly.  What I got from it is that I always had to put myself last.  My needs didn’t count, but that Jesus came first and then other people.  Actually this is a message I got repeatedly as a child.  I’m not saying it was intentional for me to learn that what I needed didn’t matter, but it is the lesson that fixed itself in my head.

That ‘yourself last’ is what I heard over and over again, right through to well into my adult years.  It was what would make me a ‘good Christian’, apparently.  And if Christianity wants to believe it, that’s fine, but for me, it was actually very harmful to learn about where I came in the world.

I was last.  My needs were last.  Actually my needs didn’t matter because it was what other people needed that did matter.  It’s an often taught principle in the part of Christianity that I grew up in, to put the needs of others ahead of yourself.

But what if I’m being harmed by my needs coming last?  On a number of occasions this idea that my needs didn’t matter, caused me great harm (physically and emotionally) because other people took advantage and it was said that what they wanted was more important than what was safe for me.

The following is an example of the type of teaching I got, both as a child and adult:

We must aim to put Jesus Christ first in our lives. Matthew 6: 33 says “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you”.

If we want to know the fruit of joy in our lives we must do all we can to have a close growing relationship with Jesus Christ. We must seek to be like Him And to live for His glory in our daily lives. We must put ourselves last. Too often we are taught in these life that we need to blow our own horn .We need to praise ourselves. But God tells us to be humble and not braggers about ourselves.

In humility we are supposed to seek to live gentle lives for the glory of God. In our day to day lives we are to seek to help others. We are to seek to be light in our dark world. The lives of others and their needs ought to be the emphasis of our lives and we need to seek to be extended leaders pouring out ourselves for the glory of God. We are to seek to put others in-between Jesus and ourselves. We are to seek to be magnets that draw others to you our Lord.  ( 1.)

Let me be clear that my point is not about whether individuals choose to ‘put Jesus first’.  To me, that is an entirely individual choice and it’s not what I have the issue with.  My issue is that I was taught to always put other people’s needs ahead of my own, and how I interpreted that (as a child and then an adult struggling with serious self-esteem issues) was that what I needed didn’t count.  Even my safety didn’t count, and I saw this demonstrated in a number of ways over the years as both child and adult.

I don’t mean to offend anyone’s beliefs but for me this didn’t work, and I don’t even believe that God wanted me to get harmed by what I as taught was my Christian duty.  I believe it is important that we practise compassion and be there for other people, but I don’t accept sacrificing my safety and my needs in order to do that.  Let me put it this way: by having this teaching, I was harmed and I have spent many years very unwell because of that harm.  That meant that  I have been unable to be there for other people.  Isn’t that crazy?  If I had been protected then maybe my journey would have been different, and maybe I would have been able to help more people.

I totally agree with helping others, and much of my life at the moment is devoted to trying to do that.  But I can’t do it unless I put my needs first.  I have to make sure I am safe, and I have to make sure that my needs are met.  If I don’t do that, I can’t adequately be there for others.

In practice what this means for me is realising that I, personally, can’t help some people because it is harmful, or at least triggering, for me.  It’s okay for me to leave those people to someone else to help.  I have to do this or I never get free from my own past hurts.  Maybe one day I can use my experience to help, but for now my physical and emotional safety has to come first.

The lyrics of the song were harmful to me, but then I was taught this message repeatedly in different ways, and so I can’t completely blame the lyrics.  I needed to know that I was important.  I needed to know that I was safe.  I needed to know that I was loved.  And I needed to know that my service to others was not to be at the expense of myself.

It has been a long, hard journey to learn this, and actually removing myself from a church environment was necessary for me to ‘get’ that I matter.  I’m not saying anyone else needs to do that, nor am I saying that I have given up my Christian beliefs.  It’s just that these particular beliefs didn’t work for me.  Actually they worked completely against me and I was hurt by them badly.  I’m inclined to think that too often religious beliefs like these get warped by people who don’t care about what happens to others, and they simply cause harm.

“Putting yourself first is the highest level of service you can offer in the world. It allows you to serve your partner, family, friends and others with joy and generosity. As long as you put yourself first to keep your love tank on overflow, your heart knows no limits in its ability to love.”

 – Susan Blackburn

Related articles

• Happiness Is… (infinitesadnessorhope.wordpress.com)
• Put Yourself First (susanblackburn.com)

In My Corner Of The World… There Is Hope

Map of New Zealand         Image credit: freeworldmaps.net

In my corner of the world, today is the first Saturday in September, a day I will never forget.  It is the beginning of spring.

