Living As All of Me

[NarcKiddo]

I'm so happy you had such a wonderful and uplifting time at camp, and that you found so many kindred spirits to enjoy it with.

 

[Hope67]

Hi HannahOne,
Wow, that's great that you enjoyed your trip to that Camp.   

[sanmagic7]

all of the above, hannah1.  yay!  love and hugs

[HannahOne]

Yeah!

I was so depressed for a few years. Understandably. Went through *. Reactivated all my trauma. Couldn't move.

Coming out of it I need energy. Energy infusions. Where's that going to come from? The sun. Moving. Music. Animals. People. Parties. LIFE.

The more I MOVE the more options for movement I have, the deeper I can go, the lower LOL, the higher I can jump, the more I can reach, the sillier the better, sassy, shy, sexy, serious, sashay, shimmy, street, the more ways I have to express All of Me and to be here now, the more I'm alive the happier I am that I survived...

Dancing my way through the day......

It's not having what you want
It's wanting what you got

Maybe something's wrong with you
That makes you act the way you do

but I'm gonna soak up the sun
I've got no one to blame
Every time I feel lame, I'm looking up

I'm gonna soak up the sun
I'm gonna tell everyone to lighten up

I'm still the king of me
I'm lookin up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji0NHUaoefU

[zen_racer]

I'm smiling about that song now. 

I relate a little too much to being depressed.  I think I got out of it before with massive amounts of dissociation.

I'm glad that it sounds like you're still in a better place since camp.  I'm also happy you survived.

 

[sanmagic7]

The more I MOVE the more options for movement I have, the deeper I can go, the lower LOL, the higher I can jump, the more I can reach, the sillier the better, sassy, shy, sexy, serious, sashay, shimmy, street, the more ways I have to express All of Me and to be here now, the more I'm alive the happier I am that I survived...

love this, hannah1.  you go!  love and hugs

[HannahOne]

Sometimes each day is as a thousand years. Time moves so slowly.

It's a useful adaptation. I can slow time down and buy a lot of time. I have time to figure out what to do, how to intervene and shift the direction of events. I can almost freeze events, to consider, to analyze. A cool hack.

It can also be exhausting. The days never end. I look at the clock and it hasn't even been one minute. I resolve not to look at the clock for at least fifteen minutes. I look at the clock. It hasn't even been a minute again.

TW: abuse

I always stuck with my father. Big and strong, knew so much. I thought.

Stayed away from my mother. The dead hand. Pick up the hand, drop it. No response. No there there. She wasn't dead. Only sleeping. Sleeping really hard. Too hard to be aware of my presence. I snuck out, invisible. Leaned against the wall. Became the wall. Until my father came home. When there'd be food. Among other things. But food. I wanted food.

One is still much easier to talk about than the other. To think about. To be aware of.

In the very long days, in the five minutes that move so slowly it seems I have enough time to complete a PhD and serve five prison terms, I become aware of it: There's no there there. It's a physical feeling, longing. Then, I'm the wall.

If I can slow things down, I have more room to work. What's going on here? What's up with being a wall? I have parts that are furious. That won't forgive me for not being what I promised I'd become, not doing .... more. Not delivering. I argue back, I delivered! For Frank's sake I got the degrees, jobs, house, family, car.... But of course it's not about the stuff. It's the price they paid that they're furious about.

I'm sorry, I say. It was a bad deal. But it was the only deal on offer.

What do I feel right before I become the wall?

It's hard to know, because immediately these other parts step in, the achievers, the doers, the taskmasters, the managers, ranting and raving and criticizing me relentlessly for not currently being CEO of something or other.

Right before I become the wall, I make contact with what I was staying away from. The place where there is no there there.

Everything begs a question. Why? How come? WHY? To analyze, to change the course of events. I did it, once. Many times. As a child it was an easy trick. It seemed I was the one making the adults do the things I didn't want them to do, or I was the one stopping them from giving me what I wanted.

Now I'm old and I forget the trick. Hocus pocus? Hippety hoppity? Stitch and stash? No magic words, what's the answer? I question what is the cancer that needed to be cut out? What in my life now is toxic, growing outside its place, unregulated?

Or from the other side: what space is cancer trying to fill? What should be in that space?

These are dangerous thoughts because it can lead to victim blaming, spiritual bypassing, and other stupidity. Cancer just happens. Psychologizing it won't help. Yet the logic of punishment is so compelling, beads I can't stop turning. I'm compelled to keep wondering what I am being punished for, what I did wrong, what I need to change in order to change the flow of events.

It's why time is moving so slowly. A part of me is doing the trick to buy me time.

Time keeps moving at its regular rate for everyone else. There is no trick. And more time isn't going to help me analyze these events. I'm due for an MRI. Overdue. Voicemails piling up. Voicemailbox full. Now the phone just rings. I count the rings until they stop.

There's no there here, either, apparently. 

Outside, time moves. You can feel time moving in the movement of the leaves. The animals keep time, the squirrels are aware of the shadows and the birds know when to sing and when to silence, the worms know when it's safe to emerge and when to burrow deeper.

Animals know no punishment, only do what needs doing, and refrain from all excess. The crow sits in the rehab, hunching his shoulders, pacing, avoiding eye contact. I rip the heads off exactly forty mealworms and put the jar in his cage. He is served one headless super worm. The super worm does not want me to remove its head. I am more persistent than he, although then I have to sit on the floor with my head between my knees.

