Holding Firm

 

I am goodly. I am avoiding all the podcasts, all the streaming, all the substacks and all the newspapers.

Politics can be a total addiction and I see that clearly now. I wasn't addressing some real issues in my life like another long term friend with dementia and the resulting void in my life that now exists. She was one of my first friends in Newfoundland and was instrumental in getting me into her building (there was a huge waiting list - still is).

I decided to go back into therapy after my doc expressed some concern (again!) that talking to someone might help me.

She got me in to see one lickety split (the following day) and I am thrilled that there was an immediate click with him. In the past I've had a few really poor ones but was canny enough to dispense with them. I was also fortunate to have excellent wise ones.

I realized when talking with him, that things had really shifted for me emotionally last November when I nearly died and my brother died two days later. I also realized that in Newfoundland I have one close friend (now in dementia) but the rest of the friendships were more transactional. And that I hadn't shared this massive loss and its impact on me with anyone. A few times I tried but in one case the friend walked away.

So my conclusion also was that I used politics to fill that massive emotional void. And I could feel myself slipping away.

So onward into a better emotional outcome for me. 

I feel lighter already.

Because

An old photo from the old house, lovely lilacs that always bloomed late June, early July.

I said I'd write about this process here. I just checked the web and I see nothing formally written on it which surprises me. Because, like, everything's on the web now, right?

So basically this is what I would do before, when I was deep in therapy for childhood issues and resolution, forgiveness, understanding and attempts to reinvent myself as a worthwhile person.

This is an actual example from an old journal:

I dread having my father coming to stay with me every year.
Because?
I am always tense and afraid around him.
Because?
I am angry at the way he treats me.
Because?
I could never stand up for myself when he abused me.
Because?
I am afraid he will hit me and shout more abuse at me.
Because?
He is an angry and abusive man
Because?
He doesn't know how to be loving and kind towards me.
Because?
He never learned when he was growing up
Because?
He was born
Because?
There was love.

So then a decision had to be made. I return to self-love. I could show him love but I made the decision not to have him for extended stays in my home anymore as he continued his modus operandi which was to strongly favour one of my children over the other and abuse me verbally if I did not give him enough attention when we holidayed together. He was unable to show me love.

So applying it to today and my physical challenges:

I hate not being able to run and hike and walk anywhere.
Because?
My legs and back and now my neck hurt.
Because?
I smoked like a savage for 25 years
Because?
I had an addiction to nicotine
Because?
Nicotine is the only known antidote to anger
Because?
I had unexpressed rage
Because?
I was abused as a child
Because?
I was born.
Because?
There was love.

Decision time: I was born. There was love. I return to love. I deserve a good life. I am disabled. Say the word again. I am disabled. I dealt with my past life in the only way I knew how. I was strong: I chose addiction over suicide. I now choose to say I was born out of love and I am now disabled. I will ask for help. I will treat myself with love and care. And not anger. I will put systems and items and people in place to support me in my disability. And embrace my limitations.

It's like coming out of a closet full of mangled emotions and disagreeable resistance and an inability to express what's really going on beneath a pile-on of inarticulation.

This aging business is a journey, and has endless possibilities once I face my own limitations head on and return to love, of self, others and this wonderful experience called life.

Stone and rocks and sea and sky. June 2016

The Dynamics of Long Term Friendship

My friend came to me today, deeply troubled.

Her 65 year friendship with her bestie was on the rocks.

Her friend, B, had made weekly plans with her, dinner on the Friday.

S, my friend, called her to confirm on Thursday.

B said, things had changed, now they would meet Saturday instead, offering no explanation.

S called her on Friday to confirm and B responded something more exciting had come up for Saturday so said they'd have to meet some other time.

S called B today to tell her how hurt she was and was immediately gas-lit. I've written about gas-lighting before as some in my own family of origin are experts. I didn't know anything about it until I read an article a few years back and the light bulbs went off. S had never heard of it either but when she went over how B had treated her on the phone:

(1)You're too sensitive
(2)I have a life, you should get one
(3)You're forgetting all I've done for you
(4)This is so trivial.
(5)You should apologise for harassing me.
(There was no apology offered by B, you will note.)

she kept nodding at me. It was familiar territory to her in this friendship.

