Convalescents journal

Started by Convalescent, March 22, 2015, 04:28:06 PM

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Convalescent

Where do I begin. This is all a little new to me... both this forum and C-PTSD, even though I have learned quite a lot from a clinic I stayed at for seven weeks, just four months ago from now. I'm going back there, in what they call "step two", in three and a half weeks.

I'm kind of blank right now. Things scream on the inside, but I'm so tired. There's a lot of sadness and grief on the inside. I don't know exactly for what, right now. I've started having flashbacks from my childhood and youth a couple of weeks ago. About things in school and things from my teens. I just burst out into tears. That's not like me. And that's a good thing ( I don't cry much, usually). I didn't think school was such a big issue, I thought that it would be family that would surface, but yeah. I can hardly contain my tears writing about it. I feel so little. So very, very little. So ashamed. So afraid. So... unsafe. I'm crying again.

I just want somebody so bad. I feel so utterly alone and lonely. I have friends, but none of them can... it doesn't feel right. I feel like the character from "The Wall", everything is unsafe. Everybody is scary. I'm seven years old again. The world is so scary. As of now I have one friend that I really can talk to. Even though that's a little contrived as well. In this state of being, everything's contrived. And the shame. And I have my mom. But I'm not really comfortable showing feelings to her. I can talk about them, but showing them is a little bit different. And god knows there is a lot of emotions these days.

I just want to be... hold. Loved. Comforted. But there's no one I feel like letting in. And I've been burned before, talking about things. Being overflooded with good advice, with the wrong things, and opening myself up to people I don't really feel safe with, to feel safe. In a way. If that makes sense. That's one of the things I've learned... to be careful and wary about who you're talking to about things.

It feels so god awful lonely right now.

Convalescent

In the midst of all symptoms and when my ICr is at its loudest, I hear the lines of Coldplay in Square One...

"Is there anybody out there who
Is lost and hurt and lonely too
Are they bleeding all your colours into one?
and if you come undone
As if you've been run through
Some catapult it fired you
You wonder if your chance will ever come
Or if you're stuck in square one"

I feel so terribly lost and hurt and broken and defect and small and shameful.

keepfighting

 :bighug:

I am so sorry you are feeling so alone and vulnerable right now. That's a horrible feeling.  :hug:

Please be very good to yourself. You are taking very important steps to go from surviving to thriving. It's a long and sometimes (very, very) painful process but you have the strength and the resources within you to help you get there - and you also have professional help (only a few more days now!) and empathy and support from all of us here on OOTS.

Just wanted to let you know that you're not alone. Hang in there!  :hug:

Convalescent

Quote from: keepfighting on March 29, 2015, 03:14:40 PM
:bighug:

I am so sorry you are feeling so alone and vulnerable right now. That's a horrible feeling.  :hug:

Please be very good to yourself. You are taking very important steps to go from surviving to thriving. It's a long and sometimes (very, very) painful process but you have the strength and the resources within you to help you get there - and you also have professional help (only a few more days now!) and empathy and support from all of us here on OOTS.

Just wanted to let you know that you're not alone. Hang in there!  :hug:

:hug: Thank you. On days like these, I feel like I'm not doing anything. And that becomes a symptom, or what I should say. My ICr really shouts. I feel like utter *. And I feel so stressed on the inside like it feels like I'm gonna crumble and die. I've been to the doctor several times, but nothing's wrong, physical.

Thank you, nice to know that I'm not alone :hug:

Convalescent

I wish I could be better friends with myself. I'm so hard with myself, and I know that's symptom nr. 1 (or at least one of them) of C-PTSD, and it strikes at the very core. I still wish I could be nicer with myself. Accept more from myself. Tolerate imperfections and flaws. And change some of my views about flaws. I wish I could take better care of my IC these days, I really need it. I really need comfort, kindness, to be soothed, and... love, most of all. I wish I wasn't so dead hard on myself. It's a fight that I always loose. I know I can't win a battle for validation and acceptance, born under those premises. So I try to be good and kind towards myself. I try to be supportive, to be my best friend. But it's so hard.

Convalescent

It's so hard. The days are so hard. So heavy. And The christmas is so demanding.

I'm angry. I'm sad. So sad. But I'm angry. I want to shut down and not relate to anything. But it doesn't work like that.


woodsgnome

Hi, Convalescent  :hug: .