Parts of me will always want to punish me. Will never expel all their rage over a bad deal done decades ago. Not because they didn't get what was promised, although they didn't entirely, couldn't possibly. Seven year olds don't know what it takes to be CEO. But because of what it cost them. integrity? A moral injury to go along with the other repairs, a stitch in time saves nine. An unspeakable loss.

Of course, she was already gone, deep in dreamland no one could wake her from, even my kiss powerless. I wisely traded what I didn't have, so why now complain I lost what never was? No there there to lose, kiddo. Unlike Daddy-o, who's right there, with food.

Lately I feel imprisoned, but it's myself that am the walls. Is the crow in a cage because he is being punished? Was he wrong to collide with a car? Or was he just himself, a being in space and time, in the wrong place at the wrong time?

He's in the cage to recover, to keep predators out, to keep him within reach of my jar of worms. If only we can keep the wildness in him while he heals. If only we can refrain from speaking in his presence, resist the urge to hand feed, to touch, to name him Harry and sing him songs, to stare. If only we can be invisible, just part of the walls, so he can occupy his rightful space.

What wildness is there left in me? What has not been punished out? What of me has not been habituated to the ways of others' whims? What of me does not salivate when the bell is rung? What of me still hunches, paces, resettles my shoulder blades on my ribs? What of me was always beyond punishment? Is there anything of me that did not take the deal?

I can't find any. All that's left is the parts that took the deal, that slowed time down to analyze, that saw the weakness in the trap and skipped right through it... I guess that's a wild thing to do. Left half of me behind to do it. But got free.

That's the calculus of the wild, and I can't second-guess it. I did what I did. Wrong place, wrong time. Back then the walls were not a punishment. They were a path. The only place I could occupy, then.

Now, to find my rightful place. To let time move again.

[sanmagic7]

hannah1, i think at least part of your wildness is in your creativity, in your words, that you dare to defy all that was taught you by writing about it, letting it out, getting it out of your body and mind where it doesn't belong.  allowing your realizations about things, speaking to them, at them, about them is a part of your wildness.  you are continually now defying, a very wild act of will. 

i see it in you.  i know it's there.  and as you continue defying, the more will be cleansed of what you've decided to defy, from small steps to giant leaps.  and time will take its righteous place, the clock will tick normally, seconds, minutes, hours will move you closer to your goal.  you're doing it.  love and hugs

[NarcKiddo]

Now, to find my rightful place. To let time move again.

 

[TheBigBlue]

 

[HannahOne]

Thank you NK, TBB, SM7. SanMagic7, you always give such powerful blessings. It's a gift you have. Thank you. I want to feel that autonomy in me, that inner knowing, the inner compass, the steady confidence of the wild things who just do what they do. By speaking it into existence... it comes to exist Words have power.

I think I found my therapist. I also found an art therapist. I'm going to work with both to contain the next six months or so.

I continue to go to the gym and work with the personal trainer and go to Pilates class. Four days a week I'm doing one of these.

I continue at the wildlife rehab. I still struggle to go, cry on the way, and fret while there. But it's just the right amount of challenge. Not that I'll ever habituate, LOL. But it's a structure and I need structure.

I continue to work on three meals a day and lots of water.

This is the structure of my days and weeks. In and around that is a lot of caregiving, housekeeping, pet tending, and a little paid work. I took on a small book. I regret it but I'm going to try to do it.

I still want to add more art classes, dance class. But I'm about to embark on a season of travel before fall. I'll be going to the opposite coast, going to see longtime friends. It's part of my aim to reconnect with the support system I used to have even if it's far flung. So I think I will wait until August to resume my search for these other classes and communities.

I decided to put off the job search until winter because of medical stuff and ongoing need to take care of my mental health. I'm lucky I can do that for now. I feel at peace with my decision to focus more on self care in the time I have leftover after taking care of others.

I continue to process the black hole where a mother should have been. The lack of care. Having no one to model what it means to be female or how to navigate the world as a woman. The lack of care. Did I say that already? LOL. No one to tend the scrape, to make the food, to touch the forehead. To stay up with me in the night when I'm sick. Or reassure me in a way I can believe. No one on my side. No mama bear when I was preyed on. No source. No soft place to fall. No there there, although she was right there.

How to give that to myself now. I did it for my kids. Imperfectly but good enough and pretty well. My habit is to turn away from myself, beat myself up for having a feeling, punish myself for having a need, or dissociate to not notice. I'm remaking the habit to turn toward it, after noticing, and to care. I don' know if this can ever "heal," will this ever "go away", probably not, and there's some despair there. But I'm going to carry on anyway. I want to be softer. I want to soften up. So that means not being so hard on myself and so tough. I can feel the toughness like a second skin, it's not really me, it's a part of me but not the deepest part. Even if only with my own self, I want to be softer.

In order to be safe to do that I need to be able to have conflicts and set boundaries. Fun fun. Like the eagle, who sidesteps toward me to claim the space. Mine mine.

I pitied my mother, which is painful. Both because I hurt for her, and because she did not hurt for me, she couldn't. I was alone with my pain. I can't afford to do that anymore. I need to pity myself. She was what she was. Now, me.