Allie's Archives: a recovery journal

Started by alliematt, November 25, 2016, 05:09:03 PM

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alliematt

I give up!

there is absolutely no one I can trust anymore.

I can't trust the news.  I can't trust how I was taught history.  I can't trust my Bible because it may have been translated by those that have an agenda.  I can't trust people that teach it because they either have some sort of agenda, are a false teacher, are guilty of some sort of abuse, or support abusers.  When told to trust myself, I answered with, "I can't even do that!" 

I heard one of our morning radio hosts talk about family members "being stuck" in certain places, and I thought, Yeah, that's me!  I am stuck!  I'm stuck at six years old, when I was first bullied by four girls who blocked me on the sidewalk and my family said, "Ignore them"!  I'm stuck in high school, where the bullies drove me off the bus and I told my parents, "They've won, I'll do anything they say," and my mother screamed back, "Don't you DARE say they've won!"  But they did win.  They drove me off the bus, they shattered and ground my self-esteem and self-respect into the dust, and there was nothing I could do about it, and no one was there to stand up for me or with me. 

I'm stuck as a freshman in college, when I joined a cult.

I'm stuck in my mid-20's, when, after leaving that cult, I joined another group that was just as unhealthy. 

I'm stuck at the age I was when my son was diagnosed with autism. 

Yeah!  I'm stuck!!

And I'm ashamed of being stuck.  Because I see no way to get unstuck.

Three Roses

Have you heard of IFS therapy? It's helping me - here's an intro video to the concept, this one is part 1 of 4. https://youtu.be/2UfmGwENz9M

sanmagic7

 here's a hug filled with care and compassion, allie.   :hug:

alliematt

And, to top everything off, I got an email from my proofing people asking about a job due at 9:30 tomorrow that I don't recall getting,but there is an email copy with a time and date stamp, so it was sent to me.

I'm trying to get it from Gmail right now and my computer is running so slowly, I can't download it! 

Nothing is ever going to change.  We'll always be in debt, I am never going to get well, I am never going to stop obsessing or being unhappy and depressed, and when my husband and I die, our son is going to go to the state because there will be no one to take care of him.  And if I become incapacitated?  Who's going to take care of me? 

sanmagic7

dear allie, i wish i could help more.  sending you love and a hug filled w/ comfort and care. :hug:

alliematt

At the moment, I'm dealing with the effects of lack of sleep.  I will probably take another nap.  The work that I downloaded was 428 pages.  I stayed up until 3 a.m. proofing until I finally went to bed, to get up again a little after 6 a.m. and finally finish it. 

I had originally said I was going to take the job and then I never saw it show up in my inbox, so I assumed they just didn't send it.  Apparently it either didn't get downloaded to Outlook or if it did, I just never saw it.

That's on me.  I should have looked, or asked about the job. 

I think I am going to need another nap before i finish up a job I had to drop to do this job. 
Then I can think a lot more clearly.  It's impossible to think clearly on only a few hours' sleep. 

sanmagic7

you're right about the lack of sleep thing.  i know that i do much better after i've slept well.  sorry that job got missed.  love and hugs, allie :hug:

alliematt

I have been in and out of bed for several hours today trying to catch up on missed sleep.  Today is husband's day in the office, and when he came home, I told him the whole story, hopefully tongue in cheeky, starting with, I and I alone am responsible for 95% of what happened.  I put the other 5% of responsibility on my email client. 

What I ended up doing was taking a break every 50 pages, making two small pots of coffee, and throwing in two loads of laundry while I was taking breaks.  I had hoped to finish it all and then go to bed, but at 3 a.m. I gave up because I physically just could not do it.

I got back up at a little after 6 (after only about an hour or so of sleep) and went back to work.  The job was due at 9:30 a.m. and it hit my employer's inbox right at 9:30.

I do have another job due at 11 a.m. tomorrow that's already partway done. 

When that's done, I will take a few deep breaths and then figure out some ways to put some decent physical and mental boundaries in place.  I'm already dealing with plenty physically and mentally and, as you all could tell from a couple of entries ago, I had worked myself into quite a state. I'm not going to be any good to anyone if I keep doing that to myself.  When I say that, that is not me beating myself up; that is me being, I hope, logical and practical. 

This could make either a comedy or a dark comedy when I get enough distance away from it.   ;D

alliematt

"Everyone makes mistakes."  While that's a true sentence and it should be comforting and encouraging, the voice I hear when I read that sentence is my mother yelling it at me. 

I can't remember the precise context of the conversation, but I do know that it came at the end of a very bad week, which included my parents pulling me off the school bus after a group of bullies bullied me there for the last time.  (This was January, 1981; I was 17.)

