Living As All of Me

[sanmagic7]

hannah1, i so much hate feeling sick anynore, yet it doesn't let go of me, so i get the idea of feeling well but not having the wherewithal to do anything constructive.  glad you're able to get back to your painting class, tho.  i know it's a good thing for you.

i've never known anyone who's into clothes w/ such depth.  i had a pair of penny loafer for years and years, finally lost them in a move, but i absolutely loved them. they lasted forever, and when i was in college (ages ago) they were 'the thing' to wear.  it became cool to wear them w.o socks, which was called going NS.  for the daring, we would even go to class w/o shoes or socks, which was called NS 2 (that's a raised 2 standing for 'squared').  i never thought of them as boring, tho, but that may be because i didn't have a lot of shoes to pick from, and i wasn't very adventurous w/ clothes at that time in my life.  i do love that you are, tho.  such fun!

love and hugs

[HannahOne]

SanMagic7, thank you for your reflections on loafers! You're right, everyone experiences style differently. It's like art, some people love a painting, some people don't, some people are moved by a color, others think it's blah. I go back and forth, sometimes I wear loafers with socks, which to me reads preppy and also a little pop rock, and sometimes I wear them barefoot. When I wear socks I like to wear floral patterned socks, or bright red---something unexpected.

I'm so sorry you've been dealing with stress flu and/or being sick. It is really a drag emotionally. Thinking of you.

[HannahOne]

I had art therapy today. I highly recommend art therapy if anyone is having trouble in regular talk therapy. Especially if you have a decision to make or are "stuck" in processing something, art therapy gets the verbal mind out of the way and taps into a different mode of being. I'm finding it so helpful.

I am carrying around a small rectangular structured boxy burgundy crocodile leather purse with a short handle I got at a thrift store for 15$. I love it. It makes any outfit look pulled together right away.

I am excited to try my navy pinstripe trousers with my chartreuse sweater (analogous colors), my burgundy sweater (analogous colors), my light pink sweater (analogous colors), my camo cropped jacket (pattern mixing, analogous colors, vibe switch), my white transparent blouse with a navy bra under it (texture contrast), and my rust velvet button down blouse (complementary colors, texture contrast). Most of these outfits would go with white loafers with a gold buckle, although for the rust top I would wear rust boots with a heel and for the camo jacket I am thinking black stable boots. With the pink sweater I might wear pink ballet flats. I have burgundy crocodile loafers coming in the mail from an online thrift store with my credits from selling some of my old work clothes, so I might wear those with the burgundy sweater, maybe with a floral sock that has some burgundy in it. Fall is here. Bring it on.

With all of these I will wear my gold heart necklace and the mixed metal bracelet from the junk jewelry when I was a kid.

And I'm wearing lipstick now. I got over it. I like it. And a little blush. I am happy. 

I feel much more like myself with my current clothes. I can feel right away when something is good, but not me. This inner confidence is taking me places inside and out. It goes in and out becauseI fade in and out. But that's a different problem. I am feeling very satisfied and proud to have created a small wardrobe that all feels like me, that I can wear to protect and express myself, that makes it easier to go out into the world and live my life.

I used to think clothes were silly, frivolous, that it didn't matter at all what you wear. And on some level it doesn't, clothes don't make the woman. But that's on the survival level. If we're all stripped naked in a prison yard, sure, it doesn't matter. Underneath our clothes we are all human flesh. But we do need clothing to survive, it's an essential like food and shelter and oxygen. And beyond survival, clothing is a cultural artifact, a craft created to express ideas about rank, gender, and beauty/attractiveness. All cultures have different styles and shapes and materials and colors of clothing. It's an essential part of being a human being to weave, spin, dye, sew, and wear clothes. It's not silly just because it was mostly women's work and because women are sometimes loaded with emotional labor to look a certain way in a way that men sometimes are not.

Choosing my clothes is choosing me. It is my body, my choice. I am not in a survival situation, I can buy clothes I like, I can wear what I choose, I am free to be me. Lucky, lucky, lucky me.

Frank wears the same fabulous fur coat every day. Silky and gray. His fur ripples over his shoulder blades, his fur suit fits him like a glove, except where it's saggy at his armpits and neck, for ease of movement. He changes his coat seasonally, from steel gray in winter to brown grunge in summer and back again. His under fluff is white and looks like dandelion seeds all over my house at this time of year, literal "dust bunnies" all the time, the Roomba never stops. His feet tap dance shoe-free, the hind feet size XXL for strength, the forefeet size XS for dainty crossing when he sits up. His face is adorned with whiskers, expressively moving with every breath and lip-lick. And his eyes have tiny eyelashes. No mascara needed. I can see how, in a survival situation, humans might want his fur coat for mittens, or his foot to hang off their purse. Lucky, lucky, lucky Frank.

