Thank you for the Warm Welcome
Thank you for the warm welcome. At my age it's funny to be referred to as a "jr." member. My youngest child is a junior in high school. I will, however, try to act my age, but don't hold me to it. I read a funny thing the other day: "When you say, 'Act your age' I hear, 'Be sad with me'."
I do act my age most of the time in that I have tempered many things about myself with experience - patience and compassion mostly. I was not patient or compassionate as a younger person. I was hostile, quick to judge and mouthy. That said, I look back on that younger person fondly because she didn't roll over and die. She had zero idea what to do about her abuse. She had no idea of a direction to take and she wasn’t even sure what was wrong.
I am here because of her. I am here because of her lack of direction and her judgment, mouthiness and hostility. I have written a great deal over the course of my life, and the things I wrote in recovery are still the dearest to me. I can honestly say one of the most important things I ever did for myself was to accept my every fault, and I learned along the way that some of my "faults" were talents - talents that had been mislabeled as faults by those in my life who sought to keep me quiet.
I do still have to check myself because I really don't like it when someone answers a simple yes/no question with, "Blah blah, Look at how smart I am. Blah blah." This "fault" turned off one therapist who wanted me to "understand" how the abuse was probably enjoyable to some extent. He didn't like my defiance, and that brought around a new therapist who, when I told her, "That guy thinks I enjoyed it," got him fired.
(I should've started this post by saying I digress a great deal.) My point with having talked about acting one's age is that I don't. I acted 30 when I was 10 and continued to do so until recently when I started acting 35. I'm not 35, so my mirror tells me, but my heart overrules that and is quick to join in as the neighbor children blow bubbles and color the sidewalks with chalk. I am blessed with children who are not embarrassed to be seen with me - or dance, sing and spontaneously gather for a group hug on aisle 3 of the grocery store.
PTSD did, at one time, make me feel very, very old - although not old in the sense of age, but rather in the sense of my time being up and my having nothing to offer the world. While not a pivotal moment in my life, I fondly recall my oldest daughter coming to my bed after she arrived home from school one day when she was six years old. She said, "But you have to help me with my singing part in my class play or I will dieeeeeeee."
I sat up in bed where another mother wouldn't have been in bed in the first place, and we sang until she giggled and her brother joined in and we had snacks that got all over my pillows and they giggled some more. Then later, when I woke up from another bout of depressed sleep, there were cookie crumbs stuck to my face and I remembered that brief reprieve from the darkness that hung over me like a heavy, wet wool blanket.
I suppose the point I labor to make is that sometimes, platitudes like "Hang in there" and "Take it one day at a time" really mean, "Don't brush the cookie crumbs from your face right away."
