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Strange Star

My daughter is okay. Her knee is a rainbow of color, front and back, but she could bend it a little today which is GREAT news. May mean it is just badly bruised but no tendon or ligament damage. I am keeping fingers crossed. She missed her whole soccer season last year due to an injury, and she has about a month before the new season begins. I am grateful that we are worrying about soccer and not something dreadful.

She refuses to go back to the beach where it happened, so I'm letting that sit for a day or two, but we will need to return. We did this with my son when he had the bad car accident...went and saw the site and the damage. Had him drive the same route. It was helpful it seems. It would probably be good for me too. Perhaps tomorrow when my husband can go with us and drive.

I cannot stop seeing and thinking about the lady who hit my daughter. Such pathos. She had tie boat shoes and a golf skirt and a pastel patchwork polo shirt. Her legs were very white and thin with lots of veins and bumps as elderly people tend to have. She was sagging as she stood there in front of us. Face slack. I hope she has family to support her through this. I'm sending her lovingkindness and it makes me feel better to do that.

I am feeling very shaky today. But I am balancing keeping moving with the compelling desire to dive under the covers of my bed and sleep for about 40 hours. The birth family will come over at 4:30. They are bringing a balloon for my daughter, and the girls will hang out together--they seemed to get along really really well. Both delighted to discover a girl cousin of the same age!

I will have a chance to hang out and get to know S & J a bit before my husband gets back. He will cook dinner...I'll just get everything ready and tidy up a bit so things aren't too chaotic. I am not going to clean much. Don't have that in me, but I can do food and a bit of tidy.

Just doing one thing at a time today. Now that I am more conscious of my usual meltdown pattern after a crisis, I am doing what I can to stay centered. It is very hard. This thing has churned up a lot of muck in my system. Maybe it was good for some reason. I have to find some sort of meaning...I always do. That's what helps me heal. Can't find the meaning in my childhood trauma stuff yet which is, perhaps, why things are still so problematic.

My birth mother thought I would be very angry and resentful and bitter. I don't know why I am not. I never have felt that way. I've mostly seen the whole mess through her point of view, and I told her that. I feel so badly for what happened to her. She feels badly for giving me up. And she was made to feel like an evil outcast by both her family and the nuns. She feels it was her fault that her father died while she was in the "home for orphans and unwed mothers." Her mother suggested that it was her fault. She says she has felt like a bad person all her life. I cannot imagine this. Even with all the problems I have with a sense of self, I don't feel BAD. I don't feel like I deserve bad things to happen to me. Mostly I just feel confused and abandoned and sad.

I'm going to stop dumping about this on this diary. It's feeling like a bit too much all around. Yuck.
 
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...
This trait reminds me of how I often can take other's perspectives quite naturally and easily, while I have often felt out of place with most other's inability to do the same...

I wonder if this might come from our shared enneagram type 5 instead of origins from ptsd & dissociation?

Here's excerpts from "Discovering The Enneagram" written by Richard Rohr's (an enneagram type 1) perspective on type 5's:
FIVEs try not to be drawn into the whirlpool of feelings and events, but instead to develop something like objectivity. It's important to them to maintain calm -- at least externally -- and to keep their emotions under control. No one is supposed to tell by their looks that they are in a rage, have fallen in love, or are competing with someone. All demonstrative "fuss" is odious to them. This goes so far that they often have difficulty showing their feelings -- even when they want to. Externally this often has the effect of making them seem snooty and cold, as if they needed nobody and felt exalted above their fellow men and women. In reality most FIVEs have an intense emotional life. But at the moment something happens it's as if their feelings are blocked and always come limping behind. At first FIVEs register it with eyes, ears, and brain; they can stand alongside the event, with seeming objectivity. As soon as they are alone, they begin to evaluate it, and once again from the head: feelings are ordered and "brought into line." That's the method by which FIVEs gradually get in touch with their emotions. Some one has said very finely that the symbolic plant of FIVEs is green lettuce, the plant that it's heart in its head.
and the gifts of FIVEs:
The gift or fruit of the spirit of redeemed FIVEs is objectivity. Again we see how one and the same character trait can contain a blessing and a curse. Unredeemed FIVEs have to distance themselves; redeemed FIVEs can distance themselves.

