Accepting Myself

[sanmagic7]

sorry you're sick, blueberry.  sending you love and a hug filled with get well soon energy, some comfy cozy item to squish into and your drink of choice.  maybe ice cream if it's your tonsils - i remember getting mine out when i was young and the big treat was ice cream later that day!  hope you feel better real soon.   

[Blueberry]

Thank you san.
Really I should be in bed but when I fall asleep I have recurring dreams of being in some inpatient place I'm trying to get out of but can't. I'm trying to get out of there because the therapy is useless.

Or I have dreams about FOO. And/or I'm realising how much I'm allowing myself to be mucked around by them. I'm working on potentially non-sender emails atm. I think I'm sick atm due to pent-up rage. It does feel good to write what I write including words that would be covered in an asterix here

[sanmagic7]

it certainly sucks to not be able to close your eyes w/o dreadful scenes, memories, thoughts, etc. bombarding your brain.  just this morning i had to get out of bed too early because of that exact same thing.  standing beside you, wishing all this would go away and leave you alone.  love and hugs, blueberry.

[Blueberry]

It's Corona. With symptoms needless to say. But not really bad, like needing to be hospitalised symptoms. Just really bad flu.

At least it's finally cooled down outside. It even poured with rain briefly yesterday evening. I might be coming back here off and on to dispel the loneliness. A friend brought me some groceries today, depositing them where I can collect them. I have to leave my apartment to do so but the doc told me yesterday that that's OK so long as I wear my mask which I do. But I also think to myself: nobody else in the building seems to care about Corona regulations so why should I go out of my way when I'm sick?? 'Going out of my way' would mean not leaving my apartment - to get into my office, my letter boxes, the garden, or the front hall to collect groceries including food for the furries.

[sanmagic7]

what a gritch of an illness to have, blueberry, and i hope you have a speedy recovery.  sending virtual hugs and chat time to you.

[CactusFlower]

Hugs, Blueberry. Hope your symptoms are minimal and it passes as quickly as possible for you.

[Not Alone]

Blueberry, I'm sorry that you aren't feeling well. 

[Blueberry]

Thank you Not Alone! I like seeing your name because it reminds me that I also am NOT alone.
____

So when I'm at a low ebb physically, I often feel at a low ebb emotionally. Though today I did remember some exercises in grounding from inpatient time - like go into garden and whatever I concentrate on there - the scent of my roses or what's growing or even cutting some hazelnut twigs for the Little Furries to chew on - that's all me concentrating on good stuff from now rather than floating around in the past somewhere, as it becomes ever clearer how much abuse I'm taking on for the sake of financial help from FOO That's me shaking my head at FOO rather than at myself. Please nobody suggest that leaving mode of the victim will help, I don't feel in any state to do that, especially what that would entail. Probably the time will come but just not yet. But it won't involve 'getting a job', 'earning my own keep' because that's just not possible. I'm constantly hanging on by just a thread as is, managing to teach, but not the admin side of things, and then getting sick etc. Inner Critic is having a field day.

[Armee]

 

I wish you could get the help you need from your FOO without enduring more trauma and abuse.

I also wish I could nosh on some hazelnut twigs! That sounds yummy! Lucky furbabies.

[CactusFlower]

Hugs, Blueberry. Glad to see you still have nature to soothe you. *shakes finger at Inner Critic* Hey, leave Blueberry alone. They're really cool and deserves better.     

[Blueberry]

I wish you could get the help you need from your FOO without enduring more trauma and abuse.

Thank you, that is a very good wish. Not really going to come about though. I'm really glad you wrote it! That's what a normally functioning family might do, right? Instead of piling on money where it's not actually needed, and leaving me dangling with vagueness at best.

Today I spoke to my host mother of decades to thank her that she's continuing to support me financially despite having adult children and grandchildren of her own. I wanted to let her know how much I appreciate that she's straight with me about it all and that she gives me what she does without any kind of nonsense like "we don't know exactly..." and "what would happen if...". If some really bad thing happened, my host mother would have to reconsider, reduce the amount, cancel the amount, whatever. That's obvious. But my own parents are not capable of being straight! I got emotional speaking to my host mother, which isn't something I'd normally do. But at least now she knows how much it means to me - not just the money - but that I don't have to beg and jump through hoops to get at it, like some tormented small animal.

[Blueberry]

Hugs, Blueberry. Glad to see you still have nature to soothe you. *shakes finger at Inner Critic* Hey, leave Blueberry alone. They're really cool and deserves better.     

