Monthly Archive for May, 2006Page 2 of 6

Narrow Past - Too Broad Of A Future

Published
by
Austin
on May 27, 2006
in Soapbox
. 0 Comments

Narrow Past with Too Broad Of A Future - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - 4:53 AM EST

I just read a letter floating around the net addressed to kids who survived 30s-40s-50s-60s. First of all let me say that the link to this letter is not by someone that buys into all of this philosophy. The letter is just posted on her site.

What bothers me about the letter is that it’s narrow minded. It talks only of play but nothing of school or family life in those years. It says they were simple times but it leaves out poverty, the Great Depression, wars and social injustices that mark those times. It only says play was simple and people accepted responsibility. It left out so much. Being irritated by that I had to leave a comment on the blog. I should have told the blogger that the comment was addressed to the writer of the letter and not to her. I wish I'd done that. This entry is also written to the writer of the letter and those who buy into his/her narrow view. This was my comment on that site:

they say people of my generation aren't made of the same things as those of past generations. this is true. the air is different, the water is different, wars have come and gone and the attitudes of many have soured. so they are right, we are not made of the simple times. we're made of security & instant pleasures. i can't say that is right but what i can say is right…we are not made of the same things.

recently a friend of mine and i went to Target and played dress up in THEIR clothes while taking pictures of ourselves. this was good clean fun. there are people who know how to do this that were not born in simple times.

Again, I wish I'd told her the comment was to the writer of the letter and not her. Anyway though, those generations missed out on medical advancement. Those generations lost parents, brothers and sisters to illnesses that they now have a cure for. Those generations lost out on the ability to heal their mind through therapeutic means and other means with greater understanding. In addition to physical and mental health delays they were stifled when speaking of and caring for social issues like disabilities, animal rights and sexual offenses towards children and women.

The major thing this generation has in common with the past generations is that we all live in fear. We lived in fear then and we live in it now. We either feared our fathers, brothers, uncles or the neighbor next door or we feared not getting enough to eat, not having good shoes or not having medical help when needed. People in the 30’s thru the 60’s experienced the same crimes we have today only now it gets across the world in seconds instead of days, months and years. The present generation shares the same growing pains as past generations only now if there is a crime against us we can tell and maybe get some help. Unemployed past generations suffered hunger the same as unemployed and underemployed do today. So when you think about the simple fun you had does it compare to the heartache of silence and injustices that were practiced in those times? I didn’t think so. I'm happy you were able to and I quote:"play kickball and come home when the street lights came on." I'm happy you were able to "ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags" and live. I am okay with the fact that you didn’t have or need, “Play stations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no internet or internet chat rooms.”

I agree that there is way too much out there for our children to get into. What they have access to is also accessible to people that prey on children. What the future holds as far as technology isn’t even imaginable. There will be ways to hurt each other faster and deeper than today. There will be ways to hear of this hurt faster and in vivid colour. Is this a good thing, to have things faster and brighter? I have no idea but when that time comes I hope I never say that I'd like to revert back to the old ways. People say you can’t have it all. You can’t have the simple times as well as advancement. If you want simple you have to give up all the progress the world has made. If you want progress you have to give up on the idea that things will ever be simple again. I myself prefer a balance and this is where your conscience comes in. You have to know right from wrong and act on it to be able to enjoy the simple and benefit from advanced ideas and practices.

I am only 35 years old. I was born in 1971 past the time of most of what that person spoke of yet I appreciate simplicity from the past but I also enjoy luxuries from today. I decide what is best for my lifestyle based on more than what I want immediately. I keep in mind the interests of others. While I live with free will I understand that my actions impact others either positively or negatively. I’ve learned important lessons from generations past. You’ve shown us how not to be. We have rights now. Women have them, children have a measure of them, and animals have them. People of colour can vote, women can vote, all children in this country can go to school, rich or poor. So yes, I am happy the good things are still remembered but I am sad for you because after all this time your views are still narrow. You’ve learned nothing. You’ve learned absolutely nothing. When will you gain the wisdom to know the difference between stagnant ideas and beneficial ones that move forward?

If what I’ve seen in my short life time has taught me anything, it’s that history is never far from us and tomorrow is never guaranteed. That basic truth belongs to all generations whether they played kickball until the street lights came on or Nintendo into the night.

