It's gone

I have been cleaning my desk today. All over I am finding story/blog ideas I have jotted down.

In the past, all I needed was a "book mark" to jog my mind.

Now they are undecipherable cryptic notes.

That makes me sad.

I don't know if its the physical illness or the natural menopausal crap, or my brain has developed some sort of dementia, but its gone.... my ability to be a writer.

I look at the drafts in my blog folder, and I can see the ghost of the former me trying in vain to reach that level I once had.

I re-read over old stuff and …..fuuuuuuck man, where the hell did she go?

This revolting development isn't sitting well with me.

once my body was all used up and I couldn't work any more....I hoped to find a way to support my self via my writing. (yes I know that is a complete delusion...but one that keeps me from freaking out about becoming so disabled, and useless.)

So who am I?

all those labels of the past have been slowly stripped off by time and disability.

I was a runner, figure skater, rider, flyer, I was a untamable horse that everyone chased but never could catch.

I was a wife and a mother who gave 100% to her family.

Now I am the weak link, who is on the verge of becoming a burden...of not being able to pull my weight.

I don't like the new labels that are creeping in.

I am a financial burden, disabled physical train wreck of a depressed soul.

Once who can't sing for her supper.

One who's purpose is gone.

This is a lot like high wire walking over a huge crevasse...but the wire appears only a second before your foot comes down. I don't know which step will send me plummeting to earth.

Each and every step I take feels like my last.

WTH

*Morning rant* (skip if fucking curse words ain't your thing)
This morning my son tells me while at summer school he does 2 hrs of work then reads for the rest of the day.
ARE.
YOU.
FUCKING.
KIDDING.
ME?
THIS IS WHY WE ARE GOING TO SUMMER SCHOOL YOU ASSHOLES!!! BECASUE YOU ALLOW HIM TO DO THIS!!!!
YOUR A FUCKING TERACHER!!!! IF YOU NEED ME TO COME SIT BY HIM AND KEEP HIM ON TEACK 24/7 I WILL BE THERE, THATS WHY I WORK NIGHTS!!!! IF YOU AN'T/WONT DO IT THEN DRAFT ME, WEW ARE SUPPOST TO WORK ON THIS CHILD AS A TEAM!!! YOU ALL DON'T HAVE MY BACK IN THIS!!! AN I'M FUCKING PISSED!!

THIS RANT GOES ALL THE WAY BACK TO HIS KINDERGARDEN TEACHER WHO INFORMS ME THE LAST.
FUCKING.
WEEK.
OF THE SCHOOL YEAR AS SHE HANDS ME A GIANT WAD OF PAPERS, THAT
"JUR HASN'T BEEN COMPLETING HIS CLASS WORK."
WHAT.
THE.
FUCKING.
HELL?!
YOU JUST TAUGHT ME SON THAT SCHOOL ISN'T SOMTHING HE HAS TO DO YOU MOTHER FUCKING ASSHOLE!!!!
I TRIED TO GET THEM TO HOLD HIM BACK IN K, 1ST, 2ND, 3RD, AND 4TH GRADE. I COULD SEE HE WAS NOT LEARNING WHAT HE NEEDED TO .
WHY.
COULDN'T.
THEY??!!!
EACH YEAR I SEND HIS TEACHERS A EMAIL, TELLING THEM MY CONCERNS, HIS STRENGTHS NOT TO LET HIM READ DURING CLASS (and yes I can, and do stop him from bringing books from home, but they so kindly take him to the school library and get him one)
BIG LETTERS EVERY YEAR
NO.
READING
IN
CLASS
YOUR
THE
TEACHER
T-E-A-C-H HIM.
I'VE BEEN FIGHTING FOR ELEVEN YEARS WITH THE SCHOOL SYSTEM.
His class of 2020 is on tract to be the first class to have 100% graduation.
I just want to know how many students are being flushed through with out getting an education? who like my son are being allowed to skate with subpar work?

and more importantly.

WHERE DID THE EDUCATION SYSTEM LOOSE ITS FUCKIN' BALLS?

I'M TIRED OF FIGHTINGTHE SCHOOL SYSTEM. I GOING MORE PRIMATIVE NOW. I'M GOING TO START THROWING SHIT LIKE A MAD MONKEY

HE'S A CHILD! YOUR A GROWN UP

PART OF TEACHING IS TO

HELLO

TEACH!

all he has learned is, "you'll pass me no matter what crap I hand in. You won't listen to my mother and here advice. Teachers have no power over me...even the power to tell me, JUR put away your book and do your assignment."

RRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAFFFFFFFFF!!!!!!

*&^%&%$%#%^$&&*(^%$$^&(&*^%$#@!!!!!!!!!

Not yet

Since going on the prednisone my writing has ground to a near stand still.

I am bombarded by story ideas, but they disappear like soap bubbles when I finally have time to sit and write.

