Out of the Storm

I had a dream tonight. I was cooking for a whole bunch of people, and it just didn't work as I wanted it to. I was running this way and that way to fetch things, I was always busybusybusy. I was doing all the work, completely on my own. I'd never done it before and I didn't even know where everything was. When I was done, I ended up with only half the food I'd set out to cook - and someone tried some and dropped still more of it, which I then began to pick up.

It's made me think about my role in relationships. My mother was parentalized at a young age, and she often assumes a "helper" role. She's actually very good at that: she comes across as wise and steady, strong and kind, someone you want to have on your side. The flipside of this is, she's absolutely crap at accepting help or showing herself weak. We're not really close. We can't be. After all, her way of relating to people is to distance herself if they get too close, and (since she's a widow) who's closer than a daughter? She has a much easier time being close to my cousins, or to strangers, because those don't depend on her so much, they all have their own sets of parents, and most of them have supportive brothers or sisters they're close to.

And obviously, that's what I learned. It's funny. I have this steady, strong, competent persona - but that's just how people are in my house. I learned this like a language. It's an advantage sometimes, but I have such a hard time showing myself weak. It's like, if I do that, people will walk away. I'm beginning to realize that this is because - well, that's what would truly have happened in my house. If I want to talk about the time my father was gravely ill (which he was for the first 20 years of my life), my mother and brother say: "It was hard, but it's made us stronger." They're saying it in this resolute way that's clearly a conversation stopper. The only possible way of being is strong and competent enough to never truly need anyone's help.

This way of being made me less able to relate to people. It made me less able to relate to myself. It's also a very efficient road to burnout. And it makes me less motivated to do anything, because there's always this element of compulsion and pressure behind it.

So I've begun to practice this - allowing myself to be not fully competent/strong/independent. It's less a change of attitude, more like overcoming habits. I'm calling it 'alignment', because I needed a short buzzword I could memorize. 'Remembering-how-to-figure-out-how-I-actually-feel-and-then-working-to-behave-accordingly' is a tad bit unwieldy. So now, I'm sometimes doing the UNTHINKABLE and, if I'm feeling tired, I actually walk a little more slowly. I know! Shocking! Or, when I've been writing non-stop for two or three hours to the point where nothing more will come, it's perfectly okay to simply stop writing.

So maybe that's something I can do today - some recovery-related work that's easy and not triggering - simply just starting a list of all the possible less-than-strong states of mind there are, and then ways to behave accordingly. Things like "feel sad --> look sad (instead of pressuring myself to smile)". That's why I like the word alignment so much. It reminds me that this isn't about self-indulgence or weakness, it's about finding out where I'm truly at, and then bringing everything else into alignment with it. It's then easier to remember that fully aligned things are usually a lot stronger. Even in situations where it's best to keep a lid on things, I can always do something - even if it's just allowing myself to be a little quieter than usual.

Allowing yourself to be less than perfect is a great way to be kind and loving towards yourself. Good going!  :applause:

Here's a link to a poster that illustrates (some of) your good intentions, hope you'll like it:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1595

That's sweet, thank you. The girl version would probably include: "before leaving the house, remember to take your tiara and your favourite sword" and "if something depresses you, find a warm place and a good story".

"It's funny. I have this steady, strong, competent persona - but that's just how people are in my house. I learned this like a language. It's an advantage sometimes, but I have such a hard time showing myself weak. It's like, if I do that, people will walk away."

Your post really resonated with me Cat, especially the notion of not wanting anyone to see me as weak.  It started me thinking about how we define what being "weak" is. In my case it is a lack of control which makes me feel very vulnerable to abuse, rejection, ridicule, and of being made to feel small.  In your case it seeems to be about about asking for help, of needing something from others -- is that about right? 

I guess my point in this noodling kind of post is that we both have gotten tangled up in others' versions of what is weak, internalized them as you suggest and now it is time to find out what it is we think and feel, you're so right about that.  When we sense someone is struggling do we attack, reject, ridicule, walk away? No.  So I guess the thing to work on as your post so nicely highlights is that we really do need to "treat ourselves as we would treat others." Simple, yet elegant and powerful.

Tks for sharing your thoughts about your recovery Cat (and by the way, we will not walk away from you).  :hug:

   

Thanks, Kizzie.  :hug:  It's already been a huge help to even have this forum. It's made me feel less weak. If you constantly read story after story where people wind up with similar symptoms after being traumatized in a certain way, then it's getting reaaaally hard to see this as a character fault. It's simply an injury. So when my inner critic pipes up with its constant song of "you're being weak", I point at OOTS and go: "hah, what about that? They aren't weak, so I'm not either."

