The journey begins ... or continues ... articulating the rollercoaster that is my life

[mumstheword]

On an up note, I got my Zentangle book in the mail!
And yesterday I bought some art stuff. An artist's notebook, some black felt top fine pens, a couple of pencils.

I'm just starting now. Gonna read and see if I can draw one, or some. :-)

 

[mumstheword]

So it turns out I'm quite good at zentagling. My twelve-tomorrow son thinks it too good to have been me that did it.
It's really fun and calming and it helped me get calm enough to get back to sleep early this morning.

On another progressive note, I started panicking this morning because my ex was going to be dropping my son off to me, up at uni and I started freaking out. I went straight to the health clinic here, and asked for an appointment with one of the psychologists and got in to see one an hour later.

This is progress for me because I tend to stoic it out but I'm trying to change that because it's not really working for me anymore. I also rang my partner and wrote a poem on Tornadic Thought's rejection loop thread.

I am also going back to yoga for the first time in months. Last yoga I went to was prenatal yoga when I was still pregnant, back in June, I think.
Even being out of the house is progress for me, of late.
I danced, wildly, for hours last night. Went to a gig of a band I really like and had a ball!

I was super nervous when I got there, in case I ran I to people from my old life (I was in a reggae band with my ex) because it was a reggae gig, but the only people I saw that I knew were some really lovely women, no one too triggery.

I am a pretty mad dancer and got some awesome responses. One fellow looked at me and said "I don't know if I can do the crazy dancing thing. Not yet, anyway. I don't even know if it's cool."
I said "maybe you have to be a crazy lady to do the crazy dance thing".
I wish I'd said "I don't worry about being cool, cool is so subjective anyway. I just be myself and do my thing."
Later on he got just as wild as me and I said "See you can do the crazy dance thing."
My friend said "it's contagious".

Dancing and singing was how I survived and endured so much for so long, but the last few years I haven't had as much opportunity, so it was really great to reconnect with "my old self". I can't say pre-trauma self as I don't think there was one but before my ex did what he did to try to shatter and kill me and turn my beloved children against me.

I love my wild, free, unencumbered-by-what-people-think-of-me "crazy dancer lady" self. It's she I call Nyah and she's one of the strongest and free-est parts of me.

I really am out there. I incorporate aspects of the African, bellydancing and traditional Australia aboriginal dancing that I've learnt, with my Nyah primal wild style and some :-(girl moves I've picked up along the way and because I was a reggae performance artist for so long, my body.moves to good reggae and dub very easily and I guess, kind of professionally.

I love seeing other women smile and respond by freeing up their own movements, even if they laugh at me. I saw a dready man just cracking up as he was watching me and I felt so good. Like a clown, I thought, I'm bringing joy through, I guess, my "performance" for the crowd, because I always face the crowd and tend to gravitate to the front, due to my habit of being on the stage, facing the other dancers.

 

[mumstheword]

B-girl moves not :-( girl moves

 

[mumstheword]

I am getting urged to run. I seriously feel I can't handle living here and even being in the relationship with a man who truly is my best friend and a person I enjoy being with, I want to run.
I'm fantasizing about moving to the town over, my own space, maybe even a share house; I could do that, as long as the people basically left me alone and weren't to noisy and dysfuctional.

I just have the urge to run. My flight response is in overdrive but I'm stuck here.

 

[mumstheword]

I want to run, I want to flee, I want to fly
I want to move, I want to groove, to my own beat
I want to use these feet to get away, not tomorrow but today
I want to fly on by, say goodbye, go; get in my own flow,
I want to cruise, not stay and snooze,
I want to skiddadle, I'm all in a muddle
I want to hit the road, I'm in the mode to get gone, outa here
I want to steer clear of this place here
I want out, I'm in fear
I want to flee
I want to be GONE

 

[mumstheword]

Instead I'm frozen. Shutting down. Withdrawing. Not coping. I guess I'm moping, not really hoping or doping, just sitting, teeth grinding, feet cold, in a mold I want to break out of.

 

[AngelKeeperJ]

@mumstheword :hug:
Your soul is SO beautiful and precious!!!

There is so much I want to say...but I am sick, and too weak to put my thoughts together and form sentences... I will be back soon.

Fly, butterfly, fly with your soul!

 

[mumstheword]

So after a very disappointing morning, where I really couldn't wake up, my T called me and then I went out and met up with my 19 year old son. We went down to the creek near his house (where I used to live and a major site of much difficult emotional experience).

It was a wonderful experience. I remembered how much I loved it down there. I felt GOOD for a change, here in this town. I used to go down there a lot and it was a place of peace, fun and inspiration for me. I always wanted to capture the beauty of it in art and would often write poetry, but now that I've started drawing again, I want to take my art stuff down there and do some visual art.

 

[mumstheword]

@mumstheword :hug:
Your soul is SO beautiful and precious!!!