It's frustrating. It's like I have lost the internal music I write to. Just  still never ending silence in my soul.

So frustrating.

I have so many more stories to tell. I am not done yet.

DO you hear me illness, medication side effects? I AM NOT DONE YET. Let go of your hold on me.

I wonder, is the trade off worth it? being comfortable and having the chronic pain eased a bit vs never being able to write again?

It's like I sold my soul for comfort in my damaged body.

Functioning equals existing right now. A writer less zombie, dis-attached from my words. I don't feel alive right now.

All I feel is this murky simmering, threatening to boil over weight, of prednisone induced irritable-rage stew cooking in my head.

It's not fun.

My soul want to write. But not to that soundtrack.

bah.

Dark rain

Having a day of dark rain.

Where ever parenting failure I have ever made falls like rain through my mind.

Emotions blow like wind through my soul.

Pause

sun starts to break through

greyness brew again and the dark rain

pelts me with its damaging blows.

Life lightening starts to bolt me as well.

So many failures as a human being...

days like this

make me want to stand in the center of the storm and open my mouth and let the rain drown me.

so much pain

so

much

Supporting self injurers (triggery)

(omg guys, LOOK what my blog coughed up! so excited!!)

You can offer support to self injures as they work on healing.

It's very possible..

You also can totally sabotage and undo their hard work as well.

It's a fine line.

First you have to admit that YOU ARE NOT QUALIFIED TO HEAL THE SELF INJURER.

(unless you are their therapist...and then you had better be sure as shit you know what your doing so you don't do more damage)

Important to keep in mind....it's SELF injury. It isn't called everybody injury, or us injury, it is self injury.

Accept that it okay not to under stand self injury. Heck even self injuries often don't understand why they do it. Sometimes is trial and error to discover what is helpful after a episode.

It normal to want to help a self injure. It's hard to see wounds without getting a gut ping of compassion and wanting. If it is someone you love, you want to rush in and hold them. Like a mother to a child who has fallen and scraped their knee. You want to hold them close and tell them it's okay.

It is also normal to want to run and not deal with it too. Like you've come across a horrific accident scene and the gore repulses you. You stand for a second witnessing then you turn away.

It is also normal to be angry. Someone hurt your friend/loved one. If someone is abusing your person you want to hurt them. If someone hurt my child you can bet the thought of punching them in face is going to cross my mind.

It's very normal to feel all of this in the same moment. People don't really know how to react to seeing fresh injuries on a self injure.

It might help  to know what may be going through their mind post injury.

After I have injured, I am dissociated to the gills. I am so far away in my head I need binoculars to see the surface.

I then get waves of disappointment and anger. Why have I done this again? Why? why? why?

I am also experiencing urges. I should have burned more, I should have made that bruise bigger, the self injury didn't work, I am still triggered and need to do more.

I am experiencing unsettling fear. OMG people are going to see my bandages and think I am crazy. People are going to see and think my husband is abusing me, uugh, people are going to SEE me.

I am feeling very visible. I am not sure how to react to others questions, when I am in a state of turmoil/emotional pain, and don't really have any answers even for my self.

Basically for me, there is not much you can do for me until I have processed through the crisis state and my feet are back on the ground. Then and only then, am I even reachable.

I will at that point usually reach out to my support system and finally be able to vocalize what is going on with me.

That is just me, I can't really speak how others process through it.

In general I think these are universal things we can do for all of us:

Keep things normal. Keep the world turning. 

Don't hide the knives, lighters, etc. (truth be told any self injure can do damage with any object...you can never pick up all the potential weapons.)

Don't be angry and belittle the injurer if you see the wounds. They have already raked themselves over the coals, they don't need a verbal dose your shit too.

(hahahahaa, okay. I may just still be a bit pissed off about the time my FNP did that to me.)

Don't change your level of physical connection you have with them. If you have always hugged them when you see them, don't change that pattern.

(I wrote this once after a SIV episode and it still hold true for me today,

"Hug me but don't hold me.

Hold me but don't touch me.")

Listen if they want to talk. You don't have to have the answers, just bare witness to there pain. That is all they want/need.

DON'T pry for details or to view the injuries.

Offer to get bandages, medical assistance if they want it.

I'm not listing "encourage them to get into therapy" here because after a recent episode of self injury isn't the time to have that conversation. Trust me. This is a conversation to have later. like after the wounds have healed.

It's okay to pretend you don't know the person is a self injure too. Time and trust will eventually open that conversation up for you if its meant to be.

It's okay to inquire, "I see your in pain, is there anything I can do?" 10 times out 10 I bet they will tell you "No." But what happens is you are seeing the person, you are acknowledging their pain, you are validating them, and no matter how they may squirm and shrug you off, your concern is wanted and needed. Your simple compassion is a band aid to their soul.