Thank you. Your finger-shaking at Inner Critic seems to have worked. Pain and realisations came up and InnerCritic wasn't needed to keep them down anymore, if that is one of I.Cr.'s roles.

I went and sat in the garden/yard for a while today too. Enjoy the peace and quiet of a Sunday.

Just sitting there and a memory came up again. Not a resurfacing but just me making a connection: B1 and me home from school, I got myself a piece of bread for lunch. It was the crust. B1 reaching towards me: "If that's the last piece of bread, you have to give me half!". Me: "There is a whole other loaf in the cupboard." This information on the whole other loaf was just ignored. B1 appealed to M who was standing there. Yes, she agreed, if that's the last piece, you have to give him half. They just refused to listen to the information that there was another loaf in the cupboard! I had the last piece of the old loaf for crying out loud. They both reached to take it off me by force and I threw it to our dog instead. Strangely, they didn't care that the dog ate it.
:Lightbulb: Blueberry from that situation is certainly at least one of those who gets so badly triggered when people in this building want to take my things and/or who disregard my possessions and the limits I set. This will be behind the constant recurring nightmares of people coming and covering my garden space in concrete or planting their own stuff in my part instead of putting the work in to make their own beds, or mow their own lawn etc etc

And now I've been trying so hard NOT to lose the hard work I put in. I'm not throwing my stuff to somebody else to use and just leaving the scene (as I did back then, giving my lunch to the dog and leaving the kitchen, presumably going to do my homework with no lunch), I'm standing my ground and arguing back, but it still doesn't get heard. And worse, I get 'punished' it for it.

I know that for some people this incident from my past won't sound 'that bad' but it was. It's this complete ignoring of me. Of not hearing what I was saying. Of not caring. After the dog yaffled up the remains of my piece of bread, M and B1 would have seen that there was indeed a whole other loaf of bread in the cupboard. Nobody thought to say "Oh sorry, we acted rather rashly there. You were right, there was a whole other loaf in the cupboard." No. That never happened. Because they simply didn't care. It didn't even seem to be about the bread at all. It probably wasn't.

Just like now. It's not really about the money, it's about them being words I can't write here because they would get asterixed. I suppose I could say 'manipulators' but I don't think that even covers it. They are manipulating, but it's worse. Like, how and why would you do that to your own child - whether in real childhood - or later when they're in dire straights as an adult?? You could help them but instead you prefer to let them plead for it, while you generously throw money at the siblings who don't even need it and talk about saving it for sibs' kids for when they need to go to university as if they a) won't get money from their own parents, b) money from their other grandparents (or their inheritance), c) as if they won't be capable of getting student jobs to help pay their way and d) as if they probably also won't go on to good jobs themselves or e) get leg-ups from their parents' friends. Whereas it's pretty clear that I just can't work. I'd love to be able to go further with some of my talent but there's so much trauma in the way. There always has been. And I'm simply not those of you on here who manage to compartmentalise it somehow and work 

I suppose this is maybe some heavy grief work going on?   

Note: Some readers might think I'm just jealous but I happen to know how much opulence there is in my sibs' lives and in their in-laws lives and how much gets showered on my sibs and on their children. They are not struggling. At all.

[Blueberry]

Some really heavy grief work going on. I'm actually writing to B1 with-sort-of-the-intention of sending it though I won't do so without at least sleeping on it and man am I crying. Which is good. I'm crying almost as badly as the last two times I was retraumatised in FOO, except I'm not going under this time. What I'm writing is specific in a way that I wouldn't do on here, or at least it's a different kind of specific than on here. It's not so much an accusation as rather- this is what life looks like for me, can you go back to the stage when you cared please

It's sort of laying myself on the line, but also with a feeling of: what's there to lose? There are various possible reactions along the denial / dismissal road but I've survived that re-trauma already. 

What's to gain? It's possible that B1 might tell my parents to get their &%§ act together and stop stalling on the money and stop making excuses like needing it for his kids and just generally messing me around. It would be oh so nice if my parents would take that from me directly, w/o any swears of course, but they won't, that's part of my scapegoat role. But they might take it from him with or w/o swears. He doesn't have to be particularly polite, unlike me. In fact, the more off the rails he goes, the better. The more they listen to him. That was always the way in our childhood.

[sanmagic7]

 

[CactusFlower]

Hugs, Blueberry.  Wishing you the energy to move through this.