Messages

So, the title of this journal didn't come easily to me. I chose it because it's generally optimistic but also realistically factual. Like me. 

In the spirit of general optimism, despite wanting to call in sick today, I got up early, rested with a cool cloth on my eyes to reduce swelling and redness, had a nice hot shower, and am heading in to work. I'll even be early.

One foot in front of the other is something I learned the excruciatingly hard way after my dad died. I haven't got it mastered by any stretch. But people make irrational decisions and life goes on no matter how much I wish it would stop most times. So I've learned that my best options are to either make my contribution to the best of my ability, or remove myself from the situation and find somewhere else to contribute. Today I will contribute where I am, as I am, and it will be ok.

This post will contain triggers for violence, and some deep emotional exploration.

I thought I wouldn't write again so soon. But I am too sensitive to the world. And lucky me, my sensitivity is multiplied by a particularly heavy period which has left me feeling sick the last 3 days.

Current events, societal and political, have got me down. There was an attack on innocent people in the pub district of my hometown this weekend, which many are making about race. It's not to say the attack wasn't bad, it was.  But people jump on any chance they can to validate their ignorant redneck views and false assumptions. The attacker had dark skin so he must be a "terrorist". A fire fed to exploding by the police themselves. Disgusting, and one of many, many reasons I Ieft that city.

Then waking up to the Vegas attack this morning. Not since Sandy Hook have I felt such utter futility in the face of the destructive power of insanity. And of course the shooter is a white man, because 99% of them are. But he's a "lone wolf", not a terrorist though almost 60 died by his hand? It makes me nauseous. 

And then the topper is the reporting mess surrounding Tom Petty. I was just reading a news story talking about his music this morning. I got busy at work, took late lunch, checked Facebook and boom, it was everywhere that he had died. Except he hasn't yet, as later corrected. But all night I've been waiting for the news... Looking for something concrete one way or another. Singing his songs in my head.

I had recently decided to give up on a car for now. I can't afford it. I was scraping to make rent, and getting further and further in debt. I think I made an adult decision.

But I had to tell my folks why I wasn't going to be there for thanksgiving. It was a big mistake on my part, saying I would go when I don't have it in me. So I told them, and about what living is like for my generation in general, and for me more specifically. My M said she'd send some money.

I told her multiple times she didn't have to but she insisted. And tonight I got it, and it's a considerable amount. I started sobbing when I saw it. It helps hugely. Yes, I appreciate it and need it. But I do not want it, and feel shame in accepting.

This is how she shows love. I think she means well. She says she loves me. I basically believe that. But I don't feel it in my core. And it was never the love I needed or wanted.

There is a deep emptiness inside me that I am rarely aware of. Tonight, I am. I love, and I am loved. But none of these loves join to form a real connection due to circumstances and biology. It leaves me feeling deeply broken to think that I can't really feel love. That it's something that either I never knew, or worse, could just never process.

And so I am broken down, beaten into submission by life. Accepting gifts from the person for whom the past doesn't exist. The person whose acknowledgement would mean the most. Considering returning to my surface family and redneck city because I have almost nothing left to my name.

Does acceptance of the gift equal condoning the violence of the past? If I am the only one who knows my truth, can that carry me through being closer to my family? These are the questions I will sleep on tonight. 

Edited to add that as I wrote this, Tom Petty did pass away. Rest in peace, Tom, and thank you for the music.

I've just noticed that I hit page 20. That was the arbitrary limit I set myself for this journal becoming too unwieldy. It feels like a good time to close this chapter and move on, and refocus on my well-being. I don't think I will post again til sometime during my vacation. Despite the difficulties I have, I think about how far I have come in a little over a a year,  and I am proud of that.

Each week seems to get harder. It's part of the flow of work. This week was extremely physically demanding. The last few weeks I've not slept well during the week, but wanted to sleep away every free hour. I've been eating terribly and then crashing out around up each night but still wake in the middle of the night. Today I probably slept 13 hours off and on from 7pm last night. I was so groggy all day and didn't really wake up until 8pm.

I've been moving and thinking slower these days. I'm just trying to ride out my time until my vacation in a week. It's all I can do to stay on top of work. I have nothing left after. I've been avoiding everything in life for the most part. I haven't listened to my voicemail in 2 months. On my vacation I will see my Dr. and say how poorly I am doing. I don't know how to help myself out of my problems and that scares me. I've been having more and more pain lately and I think that excaberates everything else.

I feel like the only way I can be healthy enough to work is through a life of extreme discipline, because that's what managing C-PTSD seems to require of me. But it's a life of little joy and less spontaneity. Fatigue and basic functionality are all I have these days. Little self care or good health. Yet I keep hoping that things will get better if I keep hanging on. Hope is the one thing I do somehow have, most of the time.