And that is the best thing you can offer.

come on blogger, burp it up...

I am living in denial. I like to think that the post my blog ate will mysteriously surface and suddenly appear in the published queue.

I really hate it when technology eats my writing.

I write mostly off the cuff, once its out of my brain onto paper/the screen/etc. It is COMPLETELY gone from my brain.

Oh sure I can re-write it and capture fragments of the original intent, but I can not recreate it. Anything rewritten looses the original oomph I gave it.

I am stalling because I HATE having to redo things....and I usually don't even try.

But this one I have to.

It was a post about 'how to support self injurers.'

I had spent quite a bit of time working on it, and apparently the blog gods weren't please and have deemed I do it again. LOL.

So as soon as I am done pouting about it, I will start over again.

repeating ruminations

My mother hates me.

I'm not just making that up, geesh. I have a life time of proof.

I got on her bad side the day I was born. I had the audacity to be a rerun. Her first pregnancy was exciting and magical, no ultrasounds back then, so lots of dreaming and hoping for what ever gender her heart desired. But no mater what she would get a baby, SO EXCITING! She got a girl! 

Second pregnancy stressful and worrisome with bleeding all through it. More hope and dreams of having a boy. And she got a boy!

Third pregnancy she had no choice, there was nothing else to have. I disappointed her by not coming out some new and exciting gender.

She demonstrated her ability to ignore me even before I was born. When she was 8 months pregnant I came to her in a dream and told I wanted to be named Paja.  She decided if I was a boy she would call me Rajah.  

um, I told you I was a girl by the P in my name mama. 

I also was born with a dime sized mole on my butt. Inherited it from my father. I at the time as a infant didn't know how much that bothered her. It wasn't until I watched my other sibling come into the world, and saw how she carefully looked each of them over that it put everything into perspective as my youngest sister was found to have a stork bite birthmark on the back of her neck. I saw that look on her face. That look of something awful rolling around in her brain. 

I pissed her off something fierce when I was little and that was the end of her seeing me. She never looked AT me again, through me, yes, but never AT me again.

I tried for year and years to get her love. I would kiss her goodnight, night after night. She wouldn't turn away from reading the newspaper. Icy cheek.

I finally stopped and accepted my banishment. Accepted I would never have a mother like I saw everyone else having.

When I finally got the nerve to stand up to her one day as an adult and told her: "FUCK YOU!!" during a heated conversation.

I was exiled once gain and forbidden to see my younger siblings.

Sigh.

bitch.

In therapy while Richard was trying to SAVE MY LIFE he tried to get me to open up communication with her. I told him I was afraid of her. That I didn't know how to talk to her, we were complete strangers.

I finally agreed and asked her if she would come to a session with me. 

Her response?

"No, I will be ganged up on and  blamed."

ah, put down your dukes there Mama. Your sounding guilty.

Richard, bless his heart, even tried. He called her and I could hear her ever so polite plastic phone voice telling him that my life wasn't worth her even spending a few minutes of her time to talk to me.

Richard was able to get me to put down my rabid hatred of her and just let her be in my head/heart. To see her as a person rather then my mother.

I spent my childhood hearing the tale of how my father was sold as a baby. I used to wonder, why didn't she sell me? She didn't want me. I feel like an adopted child who mother gave them up. Except, she kept me. I lived in a house where I knew I wasn't wanted.

She once sent me a letter out of the blue, where she wrote to me as if we had a deep long mother/daughter friendship. It gutted me. I DON'T KNOW WHO YOUR TALKING TOO HERE BUT THAT DAUGHTER NEVER EXISTED. STOP JABBING ME WITH YOUR WORDS, I GET IT MAMA YOU HATE ME.

All this damaged me.

It still damaged me even to this day. I don't see it but BOY, when I get triggered, the flashback vault will wretch up horrific things.

A couple of years ago my sister sent me a picture of Mama hugging one of my siblings as she kissed their cheek. The pain wheel turned and twisted my gut as I slid to the floor crying.  She never loved me like that. why?

Why was I so repulsive she couldn't hug me?

I grew to understand her more as I aged and became a mother myself.

But it does little to temper the pain.

I am strong enough now to confront her and have deep discussions with her. But she has fled into dementia. She takes all the answers with her.

I work on all this crap occasionally. Self therapizing. Because I know that one day she will die, and when she does, its going to set me off. That little child in me that wanted and needed a mama is going to cry endlessly, because Mama's death means the end of any chance of having a mama.

I realized as I was working on all this crap last month, that ....Mama is so shut off that I don't think she lets anyone love her. 

Oh she loves certain people, but no one can love her. 

And I was a fool for ever trying.

Her own past damaged her to the point that she deemed herself unlovable and she rebuked anyone who tried. 

My wanting to love her, must have really REALLY FUCKING PISSED HER OFF.

No wonder she hates me.