Papa Coco's Recovery Journal

[Chart]

 

[sanmagic7]

yes we are, PC, and i'm together with you.  everyone here gives me the strength i need to keep going.  it is a real connection that i've hung onto for over a decade.  so glad i found this place, these people.

i've chosen to hand forgiveness over to some higher power who will take care of it for me.  it does similar for me as you spoke about - lets the poison out.  i've only hated one person, actually felt the hatred, and it was horrid but it also felt natural at the time, organic in a sense that i didn't set out to feel that way, it just came over me.  it's finally left me somehow, but i know it was there for a time and i hope i don't have to feel it again.

i'm glad your day has started out well, you're feeling pretty good.  i hope you have more days like this.  love and hugs

[SenseOrgan]

I'm feeling kind of glad this mess happened to me. FOr me

Yep.    I'm delighting in your post-traumatic joy Papa Coco. This life is horrifically beautiful. 

[Armee]

 

[HannahOne]

PapaCoco so happy for you to hear how you are connecting with other people, even amidst your credit card being skimmed. That connection is the most important thing and you're able to experience it and create it!

[NarcKiddo]

Credit card fraud SUCKS! I'm so sorry you are having to deal with it. 

[TheBigBlue]

 

[Papa Coco]

The support on this forum is, without question, the core of my healing right now. Nobody here shames anybody for struggling to live with what the world calls "normal" behaviors. Nobody ever asks, "Why do you let that bother you so much?" This is a place of healing and safety and that's what's so helpful for me.


That being said, some things have changed since my last post.


The credit card fiasco was a tiny pebble that struck a huge, buried hornets' nest and I'm now being swarmed with 6 decades of angry bees that are making me feel attacked, unsafe and ashamed and alone.

Yesterday was a day of wandering around the house lost. I couldn't find peace. I felt fear all through my body. I was weepy and right on the verge of complete meltdown.  The entire world feels dangerous. I can't protect myself or my family. After a lifetime of feeling chronic anxiety and fear, a hit like this heaps MORE fear on top of already existing fear and has pushed me into a state of debilitating overwhelm. Trauma: The gift that keeps on giving for a lifetime. Phooey!

I keep trying to remind myself of what my therapist would say. He'd say "This feels like a very young part of yourself. Hold your hand over your heart and welcome that young part to you and give him the love and compassion he has been wanting." It helps a bit, but I have a long way to go before it helps completely. Logically, I know that it's my dysregulation of my nervous system, and not that the world is too dangerous to live in. But trauma says, "Nope! The world has never been safe and it's not safe for you, so you NEED to find a safe place to hide!" I did some research on not feeling safe, and read about how since this is the second time this card was stolen in 3 months, my brain is now even more sure I'm never going to be safe. So, I spent the day walking around the house like a zombie trying to figure out how to hide from the world for good. It's important to note that I was raised by people who valued their money more than they valued me, so when my money is stolen, that just brings up all sorts of personal value problems. I was stolen from as a kid too. My family would search my room and throw away my little treasures while I was at school, and Catholic classmates would steal possessions from my desk at school when I was at home. My own elder sister and brother stole my inheritance when Dad died in 2011. I've never felt safe from thieves...MY OWN FAMILY AND THE CHURCH! I've never felt that I am strong enough, or man enough to protect my boundaries, even from my protectors. Money means much less to me than it should. It's not the money; it's the inability to protect myself that rattles my cage. It's knowing that my own family would trample my rights and boundaries anytime they want to. I don't care about the money being stolen, I care that I can't protect myself and my family from thieves AND siblings!

My lack of feeling safe for 6 decades has hit me hard these past 48 hours. Last night I got only a few hours of restless sleep, tormented by nightmares. While trying to fall asleep last night I kept seeing lights flashing through my closed eyelids, as if someone was turning lights on and off in my bedroom, but they weren't. It's more like the wires in my brain are frayed and sparking like a broken electric cord. I woke up at 3 AM from a long, chaotic, frustrating dream that my wife, (Coco) and I were in our home, but all the furniture was gone, and the house was crumbling around us. We were trying to repair walls, windows, doors, but all we had was garbage wood scraps and no tools to work with. An Amazon Prime driver came to the door with a delivery of some little filing cabinet I'd ordered but he never left the porch. Finally we opened the door to find out why he was still here. He said he had been instructed to assemble it for us on the porch before he could leave. We thought he was being nice, but he was angry, "Amazon made me buy this for you and sell it to you for no profit to me" he said. I replied, "That's not right! Stay here!" I went back into the house to find some money to give him as a tip and to thank him for doing it for us. It took me forever. I couldn't find anything. My anxiety was rising and I was getting clumsier and more upset by the minute. I kept dropping everything I picked up. I found a $50 bill but before I could get it to him it tore and crumbled into confetti. I could feel his impatience and hoped he hadn't given up and left. I FINALLY found my wallet and pulled out three $20 bills. When I finally got it to him he was irritated at how long it took me to find the money (that I didn't owe him but I gave it to him anyway). He just yanked it from my hand and stormed off. Even when I gave him a huge tip I was still the bad guy. That was the moment I woke up, my heart pounding. I immediately felt like I am completely unable to support my family and I'm the screwup my parents and school always told me I was. 