There is so mu...

YOU are so beautiful! :-)
Reflections :-)
You are a loving strong, magnificent soul.
I hope you are feeling better!

 

[AngelKeeperJ]

Thank you, @mumstheword :hug:
I DO hope that I am reflecting back to YOU, the beauty of who you are! I am feeling a bit better. I don't like to accept that I am the age that I am.:wideeyed: I am younger at heart than I ever have been, after throwing off the "stones of heavy sorrow", to embrace the beauty of what I have learned through my struggles. If I can help even one person find their way up (or is it OFF?) the mountain of PTSD and all the symptoms that go along with it, I will be satisfied!

I have always LOVED creeks, the woods, rocks, and the sounds of birds and rushing water...definitely where I feel God and the soul He has blessed me with the most! I find my inspiration there also! It really sounds like your soul is opening up to the beauty inside you, and the beauty of the world around you. As more and more GOOD experiences come, hopefully they will begin to outweigh the memories at least a little bit? Losing a child...even pregnancies are devastating to us mothers. I think that most of us begin the bonding process from the day we learn that we are carrying a new life.

You ARE moving forward...I PROMISE! I see it in your words...in the beauty and continuity of your thoughts. I know that sometimes you feel stuck, as though you haven't made any progress. It's the darned darkness that comes with depression, and the shadows of the past.

Take good care of YOU, it's about time don't you think?

Love, Hugs, and Blessings sent your way!

 

[mumstheword]

I am trying my darnedest to take care of me, but it's scary. The safer and stronger I feel the more heavy stuff pops up to haunt me. Such layers upon layers of trauma and hardship.

I often feel like I am moving through treacle, or quick sand, the more I try to move forward the deeper I fall and the harder it gets. But that is just an illusion, because where I have come from was excruciatingly hard and I got through it!

Not dissociating is hard but I have founded a lot of good healthy strategies to cope over the years, even though I do still self harm and self abuse a bit, but nothing like I used to.

I can get into an altered state when I sing and dance. Now I am drawing again, the same. I don't feel the pain when I'm doing these things.

My mother said she was happy when she found out her just-seventeen year old was pregnant. I think she knew I probably wouldn't have made it if I didn't have kids to live for.

When I was a teen (before teen motherhood) I was either in deepest self-hatred/depression, wanting to not exist, inflicting pain on myself or utterly numb, for the most part.

After teen parenthood, still petrified but trying to hang on for dear life. I just couldn't bare the thought of losing my babies

Before parenthood, I got into smoking weed, heavy drinking, hallucinogens (binged on majic mushrooms for three months once, homeless, sixteen, ate them all day everyday), it was better than letting guys have sex with me, I didn't know that it was even ok to say no, or I didn't think I was good for anything else, but being someone elses f*ck-toy. But even then I got drugged with the most powerful raping/ exploiting drug duytura and then nearly strangled for having a breakdown afterwards.

Drugs dissociated me more, which was better than living in my body, but pregnancy gave me something to not hate my body for.

Drugs were also terrifying a lot of the time, but terror was my normal, when I wasn't utterly numb, which has been a lot of my life. Maybe that's why I'm so good at having babies without pain relief. For one, I could actually feel something, and two, I'm good at enduring excruciating pain and being numb anyway.

There a HUGE amount of my life that I cannot remember though.

But I do know my kids helped me feel something. I wanted to do the absolute best I could for them.

 

[mumstheword]

I want to keep going on the earliest memories.
It's hard. I've.been thinking about them a lot and it hurts.
After the getting lost in the mountain with disturbing mums-friends (and unfortunately Dad's friends too) and being threatened with a gun at three years old, the next memory that I have is a festival of naked people.

I don't remember what happened at the festival, just that nobody had any clothes on.

I do remember, however, that we ended up living on site, in a little cabin.

I remember mum bought a babie's bottle, because we were going to get a baby pig and we were going to feed it milk in the bottle, but we never got the pig, instead I got to use the bottle at bed time. Fond memories of sucking bottle.:-)

Next memory is mum screaming at police as they raided our cottage. Mum's 17 year old boyfriend at the time had dropped a weed seed at the front of the cottage, she said. I remember believing her, of course, but now, thinking back, I'm sceptical and somewhat cynical, because she tends to pass blame a lot. Anyway, the weed seed became a plant, and, as it was out the front, right in front of the cottage, clearly visible from the road, we had a visit from the constabulary.

My.mum screamed blue murder at them. I was scared because of her screaming, but that was mum, lots of yelling and screaming, a lot of the time.

I remember they kind of trashed our place. I grew up scared of police too. So I never went to them, not when I should of. Even now, I have a wallet that was stolen waiting for me to pick it up from the local cop shop.

We are kind of an underground family, mainly because of pot, which I don't even smoke anymore. I would be tempted if I could get my hands on the high CBD low THC stuff though