Bermuda's Memories - Overflow Journal 1

[NarcKiddo]

I hope the little girl is happy. Thank you for loving her.

Such a sad story, Bermuda. 

[Moondance]

I'm sorry Bermuda - you've experienced such sadness and loss.

Yes, you are part of her story but she is very much part of your story as well imo.

I very much stand beside you in your your nemory of your loss and sadness.

 

[Bermuda]

It was sad. Remembering it made me sob. I don't know where it came from, I think it's just my kids are the age my nieces and nephews were when I cared for them and my second cousin.

Not trying to lessen how horrible my cousin's story is, but I think part of why I managed to recover to the extent that I have from all of this generational trauma, is actually the generational trauma.

I had so many very different characters in my life, and I could clearly see how their trauma shaped them. From a young age I could see my aunt, and her incapacity to say no. I could see my mother, and her incapacity to express kindness or gentleness. I saw how my cousin rebelled. It wasn't because my aunt couldn't tell her no, and couldn't control her, it was that she couldn't control herself. I could see that. Not that I am a super balanced person at all, but I witnessed the more extreme affects, and always told myself I wasn't like them. I was different. I wouldn't be like that when I was a grown-up. I had self-control. So. Much. Self. Control. The double-edged sword.

[Armee]

 

It's also your story because it wove into your life and affected you. I. Sorry. It's heartbreaking. All of it. It encapsulates so much, Bermuda. You are doing a beautiful thing in erasing the cycle for your babies.

[Bermuda]

I feel bad for writing about this because it feels like every time I talk about things lately, I'm just rehashing the same old issues over and over again. I want to write maybe something specific about perfectionism for the book sometime, it's just a thought, but I just have zero time lately. So here I am, I'm going to talk about my weekly problem.

University is so triggering. Thanks for the well-wishes, and it went fine. The difficulty was afterward, and I'm constantly being given triggering tasks. I made a joke out of the last task and my professor actually really liked it, but as usual he made an example of my work and urged everyone to read my work. I realise logically that I do it to myself. I find things difficult, so instead of lying, I make work-arounds. Work-arounds draw attention. I can't explain to my professor that I can't write about cultural stereotypes in my home culture, because I don't have one. That just doesn't sound reasonable. ...I wrote about the behaviour of fish in a certain region instead... I know, that sounds like a huge leap but I made it fit the briefing and clearly I did well.

In the next couple of days I am tasked with something that made my insides curl when he announced it. I have to write about the educational system in my country of origin, and in my experience, and write a comparison piece.

I don't have a country. I don't have an education. I don't know. I don't know how to work around this. After he announced this assignment my whole body felt like it shut down, and I had this song repeating in my head as he closed the lecture for today. I didn't know what the song was, but when I came home I Googled it. It's the song, "Soon You'll Come Home" from All Dogs go to Heaven. I just feel like I'm having difficulty being in myself right now. I spent a lot of time waiting for the dream to end and my real family to come get me and I guess part of me is still frozen in 1990 waiting for someone to love me.

[Papa Coco]

  I just wanted to send you a hug. As you search for a way to break free from 1990, know that there's love for you here on this forum.

[Bermuda]

Trigger warning in the last paragraph. Mortality...

I am feeling so defeated. I am overwhelmed. My brain is hardly functioning. It's so hard sometimes.

I never know what the right thing to do is. I know telling someone they are so sure of themself is an insult, but I don't see it that way. I wish I were sure of myself. I'm just at a point that there is so much on my docket, and because there is so much piling up, I can't do anything. I couldn't even get the words out to order coffee at the university cafe, and then I spilled coffee all over my shirt. I know you're not supposed to cry over spilled milk, but this coffee is tipping me over the edge. My cup runneth over.

I am just staring at my work, and I have no idea. It's not that I don't know where to start. I actually have no idea. It all made sense a couple weeks ago, and now nothing. I have a cough, and it just comes when it wants. In 2023, we no longer cough. It's not allowed. I put on a nice autumnal outfit today and freshly braided my hair, I basically rolled myself in cinnamon and nutmeg and it's not helping. Sometimes I can dress myself into the part and act it, but today I feel like a fraud, covered in coffee.

