Brick by brick, not sky scraper by sky scraper

Y’know, something I have learnt, and then learnt to find real comfort in over the last couple of months, is that just so so many women have a trauma involving men. Like so many it is fucking heartbreaking. Within this realisation and connection has come a lot of comfort in knowing I am not alone, but also so so much anger, rage, and a feeling of protection for us females. But, anger is so much better than withdrawal and isolation around the subject…the route I had taken until now. I am so not off that route, but I am slowly beginning to know it is safe to talk and to share about it, even if only one or two sentences at a time. Baby steps.

When healing from any kind of trauma or ANYTHING as a matter of fact, knowing you’re not alone is so freakin’ key. But I feel this even more relevant to a trauma that can leave you feeling so dirty, so ashamed, so powerlesss and embarrassed, and just wondering whether the world should just swallow you up because of it. Or that you should tuck it under a rock in the garden and never ever look at it again. In a way this is kinda relevant to any kind of abuse. Hearing tales of others going through the same journey of healing, has brought so much comfort to me. Even though I have only heard a few, I realise my great stint with silence and living as though it “wasn’t that bad” or that it didn’t even happen, is a very normal thing. I was numb.

The few stories I have heard of people keeping schtum with their rape or sexual assault until years down the line when it all just burst out gently or not-so, gave me reassurance that I’m not the only one who goes this way. To look at beautiful women around me and know that they have encountered some kind of abuse of their rights, in varying ways, brings solace to something I just never ever ever thought I would end up facing or sharing or dealing with. I need more of this, I know I do. But to even find words to type and the confidence to know it is okay, is a big whammy of progress…so, sitting amongst a therapy group of women will be one day too, I know it. And I long for it. Just not yet. They need to be the right kinda women. And for now, these kinda women are the ones I find online!

I still feel a million miles away from truly embracing this trauma, holding my hands up and letting the empowerment fill my bones, and feel full of beauty and power despite the dirtiness,  shame, helplessness and most of all, the terror that still lingers. But, I am getting there. Something I notice that is helping me along the way is working how the way to share in a way I feel safe. Like, actually all the gross and fucking mingin’ details are not the ones I want to share. NO THANK YOU VERY MUCH. They are things I never want to think about again, and don’t really believe I do need to – unless we’re talking within an EMDR session. The things I do need and want to share with loving folk around me, are the feelings I had/have around it. These are the things that are safe to share, and don’t leave me transported back in a PTSD spaceship, to the time when one of the most awful things happened to me. The fact I could have died. The fact I was so isolated and desperately alone, literally. The violation. The terror. And all the other things that I can’t quite bring myself to type just yet. That PTSD spaceship still kicks in pretty quickly.

It’s hard really because I feel almost split down the middle. One side of me feels as though it’s going to burst at the seems if I don’t talk about it ALL, and share everything. Right. Now. It blinds me and leaves me seeing only this terror and feeling of trapped-ness as though it only happened yesterday. Yet the other side of me wants, so strongly, to gently let this trauma seep out. Rather than it being a tsunami wave that hits and causes destruction to any kind of feeling of stability, control, sense, peace, that I have just recently in the last couple of months, begun to find. This side wants to integrate it slowly, little brick by little brick, not mega sky scraper by mega sky scraper, and honour the fact that I am still connecting to the fact that this trauma even freakin’ happened to me.

Then, the wiser witnessing part of me that is increasingly taking shape and coming into strength, knows that actually what about a balance? This part of me can step away from this split down the middle feeling, and know that a balance can and will happen. A little bit of falling apart and sharing it in the moment that I get the desperate urge to, but with the knowing that I don’t need to share it ALL that milli-second – I can let it be something I feel in control of. That PTSD spaceship is the thing I blame for this – the way that all control of your processing and sanity goes out the freakin’ window and is replaced by serious anxiety and a feeling as though you are right back in the moment the trauma happened.

Well, by hopefully continuing to just type out little, or long, words about it. Simply just sitting in front of the computer, feeling the feelings but typing about something completely different or just loosely associated to the topic, is so freakin’ healing. By slowly knowing it is safe to have these memories rise in my mind rather than get freaked out about it. To tell these memories I am safe now – to be able to converse with them, or just put them in their place, rather than get swept sideways is a giant leap on this path of healing. And by gently sharing the Feelings, not the gory details, with those I love or with those that I know understand, will continue to bring solace, rather than fear and disconnection.

I think by these kinda ways, this trauma will slowly integrate brick by brick and leave a lasting foundation of strength and empowerment and protection – of myself and towards all the other women in the world. Then, someday, I’ll be able to openly share this thing that happened with a solid knowing that it is safe and I am safe, fo’ real.

I only love myself when I’m cool

I used to think self love was just one of those cheesy things that just the hippies I grew up with were into. Now I realise it’s something that we all need to be into. And actually, those hippies I grew up with weren’t actually ticking the boxes of self love in its entirety after all, I realise now. But that’s an entirely different conversation.