 

Austin’s August

I Misspell Therfore I Am :0)

Published
by
Austin
on May 27, 2006
in Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, General Chatter and Poetry
. 0 Comments

I Misspell Therfore I Am - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - 2:34 AM

Reading over my last entry I noticed that I misspelled the word college. I have a track record of misspelling things. I did go back and correct it though.

Lessons in learning:

Half the stuff I did in my early twenties I did to be the total opposite of what the mother conditioned me to be. I didn’t get that rebellious streak until my early twenties when I left her house. Until that personal Independence Day the pressure to do well in school was always strong. She would brag to friends that I was tired of getting A’s because after an A+ there was no higher grade to be given. She thought it was something to brag about when I stressed over getting a 98% instead of a perfect score plus extra credit points. Sometimes the family would stand the children up to play Jeopardy with against each other while at the grandmother’s house. They’d give us these quizzes as competition and if we lost the mother told us how embarrassed she was that her stupid daughters lost to their younger cousins. The pressure was intense and failing meant getting slammed with a bunch of insults backed with rejection and alienation.

The competition didn’t stop once we left the grandmother’s house. We got paid for grades. We got $10 per A, $5 per B, nothing for C’s, paid $5 per D and paid $10 per F. I raked the money in every report card. My sister might as well as filed for bankruptcy by the time she hit the 9th grade because the mother did in deed keep track of what we owed her. Later on we found out she’s dyslexic but at the time we didn’t know it. Poor child, the names she was called! When the mother got paid every two weeks she would give the two of us yet another competition. The first one to tell her what the meaning of a word was got $20 to $25. I usually won. It seemed that in languages I excelled, in art, in science and history I excelled but I couldn’t spell worth a darn. Of course this was not something that was acceptable but like my sister’s dyslexia it wasn’t something that was going to change quickly.

Hearing and Spelling:

For some reason I can’t hear the vowels in most words which would be okay if I was writing in ancient Hebrew. I can spell in Spanish and German but I can not spell in English. For some reason I can not hear the vowels. I get them backwards or leave something out because I simply can not hear it. Something changes when the vowels hit my ears. I hear the word. I understand the word but when it comes to spelling it the trouble begins. I have no idea why.

Rebellious streak returns:

I stopped trying to learn to spell because I knew it bothered my mother. Sometimes the people in the system would misspell their names purposely to identify themselves as separate from the outside family. Maureen use to spell her name Moreene for the sole purpose of making a distinction between free will and being under the mother’s thumb.

All these years and I still can’t spell. I try, oh how I try but it just doesn’t happen. I play the game book worm to try and get better at my spelling. I try and remember the corrections spell check does so that next time I can get the word right. All this effort but still I can not spell worth a lick. This is why the word college ended up coming out as collage because I CAN’T SPELL. I couldn’t hear which vowel it was and I overlooked the spell check thing-a-ma-bob. So while I’m not trying to be the exact opposite of everything my mother told me to be I still do struggle with spelling. I guess some things never change.

Joan of Arc

Wash Water: A Dream

Published
by
Austin
on May 26, 2006
in Dreams and General Chatter
. 0 Comments

Wash Water: A Dream - Friday, May 26, 2006 – 12:24 noon EST

I was still in college and stood at the counter of a popular bakery listening to an ex-psychiatrist tell me how nasty my cinnamon buns are. After that humiliation I went to some gay bar where I fell asleep standing up in the men’s restroom for 4 hours. I was leaning on the wall of the stall with the door open as I stood wearing only a shirt, sleeping. When I woke up I started putting the toiletries that I brought w/ me back into a 80’s style denim purse. The purse wasn’t that big but it fit an alarm clock, a large bottle of lotion and a ton of other stuff that normally wouldn’t fit in one of those purses. None of the men in the restroom found it strange that I was sleeping against the wall or that I was the only female in there. I was the only female until I walked out and passed another black woman. Before the appearance of the other black woman I was the only black person in that dream. (that same bar use to be a recurrent dream theme but it hasn’t been for many years now and to my knowledge I haven’t dreamed of sleeping while standing up or the thing with the purse until now. but that same gay bar in that same location use to be something I dreamed about all the time.)

When I finally returned to the dorm I realized that I had nothing clean to wear to class the next day. Like usual I got side tracked and kept forgetting to do the laundry. I ran around visiting and playing w/ Captain (who I did not have while in college.) Every time I went into the hallway of my dorm more and more students piled square baskets of laundry in the hallway. Each time I went in the hallway the amount of laundry (all colour loads) increased by about 5 or 6 baskets. It got to the point that I could hardly pass to get to the elevator to get downstairs to continue my course of laundry avoidance.