This gift of FIVEs is of great value for every community. FIVEs can be outstanding counselors. They can follow the monologues of others for hours at a time. You can talk and talk -- and the FIVE seems to have an unlimited capacity to listen and absorb everything. Their ability to withdraw themselves emotionally in the process can help those seeking advice to appraise their own situation more clearly, soberly, and realistically. Because of their particular talent FIVEs can look at a very tense emotional situation objectively and say: "Now I think the issue can be viewed from this side and from that."
So maybe this gifted observer part of yours might be part of the big Self, and from that place it can be listener & counselor for various EP's to help them sort things out and eventually integrate back into the whole self?
 
So maybe this gifted observer part of yours might be part of the big Self,
Yes, perhaps you're right.

I am definitely an unredeemed five. Working on redemption. I need to get that book (:laugh: Just realized how funny that sounded given the objectivity/intellectualizing we're discussing). I like the lettuce analogy.

Part of the intensive work I'm doing is getting my heart energy back where it belongs...out of my head and into my core). It feels good when I can do this, so I know it's the right thing for me.

Also, thank you for reminding me of the gift/curse thing. I just wrote something about this in @shimmerz 's diary...funny the coincidence.

My "sister" told me yesterday that I was "amazing" in the crisis. Her daughter said I saved my daughter's leg because I had the presence of mind to pull my car forward in order to release her. I told my daughter that she did a great job with her loud screaming because that's what let me know she was in trouble. Etc. I am still processing this stuff a little at a time. Yesterday I slept for four hours. Last night I slept for 12. Sleep seems to help me gain my energy back. I've not yet allowed myself to feel any of the feelings about what happened either with my daughter or with meeting my birth family.
 
You appear to be handling this crisis very well. You are so self aware which is excellent. You sound like you navigated this crises with your daughter and family very well in a mature manner. You are very amazing and inspiring to me.
 
Thanks, @gizmo. I'm not sure I deserve to be called amazing and inspiring. But I'll take it! Way better than my own adjectives of plodding and stubborn.

The birth family stayed at our house until 1:30 AM. I can't believe it. But it was okay. They are interesting people. S was a music student, and she played our piano and sang some. She has an amazing voice that almost made me cry. My daughter played and sang as well, and my husband played guitar and sang. My son was either too shy or tired to pull out his flutes, but he sang along too. It was all quite nice. The bonus: there's lots of leftovers so I don't have to cook for a day or two!

I got up and met them for coffee yesterday before they left. We took lots of pictures. Then I left them at the Starbucks and drove home and collapsed in a heap on the bed. Got a text that THEY had a fender bender in the parking lot just after I left. Yikes. When is enough enough already?! They are all okay and have made it back to their home.

I am sleeping a lot still. Not sure what's up other than relief that I don't have to be "on" for anyone except for my kids. Feeling rather fragile. No more vomiting though! Wishing my husband were home and/or that my therapist were not on vacation. Glad for the support from my forum friends. Glad I don't have work stuff to worry about.

My thoughts are pretty confused and racing. Pain levels high-ish. I can't seem to hang onto a thought or complete a task--maybe why I am sleeping so much. I don't like feeling this way. It's like those things when they show mini-clips from films all in a row and so fast that you don't quite recognize the film...I'm getting them from my life. And I'm too tired to keep up with it so I'm just letting the thoughts/images fly by.

It's odd but it is the same feeling I used to get when I would go home to visit my parents when I was in college and after. I used to call it the "malaise" in my mind. I slept and read a lot and couldn't seem to accomplish anything at all. Like fog in my head. It would vanish when I left for my own apartment.

I am going to try a mindfulness activity--Until Friday I had been doing quite a bit of knitting and beading and coloring of mandalas. Perhaps that will help me clear out the fog. Maybe turn on the window unit ac as well--it is really, really humid here and that always makes me feel a bit sick.
 