Self love, to me, means forgiving, nurturing, accepting, allowing for, honouring, and loving each and every part of you. Not just the pretty parts. Not just the cool parts. ALL OF IT. Recently I noticed my self love boxes were being ticked and I really felt like, for the first time in my life, I was really getting to grips with this nurturing stuff. Every day I was feeling this warm sense of pride for myself. And it was feeling just lovely. But then the anniversary hit and in the days, and week, that followed this I fell of the self love wagon and onto the shame one. The shame wagon was where I made a home for myself, got cosy and nested for a week. It was shit. It took a hell of a lot of effort to slowly wade my way out of the duvets that were keeping me there, quietly festering and sitting in the depths of my own emotions and hatred for myself.

But slowly, I began to do it and make my way back to the self love wagon. This only properly happened yesterday. And what a freaking’ relief. There were lots of little steps, but there was just this inability to let love in and to feel love that was stopping me make the final step outta the shitty shame wagon. I shared it with friends a bit – my feelings of shame – and I took myself out into the world when all I wanted to do (and had been doing rather a lot) was lie in bed at home. But nothing was properly shifting it. These little bits of encounters with love was lovely n all but my heart only opened up for about a few seconds and then it went on shut down again. And the most frustrating and painful thing of it all, was my inability to connect with any kinda love for myself. Zero was there…Zilch.

There was the biggest resistance to the act of loving myself or letting others love me…like, so so physical I just couldn’t shift it…because of what I did, blah blah blah. Slowly I saw that actually the love was there – this stuff never goes anywhere, it just gets masked by other shit – but I just couldn’t trust that it was safe to connect with it. But, eventually I did. Through somatic experiencing in therapy, and a craniosacral appointment, things managed to click into place a bit more and my love was/is back.

But what I realised, through this whole lack of love venture was that self love is a whole lot fucking harder than I thought. I thought I was getting it but actually, I was getting it in relation to the bits of me that are, in my opinion, loveable. Not the other bits…like the high maintenance, complicated, frustrating, loser-ish, really-fucking-way-too-beyond-acceptable sensitive, HARD WORK, parts of me…hell no. Not those parts. I found myself laughing as I was on the phone to a friend saying, “I only love myself when I’m cool”. It was half a joke and half totes truth.

I was beginning to fall in love with my vulnerability, my sensitivity (up to a point), my need for nurturance – from me and from others, my imperfections, my anger, my need for gentleness, my weirdness, a little bit of my high maintenance… And any of those things that I wasn’t quite falling in love with, I was learning to forgive me for them or allowing for them to be there. But I kinda was learning to see that actually these things were loveable from the outside too. All these things I had shunned and tried my freakin’ hardest to NOT EXIST…there they were, and here they are. I just hadn’t allowed for them to be here before. But I definitely do not want to allow for all the other shit bits that I really find hard to love…like all the extra weird, extra hard work, extra fucking complicated and frustrating bits of me that I now realise are there. And not just there, but there with (shitty) flying colours.

Damn. I thought I’d gotten this self love business nailed. I’ve put that to the side though and I just trust that as I continue to grow – both in myself, and up – this ability to love the even wider whole of me, will come. I reckon it will. But fuck that’s scary, cos what if I end up loving myself and I’m a total nightmare bitch but I don’t realise because I love myself so much I don’t notice…? That’s what I trust my friends are for. To just give me the heads up if this happens. I’ve asked them.

Right now, as I have switched wagons and am sat back on my self love one, all I want to do is be with myself. All I wanna do is hang out, with me. Just me, myself and I. And y’know what? It’s fucking lovely. I saw friends today, at a festival/market down the road, and that was nice. But all I could think was how I wanted to be lying on the grass at my allotment, reading my book. Last night I sat for two hours on my favourite hill as the sun set, writing my journal, and just glowing with pride and love for myself. I think I’m making up for that week or two of shame, self hating, hell.

With the risk of sounding like those bloody hippies I grew up with, I love myself today. A LOT. And I really mean it. And, it feels real good. I was looking at pictures of myself – actually, correction…I was taking pictures of myself to show off my somewhat dodgy self-done haircut for Instagram (YEP, we all have done it – the photo taking, maybe not the haircut), and then looking at them…and I kept on thinking, what a cool chick, who’s that girl? Oh, that’s me! Oh she’s lovely, beautiful, ace, and so loveable…yep, that’s me.

And that’s when it clicked. I love myself. I am feeling pretty cool today, despite the intense fatigue and pain, I feel pretty darn cool. And so what if I only love myself when I feel cool. My cool is a pretty wholesome cool. And fuck, that’s an achievement from six months ago. So I’ll take any love I can get from myself to me. The other lot of me will get loved when the time is right. Until then, I’m off to hang out with a film and FOOD. Just me, myself, and I.