In that dream I never got my laundry done the same as I’ve not gotten my laundry done for the last few days. It’s piling up beyond belief. There seems to be more and more every time I turn around. It takes a heck of a lot for us to get dressed because we have to decide who is dressing us that day. Therapy appointments are the worst because mostly we want to wear our safe outfit but others want to venture into their own style. We have these apparel conflicts quite often but for certain on therapy days. Trying on this and that then tossing it to the floor to try on a 4th or 5th outfit is not uncommon around here. Sometimes we settle on a mix of Joan and Robert which makes us look rather butch but most often we wear what Joan wants to wear. That always includes a baseball cap. Even if we wear Joan’s clothes we still have a pile of clothes we tried on and tossed on the floor. There is still a pile of discarded outfits that we’ve not picked up from when we tried them on for therapy then settled on the safe outfit.

Even though we dress as Joan or Robert we always have our token and the majority of the time we bring Captain when we leave the house. So even if a person doesn’t win the clothing war they at least have some sort of safety back up.

Needless to say I have a bunch of laundry to do, towels & whites but mostly there are endless colour loads.

Austin's August

 

Still Tired- Meds, more

Published
by
Austin
on May 26, 2006
in General Chatter, Mental Health and Therapy
. 1 Comment

I'm still tired….i'm not as tired as i was but i'm still tired.

i told Dr.B that i would continue to take the medication and I will. I'm considering re-starting the Seroquel even though it makes me pee every 5 minutes and i have a mouth full of sweet teeth not tooth. the sweet teeth with that med is just crazy. it only lasts for 2 weeks but goodness do i crave sweets during that time! Then i venture into the dairy products. not good since i'm lactose intolerant. cravings make you do stuff you would normally take lactaid before doing.

Speaking of teeth, I watched the re-run of CSI w/ the lady from Mommy Dearist. man did she have some seriously large false teeth. my goodness. all i could think during the whole show was how huge her teeth looked. and then w/ my brain i ran with it. what would happen if she started chewing and couldnt stop. my God we'd have a massacre on our hands. picking up chewed bodies off the set would really be a disturbing task. heck for me to see that would set my recovery back a good year or … 5. how much fixadent does she require to keep all those teeth in? what happens if they fall out? is her denture cup larger than normal to accomidate her huge false set? how big is her damn toothbrush? i fear for those who eat at the same table or in the same room with her. God forbid she should ever brake one of those things. if that hit the floor there could be some major property damage. She has alot of money so she could pay for it but she could never pay to repare her pride or her rep….

moving on…..
I told Dr.B I would eat and I have (I dont have large teeth). About the meds, my concern with not taking the Seroquel is that I remember too well how good I fel when i was on it… my brain didnt go on and on for hours at a time when I was taking it. I had a brake and man was that nice. I stopped because of the side effects. I didnt want to gain a bunch of weight while waiting 2 weeks for the sweet teeth to die down. right now i feel rather troubled in my head and I think the Seroquel may be of help with that.

"they" say you can't shock a therapist but when I told him that I'm not and have never been med compliant he was rather shocked and concerned. he mentioned that eating, sleeping, exercising and things like that make a huge difference in mental health as well as physical health. I tend to agree with that… plus, i was reading something the other day that said that people that sleep during the night like humans are supposed to lose weight faster than those who sleep during the day.. lord knows i'm a night owl. so can i blame my chubby self on my irregular sleep patterns? I plan to.

well, it is 2:40AM and I should sleep before the sun comes up so i dont gain any weight. its back to the love seat for me cause in a few hours i'm going to have to get up and travel to that other rest spot.

Joan of Arc

Tackling My Issues with Beds and Bedrooms

Published
by
Austin
on May 25, 2006
in Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dreams, Mental Health, PTSD and Therapy
. 1 Comment

Tackling My Issues with Beds and Bedrooms - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 11:30 PM