It's always good to see you here. You expressed the thought so many of us share--about wanting to "shut down and not relate". I hear you, and also recognize the notion that apparently "it doesn't work like that."

Know this, though--you've shown via your posts here that you have a depth of being that can, and does, relate; in ways you probably don't even recognize. You don't see it. Maybe, like so many of us, it takes someone else who's on the trail with you to remind you of your ability to relate.

You once responded to something I'd said by asking me "what does it feel to be on the other side" of recovery. But it's always ongoing, for me...as to that "other side" I haven't a clue. Some days it feels good, and I feel further down the road towards it; but the other days...you know what I mean.

Keep trekking, friend...your steps to recovery are ever closer than you may realize. Whatever it's called, though, you've shown amazing recovery powers of your own, right here, right now, via the words you've shared. They may only seem as words on a screen, but I feel as if I see a huge heart every time you share the load. And I hope this helps a tad to make that load seem lighter.  :sunny:

Convalescent

Quote from: woodsgnome on December 21, 2015, 11:25:28 PM
Hi, Convalescent  :hug: .

It's always good to see you here. You expressed the thought so many of us share--about wanting to "shut down and not relate". I hear you, and also recognize the notion that apparently "it doesn't work like that."

Know this, though--you've shown via your posts here that you have a depth of being that can, and does, relate; in ways you probably don't even recognize. You don't see it. Maybe, like so many of us, it takes someone else who's on the trail with you to remind you of your ability to relate.

You once responded to something I'd said by asking me "what does it feel to be on the other side" of recovery. But it's always ongoing, for me...as to that "other side" I haven't a clue. Some days it feels good, and I feel further down the road towards it; but the other days...you know what I mean.

Keep trekking, friend...your steps to recovery are ever closer than you may realize. Whatever it's called, though, you've shown amazing recovery powers of your own, right here, right now, via the words you've shared. They may only seem as words on a screen, but I feel as if I see a huge heart every time you share the load. And I hope this helps a tad to make that load seem lighter.  :sunny:

Wow, thank you... I had no idea that what I'd wrote on this forum had that much meaning or significance to anybody... :)

:hug:

Now I'm just angry. Really angry. I don't know if it had something to do with the previous "pause", or relaxed state of mind. Probably, in a way or another. I'm angry with a lot of my friends. Or acquaintances. A lot of my boundaries overstepped, with me not knowing about it a lot of the time. A lot of me spilling out my guts, sometimes not quite sober (which makes it even harder to feel what's right or not, of course), to people who don't really understand. And I'm starting to believe more and more not to open myself to people who doesn't suffer (or have suffered) from C-PTSD. 99% of my experience indicate that people don't know what they're talking about. They seem to have the impression that they do, but they really don't. Why should people be so keen on offering advice (and with such certainty and with such weight) when they don't know what they're talking about? It really gets me off. I'm also starting to, or... I started some time ago, but I'm getting more and more... I don't know. The people surrounding me as of now, well some of them,  I've contacted some old friends and perhaps new ones,  but the people that have surrounded me for a couple of years back and until now... they're not mine anymore. Some of them I don't even like. I've minimized contact with some of them, but that's a process as well. Just to... accept that I can choose what's best for me, and not have friendships that are duty-friendships. I'm in a small place, and somehow my world is intertwined and connected way beyond my comfort-zone. So, I guess the anger is natural and maybe even beneficial, it just sucks. It's not just related to that though, christmas and family and old memories and stuff resurfacing, more insight into my FOO, not really having anyone to feel safe around... it's hard. It's insanely hard.

I guess I just needed to rant a little now.

Thank you for kind words, woodsgnome, I can feel the sincerity and compassion from your words  :hug: Keep going yourself as well, we have it in us, it's just really hard to locate, or dig out, or... yeah, whatever you want to call it. I guess parts of the scars will always be there, but I believe there is a "other side". I've heard people describe it. Maybe as what appears as.... emotional maturity? Emotional ground? Safety from within? It's there, I know it's there.

:hug:

woodsgnome

Convalescent,

It was wonderful to see your observations here again. And I don't know if you were conscious of it, but I noticed some imagery associated with your return.

Your slew of entries yesterday--December 21--coincided with the Winter Solstice, marking the return of more light to a world desperately needing it. Even though there's always dark days that find their way in, the return of more light has rightly been associated with at least the potential for better times.

Happy Solstice!!!

