I feel like Im dying inside!!!

[Copabanana]

My child is in trouble.

These last few days I have been up all night, unable to sleep, a kind of mania to ward off, now, and yesterday, the sadness came.

Since the news about Omar Sharif and Alzheimer's I have been counting the years I have left to live fully, if I can. I figure, if I am lucky, 15 years, not many.

I count back to 15 years ago, to see where I was, who I was.

Living in different countries, learning languages, learning dances, studying in 4 colleges, working in 7 different towns, learning and playing bridge, doing art and photography, buying a house and remodeling it. Found a nice man. Parenting my son from age 11 to 26.

And 3 years of those years my Mother's, caring for her, and the horrible devastation that followed that I will call mourning her...but it was really a sort of death of self.

Fifteen years is enough life left. If I live it.

Except I'm not.

Re-entering a protracted period of devastation about my son, would mean I am giving up years of life that I do not have to give. I have already been in bed over a year and a half---because I have not felt able to confront the truths of my life.

I must begin to participate in the FOO Chronicles. There is so much horror there in me that continues to form what is now.

To try to resurrect my Mother, I tried to kill myself off psychically. To save my son, I try again. There has to be more tools in my toolbox, so as to repeatedly kill my self off. Freudian slip.

Maybe he/she is right when she says what she says, when she thinks what she thinks about me and does what she does to me.

This is what makes PTSD so disabling. The original trauma is repeated and repeated and repeated triggered by remote and unrelated events.

Feelings, relationships, absolutely unrelated to the trauma itself, trigger it.

As if there is some interiorized exploding remote control bomb in you; fate or G-d or whoever has chosen to put in you some delayed release death capsule that intermittently releases its toxins.

Or worse yet, that your life navigation system or Geiger counter is so distorted, so mal-programmed that thinking you are going for the gold you instead seek out disordered people who harm you...as to self-implode...re-aligning with your true destiny which is a child in trouble.

I need to remember this in relation to M. He is the only person in my life that I have ever even kind of trusted, and the only one I have trusted to be close to me. The true word is care.

Because here is a secret: They were always difficult children.

Yes they were. In my case, I chose him.

And that is how the circle closes on us; that is the place we go blind as bats. I cannot turn away from my troubled child we say.

This is where the metaphor of chewing off limbs in a trap serves me.

Cedar, I will begin to post on the FOO Files....it frightens me because I am tender there and fear exposing myself to the responses of all. As I write I realize that is precisely this that cleanses and strengthens. I will do it. Thank you, Cedar.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Cedar, I will begin to post on the FOO Files....it frightens me because I am tender there and fear exposing myself to the responses of all. As I write I realize that is precisely this that cleanses and strengthens. I will do it.

When you do it, if you do it, I will be there Copa, and we all will be there. Here is a quote: "Right needs no defense. Just good witness."

Stay scrupulously anonymous, Copa. This is for you. You merit privacy. You are fighting for your sanity, for your soul.

Sacred ground.

***

It is having nothing to hide from ourselves that is healing. As I posted and posted, I was able to see my abuser through my adult eyes, instead of seeing me through my abuser's eyes. When I couldn't do it, when the disgust or self hatred went wordlessly deep, I called in witnesses to see for me. It isn't about our abusers, Copa ~ it is about being done with, about reclaiming.

Living in 3 countries, learning two languages, learning 3 dances, studying in 4 colleges, working in 7 different towns, learning and playing bridge, doing art and photography, buying a house and remodeling it. Found a nice man. Parenting my son from age 11 to 26.

And 3 years of those years my Mother's, caring for her, and the horrible devastation that followed that I will call mourning her...but it was really a sort of death of self.

You are like me and like SWOT and like so many of us here, Copa. Women (and men) who have met challenges, created their lives in spite of everything our pasts predicted, and by our choice intend to have what is ours by right.

Access to our full selves.

They had no right to do what they did, Copa. Decency forbade it. As you go through it, as you release the polluted obscenity that was all they left us with, you will come to the other side. Clarity of vision is an astonishing thing.

It is disconcerting.

Hold on.

When a traumatic floats up, all gaseous and stinking and scary, I feel a version of those same feelings that broke me away from myself. It's like a honeycomb, or sometimes, a hornet's nest. Sometimes there is the sweetness of honey. Sometimes there is nothing but knowing you have nothing to fear, that the hornets are long dead and you are immune. Sometimes it is like drinking poison, facing and savoring the pain to learn its stink and its chemical structure and its intensity and live through it.

Sometimes it is wordless horror, or such intense sorrow, such loneliness, when you know there is no one to help you, now.

We had to break off pieces of ourselves for that too, Copa.

I see you.

I see you back.

so as to repeatedly kill my self off. Freudian slip.

True, Copa.

It was the only way to survive what happened to us.

But we lived.

I have already been in bed over a year and a half---because I have not felt able to confront the truths of my life.

I never was able to figure out what was true. That is why there cannot be compassion for them, for our abusers. Not yet. Not now. Our living compassion is how they did this to us, Copa. That is why we put everything away the way that we did. We believed them.

They were wrong.