Yes, my "weak" is about needing anything from others. I can remember telling my mother once that I was lonely, and she pursed her lips and said: "You shouldn't make yourself so dependent upon other people." She's very self-contained. - Another thing that feels "weak" is if I ever have a problem I don't know how to solve. The only permissible attitude is one that's resolute and can-do. It's not the worst attitude to adopt - but given that I've got CPTSD (=MANY problems I couldn't solve), all this meant I ceased being me. I started being someone artificial.

My mother and brother were here a few days ago. It went well, thanks to Medium Chill and never, ever talking about my personal concerns. I found myself slipping into my old persona again. I talked in a deeper and slightly louder voice, I put on a show of resolutely competent homemaking to keep myself safe from comments, and I avoided - well, any of what my FOO would call ditzie hippie touchy-feely psychobabble. The contrast to what I'm truly like was sobering.

Silver lining: at least now I have a real me I can then slip away from.

But what a sobering thing to experience: 'my family and I get along, provided I cease being me.'  :stars:   

Quote from: schrödinger's cat on November 04, 2014, 06:06:43 AM
My mother and brother were here a few days ago. It went well, thanks to Medium Chill and never, ever talking about my personal concerns. I found myself slipping into my old persona again. I talked in a deeper and slightly louder voice, I put on a show of resolutely competent homemaking to keep myself safe from comments, and I avoided - well, any of what my FOO would call ditzie hippie touchy-feely psychobabble. The contrast to what I'm truly like was sobering.

But what a sobering thing to experience: 'my family and I get along, provided I cease being me.'  :stars:

:bighug: :bighug: :bighug:

That is so sad. No wonder you learned to be self sufficient - there was no one else to rely on.  :hug:

If it's any consolation: You are definitely not alone in experiencing this! Those words could have been written by me. Only I've started being a little more true to myself lately - babysteps - but I feel I owe it to myself. I bet the few friends who know the 'real me' would still have trouble recognizing that person when I go into FOO sister modus... :blink:

Well, enjoy being able to be yourself again now and 'psychobabble' away ...  :sunny:. I like reading your posts.  :yes:

Thanks. This has made me feel a lot better about things.  :hug:   Here's to our true selves!  :waveline:   Knowing that I'm not alone does actually make a HUGE difference. First of all, it makes it A WHOLE LOT easier to remind myself that this isn't me, it's simply just my having CPTSD. Secondly, the kindness and company do me good. It's something that used to torture me - this suspicion that everyone was like my FOO, all the time, everywhere, without any exceptions at all. Urgh. That was chilling. And also, having CPTSD isolates you. So this is a good thing, finding others who feel like that.

Glad to hear about your baby steps towards the real you.  :cheer:  It's slow work, that, at least for me. I used to wonder if I was making any kind of progress at all. So in this way, that visit was illuminating. I was just so happy when my FOO was gone and I could switch back over to being me. It felt like coming home. So, maybe discovering who we truly are is a bit like creating a home for ourselves within ourselves? Slow going, but so worth our while.

If you constantly read story after story where people wind up with similar symptoms after being traumatized in a certain way, then it's getting reaaaally hard to see this as a character fault. It's simply an injury. So when my inner critic pipes up with its constant song of "you're being weak", I point at OOTS and go: "hah, what about that? They aren't weak, so I'm not either."

 :hug:

So many things about this thread are quickly becoming tools in my toolbox now - thank you schrödinger's cat!  I like the adjustment metaphor, especially how you broke it out into "feel said, so look sad" kind of terms to help ground it in body consciousness, and I really LOVE the points you and Kizzie made about reflecting on perceived weaknesses / character traits in ourselves as just injuries to an otherwise strong person.  I think you and so many others in this forum show lots of strength all the time, there's a lot of growth happening here.

QuoteIf you constantly read story after story where people wind up with similar symptoms after being traumatized in a certain way, then it's getting reaaaally hard to see this as a character fault. It's simply an injury. So when my inner critic pipes up with its constant song of "you're being weak", I point at OOTS and go: "hah, what about that? They aren't weak, so I'm not either."

I'll take a page out of Kizzie's playbook and say :yeahthat:

Are you familiar with Brené Brown?  She has some interesting talks on the power of vulnerability, processing shame and guilt.  I like this one - she's lighthearted and funny but covers this topic so impressively and authentically:

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability (http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability)

Some excerpts:
"And to me, the hard part of the one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we're not worthy of connection, was something that, personally and professionally, I felt like I needed to understand better. So what I did is I took all of the interviews where I saw worthiness, where I saw people living that way, and just looked at those."

