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Strange Star

About to go to the big meeting. Talked to birth mother, S, on the phone. She sounds nice. My body is flipping out. I have been taking it easy all day. Lots of rest and meditation and a short bit of exercise. I ate twice, showered. How basic can we get here. I think my parts are all flipping out. Am calming them as best I can when I can. It's all I can do. I want to meet this woman before one of us dies. I just cannot keep putting it off. I will be fine. We are meeting at a place near my house so if I need to go, I can. My husband or son could easily come to get me. I need to keep remembering that. I want to be courageous about this but I am very nervous and scared. At least that's what I think I'm feeling. At least no more puking so far today.
 
I did it. Totally fine, I think. Even agreed to go for an after-dinner drink with her daughter and granddaughter (that was a bit much for me I think...very tired). They are all very nice. The meeting with S was good but surreal. We look like each other except she is much shorter than I. Which is weird because I am short. Rarely do I get to tower over anyone except children. She gave me the name of my birth father. Told me stories. I think she was quite relieved that I was not angry with her. Told me stories about the home where she had me...definitely a dreadful place...

So today I take them to the beach. The granddaughter is from Texas and has never seen the ocean! I will commit to not overdoing it. This whole thing is a bit much for me.
 
So. We all get to the beach--I send the two girls to get the chairs out of the tailgate. A car backs into mine, pinning my daughter's knee between the bumpers. Came to hospital in ambulance 2.5 hours ago. Nothing broken in knee but it has some wild bruises blooming. They gave her morphine. They're doing ankle now. Hoping thres no ligament issues etc. Poor baby. The birth family drove my car to my house where we had parked theirs. My son entertained them until just now. What a mess. Could have been worse.
 
Memorable with the birth family if nothing else. Tragic for your daughter. I am so very sorry. I can't imagine how that would be for her.

As an aside, my friend in Toronto had a son who was caught in the very same position. Trapped between a car and a garage. He was eerily calm about the whole thing. I realize now that was dissociation. I wish I had known more about it at the time or I would have advised my friend (the mother) about not just dealing with the physical aspect. Now, I would advise that on top of the physical care you are giving her I would get her psychological help as well as that is a 'freeze' type of trauma. There was no escape from it for her. I don't mean to scare you .... I just think that if you can catch it right away it may not have lasting effects for her psychologically.

Much love Hope to both you and your daughter.
 
Now, I would advise that on top of the physical care you are giving her I would get her psychological help as well as that is a 'freeze' type of trauma.
Agree with this.

Not that this is top on your mind right now, but this should be added as part of the settlement that you will receive from the insurance of the person who hit your daughter. Did you get the insurance information from that person? The insurance company may try to low-ball you -- try to get you to accept less than you want or are entitled to. Tell them "no". And repeat it as many times as you need to. Your daughter was injured due to negligence -- accident or not. The driver and his/her insurance company are fully liable for all medical costs -- physical and mental -- as well as costs related to the overhead of having to deal with this situation and any legal costs you may have to incur.
 
So today was yet another example of so many things. Yes, I'm posting about ME now, not my daughter. I have settled her down to sleep. She ate. She took the painkiller. She did not want to go to sleep because she is afraid she will have nightmares about what happened. But she was able to talk through the whole thing from beginning to end with me. And to say something she did (twisting her body around) that saved her knee from being crushed. Which is good.

But now, finally, as I am lying in bed typing here, I have a moment to reflect before I crash. I have always said I'm the sort of person who is really good in a crisis but falls apart afterward. I haven't fallen apart yet, but it might be coming. I was quite calm today. Calm enough to vaguely register what happened when my car jolted and I heard screaming. Calm enough to get my car into drive to release my daughter when (I'm told) the elderly woman who was backing up did not stop backing up even though people were screaming at her. Calm enough to hold the ice pack to her knee with my shirt as a barrier until the medics came. Calm enough to keep up a constant stream of soothing words to her until the medics needed to get to her. Calm enough to tell the elderly lady who stood in front of us to tie her shoes before she tripped. Calm enough to realize said elderly lady was in shock and very upset and to ask the medics to look at her (she soiled her pants...and was clearly in shock). Calm enough to hug my half-sister (?!) as she sobbed on my shoulder while they loaded my daughter into the ambulance. Calm enough to get half-sister to drive my car back to my house and to alert my son to their arrival (he had not yet met them...yikes). Calm enough to talk my daughter through all the lifeguards and police and firefighters and EMTs who arrived on the scene.