I am feeling very out of sorts tonight. So much so that I almost posted a thread to ask for sympathy. Ergh. Just have to say, isn't it quite enough that I am dealing with all this recovered memory crapola and the realization that I have been living my whole life in a dissociated state and the pain pain pain? My mother is sick. My uncle is sick but getting better and coming here for the month of September to "help." Then I get this semi-magical medicine that takes the edge off the physical pain. I start to do Wii exercise and yoga...just a little...and it feels good. Then my friggin' birth family arrives and my daughter gets hit by a car (the first was stress of my own making...I could have said no, could have set more time boundaries...the second, well. not.) Now my pain is almost unbearable unless I am lying in the bed. I am even feeling guilty for all the muck the ambulance ride and the hospital brought up for me--because this was her trauma, not mine. But it seems it may be mine too.

A wise person told me around a year ago that "trauma is sticky." He was right. It really is. Like flypaper sticky. Like superglue sticky. Doesn't matter what happens, it just sticks to everything else that already happened. DBT skills are of little use when it comes to this for me. I'm wiped out.

My daughter is having panic attacks about the accident. I am able to talk her through breathing and grounding strategies, but it is sapping my energy totally. I have contacted an EMDR therapist for her...hopefully that will go through. I spent hours on the phone with the police department and the insurance companies. I am glad for insurance even with all the bureaucracy it entails. It is muggy here--never a good time for me--but now I have hot flashes on top of it all. Really???!!! I mean, come on, universe. Cut me a break please if only for a day or two! It is hard to meet one's higher needs when one is physically miserable.

Okay. enough of the venting. I'm now in my bed with the fan blowing on high. Kids are asleep. Dog is asleep. Husband is away. Trash and recycling and compost are at curbside. I am drinking my lovely icy drink and bringing the stress levels down by venting.

I don't quite know what self-care means in times like this. I am showering. I am eating. I am resting. In between, I am freaking out with all that needs to be done. Thank god I do not have to go to work right now on top of all this. Thank god my kids are old enough to be somewhat independent. (My daughter thanked me today for waiting on her for the past three days...manners SCORE!). I just want to crawl into a nice cool place and hideout until it's all over. Except. Except.

My birth mother is living a very small and sad life. Perhaps this is the lesson/meaning in the haze of the weekend. She was a professional musician in the making--Julliard student and all--but threw it off to be practical and went to school to become a nurse. Did that, had me, got married and had 3 more kids, got divorced, became alcoholic, had abortion. Gave up nursing to work in a factory because it paid better. Got married again and lives with a man she claims was "what I needed then" but is clearly not what she needs or wants now, but she thinks it is too late. She played piano and sang for us on Saturday night. She and I sat on my front steps and I asked her if money hadn't been a concern, would she have continued her musical career? Resounding yes. Money sucks. She was invited to sing at the World's Fair but didn't because she was starting nursing school.

She has so many regrets. Apparently my birth father wanted to marry her. Came back several times to ask. She said no. Her parents, apparently, had too much power over her. Then another old boyfriend wanted to marry her and "make it right" by getting me back. No again. From the way she talks, she regrets these decisions.

I don't want to have too many regrets in my life. I don't have too many right now and I'm 51. Except the regret that I gave up my art schooling to be practical, and that I have lived my whole life in a "part" that is socially acceptable. Well, there are a few others, but not many. But I am beginning to fix this now. Perhaps what I can learn from the weekend's experience is that I need to take the risks that my heart desires and NOT be so fixated on practicalities and other people's expectations.

I am learning over and over again that I try way too hard in everything I do. I need to learn how to not try so hard. Trying hard to not try so hard, LOL. I like Yoda (the real one) on this...there is no trying, there is doing or not doing. Somebody posted that on this forum at some point, and it fueled my desire to rewatch the Star Wars series which I am doing now with my daughter. This is why I've dubbed my therapist, Yoda. (I have to say, it is the best nickname of any I've dubbed the helping professions in my life).

Okay, time to chill before attempting a reasonable bedtime of 11 PM.
 