The Wellness Resistance

So for a while now there’s been this thing I’ve noticed. It’s the resistance – the fear – of healing. It’s like an internal battle I’ve got going on with myself. And I feel like the deeper I get, the …

Belonging when you never have before

Everywhere I have lived, I have found myself part of a family. And sometimes more than one. It is just how I roll. I have the ability to nestle my way into families pretty quickly. But never have I felt like I belong. Maybe this is part of why I have moved around so much. I always just thought it was just because I liked adventure (I think this has a big part to play too!). Never have I stayed around long enough to have to how all of me to anyone, really. Any hint of potential of me screwing up, I have moved on my way. Or withdrawn and waited until I feel good enough to be able to be my best around everyone that I am with. This just isn’t sustainable. And it’s not real either. But it’s all that I knew. And, most importantly, it’s all that I’ve known is safe to do.

Yesterday whilst speaking on the phone with a friend, she was telling me how I was now part of this family she is also a part of. I have been told that before, by other friends or people, but I couldn’t ever comprehend what that meant. I don’t know what it is like to be part of a family that isn’t fucked up and riddled with abuse and/or switched responsibilities. Basically, when you experience severe and consistent developmental trauma, your connection with family kinda gets cut off right there and then. I was on my own from the age of three. Not consciously, but subconsciously.

So, I have never truly belonged. I thought I had but just today I realised I haven’t. There’s the surface belonging, and then there’s proper belonging on every level. Up until now I have belonged but I have belonged with not All Of Me. It’s like I’ve been on the edge of belonging, but only a quarter of me has ever felt like I do. There’s the rest of me that has never ever been able to imagine myself as being loved and part of a group, or a family. And this definitely has come from the lack of trust in showing the whole of yourself to whatever group of people you’re with. Never have I felt it safe to screw up, make mistakes, show my supposedly ‘ugly’ bits and know that I am still part of the group or place or people I was/am with. That’s my stuff. I’m sure I still would have been, but I just never knew it was okay to do that.

So up until now I have always only belonged in a Surface Belonging way. Hence feeling so isolated and alone in it, when actually all my life I have always been surrounded by such beautiful friends. And deep, real, beautiful friends. Not surface friends. This shows that the ability to belong lies within us. Yes, some of the factors are environmental and we need to have the nurturance around us, but a big chunk of this belonging is down to us. And time. I believe this ability to grasp the skill of belonging, comes at the right time and comes with time.

Today I realise I am building up this ability to belong. But it doesn’t just happen naturally. For some, perhaps for those who have experienced belonging from an early age, maybe it does happen naturally. Like, it’s not something they have to consciously think about – their being just knows what it’s doing. But for those who have big unmet needs from childhood, big gaps of loss and grief, and strong experiences of trauma, this experience takes effort. And it also takes a safe environment for this effort to be made, and then met.

Recently I have been worrying about just how many ‘unmet needs’ I have from my childhood, and my adult-life. These unmet needs can screw you over big time, on a deep psychological level, but I truly believe that you can fill these needs, no matter how drastic, massive or life crippling they have been or have felt…you just need to make the effort and to work out how, for you. We are all so different and so it is purely a matter of making it work for you.  This is the reassurance I give myself when I am crippled with the grief of the lack of parental support, and the desperate need for it NOW. This is the reassurance that I give myself when I see just how much shit I need to ‘work through’ and process. This is the reassurance that I want to give to others to: that despite whatever crap went down, and whatever ways you were ignored or abused, there are always ways in your adult life that you can fill these gaps and heal these wounds. It just takes time and awareness, and LOVE. Love from yourself, and love from trusted others. But you need the love from yourself in order to really let the love from others in.

Self love, self acceptance and self-forgiveness are definitely the beginning of this belonging work too. But also, in order to be able to belong to others, we need to belong to ourselves. Trauma brings about disconnection: from ourselves and from the world around us. This disconnection that comes from trauma, is the recipe for things like chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, etc. With this disconnection from ourselves, comes self-hatred, self-destructiveness and most of all, just a lack of knowing of who we are. And a lack of knowing that we are safe just as we are.

As I begin to know it is safe to be me, and as I begin to love this Me, I am able to know it is safe to not be perfect. It is safe to let people into your life, and let them stay around long enough for you to show them all your vulnerable, emotional, complicated, sensitive, and bizarre bits. It is safe to be a bit ‘difficult’, to act like a teenager, to need reassurance, to withdraw and run off, only to return the week later and still know you have a place there. Slowly, slowly, I am noticing that I am doing this and it is still okay. I have often been told that to have relationships in your adult life, heal those that were abusive and destructive in your childhood.