Calm enough to recognize that my birth mother who looked in shock herself was probably flashing back to when her son of the same age drowned. Not able offer her comfort too. Just not enough of me to go around in the time available.

The accident was an accident. Could have happened to anyone. I have backed into another car before. So has my husband. The accident was clearly not my fault. And yet, all I can think about is the poor woman who hit us. And that if I had not asked the girls to get the chairs out of the car... and if I had not been so worried about my birth mother who doesn't walk well, so I had pulled up close to the beach instead of parking... and if and if. I KNOW this is not good thinking, but I'm thinking it anyway.

I think I am okay. I am using all the skills I know to make sure this is not yet another trauma (little t) in my endless list. It will be a long while before I stop seeing my daughter in my rear view mirror and hearing her screaming. Brought back when she almost drowned at age 2 and I saw her screaming under the water but couldn't get to her fast enough. My sister in law pulled her to the surface.

Then there was the ambulance. Brought back my recent and unwilling ride in an ambulance. And then we were taken in the fast-track ER area today where my father died. As we wheeled my daughter through on the gurney, I saw the chairs where my mother and I had been put to wait for the outcome of my father. And the place where my daughter was put was the same place I went to see him after they had declared him dead. Yikes. All that past stuff didn't help.

I haven't fallen apart. I don't think I will. But I can say that my pain levels are at about an 8 (well, better since I'm in bed). And it is interesting to me to sort of watch myself keep going even though. Got home from hospital, settled daughter with pillows and icepacks, went to drugstore to fill scripts, came home again, made dinner, got daughter all she needed from her room (she couldn't make the stairs to her room)...but could not find her special "lovey." Spent 20 minutes in a roasting hot room looking and looking until I thought I would faint. Finally gave up and told her I couldn't find it. She was sad. I felt guilty.

Now I find that one of my fingers is all swollen and bruised and painful. I have NO CLUE what I did to it. I think I might have to splint it. Totally weird. I cannot imagine how I hurt it.

I was pretty scrambled/dissociated today anyway and I think maybe I got moreso this afternoon and evening. Sometimes dissociation is a pretty good thing. It can get us through some really shitty times. But I am working on NOT dissociating...on staying in my body in the here and now. But really, when the here and now is pretty sucky, what is one to do? So I'm working to bring myself back in hopes that I can go to sleep in an aware sort of way and not have nightmares myself. Argh.

I am grateful that she is going to be okay despite the crutches and giant knee immobilizer. I am wishing I did not have the birth family coming for dinner tomorrow, but perhaps I will feel more rested and centered after a good night's sleep. As I'm writing this, though, it is sounding so familiar. I remember shattering my elbow about 12 years ago within an hour of having arrived at a vacation place with guests. I should have gone home, but I didn't. I carried on as if nothing had happened.

Isn't that what we're supposed to do? Here's the thing I've just realized. I don't know when it is okay to stop trying to be normal and fine. I really don't know.

Okay, enough. I am going to rest now. I hope.
 
I slept mostly through last night. Feeling a bit better/less overwhelmed exhausted today, but the pain is still pretty bad. I'm wondering if part of it is the weather because all my old broken bones from the past are aching on top of everything else. :wtf: When you're a person like me, you question every ache and pain. Is it "real" in the physical sense, or is it psychosomatic? At least I know my injured finger is "real". It is swollen and black and blue. Sigh.

I need to keep processing what happened yesterday because it really was a mirror to me of what happens in my own psyche when bad things happen. I pretty much watched the whole thing...the whole day...from outside of myself. Every time I became aware of it, I pulled my energy back into my body, though. This is good...just being aware that I was not in my body. There are a few other things that happened too, things that are giving me a pretty clear window into some of my issues.