Forgot to say...for anybody reading this (it is totally not worth posting on a thread because would probably cause all sorts of controversy)...my daughter started a Harry Potter film marathon today, as she still cannot walk. I watched #3 with her tonight. WOW...this is a GREAT way to escape one's worldly cares for a bit. What fun! I've not watched these for years. We will continue tomorrow with Goblet of Fire...as we await Return of the Jedi from the library :). I might even have to go back and re-read the whole series which I read one summer and thoroughly enjoyed. Maybe it's time to do that again. And it would be way better than my summer of George RR Martin's series, or of Stiig Larsson's series which followed the Harry Potter summer. I could use some magic in my life.
 
Okay. Now it is 11:42 PM. I am tired. But I have been reading and commenting on my friend's blog. Which is a cool blog (daily post for each day that she is 50 years old...called FIFTY if anybody is interested Dead Link Removed). Reading and commenting partly because I feel like I should, but also because it connects me to her. Makes me realize that we can connect with people--PTSD or not--over similar thoughts we have each day. It is good and fun but why am I still doing this when I am totally spent and exhausted. Is there simply not enough time in the world to do all we'd like to do. I profoundly and unabashedly do NOT understand people who say they are bored. How is that possible? Are there just too many of "me" that have more things they want to do than one person could possibly do in a lifetime? Will I ever get beyond that? I would LOVE TO BE BORED. Really. I would. I cannot even imagine it.
 
I am vaguely noticing a pattern emerging. I get really, really fried (I mean REALLY) Then I sleep a lot interspersed with attempting to be functional. Then I feel very out of it and confused and anxious...and somewhere over the next few days, insights blast through. I wish I could get the insights without the intensity of the symptoms that precede them. I suppose that is a goal. I suppose noticing the pattern is a good step toward the goal.

A couple of weeks ago Yoda called to ask me questions about my current symptoms because he was filling out the forms for my long-term disability (which I STILL don't know about). He asked a lot of very specific questions. For some of them, I said, "Do you really want to know the answer?" It was a rather difficult conversation but okay. He caught me in a good moment, just after I had meditated and taken a nap. Some of my answers clearly surprised him. Some surprised me as well. I think I often forget how bad some of my stuff is because I've either gotten used to it (pain) or it doesn't seem too real or too much mine after it happens (flashbacks, etc.).

"How often do you think about hurting yourself?" Really? I mean, really? Not actually DO, just think about. I wanted to ask him how many times HE thinks about it. I want to ask my friends. I really would like to know how often the average person thinks about hurting themselves. There were other questions too...

"How often do things feel unreal to you?" Stuff like that. I would love to know the average person's experience of this too.

Sometimes I ask my husband these things because I can. But he's not very average. Nor are the 2 friends I could ask. I wish there were one of those facebook surveys on something like this! Depending on your answers you could be "dully normal," "a bit eccentric," all the way to "you're really f-ked up."

Insights were decent today. I tested out some new understandings and it worked okay...got me to finally get my bloodwork done (almost 4 months that took), and to make a conscious decision about what to eat for lunch. This "listening to parts" stuff takes a bloody lot of focus and time. And it is one thing to listen to parts when there's no decision that has to be made. It is a whole other kettle of fish when one has to decide something.

Mr. Stupid Famous Psychiatrist (yes, I am finally angry with him which might or might not have been his intention) told me I don't listen to my parts enough. He has no f-ing clue. Said to me in a rather patronizing way, "Can't you tolerate differences of opinion?"

What? WTF. Of course I can. This is why I am still alive, stupid doctor. Anyway, I won't go off on that rant. Did it already in my journal and I felt much better. Planning to call him out on Monday on some of the stuff he has said to me. We'll see how he responds. Famous or not, it might be time to shift to somebody else. I don't think I can tolerate his uberprofessionalism (which translates into the feeling that he couldn't care less about me) or the seemingly offhanded way he responds to my symptoms and to the medications he proffers. He is an extraordinarily confusing person.

I am so slow to process this stuff. I saw him about a month ago--maybe a little less. But all the bits and pieces that annoyed me or various parts of me finally stuck together yesterday. It was actually a good feeling to feel angry/wildly irritated with him.