As if there is some interiorized exploding remote control bomb in you; fate or G-d or whoever has chosen to put in you some delayed release death capsule that intermittently releases its toxins.

True.

It is the scent of those toxins that guides us to our own healing now, Copa.

I see you.

I see you back.

And this time? I am the Red Queen; and I will have my way.

I had to see it that way, Copa. It's really hard to stay present to it.

And these are only the echoes of what was done to us.

And we were just little girls, Copa. Or beautiful young women, in that special way that all young women are so breathtakingly beautiful. Or young mothers, with our babies and our lives and our happiness.

Or worse yet, that your life navigation system or Geiger counter is so distorted, so mal-programmed that thinking you are going for the gold you instead seek out disordered people who harm you...as to self-implode...re-aligning with your true destiny which is "A Child is in Danger."

Yes.

Our abusers broke us open, left us vulnerable; we didn't even know that, Copa.

We do, now.

Shall I do it? Post again that I see the abuser, the abusive incidents? Yes, because it is as much for me as it is for you.

I see you.

I see you back.

The true word is care.

There is an old Beatles song: The love you take is equal to the love you make. It is all about taking, rolling around in it, relishing the good, deep laughter of your own Presence.

I had no idea I was so pretty, so like, brilliantly light-filled, inside. I don't even have to say "I see you / I see you back" now Copa, unless I want to scare whatever is left to be changed in me. The brightness is so intense that the smaller things shrivel up and die.

Which leaves the bigger ones, of course.

On we go.

F you, mom.



In the saddlebag on my Conduct Disorders motorcycle of determined intent is a needlepoint "F you, mom." Your name, and SWOT's were added to that, also in beautifully done needlepoint, some time back, Copa.

I posted about that. I don't know whether you saw it.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Wow, Copa. I did suffer from depression, but I never did lie in bed and toss and turn over E. and her abuse or the fact that my siblings apparently missed it. I went on with life focusing on my new family and a few dear friends, one who died too soon. I did not angst over whether I should have compassion for E. or not. She was so vile to me that compassion was not on the radar. I could see nothing about her that needed my compassion. So I slept fine. And I didn't feel guilty. I tried to mend the relationship before she was gone as I believe that it is best spiritually to solve these issues before one passes.

It didn't work.

The tossing and turning came now, after I realized, mostly because of how my sibs don't know about the abuse, that I was in fact the scapegoated identified patient (look up identified patient...it is interesting). Now that I realize what I am, I know what SHE was and what the rest of my family of origin were and are. In serious denial. And that's ok. It is not relevant to me or my experience for them to validate anything in my life.

I have yet to ever have such horrific problems with the other people who were and are in my life other than my screwd up FOO, including my in laws from my first marriage AND my ex-husband. We still speak. I have good feelings about him. We had bad feelings directly after the divorce, but we talked them out like two civilized humans and it is over.

My FOO could not or would not talk things out. They all felt that they were right, maybe even me when I was with them. They brought out the worst in me, and in my opinion in each other. As for communication, they wrote letters or e-mails...you can't talk back to a letter or an e-mail. And I did it too. It's part of our dysfunctional family worked...or, I should say, did not work. Nothing ever got resolved, like in functional families.

Why feel compassion for those who hurt us in a cold and calculated way and do not take up for us when there is a predator trying to destroy us? As E. tried to do to me...and lost.

Another big question...why let them control our thoughts to the point where we can't function? What give them the power? The pleasure they would get if they knew! I do not know if you are in therapy, Copa. I've been in it for decades and it really helps. I lay it all out there and I get over it faster. They show me how silly it is to hang on forever.

Since I have gotten over the fact that Thing 2 and 1 were reading my blogging here (which is actually a compliment and, more importantly, an indication that, for some reason, I am important to them), I have stopped all contact with them myself. How can I do that, you ask, when they have ended contact with ME first?

They didn't. Reading my innermost thoughts, even if they don't believe t hem and ridicule them, is being in contact with me. It's thinking about me. It is showing me that I am important to them, although I don't understand why. Thing 2 needs somebody to ridicule? Even if it's that, I am not on NC with either of them unless they have stopped.

On the other hand, I am truly in NC with them. I don't check up on them in any way. I don't talk to my father about them at all. I don't know what they are up to. I don't want to know t heir inner thoughts. The best thing I ever did for myself was to NOT read the cleansing letter Thing 1 sent to me. I am so glad I don't know his list of phony gripes (I'm sure we'd disagree on them) and I am not up for reading anything else they have to say about me. As two strangers, they are free to talk about me all they like. I am truly NC with both...and I am glad.

But they can not let go of me and that is harmful to especially Thing 2.

Let go, Copa. You will never get any answers from these people. You will lose sleep over nothing. You will possibly lose a good husband over people who were abusive to you. It isn't worth it.

JMO.

Hugs and lots and lots of peace vibes. NOTHING beats peace of mind and feeling warm and fuzzy to be with your peeps. And your peeps are NOT your FOO.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I am so glad I don't know his list of phony gripes

I need to remember this way of seeing for myself.

I was preparing myself to listen, to be swayed, to be coaxed back in. "I'm so glad I don't know his list of phony gripes."

Phony. Gripes.

Cedar