I know I said something; it may have been a verbal remark to my sister or to my mother, and it may have been a whine, I cannot remember. 

But my mother took me into our dining room, where we had a small black and white TV.  I even remember that the Bionic Woman was on in a rerun.  My mother turned the TV off, sat me down at the dining room table and the first words out of her mouth were, in a very angry tone, "Everyone makes mistakes!" 

Later in that conversation she said something like, "you're not going crazy" -- I cannot remember, again, the context, but I know she said something about going crazy, and I said, "That's what I'm afraid of!" and she said, "That's all I ever hear from you!  I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid!"

WOULDN'T YOU BE AFRAID IF YOU'D GOTTEN BULLIED FOR TWELVE YEARS WITH LITTLE OR NO RELIEF?

Yes, I WAS afraid.  There was a lot to be afraid of. 

I cannot let this one go.

After the conversation, I went to my room and cried, and it was one of those cries where the sobs just fed on each other. 

Later my mother hugged me.

But I still remember the anger, remember the conversation.  Sometimes I hate my mother. 

A counselor referred to her as "abusive" and I'm having a hard time applying that word to her, because I do not believe she was coldly cruel.

But she.yelled.a.lot. and I became very afraid of being yelled at. 
Add an abusive religious environment in college, where some people DID do a lot of yelling -- and I did not feel that I could yell back lest I be accused of being "unsubmissive" -- and yes, that DOES make me afraid. 

It makes me see God as an abusive parent.

sanmagic7

a parent doesn't have to be coldly cruel to be abusive, to my mind.  i don't think my parents were coldly cruel, but being afraid of someone who is supposed to be your protector, well, i think that speaks a truth right there.  growing up in environments containing fear is growing up in an abusive environment.  your strong feelings toward your mother don't come out of nothing, allie.  my opinion only.

the religious thing can be abusive as well.  if it includes shaming and fear, to my mind, that's abusive.  i don't want to get into a religious debate, but i decided years ago to create a higher power i could believe in, one that was full of love and all that goes with the concept of love, including help and caring.  again, my own opinion.

i'm sorry you're struggling so much w/ all this.  please take care of yourself as best you can.  sending love and hugs,  :hug:

Not Alone

You did have a lot to be afraid of. Sad that your mother was not able to comfort you in your fear and then protect you.

Would the phrase, "I'm allowed to be human," be helpful and non-triggering?

You have had a very rough few days. I hope you get some good rest and self-care and (hopefully) care from others.

owl25

I'm sorry for all the fear you experienced. It's a terrible thing to go through when it's a constant in your life. I hope you can get some good rest after that big job!

alliematt

Quote from: notalone on July 08, 2020, 09:55:41 PM
You did have a lot to be afraid of. Sad that your mother was not able to comfort you in your fear and then protect you.

Would the phrase, "I'm allowed to be human," be helpful and non-triggering?

You have had a very rough few days. I hope you get some good rest and self-care and (hopefully) care from others.

Sometimes it's rough for me to admit that "I'm allowed to be human," but that is true.  I am allowed to be human.  (Bible passage follows, use self-care if triggering) There is a verse somewhere in Psalms that says that God knows how we are formed and "he remembers that we are but dust."


alliematt

I made sure I got plenty of rest after that big job.  To give you an idea of how swamped my proofing people are, I'm working on a job right now and I can't remember if it's the second or third one I've done AFTER that big job!  (Really, this could all be avoided if people would just learn not to sue each other!  ;D). (But I also understand that lawsuits are at times necessary.)

I have also done some creative writing and that's been helpful. 

In re my mother:  If she was abusive, it also makes me wonder if *her* parents were abusive.  My parents lived in my mother's house after my dad graduated from college.  I understand that they were going to buy their own house when my grandfather suddenly died and my grandmother pleaded with them not to leave because she didn't want to live alone.  My grandfather died a year before I was born, and I was also a preemie. 

It took several years to figure out what I was missing in the relationship between my mother and grandmother, and I think it was that I did not feel a lot of genuine warmth between them.  I think my mother felt manipulated by my grandmother and resented it. 

One reason I got into genealogy was to try and put together pieces from my past.  I don't have any severe skeletons in the closet that I'm aware of; I do know that I had a grandfather that died young; and I also come from an area of the country known for poverty.  We moved away when I was very young so we escaped the area, but my parents' thinking was definitely passed down to us.

Not Alone

Quote from: alliematt on July 09, 2020, 03:19:14 PM
Sometimes it's rough for me to admit that "I'm allowed to be human," but that is true.  I am allowed to be human.  (Bible passage follows, use self-care if triggering) There is a verse somewhere in Psalms that says that God knows how we are formed and "he remembers that we are but dust."
Psalm 103:13-14