Isolation
Why?
There is nothing you can do to help
It just has to be like this until it's not
That's why isolation
Hello Freida darling! I love your raw honest remarks as always and gain a great deal of insight, as I'm sure the other supporters do.
Survivors must also feel kindred spirit in hearing their experiences put into words here....Both sides considered, this is the stuff we all need to hear and work to understand so we can find that meeting in the middle; that takes willingness, honesty, and is why this forum is so amazing. I never cease to be impressed by everyone's gusto, openness and smarts despite all the stress we're under! GO team!
Just one example in my own year to recovery a few years back, I remember the need for immediate withdrawal. White noise would go off in my head and wherever I was, I'd have to be sure to get home/to my safety before it got too loud, the emotion overwhelm, the wave, disconnection. And then you begin to fear the panic attacks; fearing the fear, fun stuff, that can become an anxiety cycle fast!
I recall feelings in public like I couldn't stand to see all the unprompted happiness everywhere I looked at the holidays and used to wonder, what in the hell are all these people so damn elated about, a sale at Home Goods, really!? It's just stuff, don't you see I'm clinging to a spider web here? I'm sniffing candles trying to remember how to breathe, stop looking at me! I'd be triggered by something like hearing, "This bottle of baby gherkins is on sale for $1.29 but the label is damaged so let's ask for another %15 off."
Today, recovered, I'm almost too cheerful for some people to stomach, don't hate me. Sufferers recovered to survivorship get like that, it's like a drug infusion of your own brain chemicals, I've survived, I did this, devil be gone! Check out my scar, mere humans! Some things matter so much more, others so much less. There's a keen recognition that comes, that time is limited but instead of feeling the blinders on like I can't bring myself to live fully and I won't be here long so leave me in my burning box to rot, it's more like f-ing try to hold me down.
These days, you bore me about a sale or whine about you got the wrong appetizer at dinner and I'll shut you down, but I'll do it with utterly glib sarcasm and no need to drive you away or even react fully. In fact, I'll more or less pity you because, poor dears, you so don't get "it", how far I fought to get back, how important and unimportant life is all at once - That 6 foot metal chicken statue you're buying by the way will be in the landfill in a year, life matters!
I have learned to revel in it. Freida, insert reference to Lt. Dan on the mast here!
What I'm trying to share is it's the sufferer experience with a more adapted than before normal variety of healed skin that grows over that becomes survivorship at its most audacious yet most peaceful, not too thick, not bitter - amazingly a better and more evolved self than before the trauma, and you can f-ing feel it. Sounds, sights, everything is sweeter - highs are higher - and the further you go into healing, the further lows get, though you'll always retain your understanding of what the other side looks like.
The same things a sufferer feels that drive them to insanity will as a full survivor prompt you to examine your scar, but with a certain fascination now; part of an elite club of full on healed survivors, like a tattoo. I see it in military leaders like Admiral William McRaven, whose Univ Texas commencement speech is amazing fodder for all of us and helped me heal: peaceful, sassy, audacious, check out my scars, boom! ;)
From survivors who've become supporters, it's especially hard to watch someone you care about go through the kind of vacillations you did, knowing that self inflicted pain, cycling, and soul bleeding it takes to get beyond, knowing there is no timeframe just lots of scraping of venom out of a wound that too often has to happen alone. But you see from a vantage point that it can and, for the majority who put in the effort, happen successfully, something a sufferer can't always see "from inside", in the throes, it's often overlooked.
If I can only offer one thing now, I offer my full support and hope to both sufferers and supporters here, from the middle ground, I see it both ways. We both need inordinate strength, sufferers not to let go and drift away into the mad mad abyss, to work on regaining their wounded core and to trust; supporters not to hang on too tight and to remove ego and not take things personally, to not cling but to offer safety and support, and patience for the loved ones they support.
It's a battlefield, it's a passionate tango, and some days it's a 3 foot deep muddy yardsale - it's life at it's hardest and the things of poets and warriors throughout time! For full survivors a view from the mountaintop, for sufferer the walk thru the valley of the shadow.
I'll leave you guys with this thought: We will ALL go through something in our lives that pushes us to the edge in some way, a high percentage of us in what will be or has been a traumatizing way, so there's merit in learning here and now to communicate and prepare and teach each other how to understand.
Also, Freida, per our last transmission, my Marine came back and shared he has been to several counseling sessions. He reached out to me after 3.5 months this week. The small xmas gift and contact and persistence did reach him when he was ready, even though he pushed me away and was quiet. Your support encouraging me to drop that gift off was so important. You matter so much to this girl out here in cyber-land. xo - Cricket