I learned that my childhood pet finally had to be put down after well over two decades of life. I feel "sad" about it but not really, if that makes sense. He outlived the normal lifespan by probably 7 years at least, so it wasn't exactly a surprise. And I know he had a good life.

But last night I had a dream that I was cuddling him and crying. And just now some tears have snuck up on me. So there is some grief there. I find my original detachment, the dream, and my sadness 24 hours later, all odd. Am I sad about him, or about a final tie to my childhood that has been severed? Both, I suppose. I haven't lived with that pet in over 15 years, though I saw him when visiting my family.

Time slides on and familiar things slip away. That is sad, but it also makes room for new familiarities. So I tell myself.

TRIGGERS in this post for gender violence.


I'm working on setting boundaries. I think the (recurrent)  fear of (violent)  pushback usually stops me from having effective boundaries. I EF into anticipating an explosion that rarely comes. And that fear, anticipation and unpredictability terrorize me enough that I would usually rather let people take advantage of me than face possible wrath. I even offer to put myself at disadvantage rather than face what my imagination conjures.

I can't even say this is based on just my inner child. I have experienced violent reprocussions to my actions as an adult, too. And it's left me with the false notion that if I could just say or do the right thing, nothing bad can happen.

I did emdr on an act of gender violence perpetrated against me. The conclusion was that I had actually protected myself in the best way I could at the time, especially as the male bystanders did nothing. Interestingly, in my bigger picture now, I see how that one incident doesn't rule me, but fits a bigger pattern in my life.

What really happened was that I froze as I was explicitly threatened and attacked verbally. I wasn't hit but was trapped and threatened so angrily that it was like being hit. I was inches from his face. So I froze,and let him terrorize me. If I had said anything or resisted at all I would probably have been beaten. I let him invade my space, trample my boundaries, and harm me, because to do otherwise was likely life-threatening.

These are the kinds of choices women have to make. And this is why for me having boundaries is so hard - because me defending myself, many times in my life, has resulted in violence against me, from childhood right into adulthood.

It's not just me reassuring my inner child that it's healthy and safe to set and enforce boundaries. I have to reassure my adult self as well. Aside from dissociating, I can't think of a way to protect myself from harm with regards to boundaries. I know that violence is one of the least likely results of stating a boundary, but the memory is imprinted in my lizard brain, and I think I understand now that I will have to confront it again and again until I become numb to it, of I gain enough positive experiences to overwhelm it.

And so it goes with so many aspects of life for me. It's not logical and it's not visible, but I fight probably hundreds of internal battles of different intensities every day. I'm grateful that at least here, people can empathize.

I feel a bit Ike I'm losing it. I was on the brink of booking and tickets home. Thing is, I really can't afford the trip now, but still I almost did it. I just accidentally closed my browser tab and saved myself, hehe.

On one hand, they sound "better", as I heard over the phone. On the other, I have deluded myself soooooo many times by thinking things would be "different this time"  and they haven't been. Last time I went I had no expectations but I also didn't enjoy myself or even really spend time with them. I spent most of my time reading or outside.

So the real issue is why I would do this. I guess to save face and try to be a "good daughter". But doing that is lying to myself as much as anyone else. And no reasonable parent wants their kid to go broke over a holiday, right?

It's really interesting to me that the desperation to present as normal is as strong in me as it is in them... One of the traits that bothered me most growing up was how they have the "public face" and the "private face" and the two are so different. And yet here am I doing the same thing.

I'm going to sleep on it and consider what is really in my best interest. I suspect it will mean I stay put.

A year ago today, I wrote this about the man I cheated with. A year later, it feels applicable to the man I call my boyfriend.

"It's too complicated and I am ashamed I was vulnerable, thinking our openness with each other meant some kind of emotional bond was developing. I like his attention, but I am learning it is not real desire and I deserve better. Eventually I will get it. I know cognitively that I am the gatekeeper of acceptable relationships and behaviours, but emotionally I am still learning."

It's unfortunate that a year later I still have these kinds of thoughts about the men I date. I suppose I forget or turn away from life's lessons easily. I "know" a lot of "right" things but living according to these things is so difficult.

I've been feeling that the man I date primarily is seeing me as a charity case, rather than actually wanting to be with me, as he did at the beginning of the relationship. But this could also be my ICr grabbing onto any perceived changes in the relationship and using them to belittle me. And at the beginning of the relationship, both his attention and mistakes would send me into an EF. Not so, now. So there has been some progress and learning. I might wish I was further along, but if I take a step back, I can see myself with kinder eyes and remember that I am worthy of care, compassion and attention, and I do get these things now, just not as often as I would like in my life going forward.