"And so here's what I found. What they had in common was a sense of courage. And I want to separate courage and bravery for you for a minute. Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word cor, meaning heart -- and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and -- this was the hard part -- as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection."

"The other thing that they had in common was this: They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating -- as I had heard it earlier in the shame interviewing. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, "I love you" first, the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees, the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They're willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental."


"And it did, and it didn't. And it took about a year. And you know how there are people that, when they realize that vulnerability and tenderness are important, that they surrender and walk into it. A: that's not me, and B: I don't even hang out with people like that. (Laughter) For me, it was a yearlong street fight. It was a slugfest. Vulnerability pushed, I pushed back. I lost the fight, but probably won my life back."


"The problem is -- and I learned this from the research -- that you cannot selectively numb emotion. You can't say, here's the bad stuff. Here's vulnerability, here's grief, here's shame, here's fear, here's disappointment. I don't want to feel these. I'm going to have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. (Laughter) I don't want to feel these. And I know that's knowing laughter. I hack into your lives for a living. God. (Laughter) You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness.  And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle."

Thanks for taking the time to excerpt this. She's making some excellent points.

I'd actually looked for that speech. I found it a few months ago and had started listening to it, but then my internet browser decided to swallow all the tabs I'd kept open, and it took this link with it. It was such a pity, because I'd only listened to enough to realize this was a good speech. I kept hoping I'd find it again somewhere, and here it is!  :cheer: Thanks, Somnambulist.

It's absolutely what happened to me. I guess it happened to several of us. We numb our terror, our loneliness, our negative feelings, and unwittingly, we numb everything about ourselves. I've been numb the past few years. I couldn't feel anything. No: worry still worked. For some reason, worry always works. I'm still only starting to move out of it. It's such slow going, but absolutely worth it. I'd rather have the bad memories than the numbness.

(That's actually something I'm having to remind myself often. "Feelings are GOOD. Grief is GOOD. No more denial. Say yes to grief." Bleargh.)

Brene Brown!
That is probably my most favorite TED talk, ever.
I have watched it a few times. For so many years I equated "Vulnerability" with weakness, but now I know it is a strength, and a goal.
Slamming down the wall to let others in requires it.

Quote from: globetrotter on November 07, 2014, 07:42:54 PMFor so many years I equated "Vulnerability" with weakness, but now I know it is a strength, and a goal.

Same here. Somnambulist is right, she describes this really well.

My family saw vulnerability as a weakness. Still does. Showing myself vulnerable with them is a bad idea.

cat - i get so much of what you have written. totally, 100%. all the way from your mask, to the need to be competent and capable, to searching for and acting on your authentic self. :hug: i hear you.

My T turned me on to Brene Brown. She also has a great Ted talk on Shame that is lesser know than the Vulnerability one, but more impactful (imo). Here's the link: http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame

QuoteShame is an unspoken epidemic, the secret behind many forms of broken behavior. Brené Brown, whose earlier talk on vulnerability became a viral hit, explores what can happen when people confront their shame head-on.

I think about shame often, esp. when I get angry or be on the verge of getting angry with my kids. So much of it is tied to shame and just being able to explore it is amazing.

Thanks, Sandals, I'll go have a look at that.

Here's something I did last Saturday that helped immensely, so I thought I'd share it. Background information: I was a rather typical "Lost Child" (http://lightshouse.org/lights-blog/the-four-dysfunctional-family-roles), and I was socially isolated, so I spent most of the time in my room so I'd be out of the way. Summer holidays were a bit of a challenge - we didn't travel, I didn't have any friends, my family hardly ever went on outings (and if we did, it was rather stressful), the only things I had to occupy myself with were pen, paper, books I'd already read several times, and the TV. Boredom was a bit of an issue, as you can imagine. Not "boredom" as in "oh, what will I do this afternoon", but the kind where you have six weeks to fill and nothing to fill them with.


Boredom makes me have the following Negative Automatic Thoughts:
1) This is insupportable. I won't be able to endure it.
2) Boredom means that I've been excluded and rejected by the others.
3) Boredom is a character fault. If I were strong and independent, I wouldn't need social contacts or novelty. If I were fun to be with, I wouldn't be so bored.
4) Boredom is a weakness. If I were strong and hard-working, I'd never feel bored because I'd be fulfilled by working and doing chores.