Two years ago residents of my city, Christchurch, and surrounding areas were violently woken at 4.35am by a 7.1 earthquake, the first of thousands of quakes to follow in the next two years.  It was the first time the city had ever really cared about earthquakes, because it wasn’t known to be an area at risk.  Now we are obsessed by them, but trying to rebuild and slowly move on.

That morning I woke and immediately tried to get out of bed and race for the doorway.  It was only a matter of metres to run but between cupboard doors swinging wildly and the bed being tossed and turned, it wasn’t an easy pathway to tread.  I got there and hung onto the door frame for dear life.  It was beyond anything I had ever imagined and I wondered how the ground could possibly move that much.  I was terrified.

By the time the shaking stopped, power and phone lines were down.   A few minutes later I got a call on my mobile phone, from my sister-in-law.  We were both terrified and needed to know everyone was okay.  Amazingly there was no visible (once it got light) damage to my house.  That was too come in the months ahead.  But everything had fallen off its perch, the television had taken its first of many dives onto the floor (it’s now been replaced), and my cat, Penny was nowhere to be seen.  She didn’t appear for a day and eventually I found her, also terrified, hiding under the bed.

The daylight broke eventually into a beautiful spring day.  Blue skies, calm and warm.  It was in stark contrast to the events of several hours earlier.  I have noticed that same beautiful spring weather over the past couple of days and actually the beauty of it takes away the horror of the morning.  Somehow thankfully, I have a better connection in my mind with the beautiful weather, than the terror.

I tried to head to my parents home to make sure they were okay but even my car had responded to the quake and the battery was dead.  Was this coincidence or not?  I have no idea.  It wasn’t an old battery and there was no other reason why it should have drained.  But now I was car-less and new batteries were hardly on anyone’s list of priorities that morning.  Eventually I got a lift over to where I was going and it was incredible to see whole street frontages of buildings having collapsed onto the road.  In Christchurch we grew to be used to destruction like this, but that day it was all brand new and it completely blew me away.

My parents were fine although they had a lot of breakages.  We worked to put their place back together again, with no idea that we would repeat this exercise over and over again in the next five months, until the building was so badly damaged that we couldn’t go back in.

That afternoon, back at home, I walked down the road to the nearby Avon River (which flows through the city).  The river itself was a milky colour.  Almost like a milk tanker had tipped in its load.  It didn’t look right at all, but was a sign of the silt that raised from the earth below into the river.  That silt was something we became very used to.  Called liquefaction.  It wasn’t just the river, but land for miles was almost drowned in the stuff and residents had to work hard to clean it up before it set solid.  Liquefaction is something I had never heard of, but was a repeated problem every time there was a big quake in the years since.

I’ve written about the quakes before but the reason I write today is to mark the anniversary (actually on 4 September) but to also note that finally the ground seems to be quieting down.  Three days ago it was reported that we hadn’t had a quake (that could be felt by humans) for eight days.  Wow!  This is really big news for us because the quakes have been rolling constantly for the two years.   To finally go that long without them is a very great gift to us all.  I’ve just checked, and I don’t think we have had any since that news report, which would take it to eleven days.  There have been small shakes (under 3 on the Richter scale) but that is all.  Of course we all are reluctant to tempt fate by celebrating this quieting down of the ground.  But maybe it is coming to an end for now.

It has been a heck of a two years.  Constantly alert for quakes.  There have been over 11,700 quakes in that time and most of those have been very shallow and centred very close to the city.  There has been much loss, and for  me aside from a very badly damaged house, my father died as a result of the stress of the quakes.  Many people have suffered badly in terms of both physical and mental health.  While I have been fortunate that my mental health wasn’t affected ( and that in itself is a miracle), my fibromyalgia has been put down to being a result of trauma from the quakes.  I am not alone.  Many people continue to suffer.

I love spring.  I think it is my favourite season because I love to see the new growth, the warmer weather, the city filled with golden daffodils.  I love that my daphne bush in the garden is flowering.  It just makes me feel better after a long winter in a damaged home.  Here in Christchurch we have a long way to go in repair and rebuilding, but perhaps now that we see the quakes dying down, and winter is over,  we can begin to have hope again for restoring life.

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.  The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits.  People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.” 

―    Ernest Hemingway,    A Moveable Feast

Related articles

• Christchurch quake-free for eight days (stuff.co.nz)
• Land woes ‘harming mental health’ (stuff.co.nz)
• Residents link health problems to silt (stuff.co.nz)
• Reality…   10,000+ Earthquakes And Counting (infinitesadnessorhope.wordpress.com)
• Kia Kaha (infinitesadnessorhope.wordpress.com)
• ‘Normal’ Coveted In Christchurch (infinitesadnessorhope.wordpress.com)