I have less than three hours until class begins, and my professor will want to talk to me, to address my CPTSD. I am so unprepared for today, both for lectures and also for conversation. I tried. I had a choice to stay home today instead of attempting to study. I have a mountain of things to do at home, but I don't want to give up this time. I don't know how I am going to outswim this tsunami.

I have no idea when it's time to not run, to not give up, to not let the world defeat me, and when it's time for self-care, self-compassion, and self-acceptance. There are some things not even a tapestry blazer and a low-bun can fix. There are no straps on my boots to pull myself up with. If I turn my straight face upside down, it's still a straight face, and believe me I am just hanging in there.

I just remembered I woke up last night after having a dream about two friends who are dead. In my dream I didn't remember they were dead. A friend said they were going on a couple dates and they wanted to tell me who they were going out with, they named someone and I reflected on them fondly. I told her that I knew him and that he was a very good person, and then she told me about the second date she had lined up that week and I smiled, and told her about him, and his character, and that she should feel safe and unaffraid. I felt like they were both there and that I was talking to them. It was only after I woke up that I realised that they were dead. That would make another post.

[NarcKiddo]

Someone else said to me in my journal that I am doing better than I think because I am retaining my sense of humour. If that is indeed a mark of doing better than I think, then you certainly are doing better too. I feel a bit rotten giving a wry smile at some of your comments, because I know you are struggling, but still you have taken the trouble to write an engaging and amusing update rather than only wallowing in despair (or coffee).

I am thinking of you and standing with you.

One thing I would ask you to try to remember is that you do not have to speak to your professor about your CPTSD if you are not up to it. Of course it needs to be addressed at some stage because that was the whole point of you raising it in the first place (and, again, well done for that). But that does not have to be done verbally and can be done at a time when you are feeling stronger. You can ask him to raise his points in writing. He well knows that verbal communication is an issue for you.

 

[Bermuda]

Thanks NarcKiddo. I appreciate the take. I thought of it yesterday during our talk, yet in a negative way (CPTSD  ). It was when someone else spoke badly of themself for having to be the one to give the harsher critique, and I thought that they actually were not harsh at all, I thought my jovial demeanor was much harsher and quite childish, that I should be more professional... But alas I was not wearing this magical blazer and was using the wrong camera, disaster. I didn't say what I was thinking at the time.

 You are right. I don't be straight faced. Me laughing things off shouldn't be unprofessional, and childish shouldn't be an insult. I was never supposed to be neutral. Just like if I felt the need to be abbrasive to be understood, that's also OK. It's okay to express things in our own ways, especially when it doesn't harm anyone. I have to remind myself of that. I'll set a notification on my phone every hour.

We are so critical. I have to laugh at my inner critic for its ridiculousness.

[Armee]

Oh poop. Dusting oneself with cinnamon and nutmeg and wearing tapestry doesn't provide sufficient autumnal insulation against the endearing effects of CPTSD??!! <Armee sighs, changes back into all black>

I love your descriptions too, even as I hate the suffering behind them and wish it weren't so hard.

I could be wrong but I get the sense your professor will be sensitive to how when and if he approaches you about what you wrote to him. I like the reminder from NK...even if he wants to talk you don't have to. Sometimes all I can do at therapy even of all places is just shake my head and barely whisper "I cant"

Often after I've made some difficult disclosure to someone I'm worried about how they will bring it upwhen insee them. I get pretty worked up and panicky and then they don't say anything at all. Nothing. Or maybe just "thanks for letting me know." I bet it won't be that bad. Here's hoping it won't be that bad, and that he has an alternate assignment for you that is not too triggering.

[Bermuda]

I was walking though a shopping centre with a friend when she had a laugh. I asked what she had laughed at and she said there was a buff guy with his protein drink taking the lift up to the gym. She wasn't judgemental, but rather thought it was a great way to be. She admired his decision to take the lift. She is also a member of that gym. Like most people here, she goes to the gym regularly. I don't.