Mental image I get when I'm thinking all this: "the stupid girl has been rightfully left behind by her peers and family and is now too weak and inept to find her joy where she ought to find it".  (Toxic y/n? Yes.)

Reframing the Present:
1) Boredom is transitory. It's the place before the ideas come. I'm now able to endure it as simply just another part of being human.
2) "The others" aren't a cohesive group anymore. Grown-ups are a lot more individualistic. There are thousands of groups to choose from, not just the one.
3 and 4) Are you kidding? Even most religions say that work is work and fun is fun. NEVER believe ANYTHING a workoholic tells you about work. Seriously.

New mental imagine for the Present: "the woman battling CPTSD has a limited ability to tackle her work (because of EFs, demand resistance, Inner Critic cognitions attaching themselves strongly to work, lack of energy,...), so she deserves some fun and relaxation that is NOT writing or CPTSD recovery. All work and no play... remember that poster of Jack Nicholson from The Shining? That's where that would get you."

Reframing the Past:

1 and 2) Boredom was insupportable. A child isn't equipped to occupy herself for a full six weeks, especially in a small village where she's discouraged from leaving the house. I rationed out my books. I rationed out the few activities I could do. I watched TV with my father, who never acknowledged my presence (unless I wanted the remote). I wasn't able to do anything that had value for the community; all I did was simply kill time. It made me feel sidelined and useless.
My mother was constantly busy and had little time and attention to spare for me, and my brother was busy with his friends. I knew I was doing them a favour by keeping to myself. I still do that: if I like someone, I take care not to inflict myself upon them, because my FOO and my "friends" always gave me to understand that a little of me goes a long way. (Or as my husband puts it: "you grew up surrounded by jerks.") The few times I was in groups other than my FOO and my school class, I did just fine, so it was simply just them. I know that. But my default feeling is still that I'm alienated and superfluous. That feeling was always an integral part of boredom.
I often felt unsafe even in my room, because my mother had very definite ideas of what it ought to look like (tidy) and sound like (quiet), so anything that was loud or messy (like painting) felt unsafe. Also, she might walk in at any time, and she'd comment on anything she saw. It's why I still do a lot of my creative writing in English - it's a language she doesn't speak. My classmates, too, would comment on and mock anything I did that was different from things other kids did. I learned to fit in at all cost. I ceased being me. Doing activities that would fully express my creativity was out of the question from the start.
And I was isolated. Every day, I saw my parents suffer, which meant I was depressed and sad and too serious and "not fun to be with". Kids that age think nothing of excluding someone if they're not fun; they even purposely take pains to make someone feel excluded and unwelcome. At that time, I lived in two communities: my FOO and my class, and in both, I was the odd one out and felt like it. I was left alone with my PTSD, my depression, my food intolerance symptoms. There was no one there to even see how bad things were. No grown-up ever cared enough to find out. That kind of loneliness is terrifying. It was suffocating. I felt that this abandonment was actively doing something to me that I had no way of stopping. It made me heart-sick, even physically sick. It was slowly eating me up alive, hollowing out the true me, until I was only a wraith, a weakened, thinned-out ghost - until I had no resistance left and every last little thing my FOO or my peers shamed me for was of vast importance. That's how brainwashing works - there is NO reason to minimize the impact of this.
So the overall athmosphere was chillingt. Whenever I'm bored, the whole package of this all comes back up. If it feels like it's unbearable, it's because back then, it was.

3 and 4) Work is rewarding, yes. But working makes you need relaxation-type fun as well as active / self-expressive fun. This is what's normal. My mother was a workoholic and busyholic. She was hard to please - accusing us of "never lifting a finger", but if we offered to help, she let us do tiny chores that made little difference, and/or she'd shoo us away because "I'd rather do it myself, it's quicker", and/or she'd be visibly tense and uneasy, watching us like a hawk to make sure we did every last little detail "properly", and visibly feeling annoyed that NOT ONLY did she have to do all the chores, now she ALSO had to supervise our attempts to help. Sometimes things worked and we could really make a difference for her, but it wasn't predictable when she'd be pleased and when she'd be annoyed. She always warned me of doing things improperly, saying the precise same warning every single time for decades.
Wanting to have friends is normal. It's not a weakness. NEVER believe ANYTHING a very introverted introvert tells you about socializing (if you're not an extremely introverted introvert yourself).
Wanting novelty is a sign of creativity and intelligence. My mother sees it as a risk; she sees tradition as safety, and prefers being stuck in a rut because it's a safe rut. She's welcome to that, and I can see where she's coming from, but she shouldn't have shamed me for being different.
Therefore: wanting fun, friends, and novelty was an age-appropriate, normal need.

