GIFTS

Photo by Patricia

As the chapters come up one by one, as a gift to the one woman who might think she is all alone, (you’re not), the memories cloy wanting to escape them, have them not be mine.

Is this good for me? Yet the idea came from my core, my soul, not my head, give the gift of publishing the book chapter by chapter. It wasn’t about money anyway. So own these memories, they are parts of me.

It is a chance to own it all, bring in, not run, and love myself for coping, living, and being here right now. A chance to feel proud, to lovingly cuddle and comfort all parts, even those once ashamed of, because they never were shameful at all, just groomed to think and believe that. A chance for my critic to become my most loyal supporter, a ding when she comes signaling the forces to defend me.

NIGHTMARES

PHOTO BY PATRICIA

Body and mind split, the tatters impossible to replace. Though my body improves daily, the C-PTSD symptoms keeping me from sleep at night haven’t calmed down and I’m wide awake well past midnight.

After not using medication for sleep three nights in row, if sleep were to come last night it had to be with help, so finally it was taken allowing for some relief by 2AM.

My life is so out of order and it appears to stay that way, the damage in childhood complete. When having to hold so much horror in to appease the family, the internal chaos did damage to many of my body systems permanently.

My coping was more greatly challenged by illness, especially this one because after a day or two one expects to get better. Not so with Covid, day after day moving into a month before improvement slowly comes.

It will take some time for my body to adjust back to the already existing challenges, hard enough. For the first time a nightmare came, a brother jumping out from my blanket attacking me. Never had a nightmare about any of them happened before. (4 out of 7 attacked me sexually all before the age of 11)

So much damage done in childhood. It is hard to accept and not run from it, but most separation is unconscious because my body learned a long time ago how to split from my mind. It reacts daily as if threatened even 60 years later.

With illness the threat really exists. Yet my mind goes on like my mother taught me… as if nothing ever happened- until nightfall when even little concerns loom like monsters devouring me. I can feel the split occur and know that sleep will not come without assistance.

They come in the dark of night, worries, threats, nightmares… brothers. As respect and love grow within, so too the memories of just how horrifying my early life was. Their crimes caused life-long damage which worsens with age. Yet my will to live a joyful life continues. I will, I will, I will.

BE YOUR OWN CHEERLEADER

Cheer for myself. Trained in opposition of that early on due to Mom’s desire to keep the dirty secret of her daughter’s sexual abuse  committed by her sons quiet, caused me to believe I wasn’t fit to be born.

With belief in the contrary, that I too belong here, am a good person, and have special, unique qualities, a life worth living is possible.

It isn’t easy. It has taken a life to turn around the damage done by childhood sexual abuse. But when I lay dying, I don’t want to think of my life wasted from hating myself. I want to love myself now, and as I pass from this world.

Loving oneself, cheering my achievements rather than criticizing them, giving myself warmth, encouragement, and acceptance… that is where wholesomeness, peace, and the beauty of life resides.

WINTER’S DREGS

PHOTO BY PATRICIA: first bud on the honeysuckle…

Maybe there will always be sadness within, sadness for what was lost, what was taken, what will never be, and sadness that my voice still now stays mute when it should scream.

So, in going there internally, that is what is felt on this frigid yet sunny spring day. And that is much of life, the sadness with the joy.

It’s when numbing out one the other goes too. In solitude by the creek, tears as the two love bird geese paddle by, then robins perch above ready to mate.

Tears of pain, sadness, yet joy too. But one cannot be had without the other. The numbing of winter’s dregs are beginning to thaw, and with it a new start, another day, an improved me.

HUNGER

Is it food

or love?

Is it food

or escaping anxiety?

Is it food

or a need to numb?

BEING WITH ME

Shifting internal dialogue has taken decades, many, many years of therapy, but of late the resolution to a life of forever feeling bad has taken a turn towards lightness by being with myself in nature- the woods, the land, and me.

And it’s fleeting, as tomorrow my writing may be pain filled and down. But there are moments that have stretched into days where my internal world is gentle, loving, encouraging, and accepting of ME.

And it is more than a kinder voice, it is feeling wholly accepting of myself, more than OK, but that I too am a good person.

Raymond asks one day, “Good? That you are a good person?”, a psychiatrist who knew what he was doing, though pushing me into a career because I had the intelligence to do it might have been more about his being successful than me.

Though glad to have succeeded at such a feat because it paid for both sons education at a prestigious college and set them both on a burgeoning career in the technology field where they still work, the years it took me to accomplish it stressed my already overloaded nervous system.

Daily cortisol bursts from each challenge and the ever present fear of people caused my body to develop a syndrome of fatigue that cannot be repaired. It was worth it to see them thrive now, even if I don’t, not in that way, but in my own quiet way; learning to be with me and be OK, a place always run from before that I now inhabit fully.

Fractured, now whole, perhaps a bit bumpy, but whole.

It has always been about goodness, that I wasn’t, I was bad, abnormal, bad, bad, bad. The revelation that I am of good heart, as human as any with mistakes, flaws, and quirks? That it is more than just words? All new.