Beds bring back memories I’d rather forget. I associate them with only unpleasant things. Why would I want to sleep in a bed? I mean, dang, you get beaten on one, you get molested on one, we did our homework on it and we studied the Bible all in my mother’s bed. We ate dinner while sitting on her bed, we watched TV on her bed, we laughed and cried there, we sat quietly there and we argued there. The truth is, the rest of the house was ignored and the three of us literally lived in her bedroom so all these things happened in her room and on her bed. My sister and I didn’t sleep in our own beds most of the time growing up. When we did sleep in our own bed it was around the age of 12 or so. We had our own rooms but those beds stayed empty quite often. The thing is too, bedtime hasn’t been something pleasant. Many times the things that happened in our house were late at night or around 3am. If she said we were in trouble early in the day she made us wait all day and to get the punishment. Just before bed is when she delivered that punishment. As the night went along, if we stayed up longer and longer we could guarantee that the punishment would be more severe. If it got late she was up festering OR she was up laughing with us as if she didn’t have something horrible planned. So we’d either walk on eggshells OR we’d let our guard down and laugh and joke with her. It just all depended on how she felt that day and at that moment. Bedtime, beds, it was all connected with uncertainty and most often pain and/or humiliation. So why on earth would I as an adult be able to associate it with rest or rejuvenation? I don’t, I see them as a burden, as a constant memory that some things never change.

I don’t mean to say we never slept in our own beds but the vast majority of the time we slept with her clear up until about the age of 12. Although she made good money those beds were draped with scrap material from clothes she never got around to making us. We had plenty of clothes but she always bought material saying she was going to start making them for us. She never did and that material was used for covers and sheets. I wet the bed until around … oh man, I think it was the 8th grade. We didn’t wash those sheets much at all so the smell was quite strong. My sister did not wet the bed like I did. She only wet the bed on her birthday and did that clear up until her late 20’s. You know too, we were never required to clean our room until we reached high school. … wait that’s not true. We were in the 2nd grade but I don’t recall having to clean it after that. In the 4th grade we were not required to clean that room. As I got older I cleaned it by choice and not by requirement or force. We had other chores but the bedroom wasn’t one of them…not that I recall. I don’t think it was other than the 2nd grade that we had to clean the room or else.

Choice, the doc said that now I have more choices because I’m an adult. We talked about how hard it is for me to eat and feel like I deserve it because I didn’t work my ass off before I ate. He said I didn’t have to go by that standard anymore he said I have the right to set my own standards now and said that I can choose things on my own..things like how my bedroom is laid out and what colours I use in there. There are colours I refuse to use because I don’t want my room to look like that of someone defenseless- a child. Although my favorite colour is soft pink there is never a time when I want that colour to be dominant in that room. I don’t even wear that colour but I do love it. I don’t my room to look like a little girls room or for me to look like a little girl because to me, being a little girl is dangerous and it makes me a sitting duck (defenseless)……………..

Beds and bedrooms are hard but my medical doc said my lack of sleep is literally killing me. I could force myself to stay awake for up to 4 days at a time (6 days short of the average time it takes for a human to die without sleep.) I just didn’t want to lie down. I didn’t want to walk in that bedroom and climb on the bed. I kept looking at the door expecting her to be standing in the doorway. I could feel someone above me; I thought someone slipped into bed beside me. I listened for footsteps to come close to the door until I just couldn’t take it and got up to leave the room. Walking into that bedroom and lying down is only a fraction of the battle. I have to actually sleep and sleep means my brain is going to vomit up the past like a 3 day old re-warmed Quickie Mart burrito. Of course there is the anxiety (or emotional diarrhea) that follows. That takes hours to get over once I do finally wake up. So, the whole issue of sleep is rather …well, its messed up.

Recently I’ve started sleeping on the loveseat and then in the middle of the night when I’m too drowsy to think I get up and get in the bed. I told the new doc/therapist this and he paused to consider my statement. He said he supposed there was no hard and fast rule and certainly no laws saying I have to sleep in a bed. He asked if it was negatively affecting my health. I think he was talking about back and neck problems. I said no and he said then if it works then fine. He again said it was my choice to do so.

I make the loveseat with blankets and pillows then heat the lavender aromatherapy pillow. The dog is at my side and the kitten lies on my chest. I fall asleep that way with so much less anxiety and fear. I don’t keep looking up. My imagination isn’t looking for the mother; it’s not waiting to hear her approaching footsteps. It’s not waiting to hear her sing the “safe song.”

With the mother we knew the night would go well if she sang a certain song. If we heard her sing this song then we knew it would be a safe and calm night. My mother may have been a devil but she sang like an angel. “Go down Moses, way down in Egypt’s land. Tell ‘ol Pharaoh to let my people go. They worked so hard they could not stand. Let my people go.” I’m tellin’ ya, she sang like an angel but her skill for violence and follow through on destructive purpose were much like that of the devil himself. She was beautiful too.