New mental image for the past: "the abandoned girl had no way of assuaging her loneliness, no one to help her work through her grief at seeing her parents suffer, and no way to have fun, find herself some non-jerk friends and productively contribute to the group in a way that was of worth. The only way left open was a Freeze Response. Given those circumstances, she found some rather amazing coping strategies - writing novels before she knew this was something people did as a hobby, rationing out activities, composing songs, vivid daydreaming. She has no reason at all of being ashamed of who she is and how she reacted. Throughout, she showed a normal level of distress, confusion, depression, and anxiety. No more victim-blaming. I mean it."

.................sooo, this was kind of long. Sorry about that. But I'm working under the assumption that I might not be the only one in this situation, so maybe this is of interest to someone other than myself?

Yiiieees... I know our culture was spectacularly screwed up when it comes to work ethics, but we're not all like that, I swear! I know a lot of warm-hearted, lovely German mothers with excellent social skills and a grand ability to kick up their heels and have fun. Just, mine wasn't one of them, and neither was yours, from the sound of it. The culture back then encouraged people to define themselves via their work and their duties, so it was easy for people to slip into that particular trap and think that this is what life is about, period.

Thanks for the hug. Here's one right back:  :bighug:

Cat, the way you're reframing your experiences is great. I hope it brings you peace at last.
Your story resonates with me, too.

Yes, the German work ethic! My grandparents (on both sides) were German immigrant farmers. Always we were lectured about working in the fields. Just last week, my brother said my family had no "character" because we weren't working in the fields. (My brother doesn't work in the fields either - he's in computers.  :doh:)

Yes, these old habits of child-rearing just keep going until we make the effort to change them.

 :blink:  ...working in the fields? How long ago did they emigrate? All my extended family come from farming stock, and they hate working in the fields. ... Sorry, I do realize that people saying "Germans do this" or "that is typically German", they don't mean me personally, but it still makes me want to hide under the sofa until the shouting has stopped.

Quote from: schrödinger's cat on November 14, 2014, 12:38:15 PM
:blink:  ...working in the fields? How long ago did they emigrate? All my extended family come from farming stock, and they hate working in the fields. ... Sorry, I do realize that people saying "Germans do this" or "that is typically German", they don't mean me personally, but it still makes me want to hide under the sofa until the shouting has stopped.

Sorry, Cat. I don't mean to paint Germans (or any nationality or enthnicity) with the same brush. I suppose that because many of us here in the U.S. retain only tenuous links with our ancestry, we tend to note traits that might link us with our "original" people.  For good or ill.

My relatives came at different times in the early to mid-20th century, but they all moved to rural farming communities where everyone else was just the same. Any old-fashioned beliefs were just reinforced. And because they were more isolated way out in the middle of nowhere, these qualities just became more intensified with time. So this probably says far more about rural German immigrant farming communities in the US than it does about modern Germans of any type.

One of my aunts came over much later, from a sophisticated city, and she wouldn't have been caught dead working in a field!  ;)
 

Oh, okay. Phew. Thanks for saying that, I'm really relieved. :hug:

Germany has changed a LOT since the mid-20th century. But before? Yikes. If your family's "German" traits are stuck in a little pre-70s timeloop, you have my sympathies. Here's something by a German comedian called Loriot (real name Vico von Bülow) who poked relentless fun at the stuffiness and self-importance of it all. Here's something with subtitles that you might enjoy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lliHC7QSiG8).

Do you think your family might have clung to their "German" traits so stubbornly because they missed home? If you're living in Germany, you don't really have to be pointedly German at people all the time, there's no good reason for it. If you emigrate, you think of the home you left - but of course, even after ten or twenty years, that home doesn't exist anymore. Things keep on evolving. It's a bit sad. Emigrants can never truly go back home.

Hi Cat - One thing that kept coming up for me as I read your post about boredom is that you had to spend so much of your childhood "not being"  and I was struck by just how much energy it would take to contain the normal exurberance or lifeforce children possess. 

Thanks for saying that, Kizzie. It's a weird feeling, being understood, but I think I can jiiiust about get used to it. (Kidding. It feels brilliant.)