It's like a prophecy that they created and I lived. Children can grow up to be what they are told they are going to be. And I was told I'm always going to be a screwup and other people are always going to have to carry my burden because I'm always going to screw it up.  And every time one of my bill collectors contacts me now telling me they'll cancel my services if I don't fix the credit card, I feel that old, ancient prophecy, created by my FOO and church coming to life just as they'd predicted.

So, this is what I mean, the card issue is easily being handled. Nobody's going to throw me in prison for being a week late on bills, but every time someone texts me with a warning, my entire life of shame and incompetence floods all over me.

I've been accused, my whole life, of being a problem for my family to deal with. I was a burden. I was incompetent. I was weak and annoying. Every time they made a mistake it was my fault. My dad's money was more important to him than I was, and he made sure I knew that all the time. Mom did too. My siblings were allowed to want things, get things, even have romances with other people and get married and have children, but somehow, I wasn't allowed to do any of that. In high school I had to date girls in secret so my parents wouldn't freak out. At age 22, when I met Coco, I kept her a secret. One day I told them I was going to get married and they freaked out. (of course they didn't know I was dating anyone, but whose fault was that? What few girls they knew about when I was younger and dating, they pulled all kinds of tricks to break us up. They stole my possessions, my inheritance, and always, ALWAYS destroyed my friendships and love interests. They made it too dangerous for me to even share my wants and desires with them. My family only knew I was dating for one week. When I could sense my mother and my older sister starting to tell me lies about this girl they didn't know, I knew I had to act quick or they'd take her too. To make the long story short, Coco and I dated for 4 weeks, and eloped 28 days after our first date because we knew my family was planning to break us up, so we had to act quick. (That was almost 43 years ago now and we're still married). 

To be honest, the past two or three days, ever since I wrote my last post and all those nice things about how I was handling the theft, have taken a dark turn toward crazy-ville. No matter how good I feel on any given day, I'm wise enough now to always remind myself that today is today. Tomorrow is a mystery. I may feel all better today, but this roller coaster is relentless. RELENTLESS! My EFs are fewer and farther between, but this one came on like a tsunami that nobody saw coming. The only reason I'm not drowning in it, is I've made connections now with others who know that what I'm feeling is real. The trauma. I'm not alone in trauma anymore. I now know that as ugly as it is, it's how I was wired by people who had no idea how to raise a child properly.

A book I'm reading now says that we need to forgive ourselves for the wiring. We aren't as responsible for ourselves as we try to believe we are. At least, I'm not. It described me perfectly when it said I'm like a leaf that's blowing in the wind but thinks I'm dancing of my own free will. That's been a comfort. I absolutely believe in personal responsibility, but I have to stop taking it so far as to think I can muscle through all the terrible things my family and church did to train me for most of my life. I'm behaving as I was trained to behave. I'm taking responsibility for myself by seeking help, admitting my feelings and fears, connecting with the right people, reading the right books...I don't need to behave like nobody's ever hurt me before. I can be responsible without believing I need to be undamaged. I like that old saying that our scars are where the light enters us.

Today, I'm about 8% better than yesterday. I'll take it. I've been learning how to work with my body, giving it some sense of agency so that even in the fear and emotional duress, my body feels comforted by some light breathing exercises, and permission to be unproductive for a few days. The only time I ever feel like I have the right to not be productive is when I have the flu. I need to know that this is worse than the flu and I'm NOT required to do my chores or save the world today. Today is going to be another day of wandering around like a zombie looking for someplace safe to hide, but I'm going to give myself permission to be okay with it. Coco is encouraging it. She knows what I'm going through and she's telling me to just relax and be lazy today.

Okay: My keyboard is smoking. (ha ha) I need to give my computer a rest. Maybe I'll draw a bath and hide in the dark for an hour.

Thanks, from the bottom of my heart for letting me be a part of this community.