I discussed a long term friendship I had lost. It all boils down to the respect given and received, doesn't it? How we value each other. There were underlying issues (passive aggression and continual tardiness) in my former friendship but basically, for me, it was that sense of having no value, evidenced by lack of contact - an inherent laziness - and dismissal of efforts made by me to cement and honour what we had.

We need to be seen and heard we both agreed. I suggested she take timeout as I had done, to re-evaluate. To get to the point, perhaps, where they could sit down and see what each needs from the other and how they could prioritize and respect what they have.

A difficult process but if both participated equally it could re-ignite that intimacy of 65 years and forge a new respect and connection.

Maybe I should have been a therapist?

I've often thought so.

Life Long Learning

Isn't it great? - I mean the fact that we are never finished learning about this life business.

I had a session yesterday. What should be obvious often isn't. And vice versa. I can't believe what's tumbling out of my head. Stuff I hadn't thought about in years. Linking previously (to me) unrelated events. And sharing. And it's astonishing how he can weave a tapestry out of all this.

Like the man says, terrible losses can open up every single loss in one's life. All over again. Fresh. Or for the first time if they've never been looked at before and dealt with. I'd rather deal. For what happens is: every creative stream inside is finally set free and becomes "magnificent in its flight". We shall see. The pieces of every sorrow are gathered within us ready to fracture again when a new loss is inflicted on this huge ball. I wouldn't have believed it until it happened to me.

Plus insight. Example: living life like a stereotype, a cliché, for most do. Automatons, told how to feel, desire, behave, respond, accumulate, judge, terrified of anyone who marches differently and thinks tangentially. Never for me, thanks.

Maybe we need to be more like metaphors. Ha!

Happy New Year 2016 to all you duckies out there. Keep waddling and quacking.

Breathe. Feel. Learn.

Me and Da Couch

It's been a while since I had "outside help" - I'd say close on 30 years now. Well actually "outside help" is a misnomer for surely it is "inside help". Stuff for the spirit, soul and psyche. If you believe in that kind of thing. Which I do. It's either that or pills and I am surrounded by sedative/tranquilizer and anti-depressant takers. I'd rather take the therapy route. I don't judge the others who opt for the chemical solution. Ever. It's a very personal choice, some like to keep the daemons buried. I wanted to stop feeling so discombobulated and raging after sobering up so had no hesitation about unlocking all the childhood misery so many decades ago.

I just looked up my therapist from close on 30 years ago and found his obituary. He was 93 when he died last year. An amazing man, he brought me from darkness into a place of peace with my past.

The thing is when I seek this kind of help I'm always hesitant and almost apologetic. So much serious crap in the world and here I am sullying your doorstep with my trivial concerns.

Was I set to rights rather quickly with my case review yesterday. Dr. Patrick (pseudonym)looked at me intently and said:

"I have rarely seen anyone in my long practice with so much devastation in 8 months. Actually, come to think of it, never."

And I bawled my eyes out when he said "you've lost 3 anam caras", using the Irish language. Anam cara means, literally: friend of my soul.

And over an hour and a half I poured my heart out and he said to me then:

"The privilege in my job is that I really, really get to know dead people and the families supporting or abandoning the bereaved."

And he proceeded to gently cast a light on behaviours that have hurt and baffled me and the ongoing pain and loss of creativity that have me plagued and the overwhelming tides of grief that take me unaware.

He told me to try and find one small moment in every day that brings me a sliver of joy until he sees me again.

I feel the beginning of hope and renewal today, a little match struck in the darkness.

Into the Grief Room

Some trepidation in the parking lot.

Some downtalk as I enter the room, you know the drill: "what the hell are you doing here when so many others are so much worse off?"

Some tears. Gulping them back.

Recognition of others and others of me, my gawd, we're all in the same boat of anguish and pain. We're all new to this process wondering what to do next with our lives which have this meaningless, hollow ring to them.

Understanding. Everyone here gets this. Understands the absolutely crazy insane thinking inside of the skull of the bereaved.

Down to the total lack of comprehension of the process from family members. The sheer cruel isolation of it all.

I was totally at ease in that strange, loving, kleenexed room. For two hours.

My blood sugars were normal when I took a reading a few hours later.

For the first time in months and months.

Mind=Body.

I'm a believer.

Quote:

There's a point in which life stops giving you things and starts to take them away.

Mind over Matter

I would consider myself fairly in tune with my body, my emotions, my mind, you know?