That might explain why I got PTSD in the first place - all that energy sloshing about with nowhere to go. Maybe I'd have been able to metabolize my trauma if I'd had some kind of outlet, something to do that wasn't merely "killing time". Pretty useless to think of this now - our lives aren't made up of "if only"s - but this could be an interesting point to explore: whether isolation and inaction make it harder to digest trauma. I know I often feel better when I do something, it almost doesn't matter what: even just baking a cake makes me feel like I'm active, I'm doing something, I'm changing the world, I'm not helpless, I'm not prey. If I do nothing, it feels like being tangled in a spider web.

Haven't been feeling too well since Sunday before last. I'm tired and woozy all the time and a lot less able to concentrate. Simply just being weak is unsettling. I'm having to remind myself that it's okay to be exhausted. It didn't use to be - there was always a high likelihood that there'd be more abuse, because no target is more tempting to kids than one that already looks defeated.

Get well soon, Schrodinger's Cat.  :hug:

Yes, it is okay to be exhausted, to rest, to listen to your body and give it what it needs. I know it might be contrary to the messages we were given growing up, but from a survival standpoint? It's basic good sense!  :yes:

Yes, get well soon, Cat!   Isn't that the truth with feeling unsettled about feeling under the weather.   It is okay to be exhausted.   Be safe, be well.    :hug:

Thanks, you two.  :hug:

Looks like my tiredness responds to EFs. I had that for almost a decade, and I was so happy to be rid of it: EFs kind of hit my dimmer switch and I was so physically exhausted I could barely stand. At least I have more tools now that could maybe fix this.

I'm editing a book, which was supposed to be done by now but I haven't worked on it since we came back from our summer holidays. Realizing I've got CPTSD changed too many things. But it's high time I continued work on it. I'm scared. So, baby steps. Opening the manuscript today to see where I left off, that's the only thing I'm going to do today. I can do that. I hope.

EDITED TO ADD: I did it. Feeling woozy (see first paragraph), but when I gave myself permission to feel woozy instead of feeling guilty, things got better. This is so bizarre.

Feel better Cat! You've been using a lot of energy dealing with CPTSD so a little rest wouldn't be a bad thing.   :zzz:    The book has waited this long, a couple more days won't make a big difference in the scheme of things.

A friend of mine is dying of cancer. It's making me think about quite a few things, as such deaths do. How precious life is. How sad that so much is lost, that so many suffer and disappear. How we almost owe it to those who are gone to really seize our day and make the most of enjoying it.

So how about we institute an extra holiday? A day that's just about celebrating the fact that our adolescence didn't kill us. That goes double for anyone who's survived physical abuse. Even just simple emotional abuse and neglect can kill you. But we're still here. That cost us. We've all of us expended a ton of energy into simply just surviving. So hey, it worked. We're still here. So why not mark the occasion? Give it all the fanfare it deserves. Have a second birthday. Or a still-alive day.

I'm glad that you all made it this far. This loss that my friend's family is about to experience made me think of all of you - that so many of you could have been quietly lost. I'm so, so, so glad that you weren't.  :hug: 

Sorry to hear about your friend. It is so sad and unfair.

In Dutch, people wish one another 'strength' in all things concerning illness and death. I'd rather wish you 'courage': Courage to be there for your friend as long as she's still around and courage to face your own sadness as well as that of the people closest to her after she's gone.  :hug:

Quote from: schrödinger's cat on February 16, 2015, 08:51:34 AM
I'm glad that you all made it this far. This loss that my friend's family is about to experience made me think of all of you - that so many of you could have been quietly lost. I'm so, so, so glad that you weren't.  :hug: 

Right back at you, Cat! Happy 'second birthday' to you, too!  :hug:

Thanks, keepfighting.  :hug:

So sorry to hear about your friend Cat  :hug:

Hugs to you Cat. :hug:

It was my very near death experience that gave me this understanding and helped me to truly appreciate life.  This journey isn't easy.  But it's OUR journey.  I like the idea of a glad you survived day. 

Praying for you and your friend. 

Thanks.  :hug:  She's already unable to talk, and we don't even know if she's conscious. So it was a shock, getting that phonecall and hearing that she's already gone, in a way. It reminds me of the time my father fell ill, back when I was two years old. It happened from one day to the other, wham, just like that, all at once. So in my post, when I talked about people disappearing, I meant it very literally. It's an unsettling thing to witness.

So it's a good thing that my husband and I are a lot better able to talk about our feelings, and that we're aware of our FOO's dynamics and of our childhood trauma. We went through the death of another dear friend of ours about a decade ago, and back then, we just bottled things up and each of us dealt with it on his or her own. That was not a good time.