Now, in 2006 I don’t need to hear her sing to know that I’m safe. I don’t need to hide inside her voice for protection or send up prayers so that she never stopped singing. I’m trying my hardest to change my views on sleeping so I have to start with the place that I sleep.

Grounding Tools: Things that remind me that I live in my own house, things that let me know I’m not in my mother’s home …

1. My mother would never have a dog in her house but she would certainly never have a cat. When I see Captain & Gracie I can know for sure that the mother is NOT in this house, that I’m in my own home.

2. (Ownership) I try to remember where I bought certain things so that I know it was me as an adult that made purchases and that they were not in the home when I was a kid, therefore I’m in my own home as a relatively safe adult.

3. (Scent) I have aromatic sprays, incense and spray disinfectants, things my mother never had because of allergies. I don’t think my mother would like sandalwood anyway or jasmine and vanilla. I don’t think she would like the scent of burning candles. These things were never in our home back then and are a visual as well as sensual cue that I live in my own home and set the standards for what is acceptable and what is not. I like that thought, I set the standards. I really like that thought.

J of A

For Ross who left a comment

Published
by
Austin
on May 25, 2006
in My reply
. 1 Comment

Ross said: ___I really don’t know what to say. I stumbled across this website while looking for information about P.T.S.D. child abuse, sudden death of a parent, fire-starting, etc. Being male, in the post-feminist revolution, I feel very awkward writing on this website as if I don’t have the right to participate, which makes me very sad. I’d like to describe something very briefly…..____

My reply:____

Men and women are welcome here on this journal. I encourage male comments as well as comments from women. I don’t think you guys should be quiet at all. I don’t see you (men) as a threat to women simply because you're male. To me, you are a survivor and that is what I look at. The thing is I wouldn’t have a problem even if you were not a survivor of abuse and left comments. The only thing I've ever asked people that comment is to act like they have some sense. Don’t leave spam on my blog, don’t use any racial slurs, don’t call me names, etc…. For me, there is no gender when it comes to the phrase abuse survivor.

Heck comments from men could be of assistance because we have males in our system that have never communicated with other male survivors. Comments by men can be read males in our system like Robert or Steven. So, to any male that reads this journal you are more than welcome to read and comment with the knowledge that like the women you’re expected to not flame or spam me.

Welcome to Sundrip.

Austin

On Being An Adult Survivor

Published
by
Austin
on May 23, 2006
in Dissociative Identity Disorder, Mental Health and Therapy
. 4 Comments

On Being An Adult Survivor - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - 5:30PM -

It’s hard to figure out why people do this or that. We knew Robert was calling the birth name and we figured out that he was actually calling our host. We thought about how dangerous that could be for the system right now if the host came back out. Today in therapy Dr.B met our host. I guess that was what Robert was doing when he kept calling to her. So now we are home and we are dead tired. It wasn’t a heavy session per say but we are still kind of teetering on the edge of shutting down.

Last week Dr.B said something about it being okay that we still struggle with the abuse issues. I remember saying to him, “Are you serious?” He kind of stumbled and then asked me what I meant by that. I told him that usually people tell me that I need to get over this and that I’m “letting the mother control my life” because I …oh what’s the word…I um, dwell on the past. They tell me to let the past stay in the past and that at this point I’m letting her control and hurt me. He says that I wouldn’t be human if I walked away from all of that without being affected by it. He said that it’s okay to still be struggling with it. He called me human, how ‘bout that. Hell, I say it about myself all the time and I say it about others …I even believe it about them…but me?? Well.. not so much. What am I then? Shit, who knows…a figment of the hosts imagination I guess.

Today Dr.B said to me that we had the right to be an adult. That is very different than saying that I have the right to be a survivor. A kid can be a survivor but a kid cannot function as an adult or benefit from freedoms the way adults do. That makes a difference to me. I wrote down what he said to me about the abuse being over. It makes me want to cry. Whatever he said last week was worded differently or maybe I heard it differently but still it means a lot to me.

When he said that I had the right to set my own standards we were talking about what I feel I have to do to deserve to eat. He said I had the right to set my own standards and I asked him why. He said because you’re an adult now. Why does that sound so strange?