Speaking with my friend, I realised that I for the first time in my life actually can truly imagine myself as part of this family. That’s the difference – in all the other times in my life, I have belonged but I have NEVER felt it in myself, or imagined myself as though I am part of it. I have always felt separate. But now, I think I really know this family is there for me, just like families are supposed to be. Sure it is not in the traditional family sense, but fuck traditions. I’ve had to let go of that wish a long time ago of the desire for things to just be fucking normal. This for me is absolutely huge. To be able to feel as though I belong is as though I have just won the lotto in love. It feels weird, it feels bizarre and something I definitely do not trust yet, but just the fact that I think I can feel it, shows I am on the road to truly knowing it.

We can all get our unmet needs met, however big and impossible they feel, it just might look a little different to what we dream of in our heads. But, it can still hold just as much power, and just as much love, and just as much healing.

Fudging flare-ups

Reading online about flare-ups, the spoon theory, and reading comments from you lovely readers, it does nothing but reassure and comfort these big fat stints of chronic fatigue, like the one that is happenin’ over ‘ere.

Jeez.

Truth is I think I have kinda forgotten that I’ve got chronic fatigue because there’s so much other shiz going on in my life at the moment. There’s the EMDR, which leaves you completely whacked afterwards. There’s the Somatic Experiencing which kicks up your nervous system and re-regulates it. There’s the trauma memories that have been surfacing on their own accord, and the emotions that have come with them: the anniversary of my overdose, the ten tonne weight of grief for my mom (or lack of), and the smack of shame that I’ve been experiencing. There’s my Liver. And then there’s the anger that’s been hitting hard these past few months, rising up, roaring around and then settling back down again, leaving me exhausted in its wake. All these things have big physical effect…all different to chronic fatigue. Every day chronic fatigue is a big feature, but more like an underlying current beneath the river of whatever-other-shit-is-going-on, instead of it being the river running through my day like it has been for the years before…in the bad spells I mean.

Each day is something COMPLETELY different, emotionally and physically. Just as intense, but varying in the what and the why and the how. In a sense, this has given me faith. It is heartbreaking, but it weirdly gives me faith that this is trauma release happening. And my health healing. Take the liver for example – it’s not going to be effecting me this way forever. I am doing all that I can to support, repair and nurture (MILK THISTLE)…so sometimes I find myself worrying about the state of my health but in this specific case when it feels so so liver specific, I can take reassurance in the fact that everything I am doing is right. If I was eating milk thistle but going on mega long weekend benders, mainly involving litres of Cider, then perhaps I wouldn’t find so much comfort in this…although it might be a bit more fun. Both my herbalists (yes, I have two) say that they believe that the majority of my symptoms will ease – both emotional and physical – as my liver begins to repair. And I really really believe them.

I haven’t had a flare up like this in a little while that hasn’t been directly from either a therapy, that flippin’ experiment with those drugs, or something else. I don’t do very well in these times. It’s the pain that gets me the most. The shooting pains that come and go, the consistent painful ache that shudders through me, the painful sensitivity to light and sound, and the need to just have my eyes closed. In these moments I just want someone here that knows. That understands. That can make me a cup of tea and laugh with me at the ridiculousness of it all…and cry a bit too. It’s just mental how you can go from a day feeling just a little bit crap, to a day of feeling like you are being eaten from the inside. This is the hardest bit to explain about this experience – I mean, how the hell are people around supposed to understand this sporadic and unpredictability it holds? It just kinda makes sense that people might think we’re making it up…”how can your body just suddenly collapse for no apparent reason? You seemed fine yesterday… Maybe you just need to stop thinking about it. Maybe you just need to go for a run, or have a good sleep.”

UGH.

In my heart I know why it is here but it just breaks my heart to actually admit why I feel like I do today, because I feel like as a 25 year old I SHOULD be able to do the things that I know have brought this spell on…but ‘should’ is a fucked up word.

• I ran three freakin’ minutes for a few trains, two days in a row.
• I woke up at the crack of dawn and went to a car boot sale with friends for a morning.
• I have had shitty nights sleeps, falling asleep real late and waking early each time, with the sleep being bonkers and not restful at all.
• I have been doing a lot of work on the computer. Not even that much, but for me, more than normal…I’ve been getting excited and totally absorbed by it too, ignoring needs for a naps.
• I had a mega intense emotional week last week with the anniversary…and the body remembers, yo.

So all in all, these few things that someone my age ‘should’ just be able to do, I know is what took the wind out of my sails…particularly the running for the trains. But jeeeeez man. And y’know the screwed up and confusing thing? Some days I would do this and it would not have the same effect…yes, I would feel shitty afterwards or the following day, but I wouldn’t be attached to my bed crippled with pain, sensitivities, nausea, aches, and tiredness, like I am today. Truth is though, I am getting so much better at rolling with what comes my way rather than sitting and working it out…like I have above.