[NarcKiddo]

I love how you enjoy your clothes, and your colours, and now your make up.

You've inspired me to enjoy make up again. I've always worn lipstick without fail (partly because my lips feel too dry without a coating) but I realised I had stopped bothering with anything else since the pneumonia. Unless I was going out for dinner, the make up would sit in the drawer. Reading your journal over the last months has made me realise I can enjoy make up for me. And that I can benefit from experimenting - because make up has moved on and my skin has moved on. Liquid blush in Barbie pink is so lovely put on in a sheer wash, and I never knew! So, thank you, HannahOne. I'm grateful to you. 

[HannahOne]

NarcKiddo, that means so much, that I may have inspired you to enjoy your own choices! Thank you for letting me know! For me it's become a kind of self-care. Taking the time in the morning. It takes about thirty minutes to choose an outfit I'm happy with and that goes with the weather and vibe of the day. I often rushed out the door in a t shirt wet-headed, or unshowered. Sigh. My hair would dry on the way to work or I'd put it up... I had babies for some of that time, I was busy. But I also was afraid to care, couldn't face myself in a mirror, didn't want to think about my body. This change I've made feels deep, feels profound and important, like what always should have been. I should have always cared for and cared about and taken account of my body, prepared it to face the weather and the eyeballs of others, taken time for me to feel hot water in the shower or style my hair so I don't feel ashamed in front of people. I dunno. It's a whole thing I'm still understanding the meaning of, and I certainly don't have a lock on it, there are days I struggle or don't bother and that's ok too. 

[Blueberry]

I highly recommend art therapy if anyone is having trouble in regular talk therapy. Especially if you have a decision to make or are "stuck" in processing something, art therapy gets the verbal mind out of the way and taps into a different mode of being. I'm finding it so helpful.

 

I love reading about your experimenting with clothes and the choices you then make. It sounds like the clothing is maybe art on your body, a form of art therapy you're carrying out? What you write sounds such a whirlwind too, I feel breathless reading it, in a good way.

[HannahOne]

Blueberry that's such an interesting perspective, I never thought of my clothes project as art therapy, but Yes! I am going to ponder that. Thank you for sharing your comment.

What I find so magical about art therapy is that it bypasses the verbal part of the mind. And as you can see I'm hyperverbal LOL. I used words to cope from age two, which is not developmentally appropriate. I ended up on the high IQ end but I don't think that's why I did it, I think it was a coping mechanism. Instead of being a normal toddler and looking at my parent's faces, learning to communicate, learning body language, learning how to have a conversation, learning how to ask for and receive help... I had my nose in books, or had my record player reading me stories while I read along with the book. I spent many hours in books. I guess it's lucky my house had books in it!

So therapy has been very helpful but it's also limited because I intellectualize and get lost in the words. It gets very abstract and I lose contact with myself and with the other person sometimes. It's a defense.

Art therapy somehow accesses a more visual part of the brain... and a more feeling part. Some of the most insightful and telling art I make in art therapy I've done with my eyes completely closed the whole time! I find it very compelling and an incredible relief to be in touch with this side of me. Art therapy tells me more of the truth about myself than my verbal mind can think up. It feels very deep, settling, a quiet knowing. I look at the drawing or art, and I know what my decision is. Or I know what I know about my life. Or I feel the feeling. It's very clear.

So this clothes project is learning a language, a visual language of color, shape, and texture, and also a language of feelings. How does the shirt feel on my body, how do my feet feel in the shoes, does the belt make me stand taller or shrink? It's a form of art therapy that I do both eyes open and also eyes closed. I do look at the outfit and judge what it looks like, but I can also put on the outfit, close my eyes and ask, how do I feel? I know if it's right or not by feel.

Maybe that's part of why it's speaking to me so much the last year or two. it is definitely a form of therapy. A way to take my body back, to connect with myself and others, to express myself and also protect and hide parts of myself.

Thank you for sharing your insight!

[HannahOne]

I'm in an EF here. It started about 24 hours ago. I notice that I tend to ignore/avoid for about 24 hours, sometimes much more. When I get triggered, I try to just ignore it for a while. Eventually it catches up with me.

