seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Vietnam
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Panama
seen from United States
It’s like grief. The brain fog has been pea-soup thick for two days. It’s like grief, like wading through sludge, the not-thinking is so intense. And when I go to find what I’m not-thinking of, there’s nothing there.
And I’ve just realized that I didn’t actually complete the order on the last two dresses.
indigo waxing crescent moon of new hope
Gave up and ordered the five dresses to have a working wardrobe again. With wearing tops over solid color cotton nightgowns so my nightwear can double as sleep wear I can pull it off. No idea where the money will come from, but I’ve been putting the purchase off for three months now. But who cares if I wear the same tattered outfit four days in a row? I need to care. I need to care.
It took something like twenty minutes last night to place the order... after I’d put the two dresses that I knew would fit into the cart. I kept “needing” to look something up, check something else-- while the Wolfman kept asking, have you actually placed the order yet? I would have wrapped up and walked away from the computer without actually having pulled the trigger for sure if it weren’t for him over my shoulder.
I’m terrified to think about the credit card bill this month. That bike has got to sell.
Shouldn’t I be happy that I’m going to have clean, comfortable clothes to wear?
Shouldn’t I be happy?
And one of the things that I have to cross-examine and be aware of is how getting lost in the “big picture” of this takes away from connection with the small stuff that is also a battle ground.
Hanscom uses the metaphor of a forest fire. It has to be fought on all fronts, with co-ordination, and in sync with conditions as they change.
It was... it’s so tempting to anthropomorphize this, to name it, to speak of it “talking”... but the only face and existence this has is my own.
But the *feeling*, as I read through the research behind the program, as I took the time to digest all the implications, as I began preparations for the exercises...
The feeling was as if something were telling me, “How dare you think that you’re going to live, you useless piece of filth.” Like I could feel it hissing at me.
When I woke up this morning, I did the Waking Gratitude immediately. Because I had to reach out, with what I knew was in me.
I’ve been so frustrated about the fatigue in my legs skyrocketing just the week after I’d managed the milestone of eating vegetables every day. Just when I was starting to feel more healthy, more competent, and more stable.
I no longer think that’s coincidence. I think the spike in symptoms was a deliberate threat-response.
It’s like I’m living in one of those films where the evil is a shape-changer and the hero is realizing nothing they perceive is fully to be trusted. I’m having to cross examine every impulse. It wants me to attempt everything but succeed in nothing. It wants me to prove how worthless and worth hating I am. And that’s so easy to do, because there’s so very much to do.
Late last night I thought I heard the Wolfman crying, but when I got up he wasn’t sure what I had heard (if I wasn’t hallucinating, which is always a serious consideration).
I shared what’s going on, with starting the very tip of the Hanscom program and the shock of having discovered not merely that part of me hates myself, which has always been kind of obvious with the whole fighting suicidal ideation since the age of seven thing... but that the part of me that hates myself isn’t just reflexive defense mechanisms, absorbed habits, sorrow and wounds and desperately misguided responsibility blaming myself as a side effect of trying to take on too much. Nope! I saw yesterday, the I that hates myself glories in hating me, revels in my disgust for myself, experiences perfect self-righteousness in my self-hatred and in the prospect of my destruction by any means available. Basically, Pure Evil.
I was not expecting that.
blue waxing crescent moon of new hope
This log has been working, and in the past couple days I’ve practically stopped using it. And from what I’m starting to see of myself, there is every reason to suspect I’ve stopped using it *because* I’ve worked through enough on it to make it really effective.
SO. Yesterday. My folks came to town, and they brought the new family car that can carry four oversized adults (three with disabilites) and a kid in a car seat, and we all do actually fit in it W00t! Although we’ll fit more comfortably if we put up the thrid row and I ride back there.
We had a beautiful lunch out at the cafe where Kindred Sprite’s paintings were on show so my mother could see them and she adored them, we had a magnificent dinner at a favorite restaurant that we used to go to every year where none of us have been in years because we couldn’t travel as a family anymore. They ran me on three errands at the end of which I successfully emerged with a new stopper for the new sterilizable neti solution pot.
Also I met My Own Pure Evil.
Always thought that was just a metaphor of my people. Nope.
“I can’t do this alone. I can not face this and work through this on my own. I’m going to line up and start professional help to get through this.”
Uh-huh. WOW. Some part of me REALLY REALLY does not want this to happen.
I feel like... like every night after spending the day nose to the grindstone doing what I can about the crisis of the moment, I lay in bed and try to push again the bigger problem underneath. Like a cartoon where some character has been shouting and throwing things and trying their very hardest to get the dragon’s attention-- and then it works-- and then they realize, they now have the dragon’s attention.
And if I keep analyzing it, the analysis itself will turn into a way to avoid the doing.
I'm really struggling with the Hanscom pain program. It feels like I've spent my life being forced by experts and mounting symptoms to make peace with taking my limitations seriously... and now I'm being told that current hard research says I really can inner-work the pain (and fatigue and fear and depression) away. That wouldn't be hard to hear if I didn't have so many value-judgments attached to it. But I do.
He writes that being suicidal is a state of anger. That suicide is the ultimate act of destruction. In all these years, therapists, books, positions, that absolutely does not match any thing I have ever learned about suicide anywhere...
... except from my own experience. It exactly matches my own experience, in a fireworks going on “how have I never seen this before” kind of way.
This is a MEDICAL website and there’s all this talk about the power of forgiveness and letting go of hate and inherent destructiveness of anger, and, it is terribly terribly unpleasant to recognize that I’ve already done all the work of recognizing all of this... and that I’ve never done the work of actually doing any of it.
I am shocked, shamed, and appalled that something in me really does not want to heal. Shocked, shamed, and appalled-- and at the same time too tired to really feel.
Sister Spineless. Shut down. Move on.