All I can do is have faith that with this trauma release and nervous system re-regulating, this chronic fatigue will regulate and fuck-the-hell-off too. And I think it will. To the extent that it is here anyway. Sure, it may well be a sensitive point for me for a long time, and I reckon it probably will. But if it just means that I need to take it a bit more easy, then that’s cool. But if it  I worry about what on earth I am going to do as work, and I wonder whether applying for the job I mention in the post before, is not such a good idea…who knows. But one thing I do know is that I literally cannot go on how I am feeling now, to determine the rest of my life. No-one can, but I know for me I particularly can’t because I am in the midst of a big fat trauma healing/release time…and so things are ever-moving. And, maybe as the rest of my physical and emotional symptoms are a bit more consistent, as the acute trauma release stage passes, then at least perhaps I’ll be able to manage this chronic fatigue better…I’ll know that by getting up at the crack of dawn to go off on an adventure with friends, after a week of not-good nights sleep, will be too much…whereas at the moment I just am living for the moment because that is all I feel like I can do. With time, perhaps this will ease and I will be able to know my baseline a bit better. I have faith I will.

It is hard to not just push myself when I feel like this, because I feel like crap every day in some way…but this kind of crap is different. Really honouring it, resting, NOT pushing myself, is the only way that it doesn’t stick around and doesn’t hurt even more. One thing about my days being so different, is that I really have embraced the self-nurturing title…this is huge. Before I would have desperately tried to make the most of every moment of every day, with whatever energy I could find within myself…but now there feels a desperate need to TAKE IT SLOW. To not panic and fret that I haven’t done the million things I need to do in the day…that I haven’t walked to the bank to do the thing I have been needing to do for a week now.

Nope. Instead, on days like this it is simply a matter of eating, and looking after myself, that I have all the spoons for.  Because maybe tomorrow I’ll have a few more in my back pocket, and I’ll be able to do the things I ‘need’ to do. And if not tomorrow, then next week… One thing I have learnt to trust when your energy and health feels a dwindling and chaotic mess, is that things really do always work out. When you can’t do something, you then do it at the time you CAN…and it always always ends up okay. It really does.

Chronic fatigue, you’re a (confusing, painful, and unpredictable) bitch.

Early birds

I wake up early. It’s just how I roll. Whether I hit the pillow at 10pm or midnight or 2am, a 6am rise tends to always be what’s in store. Sometimes, sometimes, I sleep until 8 or 9am. When I do, I wake up grinning like I’ve just won the Lotto.

I always, not one exception, have the urge to go outside. Straight away. Most of the time I just open my big windows wide and let that be enough, stuffing down the desperate need for nature and proper fresh air. I always have the running dialogue of ‘you shouldn’t do that, you’ve just woken up’. Because I don’t see other people waking up and diving straight out their front door in their baggy pants and wooly hat at 6.30am, I think it’s weird if I do. This is one of the most annoying habits of mine – stopping myself doing stuff because I don’t see other people doing it – but it is beginning to gently break. And that’s such a relief.

This last week has been undescribably bitching and I have felt the importance of bringing myself back to the Now…constantly. And connecting to nature around me is the way I do this the most. It eases, inspires, nurtures, reassures and grounds. Or, when things are proper tits up, it at least just holds me. All the other things come with time.

So, one morning last week I listened to that urge to go outside, and went for a potter with my camera at 7am before the city had properly woken. The aim was to remind myself where I am, that it is 2013, that I am okay, that I am going to be okay. And it worked. I realised how, despite how much I soak up the beauty of my surroundings every time I go outside, I don’t realise how in the city you truly can connect with nature amongst the concrete. That morning stroll showed me nuggets of beauty that I hadn’t seen. I sat by a stream that I have always just walked past, wishing for the river or the sea. But that morning I sat by it for twenty minutes and realised that, despite it not being perfect – I couldn’t swim in it – it was still there. One of my most ultimate sources for resource – water. And now I have found some just down the road. Sure, I will always have a painful wish that it’s more, but at least there is some.

I am terrified of Spring. Because with spring comes the year mark of my overdose. And what follows spring comes the Summer – when the most trauma would happen with my mom. So, I go against the grain of the British world who are wishing the winter away – I have just been longing for it to stay. Because also, in the winter, it is easier to hibernate and feel like shit, because the rest of the world tends to be slightly dozey too. But come the summer I just have that painful longing for health. My chronic fatigue feels like a constant punch in the face, gut and heart. Every. Summer’s. Day. And now I’m living in a city, I fear this even more too.It’s a fear I can’t describe. It’s like a panic that runs through my bones – as soon as the sun comes out, I have to be in it, outside and in some form of water, or on some blustery hill with no block of concrete to be seen.  The summer to me, means every waking minute outdoors.

This morning stroll gave me a blast of faith to all those fears I write above. It may not be perfect where I live, but there are many things about it that I need right now. And every day, most of my waking hours, nature is incorporated into it. So, despite it not being wild and free, it is still nurturing a big chunk of me. Compromise is one of my words of the moment,  and I feel it quite fitting for this nugget of life too. As for the fear of the month it is, and the summer on its way, this is the year I am healing and releasing the trauma, so this is the only thing that seems to soften this fear of what is t come. Only just. I am still terrified, but it is so deeply stored in my body that all I can do is just notice it and gently prove it otherwise. And I know this is what works. That is all my body has known, but my soul knows otherwise.