Imagine my shock when my doctor adamantly, adamantly disagrees with me.

I thought I was cruising along nicely, yeah, it's been a shyte year, so many losses I can't count them at the moment.

And yeah, I feel on the edge a lot of the time. The edge of what I couldn't tell you. Disaster I suppose. Another awful thing maybe looming around the corner ready to grab me by the throat.

And Doctor tells me my health is really, really suffering. My blood pressure is now worse than before, my blood sugars are all over the place, my body is not happy, my outlook is depressing. And to top it off my eyes are red like I've been on a bender.

Surely to gawd, I say to him, grief couldn't cause all this havoc in my body.

And he laughs at me.

List all the griefs for me, he says, pen poised.

And I do. And I was surprised, the list was so very long.

And he says: death of many major friends, loss of family, loss of emotional connections, a dying dog, a long-time missing daughter - you need grief therapy. Stat. Meanwhile I'll up your meds again, but this is it. There's no more up, we ran out of ups today.

I've obviously lost the run of myself.

Jewels

There's something about good friends who come to stay.

Hard to define.

I've lost a fair whack of them in the last few years, so the remaining are very precious indeed.

So last night, just the sitting and chatting and sharing the "all-of-its" is better than a week at a spa with therapists hand and foot 24/7.

Ya know?

Just Breathe

I am reminded of how fragile we all are. Regularly it seems.

I'm having some medical workups done at the moment, the usual (I would think). I avoid doctors. But I recognise also that for some it is inevitable. And I need some evaluation as my stress level is far too high right now. So tests. And tests.

I was the one who insisted my BFF Helen demand answers last August when I was in Dublin. She'd been feeling "weird" for a while. You complete a marathon in May and sit under a patio heater in June and feel full of brain sludge the following morning which won't leave and then get prescribed anti-depressants until you can no longer articulate what's wrong with you and your stash of books goes unread and you can't eat. And that story resonates with many. Symptoms missed or misconstrued and women? Anti-depressants! I believe most of the world is on anti-depressants. They are supposed to be a short term solution while therapy sorts one out permanently. Meanwhile, my glorious life-long friend died excruciatingly of a brain tumour in December.

Big Pharma makes of it a racket. And the effects are audible and visible. More brain sludged innocents meandering around. A sedated population is malleable, yeah? I'd say many of my intimates are on such meds. Some tell me, some I perceive as being not quite there at times.

I was suicidal at one low point in my life. And I was prescribed anti-ds while I underwent therapy. A good therapist is essential. Mine sorted me out, I couldn't believe all the repressed stuff that kept pouring out. This was after I sobered up and let go of my 40+ a day smoking habit. The alcohol and nicotine had kept everything nicely tamped down. I was a raging lunatic for a while. Couldn't believe all the repressed emotions. Particularly around this and this

But like they say, the brilliant they, you never quite leave the room(s) you slept in as a child. Profound when you think about it.

So yeah, I remind myself to breathe, especially when those frayed old scenes start haunting me.

And you know? When I wrote those long ago blog-posts about my own childhood, my volume of emails from you guys out there went through the roof. It's good to know I'm not alone.

Uncertainty

I test the waters sometimes. With trusted friends. You know, reveal a bit of the inner. One has to be careful because trust is bathed in fragility for some of us.

My world was uncertain as a child. I could never trust my footing. And yes, I can trace the beginning of it to here.. In untangling my life with the aid of a good therapist, years ago, I got to understand the whys of my personal quirks but corrective measures? They ebb and flow, with the moods, with the atmosphere, with the health.

I never quite trust. And I question did I ever? I hold back. Waiting for a chasm of indifference to yawn up in front of me. Nothing is forever. Those good feelings of today can vanish with the crack of dawn tomorrow. Ones I love so desperately and completely can vanish, can shun, can evaporate without a wave of farewell or a wisp of explanation for their frigidity.

And I confess to surprise and shock when people around me show me a measure of love and respect I feel unearned. I want to push them, to test them, to prove to myself I was never worth the fine feelings they exhibited towards me to begin with.

It is said a life unexamined is not worth living. I concur. Even though the answers can be ephemeral. How do we know what goes on inside another's head? Are they uncertain too? Not that they'd ever admit it. Not that I would. Unless clothed in anonymity.

But some days, some days, I would give anything to feel my footsteps ring firm on solid ground.