Thank you, San! Oh boy, have I ever been thinking of you, with the hurricanes and the earthquake in Mexico. I hope you and everyone close to you is ok.

Hi all,

Have always known myself to be different from FOO . Was the scapegoat for them for years and years. They still want a normal relationship with me but don't make much effort and the condition is that I will never bring up my abuse or hold it against them because it "didn't happen" .

I struggle with many holidays but have found my own ways to find meaning in them. But a tough one is Thanksgiving, which is coming up. I'm supposed to go home this year and have realized I'd rather not. I haven't been home for a holiday in years. I might be done with them.

I've gone nearly the whole summer without talking to my FOO. Mainly because I needed to focus on myself. My SF texted me the other day, said he misses me. That was it, but it was enough to send me into a major dissociative tailspin. I still feel foggy now.

I've been avoiding this moment for months, I suppose. I have done well at avoiding a lot of family pressure by being an underachiever in their presence. I've done better overall on my own. But standing up to them is something I have avoided with more energy than I should.

I don't know what to do. I don't want to deal with this at all. My catastrophizing has gone crazy, and yet I'm frozen and have been avoiding responding to a simple text. Nothing makes me feel more powerless than dealing with the unpredictability of my FOO.

I've slept better this week. Last night was a bona fide good sleep. The night before was a long sleep. Long is good but good is better.

I waffle about wanting to break up with my boyfriend. I love him, and after some difficult growing pains I have a much better idea of what a healthy relationship is like. He's good to me and he's respectful. But in the long term, I know I want a life partner. He's not in that position, and might be keeping himself there because that's where he wants to be. And it's fine for now. I think about the fact that I generally sleep "better" alone, and need alone time to process things sometimes, or go for a walk, or a much needed nap. I think about how codependent I can be. And all of that makes me realize that what I share with him is pretty good for me. I decided to just enjoy the present. There's still a corner of me worrying about the future and how I'm not "available" for my future partner. But for now I have as much as I want to keep me busy and through careful communication and I am mostly content, which I think is a realistic and relatively sustainable state of being.

As far as how I became afraid of the things I love, it comes down to me being gullible. My inner child looks so desperately for approval from others to replace what she was lacking in the first place. When I am ruled by my inner child, I take things more literally and seriously than I ought to. I believe things others say that are subjective. Adult me sees how this causes me to be hurt.

For a long time I think I believed my inner child was "me". Now I think that the real "me" is this adult me, and that my inner child is a part of me who sometimes comes to prominence.

... Unless this is all rational dissociation... Hahaha, it's thinking that will drive me mad. At least I feel pretty relaxed today. Will let this all marinate my brain for a while and see what the results are.

The question of the day is: how did I get to be so afraid of the things I love?

Awake in the middle of the night, again. Tired but unable to sleep. Tossing and turning for over an hour. Trying to keep work thoughts at bay. Was exhausted by 8pm, so I went to bed like usual. And now I'm awake like usual and hoping to get a couple more hours in. The pursuit of quality sleep is probably the dominant health issue in my life but people constantly glorify sleeping less and working more. I think those are people who don't actually struggle with fatigue, nightmares or bad dreams, or sleep disturbances. I loathe that, sadly. The second I wake I start battling unwanted work or family thoughts.

I think I can try to sleep again. I am one month out from a week off. I need it so badly. Basically just going g day by day, trying to do just a little bit more than I feel capable of so a tiny bit of progress is made. It's the best I can do. If oy my best yielded satisfaction. And a good night's sleep.

Had a rough day yesterday. Woke up in a panic in the middle of the night. Managed to calm myself enough to get a little more sleep but my mood was a bit off all day. My panic was work related. As it stands I am a day, maybe two behind on an important deadline. This isn't really my fault. As always, it seems to be a terrible time for my partner and so I have trouble connecting with them and getting the information I need out of them. These delays snowball into the rest of my workload. I have another project with another partner and it's the same thing, too. So my panic is how I can ever meet my deadlines when people are like this. I try to channel "not my circus, not my monkeys" but it is my circus and for better or worse the ringleaders are acting like monkeys. Me, in terms of seniority, I'm the guy sweeping up the peanuts and elephant poop at the end of the night.

I'm heading out for some long weekend camping with my boyfriend. Part of me wants to work in my idea  a little over the weekend. The other part of me just wants to relax. Can I give myself permission to do that?

Woke up in the middle of the night last night, too. My Inner Critic got on a tear about my appearance and my body. I had been letting myself go lately. Will try to make more of an effort.

Anyway, a break from the city will be wonderful. A last blast of summer. I will enjoy it.

Thank you, everyone. I don't think I could have done it without the outlet and support I've found here. I worked reasonably hard, but not *too* hard this time. The time was right and I was ready.