Maybe Spring isn’t, and won’t be, so bad after all.

These are just a few of the treats I found. The chubby little guy in the first pic sits directly opposite my window every morn, greeting me with a ‘cuckoo’ whatever the hour, whatever the day. It’s lovely. I’ve named him Dave.

These Special Days

Christmas, Birthday’s, Easter, Mother’s Day…all these special days whether they’re big or small, hit hard. No matter how much I try to look the other way and pretend they’re not happening, or more like that the feelings of grief or pain that surface around them aren’t happening, it doesn’t really work.

I always feel like denial is just safer, y’know? Especially when I’m knackered and emotionally flippin’ wiped, I just feel like looking the other way protects myself from what surfaces when I stare it in the face instead. I tried pretending today – Easter – isn’t happening. But the fact is, it creeps up into your day whether you try to look every other way possible…it’s just there. And so is the grief. And so is all the chocolate.

And…so is the heartache and heartbreak, grief and loss, too. Despite how much shit was going down in our household home, we always made a focus of holidays like this. And birthdays too. But in a weird way, it’s not so much even the ‘holiday’ that is significant now. It’s just another day. A day with meaning, but still just another day. It’s almost like I have this band-aid laying on top of my pain and grief from my life, protecting me from feeling it all at once and allowing me to feel it gradually and safely.  But days like this rip off a bit of that band-aid in a way I don’t want it to. They just bring stuff up whether I like it or not. They’re a trigger. And they are for anyone with turmoil in their life, and even if not. I used to, and still naturally do, desperately cling onto these days in a hope for things to ease, but instead these kind of days just remind me of how completely mental and tragic this whole thing is.

I cannot help but feel the pain. It’s just how connection works. These days are connected with ones from my past, and I wishfully long for them to not be connected, but they are. Physically and emotionally we store these memories and they surface when they have something familiar happening again. It’s just the way this life works. And so as I sit here, wondering where my dad is, wondering where my mum is, wondering where my sister is…wondering how they all are…wondering whether they are okay… My heart feels broken by this overwhelmingly discombobulated story of a family and the pain within it, but I realise it is safe to feel this. Feeling is the healing and making of me. Stuffing and denial is the self-destruction.

Today it feels different. It feels another kind of significant. It feels like another beginning of my chapter of my adult life. Away from the mess that followed before. It’s the chapter that’s been beginning this whole year – the chapter that will lead to a million more stories to come, of my own life away from my mum. This I know is only a bloody wonderful thing, but the young child in me still holds that hurt. Holds that longing to be with the family again, in the fantasy happiness that I so well create in my mind.

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be truly alone. Like with absolutely no one close. Because despite how alone I so often feel, I realise I really am not. Like so not. I always always have people around me in my life that love me. Whether they’re close by or far away, I always have people here. So on days like this when I feel like there isn’t anyone right here I realise these are the days when I need to take a deep breath and picture all those people that hold me close. Just like I do to them. The fact is I have The Most Wonderful array of close friends. Like, so good they should all get a medal. And I wonder too whether there is anyone that is actually ever completely alone. I just don’t believe we work like that as humans. Even if you do an Into The Wild stint, there is always someone that is holding you in their thoughts at some point.

That gap that I used to so desperately feel was never ever filled, is a gap of two things. One being the big gap of grief for a mom, but then the other is a gap of self-love. This one is now beginning to be filled and the other – the grief – is now beginning to be felt and known it’s safe to be. So all in all, I think the reason I can sit here and know that despite how alone I feel, I deeply know that I literally couldn’t be further from it, is because these gaps that were so roaring wide are beginning to heal or fill.

By sharing these words, these thoughts, this pain, there is room for the awareness that actually, this is not really that big of a deal. It’s just another day. And a stunningly beautifully sunny one at that too. But when these thoughts just stew in your own brain you don’t have the capacity or room to just let them go and laugh at your worries. Sometimes they just need to be told. Other times they need to be held and felt. Today, I’m sure, will be a mixture of both. Whatever it is and whatever I do, I hope that I remember how much has changed too.

Happy Easter y’all.

Beginning the million stories

There are a million stories I want to tell and a million things I want to yell at the top of my voice, telling the world every last detail. Sometimes I get overwhelmed at the desperate need to do this. Other times I know that over time I’ll get this chance. But sometimes the need feels so so strong I don’t know what to do with it, or I don’t know who to call. And so it gets buried.

This week it’s been something new. It’s been a story that I haven’t really shared with anyone properly. It’s a story that still feels so bizarre that it hardly feels mine. Yet the rage is here with it now, and for me anger feels the most ultimate way of connecting. Connecting to whatever has happened and owning it as yours, in the most empowering – and as a result, healthy – way. And when this rage, and this connection, is here it is safe to talk. In fact, at the right time, it is essential.