Goals for today:

Eat a meal: throw the roast in the oven

Run the sweeper in the bedroom

Completed Goals:

Therapy session

Hygiene

Shit that can wait until tomorrow:

Load of whites-Phone call to Sg and UK-No fresh rolls with dinner tonight ‘cause I don’t feel like making ‘em -Cleaning up Cappy’s yard from today’s…“droppings”

Affirmations/confirmation/assertion for today:

I am an adult. I can eat dinner tonight and keep it down. I can eat dinner tonight and not worry about if I’ve met my mother’s standard of living and her definition of what it takes to deserve to eat. I live by my own standards.

(This is one of those things that will take awhile to change but I’ve got my other progress that I can be proud of.)

Just Me

Things Have Changed Inside and Out

Published
by
Austin
on May 23, 2006
in Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Mental Health, PTSD, Poetry and Therapy
. 2 Comments

Crawl

I’m bitterly grief stricken
Filled with anger and resentment as I drown in a sorrow that drags me with its undercurrent of past events
I find myself reaching for a life jacket made of stone memories anchored to crystal-clear humiliation at the bottom of a mud filled ocean.
Why do I keep doing this? Why can’t I ever reach the shore?
Why does my mind break then rise to endure even more?
Endurance is applauded only when the body is pressed beyond what it was created to do.
Humans marvel at a broken athlete willing to crawl across a finish line
He’ll receive nothing but admiration, no gold, no silver, bronze or even tin
But the crowd will cheer and years later they’ll remember him.
My knees are scraped as I labor across Mental gravel to a finish line I can’t even see.
There will be no crowd gathered, no support team cheering.
My knees are just as bloody and my soul is tired.
Yet I crawl not for a medal, for glory, for title or fame
I just want to survive this life and not have to rise to endure it again.

December 13, 2005-Maureen of Morton’s Pride

Yesterday I found a Growth Sheet on BoyyM MPD Information Pages. When I looked at it I could see areas where I’ve improved and areas that still make me shutter. I love stumbling on sheets and forms like this and things that are spelled out clearly where I can examine the past with the present.

Things have changed for us. It seems that although I meet crazy people I meet a lot of good people to make up for it. I trust a little bit more, I’ll admit when I someone though I refuse to say it too much because it’ll come to sound empty. I can leave the house now without Captain sometimes. I do not cut everyday or isolate as much. Not to run it in the ground but my biggest issues right now are PTSD. Last nights nightmares are quite clear that there is a lot of work to be done. On the sheet I noticed several things I need to work on: adapts to new situations, able to shake hands, accepts praise well, enjoys love making, chooses supportive relationships.

What all of this says to me is that I still feel like I’m bad inside. As much as I’ve worked through that underlying thread keeps going through it all. I’m bad and that’s why my mother hurt me. When I think about being touched I shutter. I hate it when someone extends their hand for me to shake. I shutter when Sg wants to hug me though I have found that sometimes I long to be held..it just doesn’t feel safe to do so. I’m dead during sex. I leave just as it starts. I’m okay for the 4 play but once it starts I’m gone. The exception to that is with my ex-husband. The reason I enjoyed sex with him was because he found me repulsive. Certainly that was not healthy for me. It is good to know what I’ve got to work on but it’s also good to know what steps I’ve taken forward. I think this was the idea Boyy M had in mind when he posted the growth sheet.

Alright well, I’ve got to get ready to see Dr.B for therapy.

Austin

My Personal Survivors Bill of Rights

Published
by
Austin
on May 22, 2006
in Gratitude Journal and Therapy
. 0 Comments

I wrote this awhile back but it’s something I need to remember on days like today when guilt is setting in. I feel guilty for kicking Mrs.R to the curb when it was her that couldnt be appropriate with me. I explained several times to her why she couldnt talk to me about her sex drive but still she does. She looks nothing at all like my mother. The only thing they have in common is that they are both African-American. I still have a hard time with this woman telling me these things. I end up hanging up the phone and really doing a job on my arms. So, since I stopped taking her phone calls I feel bad. I feel bad because she doesnt seem to get it and I know she doesnt. But the fact that she doesnt get it doesnt make me feel any better. What I’m doing is healthy so I have to stick with it for my sake.