I see Yoda on Monday too. A therapeutic day. Yay :wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf:. But I have missed Yoda a lot. I need an infusion of his wisdom because it fades after a week or so. But I could do without all the appointments. Blech.

I did okay today. I took the medicine last night and this morning after some long internal battles. I will continue to take until Monday, then re-evaluate. I will not do what I have done before and yank myself off of them. I don't need withdrawal symptoms on top of everything else. I got the bloodwork done, I ate a decent lunch, I got my hair cut (short short again), and now I am going to take a nap because that's about all I can manage. I need a break from the inner noise, and the strain of listening through it.

In between all this mess, I am managing some other small tasks so not all is a loss. I think I have sorted out the insurance coverage after dozens of phone calls. I have been waiting on my daughter with food and ice packs, etc., but she is a little better now (although it is really, really hard to look at her knee and thigh). She is watching movies, making bracelets, and shopping for back to school stuff. Even though the pediatrician said she was finished growing, she's managed to increase a full shoe size and grow two inches. Also managing to get some of the stuff organized for my son...he now has a meal plan, a list of stuff for his room that we will ship, and a list of clothing he needs. Sometimes it is much easier to deal with their stuff than my own. Other times, I find it impossible. So I try to get as much as I can done when I can. And I am coming to accept that this is all I can do for right now.

Which sparks my anger at Mr. Stupid again. But I swore I wouldn't rant about that. Let's just leave it that he implied (or I inferred--not sure which) that I am on a slippery downhill slope to being one of those people whose whole identity is wrapped up in being a "survivor." This pissed me off for so many different reasons. I did at least have the presence of mind to call him on that one at the last appointment. I looked right at him and said, "I am telling you right now that if I could wave a magic wand and make all this shit go away so that I didn't have to come and see you, or see Yoda, or any of the other things I am doing, I would. I would MUCH rather be living my life." He seemed somewhat satisfied with that answer, but we are going to have to revisit that conversation and sort some things out if I am to continue seeing him. I like his bluntness, but I don't like feeling alienated from the person who I am paying to help me.

Oh, see, I get going and rant, rant, rant. I suppose writing in the journal last night was not enough.
 
Finished last of the Harry Potter movie marathon. I suppose I didn't realize that I had only seen like three of the films. I did read the whole series. So it was really fun to watch. And I wasn't scared at all (I was really scared by the first few I saw years ago). Still waiting for Return of the Jedi.

Harry's visions of his future with Voldemort are disturbingly resonant of some of my visions of my past. Without all the magical creatures and stuff of course. More like the fragmented nature of them. Perhaps this is just what memory is like...I guess I know that. It isn't narrative/episodic for the most part.

Every time I think I'm done with remembering stuff, more comes. Not all just bad stuff. Good stuff too. Which is nice. I was overwhelmed enough with fragments today that I started brainstorming on a timeline from 0-6 years before we moved to the house where I spent the rest of my growing up years. It was a really good exercise. I wouldn't have been able to do it the way I did it today if I had tried a year or so ago. So much has come back to me in the past year. And I can get rough estimates of when things happened now. But this sort of brainstorming is not for the faint of heart. I had to stop after a while because it was all a bit much.

The other thing I did today was make a list of all my body parts (external). Then for each I wrote "yes" or "no" in a column for "Do I like it?" And then in the third column, I wrote "yes" or "no" for "Can I change it?".

It was a surprisingly satisfying activity. Because. LOL. Come to find out, most of what I don't like I can't change anyway!!! Well, there's a relief for the system. Hate the forehead? Sorry, folks, you're stuck with that one. Etc. I came up with a list of 15 things I can change and want to change. Some are really easy, like my eyebrows. Others are longer term, like weight and strength. But somehow it seems vaguely doable. At least for the moment it does. We'll see. Where, oh where, is my magic wand? Hey, if I can go gluten free for three weeks...(or is it only two weeks?)...anything is possible.

Going to sleep now. I hope. Hopefully without all the body stuff that has been tormenting me for the past week or so. Argh.
 
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