It’s not so much the details that I am feeling about this incident right now. It’s the rage that I want to yell about. I want to yell thousands of what the fuck?’s just to The World and anyone who is listening, and hundreds of you selfish bitch right to my mum’s face. And then so many more things, so many more times. The details I am desperate to share just to paint the picture behind this rage.

July 2010 I walked in on my mother hanging herself. Hold fire here, it is not the horror movie type thing you may imagine, but it still is incredibly fucking awful and horrendous in its own unique way…as all these things are. They are never like you see on the movie screens – instead they are their own fucked up thing that happens in its own fucked up way. Just like break ups are never what you see in the movies, life changing or life haunting things aren’t either. The image of what I found that night was one I struggled to shift from my mind for quite a few months afterwards. The whole thing still feels so surreal, but so clear at the same time. In some ways it feels like it just happened yesterday.

What was she thinking? How did she think it was okay to do that? To let her daughter find her doing that? But that’s the sick and twisted thing in this – it was just so normal. This kind of thing had never happened quite like it did that night, but the heart-breaking piece in this crazy puzzle is that to find her like that just fitted the bill. Her crazy and messed up bill. Sanity wasn’t a theme here.

To put that on your daughter…? The one who has cared and looked after you for all the years before. All the years she could have been being a care-free child. She didn’t know I was coming home, she thought I was staying at a friends, but I don’t know if she would have actually followed through. She’s too much of a coward and always was. Instead it was like her own psychotic play date with herself…putting up the rope and hanging from it. Teetering on her tiptoes on the stool below, hanging over the railings that led out of the kitchen. Stuffing a tonne of grass in her mouth. That was how I first found her – the sound of her breathing through this mesh of greenery. Lunatic. Maybe she would have followed through. This I’ll never know. She left a note…a lengthy detailed one.

I’m so effing mad at the whole situation. I’m mad at the fact that this kind of thing was even ever a part of my life that I had to get to know and see continue to grow. I’m mad that I had to see this and have this happen. I’m so fucking mad at her. Her selfishness. Her bizarre sickness that shadowed itself so well into normality. If she was just constantly Plain Sick it would be so much fucking easier. To have some more clear cut, black and white lines where I could see sanity and insanity would have made each and every year of my life a whole lot more fucking clear. But instead it was never like this. There were chalk drawn lines that were brushed and bruised with the back of her crazy hands. There was just one massive grey area that my sister and I tried to navigate our way through, never getting it right – always getting it wrong. This night was a perfect canvas on which I can paint my whole fucking life. Yes, speaking with therapists or professionals now, I can be told til they’re blue in the face that she was sick all my life. But she was my mum. So this title of ‘sick’ just doesn’t cut it. Yes for many months or weeks she completely lost her rocker, but this night she seemed ‘sane’. And for so many of the other years too. Yes she was fucking hard work, abusive, narcissistic, a rollercoaster of behaviours and edges of personalities, but she was still present.

But this night she wasn’t. She seemed it all those hours before, just like she had seemed it in all those years before, but actually she was just in her early of psychosis. It was the middle of summer. It was when these things just always happened.

This makes me even more mad that she had an air of sanity to her yet she still chose to do this. To let her daughter find her like this. The word selfish doesn’t even cut it. To walk in and find her when I was desperately trying to navigate my own life – a recent split up and the severe peak of my Chronic Fatigue – just meant this hit harder. The emotions that I have flying on the surface feel blinding and irate. It was almost like just another tally on my widespread tally chart of the shit in life. This was just another teaching that ‘life is hard’. It was just another thing that paved the way for me to just take what came my way at the end of that summer – the nasty word beginning with R. The shit with my mother just meant I thought this is just how life goes. 

And you know what? It turns out it doesn’t. Yes shit happens. Yes trauma happens. But you don’t have to take it. You can get mad at it. I know we can’t change what has happened, and that’s okay. But what we can change is the knowledge that, after a lifetime of just taking abuse because we don’t know anything else, we can begin to Own what happens as ours, because we deserve what follow this. The healing and the empowerment.

I want to tell the story of that night in each and every darkened detail, because for me it is getting that night back and letting it pave the way of this road now. Rather than dragging with me all the shame and guilt that came from what happened then. I should never have ever had to cut the rope of my own mother, but I did. I can’t change that but I can change what I do with it.

What followed this event was one of the best weeks of my life. I headed to where felt like home the next morning, to friends, the ocean and the most beautiful week of surfing, beach fires and fun. From one extreme to another. This too is the most perfect canvas on which I can paint my life. So much pain, but so so much beauty.

The year mark

The year is almost here. I can feel the date in the diary heading my way fast. It is still only a month away but I worry that I will become all encompassed, all enthralled, lost, and unable to be …

Why did I call my mother?