             :hug:    :sunny: :sunny: :sunny:    :hug:

                     

Convalescent

Quote from: woodsgnome on December 22, 2015, 01:56:10 PM
Convalescent,

It was wonderful to see your observations here again. And I don't know if you were conscious of it, but I noticed some imagery associated with your return.

Your slew of entries yesterday--December 21--coincided with the Winter Solstice, marking the return of more light to a world desperately needing it. Even though there's always dark days that find their way in, the return of more light has rightly been associated with at least the potential for better times.

Happy Solstice!!!

             :hug:    :sunny: :sunny: :sunny:    :hug:

                     

Happy solstice :hug:

Convalescent

At the bottom... christmas. I'm walking around in a coma. Not feeling anything, feeling everything. You know, depression, the worst of them. I lie in the dark, listening to Failure and Autechre, just to get a little darkness to hold on to. I'm mad, and careless at the same time. I don't even know why I bother to write this. I want to shut down every possible feeling, and just exist. Just be, in something that doesn't require consciousness. Something without beginning and end. Oblivious. I know I'm going to halfway remember writing this. It's like that. Dissociation I guess.

I haven't got any hope. Christmas is all on the outside of everything. I'm not there. I just try as best I can to slip away. Live inside a vacuum.

Vacum vacum vacum. Blah blah blah. Write write write. The sound of letters being pressed on the keyboard. Incoherent thoughts. Incoherent everything.

woodsgnome

#11
"Incoherent everything." Your words, but I echo them, 'cause when it comes down to it, it's really all we can know of where we are. Or even who we are. And if not incoherent, a lot of this is so contradictory, and it all hurts.

It would be easy to fall back on the everyday cliches--it'll get better, etc. But those are as incoherent as anything, too. It's all humbug, to borrow the seasonal reference.

I'm only going to venture this--you shared that you felt an opening the other day. More incoherence, perhaps--at least that's what your mind might try to convince you it was. All that matters is that you felt it, really really felt it...and you wanted to share the joy you felt.   

Maybe you did gain something with the incoherent writing, as you call it, 'cause your words sure struck me, and I'm guessing many others who read your reflections and have felt that same pain, that same feeling of giving up. We know it too well, kinda wishing it were truly incoherent so we could say we call it something, to give it a label at least, even in that vacuum we feel when we don't see a way forward.

I probably shouldn't butt in here; journals were designed to be stand alone reflections of the writer, but I was drawn to say something about what I see in what you've shared. I'll even risk a judgement call and say that to me your writing was not incoherent at all. It's beautiful and yes, in saying so I recognize it's also extremely painful.

Take good care. You may be "holding on" to the darkness, as you say; yet I still see that bright beacon of light from what you've given of yourself.

Thank you.

Convalescent

Thank you, woodsgnome :) Your words are like poetry, and you have such sincerity and goodwill in your words.
:hug:

The beacon of light is ever on and off. I can never shut it down all the way, which is frustrating. A good thing also, perhaps, but emotional pain is so hard. Darkness doesn't require that you feel all those heavy feelings off loneliness, despair, sadness, anger, etc.


Convalescent

All of this guilt, shame, fear, and conscience... it's just what's been imprinted in me for being controlled. Manipulated.

All this time I've thought that it's about me... not being good enough, not this, not that... whilst in reality it's more or less me being indoctrinated so my dad can get what he wants. Brought down to my knees by a war raging inside, by torment of fear and depression, while the world plays out its usual way without any immediate danger.  It feels like a war that both does and doesn't exist.
And that's the the most awful part of having C-PTSD.... you're fighting war solely on a private and intimate level. I watched LOTR again the other day, and was overwhelmed with this incredible sadness and despair.... for * sake, I'm not even at war with something outside myself. I have no sense of companionship whatsoever in all of this. No sense of fellowship, no one to turn to in all of this. Yes, I have friends... most of them haven't a clue what this is about. The few that do, they're on the outside. As if on another planet. On planet Convalescent is only me, fighting an invisible war, wearing invisible scars, living in the aftermath of something invisible. Jesus christ, my own war, which is just me, is not even there anymore. It's just the scars and the feelings that linger on. How lonely is that? I don't think you can get anymore lonely than that.

I visited my father and my grandmothers grave just now. I felt like spitting on it. I didn't. Instead I asked my dad why I should feel anything bad for him, you're both psychopaths. It's like it didn't happen. Guess I'm dissociating again.

Blah.

Convalescent

I just know that it will get better... I don't have many words right now, but I just know.