Desert Flower's Recovery Journal

[TheBigBlue]

(For those who this is ok)

[Desert Flower]

 
Thank you all, dear friends. Your words mean so much to me.

[sanmagic7]

 

[Desert Flower]

Janina Fischer wrote: "It cannot feel over if you are still taking care of those who harmed you [...]." (Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma, page 102, bottom) and that is what I had been trying nonetheless.

This has been the first Christmas without my mother (who died a little over half a year ago). I did not and do not miss her (I keep repeating this). It was the calmest Christmas ever in my mind. I did not know it could be so calm. Like clear water without even a ripple. No worries whatsoever about what she might think of me. None. I am clear. It is so radically different from a year ago, when I knew what was going on but still felt obliged to take care of her and I felt soooo stressed. And so different from all the years before, when I had no idea what was going on at all and of why I was feeling so bad all the time.

I am looking back on 50 years of being stressed out over everything, being the stress while now, sometimes, I feel what I call 'the baseline'. It is the way I feel when I am not stressed at all. It has been rare but it is here sometimes. And I felt it a few times these past couple of days. It is awe-some and wonder-ful to me. Utter calm. So strange to me.

Today, walking through town, I was observing the world. Being a spectator to the world, while being conscious of myself too. It feels so different. I seem to be here.

I have been dreaming:

(I have recurring dreams of pets needing my care and me being unable to adequately take care of them because they keep multiplying, running rampant etc.) I dreamt that one of the guinea pigs kept escaping, running away, and me being the only one able to catch it, me catching it repeatedly and the guinea pig becoming more and more bruised and battered every time I retrieved it.
This one, to me, means I'm trying to take care of myself, falling and falling again, making the same mistakes over and over. But I am the only one who can really take care of me.
I want to start learning from my 'mistakes' (that is, I want to 'catch' myself before I derail again, taking better self care, setting clearer bounderies to stay within my window of tolerance).

And another dream was made up of healing, nothing else but healing, being allowed to heal, taking the time to heal, in a somewhat hospitalised and safe environment. It is time to heal me.

(I think there was another dream that meant something, but I forgot. I may add it later.)


(I've been thinking about this 'No Contact' with FOO concept. I had not heard of it before I came here. But I had been NC with most of my family (except for my mother, different - more difficult - story) in practice for a long time already. It hadn't been a conscious choice but I really had never felt any need to see them, we had never been close or fit in anyway. And half a year ago at my mother's funeral, I saw the whole family again after many many years and it was so strange, we were all behaving so 'nicely', I was fawning of course, and now I don't think I'll ever see any of them again. We can now quietly let each other go our seperate ways again.)

[Desert Flower]

About this 'not missing M'- business. 'Missing' to me, entails an emotional response. Involving pain, sadness, etc. And I'm not feeling those. Not relating to my mother's passing that is. (I am feeling those regarding my life so far and everything I missed so much along the way.)

But other than the missing-response, there are patterns that my brain is still repeating that I notice. Like when the kids do something fun, smart, sweet etc. and I take a picture of it, my brain tells me: "Send it to M", and I noticed a tiny whisper adding: "Maybe she will like us then". No chance of that ever again. Never happened in the past either, so it's a mystery why I was still hoping for this. But I am sad to know 100 % certain now that she will never tell me I am okay. Tell me she likes me. She never did.

And this morning, I woke up within the angry part of me. And the angry part turned out to be sad deep within. About not being seen, it had been trying so hard to be nice, be kind, be acknowledged. And that part feels cheated. Treated very unfairly (is that English?).

And it took me a while to feel better today. It turns out I started feeling better when I thought of all the chores I had been doing yesterday evening. Made me feel like a good person. Although I 'should' be able to feel good about myself without having done any chores at all. Just good the way I am. I know I am though. I did find that feeling again somewhere today.

It's strange having all this awareness. I'm once again thinking back about soooo many times I felt like s*** without having a clue why. I've come a very long way already. This is an awareness I think not many 'normal' (or traumatised for that matter) people have.

And I think 'crazy' is not an yes/no concept. It has many many gradients. And what is called 'crazy' in this world, may be a whole other sort of sanity after all.

[Desert Flower]

I was cleaning up my photo files just now and I came across a picture of me and my M; me holding my arm around her shoulder and smiling, she smiling and looking insecure. And I remember how I felt back then. It felt like I was performing. Like I was looking at myself making this arm gesture and having the picture taken. Looking at a daughter putting an arm around her mother. Performing to be a good daughter. It did not feel like it was really 'me' (as in Richard Schwarz's 'Self') making the gesture, not like 'I' was really there. Dissociating is what I was doing. Very strange to realise now. I didn't realise at the time. Looks like 'me' in the picture.

So much is going on in my mind. It's unbelievable.

[Blueberry]

Hi DF, I've been reading your recent posts. They are giving me food for thought e.g. on missing / not missing FOO members. It sounds like you're processing lots.