Since this interaction, it's been on my mind. I do things the hard way. I don't go to the gym. I just live life perpetually difficultly. I don't take the proverbial lift. I have had people make comments before, nothing mean, but people notice the strange things I do.

I remember shopping with my son on my back, with grocery bags tied to the front of the carrier straps and large bag of rice over my shoulder. An older woman praised me for doing things the African way. I think I smiled, but didn't reply. In my mind, I thought I was doing things the easier way. You just get on with it. You carry the weight.

Today, after jogging my son to school alongside him riding his bike, I went into a grocery store and saw they had pumpkins in. I have been looking for pumpkins everywhere. I bought six of them, and I got a lot of astonished looks as I carried them two kilometers home. I didn't even feel myself getting friction burns because I was busy getting it done.

I was once given the nickname Mighty Mouse, as I am 150cm of dedication to doing things the hard way, on my own. In all other aspects of life, I don't think I'm a self-motivated determined person. It makes me wonder if my super hero ability to simply do things the hard way without consideration is a trauma adaptation. There are the little things that I can place as trauma, for example I do wear my children. I could afford a nice pram, but I would never buy such a thing. Then I would have to store a thing, push around a thing, and look at a thing. I don't like things. That is trauma. I know where that stems from.

What is more interesting is that I never consider going to pick up my cargo bike and then returning to buy the pumpkins.  I don't think anything odd of hauling a toddler, groceries, and 20kg of rice. I just do it. I don't consider the length of my arms when lifting a box, I will get creative.

I only take note of a choice that I made, when others seem astonished by my choice. I never felt there was a choice. It never occured to me. If this isn't a trauma adaptation, it is still a metaphor for everything CPTSD.

That being said, what I was led to believe was false. Life DOES give you more than you can handle. I once walked nearly five kilometres with a giant watermelon in 40c, because I really wanted it. I really wanted that watermelon, but I needed to breathe, but I needed to make haste because men were honking and shouting at me from their cars. I could have died over a watermelon. The irony of dropping dead from dehydration while running with a giant watermelon is as comical as it is sad.

At what point do you stop pushing yourself? Do you know your own limitations? ...Or are you perpetually running with a watermelon? Are you only made aware of injuries when you glance them in passing reflections?

[Bermuda]

I wanted to write about death. I wanted to write about people who have died. My husband recently lost his grandfather. It was the first person he had known to die. I can't say that. My grandparents died while I was quite young. My father died a couple years ago, but I wasn't there for that.

So, death list. It's going to be morbid, trigger warning for that. Drugs, suicide, murder, rape, all the things.

Death was a thing that I had known about, there were people who were suspect of killing people within my family. Rumours. I can't confirm, and I didn't know those who had died, so I cannot comment on it. There were lingering suspicions.

Between 19 and 25 years old I lost:

Someone I had befriended shot herself in the head alone in a hotel room, she had even told someone she would. They didn't stop her.

Someone I worked with went missing. I had forgotten about this, probably intentionally. A mutual friend asked me about it a couple years ago. I was the last one to see her alive, the last one to talk to her. I remember the police coming in and asking me, someone had been concerned about her disappearance and called. My friend asked me, "She's dead isn't she?" ...We nodded at each other... We talked about warning signs we were too young and naive to understand. Her life was hard, she had to make difficult choices. Someone had killed her, and there was no one to look for her. She was just gone. That's how it would be if I died.

A mutual friend, acquaintance, was raped and murdered, strangled left in a ditch not far from where I was staying. That one really messed me up for a while.

I had a friend who came from a hard family. He was heroin addict, but had been in and out of rehab. He had just gotten out of a very long in patient treatment program, and he reached out to me, we chatted for hours. I was so proud of him. I was probably the only person he knew who didn't use hard drugs. I just tried to be positive, because his family had disowned him, he had robbed them at one point... His story could be a book itself, it's tragic.... After seeing him that week he had asked me if we could hang out on the weekend, and I was enthusiastic. I told him of course, it would be great. When he called me that weekend, I didn't answer my phone. He took heroin, one last time, and he overdosed and died. I went to his funeral, and it was filled with people who didn't love and support him. And it was so hard. I feel so much guilt because if I had answered the phone, he would be alive.