I know that I get hyper-focused in a crisis. Part of this is my first aid/lifeguard training, but part is just...well, a part. A part that takes over and does what needs to be done to make sure everyone is as okay as they can be. This part seems to have a sort of peripheral psychic vision...so it can focus on the most urgent of needs but is also highly conscious of the needs of all the others at the time and is plotting how to meet everyone's needs. It is very disconnected from my body except to use it as a vehicle to help other people. This is why I was able to move the car, notice the old lady's untied shoes and emotional state, and, etc. that I mentioned above. Usually this part is pretty effective, but when it can't fix everything for everyone, another part comes in to excoriate it for not working hard enough. This is mostly the mode I have lived in my whole life. And it is that part that relives the crisis moment again and again...what else should I have done? Not surprising, I rarely give myself credit for what I actually did do. I am consciously changing those thoughts as best I can...giving myself some credit for yesterday.

The third thing is the empath thing:

The accident was an accident. Could have happened to anyone. I have backed into another car before. So has my husband. The accident was clearly not my fault. And yet, all I can think about is the poor woman who hit us. And that if I had not asked the girls to get the chairs out of the car... and if I had not been so worried about my birth mother who doesn't walk well, so I had pulled up close to the beach instead of parking... and if and if. I KNOW this is not good thinking, but I'm thinking it anyway.

This is pretty key for me to understand. It is at the core of my responses to stress. When difficult times happen, I go out of my body. I experience things from several other points of view--not my own. I watch myself...I mean I know I am there...that my body is doing things to help the situation--I suppose I am in a "part"...but it is as if it is in the faded background and my energy is divided among all the other people involved in the situation. I usually don't remember much of what I did, or when I do it is very blurry and dreamlike. I suppose this is what they call dissociation in one form. But even after the stressful event is over, it continues on with me...it is as if my energy goes off with all the other people involved and I forget me. In this situation, I'm still feeling and experiencing it through multiple perspectives...bouncing from one to the other...aware of all the conflicting needs but unable to do anything about any of them except my daughter's. It is exhausting. But it seems to be the way I function. Or don't function. It is why I have to be extraordinarily careful of what I read or see...because the crises do not have to be immediate in my actual life for this process to happen. It can kick off with a picture in the Times (this has happened many times) and it can take months before the stress responses fade.

The reactions to non-personal crises and suffering are different though. They exist more in my head and heart. The reactions to personal crises whether physical or emotional are more stuck in my body. That doesn't make a lot of sense really but there it is. It is a different experience. Maybe because I see my own body as part of the scene even if it doesn't seem like me.

It is such a strange thing to be me. I'm sure now that I am not the only one who experiences life this way. I know the fact that I am becoming aware of it is really good and will help me progress toward integrating things better.

The key is that I need to reign in my energy and thoughts back into my body and allow myself to FEEL my own embodied responses to what has happened/is happening so that it can get processed the right way. I have been able to do this once or twice with smaller issues. I am attempting to do it with this one...to not just think about what happened, but to allow my embodied self to respond to it and feel the feelings that go along with it.

Damn, I wish Yoda weren't on vacation. I could really use his support and guidance right now. But I suppose I'm meant to do this on my own. Clue into how I feel about birth family. Clue into how I feel about what happened yesterday and all the other past crisis :poop: that it brought up in me. I think I need about a dozen brains and bodies to untangle it all.

My kids are freaked out that my birth mother looks just like me except shorter and heavier. And that they are referring to themselves as grandmother, aunt, and cousin. It is making all of us pretty confused. But we're doing okay with it.

My birth family are very invested in being "family." It is freaking me out, but not as much as it would have twenty years ago when I ended the contact because I was freaked out.

I have found my birth father on facebook. I think. It must be him. Unusual name. Right age. Right university.

I have discovered that chronic pain and thyroid problems and autoimmune stuff are an issue for my birth family. I suppose I will need to consult with my doctor about this.

I have discovered that my birth mother basically experienced the american equivalent of the film Philomena.
 
@Pietro, thanks for the advice. I think all the appropriate info was collected by the police. I have this vague recollection of handing one my license and of one talking to my half-sister and my birth mother. And I'm sure they spoke with the woman driving the car. There were quite a few bystanders as well. I will call my insurance company on Monday and also get the police report sent to me. I don't know if I will need a lawyer. I hope not. I hope the insurance companies can just duke it out and be done with it. I don't need a legal battle on top of everything else.
 
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