I'm sure that's a helpful protective act.

But I'd like to shorten the time between being triggered and taking full delivery of my emotions.

In between those two things, I've always historically stopped eating. Stopping eating also shuts down feelings and thinking to some extent.

In the last few years I added staying in bed, not drinking water. From the pandemic to about two years ago I was very overwhelmed with some life problems and all of that was apparently the straw that broke the camel's back.

I'm focusing on the fact that I didn't stay in bed and not eat for days. It was less than 24 hours this time. I just had a nice meal and left the house. In grey barrel jeans. Good job, HannahOne!

I want to be closer to myself. I want to be able to acknowledge my experience closer to the moment.

I'm having to make decisions about my healthcare and it's just not black and white at all. I never knew it could be this "you have several reasonable choices." My partner doesn't agree with my decision. I can't trust his opinion. First, he's barely read a thing about it in the last year since my diagnosis. Second, he doesn't want me to be non-functional, he wants everything to stay the same, and some options would necessitate I take some time off and get help. Third, I am upset that he waited until a year into the diagnosis to bother even reading anything and I'm upset that he didn't come to any of the 10 appointments I've had with oncologists and surgeons, save one, and in that one I felt he undermined my preferred approach. He could have at least been on the phone for the appointments. My sibling was on the phone for many of them.

So all of that is disappointment. Which leads to some paranoia on my part, I lose trust in him, then myself. I am able to stay aware that two reasonable people can have different opinions and approaches, but somehow I also get into an EF where that awareness doesn't touch the feeling that he's not on my team, he doesn't care or is only out for himself, or just that he's not up to the task of what I need.

I'm writing this not to disparage him. He has his own valid struggles, reasons he didn't attend appointments, for one I didn't tell him for the first two months and went through biopsy on my own, I only told him when I needed lumpectomy because I couldn't drive myself home. So my narrative is clearly unreliable, it's only that, mine, and can't be trusted as the whole picture. I rarely ever write about him because it's unfair, even anonymously, and my recovery isn't about him. I'm writing about this now because it's a relational issue that's profoundly resonating my relational trauma and that's what I have to work out.

What I know about myself is that when I was sick as a kid I was alone and terrified, and when I was injured a doctor abused me. When my mother found out, she screamed at me. So I know that I will tend to feel alone and shut down when I'm sick, I will cut off "terrified" with cold steel. And I don't trust doctors, others, or myself. It becomes a toxic soup of paranoia and distrust, overthinking, confusion, fear. Like a hall of mirrors.

Stepping out of that, I'm left with myself and my gut that I have to trust. I am sad that I can't seem to get more support or the support that I want from my partner and that I don't have local people to be with me. All my people are spread around the country and the planet. I also know that part of that is due to how I act in relationships, I don't share, or I don't share enough or the right way. And I don't share or don't share enough because I'm scared of this exact situation, or feeling invalidated, unheard, feeling crazy or stupid, feeling confused, second guessing myself. I kept my friends from my twenties, but once I settled in my thirties and had children I didn't make so many new friends, and the ones I made died early of cancer or COVD or self-harm. So here I am with friends, all over the place but not here.

I'm not sure how to work with this.

Going back to what I know, I know that when I'm by myself I feel clear about my decisions. When I make art, it's very clear.

I know that tomorrow I have painting class. That will be positive.

I don't know what to do with my partner. I can say "I'm disappointed" but it feels too big for that to be adequate and neither of us can go back a year and communicate differently. I also feel it will just keep happening. It's part of the dynamic, part of his way of being and mine. There's a despair about that. Some of the dynamic is my ambivalence about care, about support, help.  Under extreme stress, this is just how it goes with us, and the stress is extreme again. His FOO is undergoing ground shifting change and he's in the exact middle of that for the last 6 weeks, he's overworked, he's got limits of all kinds himself. And I'm under stress with the medical stuff and then general trauma load. We've been through hard times, much much worse. I know things can get better.

I'm just not sure how to work with the medical stuff within the relationship, because I can't seem to, mostly because of how triggering it is and how I handle it, and partly because he's limited and doesn't mesh well with me in this area. We've never agreed about many important things, how to handle certain things with our kids being a big one. But we got through it and resolved any resentment. The stakes were extremely high and we didn't see eye to eye. but it all worked out. Eventually, this should be the same. I'm just scared right now.