I had a friend, who maybe I loved, I don't know. We had a lot in common. We were drawn together because we seemed to be both just in a bad place that we didn't belong in. We both were aliens, and in hindsight, probably quite depressed and trapped, and probably both had CPTSD. He was in the middle of a bad break up, with a very nasty narc, and they had raised a daughter together. They had gotten together while she was pregnant, and the little girl was now maybe 13 years old. He felt like he was losing all rights to his daughter, that he had raised, that he loved. I came over after their place was emptied, he told me his life story, he had never told me before. He told me about being a child soldier in El Salvador and eventually escaping illegally. We slept together, just that once. Then I left, the country. I never called him again. I was afraid is his ex. Very shortly after I left, he shot himself in the head. I could have helped him escape. I knew how.

My boss's son that I had looked after died in a car accident. The driver had been drinking.

Shortly thereafter his father, my boss, died of cancer.

...

That's all I can remember in this moment. There were also other horrible things that happened to other people, which affected me deeply that thankfully did not result in death...

I don't know why I felt so compelled to write a list. I guess it's because maybe I feel my life story is also about the bad things that happened around me, not just the things that happened directly to me. I had to be cautious. I didn't want to die. It was like everyone was trying to kill me. I always hid.

[NarcKiddo]

Oh, Bermuda, that is so very sad. All these stories, all these deaths. And you carrying guilt that is not yours to carry. I understand why you might think it is yours to carry, but I don't agree.

I am happy that you survived. That you had the strength, and the wit, and the courage. And maybe your pumpkin and watermelon carrying habit is testament to that. You have not let supposed limitations beat you. You get things done. For sure you may benefit from considering whether all things need to be done and whether there might be easier ways. CPTSD must play into some of your decisions. We all understand that burden.

Most of all, I am happy that you are here today and that I know you.

 

[Armee]

 

I'm glad you put that list down here to get it out. Those are very very difficult things. The bad things that happen around us do affect us. That's why first responders also get PTSD. And experiencing all those horrific deaths would affect just about anyone but add that to a lifetime of trauma that threatened your life and yes. It makes 100% sense you would come away feeling like everyone would try to kill you. And hiding and running away makes sense.

I'm so sorry you have gone through all this Bermuda. You are one strong person to make it through.

And I agree with NK...it makes sense that you carry guilt but it isn't yours to carry.

And speaking of carrying I do things the difficult way too. I once...well no twice...moved my piano across my entire house alone rather than ask my husband for help.

Hugs to you my dear   

[Bermuda]

Thanks, both of you.

Sometimes I ponder on the ways I survived. Not just my strong instincts, but also luck, and maybe my sensitive stomach helped too, maybe my strong reaction to drugs made them unappealing, and my paradoxical reaction to sedatives. So many times I was drugged... muscle relaxers... I can't relax.

CPTSD really did save me, didn't it? I escaped. No one else did. I cry about it sometimes, a lot today. I met so many people, and despite the stereotype I rarely encountered someone there by choice. It was so hard to see my life as traumatic, or my story as abuse because everyone around me had had it so much worse. I wasn't sold into it. I wasn't drugged and owned. I wasn't a child soldier fleeing capture. The friend who overdosed was given heroin for the first time at 12, deceived. That didn't happen to me. My feelings felt disproportionate. I always thought I was really lucky, but now I am beginning to see just how extremely unlucky I was. Over and over again.

I can really imagine you moving a piano. The piano had to move, and you were right there. Sensible to me. The question of learning our limits is perhaps best left unanswered, as answering it would mean hardship. It seems to be an intrinsic characteristic of beings. A bird leaps from a tree knowing they will fly, eventually, but they don't all dive into the water knowing they can swim. Sometimes I feel like I am missing that distinction. I don't know when I am safe and what my capacities are.