Every minute alive is one minute gone. Getting older one begins to realize that, that this moment is precious and living it feeling bad because I’ve been habituated to feel that way doesn’t have to be. I am learning otherwise, I am learning the truth.

The rabbits, soggy ground, icy earth, birds, and running water of the creek have taught me that. That being with me is the best place to be.  

Love of Life

Photo by Cory (my younger son)

Each day there is a job to do, work on self-esteem. Though possible to improve on that front, the core of my being already formed is staying that way.

You cannot cut into the layers of a tree and remove its inner ring without killing the tree.

I am who I am, who was formed during childhood, with beliefs about myself that became embedded into my personality.

So, each day takes focus, work, and effort to counteract the life-threatening critical voice which thrives so dramatically inside me. To tell it, I do deserve life, equality, pleasure, and happiness, even amid all the other struggles and pain that life brings to each of us.  

EVERY PRECIOUS MOMENT

A walk in the meadow-1/19/2011

The things once done, are no more, deal with that. My body won’t tolerate it. Yet in its place there is so much wisdom, peace, safety, and calm.

Every precious moment matters, the feel of my hand with the long slender bones beneath, the stretch of toes waking up tendons and muscles all the way up my calves, the scent of balsam filling the house using candle warmers in every room, and taking time to be with the cat as she turns herself into a contented warm pretzel by the fire.

No, after a life of draining cortisol rushing through my bloodstream daily, often several times daily, my body is depleted and can take no more. Yet my tendency is to push, push, push, fearing that even my best friend Samuel will see me sludging on the couch as if a lazy good for nothing human, but really it is the ever-present critic within that bites and sucks the life out of me.

Rest, rest, and more rest. It takes a great deal of time to connect to my body and care for it; eyes that dry easily especially after the cataract surgeries needing the humidifier filled daily. And drops in them a few times each day especially when the heat is running. Exercises on the chair with the rope and pulley to unlock a shoulder that once was badly impinged. Taking medicines, supplements, and vitamins morning and night, and oh so much to keep an aging body going.

All good things as once our lives didn’t last this long. But for one who left their little body at the age of eight, staying in it long enough to feel what it needs takes focus, calm, and a great gentleness for self.

That does not sound so hard, but a devasting critic took over at a young age when brothers sexually abused my little body and no one came to help, but much worse it could not be talked about and the blame, shame, and crimes were taken in as mine. Growing to love myself does not come easily.

It is a life-time work. Can I go with Shane and his family tomorrow night at the little Christmas festival around the block at the park where trees are decorated from area businesses outdoors to vote on, and Santa comes with candy canes, hot cocoa, and cookies?

Well, yes, if I don’t care about my sleep habits, so no, because it takes all evening to keep my whirlwind psyche calm. To get excited, even happily, means looking at 2AM in the morning wondering if sleep will ever come.

It is difficult accepting my limitation especially when comparing them to others. How do you explain to anyone who hasn’t gone through it or lives it how even happy gatherings cause angst, tiredness, and PTSD rockets to go off? When it occurs, and it does with even tiny things, a great need for rest and quiet comes with it, and sometimes recovery takes days. Solitude is my refuge. When once being alone felt like a knife was cutting from the inside out, it now offers a healing balm.

When able to care for myself as deserved and needed, and feeling strong enough to challenge that critic which will not happen when overwhelmed or tired, so many gifts slowly return- gratefulness, love, warmth, appreciation, well-being, and cherishing every little moment. Quiet and rest is the magic that brings me back to life…

1/11/2009 by Patricia

HEALING

Minute by minute, moment by moment, time passes. But each one is precious, sensing the depth in every one, or drowning it out with worry? Much time is wasted on the later, then remembering.

There isn’t much time left. Finally, after decades of chaos and self-hating, there is a shift of major occurrence. Instead of the critic flying free treating myself like some kind of fluke needing beatings, bad treatment, chastising, or bullying, there is an opening to how it feels when coming out of childhood with self-love.

Becoming gentle, kind, and patient to myself takes focus after a life doing the opposite, living off the voices in my head from the traumas in childhood being discounted, denied, and ignored completely. A child takes that and blames herself making life unlivable.

Go slow, take care of the hurts, whether physical or of the soul, and spend the time needed to do so. It is OK to love life, and myself.

PERSEVERE

The birds take longer to wake as the sun takes longer to rise. Already fall approaches with the shorter days darkening my interior. Yet there is hope, that the new being born out of old skin is a happier one, translating to more peaceful and self-loving.

After so many months, even years of late, working daily at self-esteem, questioning that awful critic arising from the gag order ‘family’ imposed; imposed to keep their secrets of what their own had done.

What does that do to a child traumatized? She takes it into herself as her doing, her BADNESS, her being not having the rights to even be born.

The traumas, then more heaped upon already broken shoulders. Yet these years have become the very best. Respecting my limits, my brokenness, my tragedies with grace- as the continual walking in nature brings a curative effect.

Not giving up, but pushing forward, yet also leaning to do so more slowly, carefully, with patience that is not yet forthcoming with ease, but coming. The well springs open with love, peace, and wonder at every moment of life and well-being.