Underneath the internal argument about how he didn't come to XYZ or how could he think ABC, I am angry and sad that I'm in this position. And that he can't fix it. Or make it better. Or save me. As an adult I Can see that those are the expectations of a sick, sad, abused child. And I'm an overall healthy adult. It's true I can't trust him to know everything, make decisions for me, agree with all my reasoning, or ensure safe doctors and just carry me through treatments with me as a passive bystander. I'm an adult, it's my decision, my personal reasoning, I have to make the relationships with the doctors myself, and I have to carry myself through and be present to all of it. It's usually better, I'm usually more able to do that, when my partner is not there, if he's there it's a triangle. If it's me and the doctor, it's more clear. I just don't trust myself to think through and accurately hear the doctor by myself so I want someone else there.... but maybe, because of my own stuff and also because of his stuff, it can't be my partner. And maybe that's ok. Ideally I would have a partner who could do the "in sickness" part in a way that felt better to me. I just know that even a different person wouldn't solve the whole problem because of my own issues with being sick/needing care/doctors.

I'm not sure what kind of comfort could really be had from a partner or anyone. This is also part of my legacy of neglect and abuse. I don't even know what "support" would look like. I know that I feel safest in the world with my sibling. Yet my sibling would not be taking my approach at all. Doesn't argue with my reasoning, accepts and understands it, but would do the opposite as me. And somehow that's tolerable. Being with my sibling is the most sane I ever feel, because we are coming from the same place.

I think the biggest trigger is that, feeling insane. The feeling of invalidation or intense self-doubt, diosorientation. It's a very scary feeling, and probably an EF. Somehow my sibling does not invalidate me. My partner and I don't hav much time to talk, which doesn't lead to validation, and, well, he's a man, he talks in a more blunt, direct, confident way that is difficult for me at times like these because there truly is no one answer, all the doctors agree on that. So for him to find it "clear" makes my head explode. But that's partly how he is and how he approaches life, not one for nuance. Whereas I get lost in the weeds.

I am going to keep working on validating my own thoughts, feelings, perspectives, even as I leave room for those of others and for mine to shift and change. I'm going to allow myself to be physically present, that is to feel what I feel, know what I know. There's no other way through this. I'm glad I could recognize that some of my expectations are those of a sick child. And that even if my idealized hopes were realized, I would struggle with them. I want to be "normal" and have images of "healthy normal couples" and how they would navigate this. but neither of us is "normal" and I am what I am. CPTSD means it's going to be more complicated, more emotional, more intense, more difficult, more overwhelming, overall messier to navigate.

What helps me most with feeling like myself, feeling safe, is being with an animal. If I say to my dog, "I'm considering X treatment," the dog will lick and chew if that feels right to me. If it doesn't, she might move away, or stare. Horses and rabbits the same. They pick up on my feelings about the topic and react. It's like an external biofeediback device. You have to get the animals agreement to be such a device, and keep it short so you don't fry their circuits. But my dog is a very good magic 8 ball and open to performing the service. I will start with that.

Makes me remember when I was little I would tell my dog all my secrets and then quick! close the flap of his ear so my words wouldn't fall out. That dog saved my life over and over for my first eleven years, saved may sanity. So many hours we spent staring at each other, nose to nose on the dirty carpet, or on the heat vent in front of the sliding glass window trying to stay warm. If not for him, I think I would be feral and not just socially awkward and a little out of step. I think I might hav become psychotic, and not just have CPTSD.

At each step of my life I found ways to survive, ways to go on, at each step I took the least bad of the bad choices, I made lemonade out of a thousand lemons. I made choices when the best path wasn't clear. I made choices that cost me a lot but gained me the essential. I know how to do this. I am just vulnerable, having self-doubt, and not getting the kind of support I need, or not able to allow the kind of support that I need. It is as one, really.

Just being able to write it out here is a kind of support. Something I would never in a billion years have done just a few years ago. I wouldn't have expressed even to myself let alone anyone else. Let alone the internet. I wouldn't have been aware of half of what I've written here.

There is not other path forward but this one, and judging my partner or myself doesn't achieve anything. There are all kinds of stories my mind can make about my relationship, my illness, my life, myself. And, here I am. The sun is setting and the insects are making their insect noises, like the beeps of the earth's heart monitor, letting us know the earth is still alive, still becoming and falling apart at the same time, still here as the ground to fall down to and the sky to fall up to. In the middle is All of Me.