 

SURVIVORS RIGHTS

 

I, the survivor, have the right to pursue happiness in it’s safest and most beneficial forms. I am free to find love, contentment and satisfaction in every day life. I, the survivor, have the right to let go of old tapes and create new ones. I have the right to eat without breaking my back to appease those that might give me food. I have a right to privacy in thought, in spirit and in my home. I have the right to make choices based on morals and values that I adopt as my own. I have the right to use the word “no” even when it offends others. I have the right to a future. I have the right to be an adult. I will not be bound by past obscene names and descriptions that were once used to demean me. I have the right to be treated as an adult, and as an equally respected human being. I have the right to dismiss those who have proven that they cannot accept my reasonable personal boundaries. I have the right to be who I was born to be. I, the survivor, have the right to peace of mind, to a good night’s sleep, to a memory painted with colours and not gray and black. I have the right to justice. I, a survivor, have the right to assert my rights; assertion of rights is what separates a survivor from a victim. I have the right to be a survivor.

 

Maureen

Taking A Break - Different Directions

Published
by
Austin
on May 22, 2006
in Mental Health
. 0 Comments

I need to take a break from the PTSD work today. I can tell I'm pushing myself too hard. My dissociation is increasing and the anxiety is too. I need to back off of this..plus, I have therapy tomorrow. I need to go just to kind of get grounded. He said something to me last week about how the abuse is over. I've got to ask him what he said because I need to hear it again. How ever he said it was a pretty good way to put it. I've heard it before but something about the way he said it sounded different, believable, something I can tell myself without minimizing things.

I did figure out that Robert is not calling US that name, he's calling out the host. So we apologized to Robert for thinking he was trying to cause chaos in the system and torturing us by calling us by that name. He has tortuned us emotinally before but this time things have changed. He was so angry and violent towards us before but with time and work he is not so much that way. We apologize for reverting back to thinking of him in the old way. We failed to remember just how far he's come so we apologized greatly. He's a good young man. (reassuring nod).

Anyway, so we are taking a break from the PTSD stuff right now and from major type issues with the mother and what not. We are going down hill and can feel it so it's time to back off.

Today is house cleaning and dog grooming day. Cap's legs are bothering him something aweful. The chill and the rain just wont let up. We've had a few hours here and there were the temps rose above 50 but other than that it's been damp and chilly. I hear we will reach 80 by late this week. He could use a day of dry warmth…poor boy. I sometimes put him in the jacuzzi thingie and let the jets try and sooth his legs. I'll have to do that today cause he couldnt even hop up on the bed last night and he had a hard time getting up the front steps to come back in the house. There are only 3 steps but he had a hard time getting up them. The person that beat him so badly and broke 3 legs did not break his spirit but man did they leave some arthritis damage behind.

Gracie has come out of her hiding place since Shadow left yesterday afternoon. She's doing fine. She's checking out the new(er) chair we traded an item for. It belonged to UK and UK has 4 cats and 3 new kittens along with 3 dogs and a host of neighborhood kids who have dogs and cats. She's really smelling every inch of that chair. Depsite the zoo at UK's house you cant smell the animals at all. The only way you know they are there is because they want to be petted. The dogs aren't in the house, they're in the back. Anyway, for so much activity in her home on a daily basis she sure does keep that house clean. Two kids, neighborhood kids and a husband, a part-time job as well as Lupus and FM..she does it all on her own and somehow keeps up with it. SuperWoman I think she is. Goodness! Lord knows her husband does not help out at all. He pays the mortage and that is it. She cooks, cleans, takes care of the kids, does activities with them and runs that household by herself. It's killing her too. She knows it. She is determined to not be the mother she grew up with and abandon her children. She may have married her father but she refuses to be like her mother. The untreated Lupus is going to take her, she already knows that but she thinks that while she's here she will make sure the children have what they need. In my opinion, not treating your Lupus and allowing it to destroy your insides is suicide. I told her this and she said she knows. I asked her if she really wanted to leave her kids with HER husband. But UK is ready to go. Her life has been so dang hard from day one. She's 32 years old and she's tired. So she's not having the Lupus treated, she's just taking the borrowed time to set things up for her kids. They'll have inheritance from their uncle so financially they'll be okay but they wont have her and that is not okay in my opinion. but I understand that she is tired, Lord do I understand tired. She's not just tired, she's tired with zero support systems and zero therapy. She's a survivor that is ready to stop surviving. Anyway, so we got the chair from her garage sale but we traded it so there was no money involved. They got new furniture and new carpte. I got the chair. I loved that chair anyway. I like going there because it's so homey.

so, that's what's up with me and UK. Sg is doing fine and Barney is…well, he's Barney and Mrs.R is on the outter circle.

Later,

Me