Regret. It’s a nasty word. It’s one that just sometimes can’t help but seep into our bones on the odd occasion. But it is one of the most unhelpful and most draining things for our Soul, that we could do.

I realise, instead of regret, I tend to wonder. 

Why did I do that? Why did I think it was a good idea to do that? Why didn’t I do that? Why did I not just keep going a little bit more, and push through and finish that project? Why…? 

This wondering can cause a spiral to self-judgement and self-disgust, doubting the decisions I have made and wishing for them to have been different…just that one fucking time. But my Wondering, as much as it has loved to take that path, it seems to prefer the path of inquisition. The Wondering becomes a genuine inquiry into why I did what I did. Not for judgment of myself, but almost like a ‘why’ to the World…to life. Why did that stuff happen, why did I do what I did, life? What was it to bring me next?

One particular thing that is running through my mind when I think about this is the question…

Why did I call my mother…? 

Two days before the overdose. The thing that fundamentally caused the overdose: a conversation with my mother. Why did I call her? What the FUCK was I thinking?

I had been living in California for 5 months. I hadn’t spoken to her for the entire time. Except for a Skype call on Christmas day, and a phone call a couple of days following, but these didn’t count because she was on her Breakdown/Pre-Psychosis Planet. During these 5 months in Cali my PTSD and anxiety had been developed, had slowly riddled its way into my daily life, and was now what I was facing to deal with. My mother was the main trigger for the PTSD…the main cause of the all the shitty trauma (bar one thing). She was the one that fucking started all of this.

So it just makes sense that she was the one that almost ended it too. In a way it feels logical that she had this role. But I didn’t succeed, and fuck I’m glad I didn’t. But why did I call my mother that day? What was I thinking?

To call The Route Cause Of Your Trauma when you are in the world of reliving it (through therapy or flashbacks), is just plain silly…it is not a done thing in the land of PTSD.

I remember it so well. And I do know what I was thinking. A couple of things. I was thinking how I wanted to try for one last time to have a mum. I needed money…I was skint. I had about $40 to my name. I had some in a savings account, but I needed the telephone number of a distant family member in order to access it. The thing is, I didn’t need to call my mother. I could have called my sister. I could have emailed my mom. In fact, I could have emailed the lady that I needed to phone…I had her flippin’ email address. And I didn’t even need to call her…an email would fucking do.  So why the fuck did I CALL my mom?

There was this part of me that went ahead and dialled her number, despite all the inner instinct that this is not the right thing to do. This part of me that called, wanted to try to see if I could take my mum up on the offer she used to throw at me from time to motherfucking time:

“If I’ve fucked you up so much, I’ll pay for your therapy.”  

I remember this flying out of her mouth. I never did anything with it because, fuck, I was NOT going to therapy. Not to sit there and speak about this fucking lunatic that raised me. That was the last thing I wanted to do. Mainly for her sake, I realise now.

But in California I did. I spent 4 months twice weekly, in therapy.  And so, seeing as I had been spending $100 a week, and this had been a big reason as to why I had dwindled my funds, I remember having a baseline intention for my phone call. I didn’t want to acknowledge it properly at the time, but basically, the reason I was calling my mum up was to see if she would follow through with her offer she used to throw at me for all those years. I wanted to see if, for once, she would be my fucking mother. I wanted to see if she would give me the money I needed.

But she didn’t…she wasn’t.

She was the complete opposite. She was indescribably awful. What came during the call was trauma – another fucking shitload.

In that moment of inquisitiveness…that moment of wondering…I called the person I wanted so much to have changed. I called the person that I KNEW had not, would not, and will not ever change, but the person for whom I had always carried a candle of hope that she might…that this time it would be different…that she might finally be the mom she could be.

I called her because something inside me must have known that I needed this to happen, to bring me to overdose, to bring me to where I am now. That has to be it. That has to be the Why. Why else?

I don’t regret that I called her, I just wish I fucking hadn’t. But I wish that the whole thing – the overdose and what followed – didn’t happen. Or didn’t need to happen. But when I sit and wonder what would have happened had I not called her, I see that actually what followed this call, really was something that needed to happen. As fucked up as it sounds, I think I needed to overdose. The way I work is that I don’t do things in moderation. I either do them or I don’t. I needed a kick up the ass, a rebirth, a transformation, to enable me to crumble and fall, and ultimately: heal.

I regret that my mother was the trigger for this. I regret that she got this role in this story. But she got this role because in those twenty minutes when I needed her most, she showed her true colours. She showed me her what she is made of. She had shown me what she was made of for the 24 years previous, but I had not been in therapy, or been out of the situation enough to truly see her. That day in San Francisco was different. I had begun to create the me that was solely me, and not her, and calling her took me right back to her. And this shit and abuse that came with it.

So actually, I don’t mind that she plays this part in this story. Because, for once, I get to show the world what a true mess it was. She was.