LIVING DESPITE PAIN OR GIVING IN AND EXISTING IN FRONT OF THE TV.

 For some reason I have been having flashbacks a lot recently.  I have had three very disturbed nights where I have actually been sleepwalking but talking and sort of behaving normally but nonetheless asleep. I know this because of what John tells me. 

However, I had one whilst here on my own on to stay night. It was very disturbing to me. I dreamt that people were after my puppies and that they had been messing about with my baby puppy bottlefeeding kit. Eventually I went to sleep but it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up. When I got up I was shocked to see that my bottlefeeding kit had indeed been messed about with. Clearly by me. 

I cannot really see a reason for all of this. The following thoughts  may be part of it. I had been waking in the morning absently convinced that my mother and my younger brother were in my house living in my house. By the time I was fully awake I realise this was nonsense. My mother is dead and my anger brother may also be I suppose. I mention that because perhaps that's why he was included in the dream.  I really don't know all I know is that I have been experiencing a lot flashbacks to very painful periods of my life. I do think that much of this has been brought about  by the constant references on the news to the child sexual is abuse scandals in the 60s and 70s for which the men involved are now being prosecuted. This was the period that my abuse was being experienced. 

I'm growing more concerned about my ability to continue to show my dogs. I am certainly much worse the day after the show than before. The pain is unbelievable.  What has grown worse is the pain in my legs. He used to be in my hips and it still is but my legs are waking me up because they are so painful and yet I couldn't really explain why they are so painful or describe how painful they are. In other words describing the pain would be very difficult.  I don't get up until very late which today was gone 1 PM. All I can say is thank goodness that John has retired  and is now always here the day after a dog show  because otherwise I would have to be dealing with the dogs and when I can barely move.

I refuse though to give up living. I didn't fight the effects of the abuse only to end up sat in front of the TV day after day.  Even after a day in a shopping maul where I in my wheelchair all day, I am very tired and sore. Nothing like being a in a dog show.  Although even at a dog show if I have my wheelchair I do very little walking apart from my time in the ring. I have just had an image of what I have to do in the ring and the walking parties very short. John and I measured the time and it is less than a minute and a half. However, I spend a lot of time on my knees and getting up from my knees and getting back down again and all that sort of thing. This is extremely difficult and if I'm going to fall it is usually when I stood doing nothing in the ring. I always fall backwards. I don't know why or rather I do not understand why but this is part of my neurological disorder and the fact that I always fall backwards is a well-known symptom of neurological disorders. At least I think that is what I've heard from my doctor. I may have misunderstood but for me definitely the falling backwards is what convinces them that a major part of my difficulty is neurological.

 I think what always trying to with my blog posts is showed that life can be very good for abuse survivors.  it is so difficult to believe that when we are caught in the grip of its pain which causes us  to self harm to have OCD and PTSD and any number of truly painful and disturbing symptoms.  it also makes relationships very difficult because our worlds were very different to the world in which those who are not abuse survivors is live.  we have so much mistrust and so much shame that we keep most of ourselves hidden and relationships with a person like us can be very difficult and I can now see why many people choose not to have us in their life because they just do not understand our worldview. Of course some of them are just plain unkind. 

Gradually if we put the work in over the years we develop good relationships that last. In my own case my good relationships that have lasted have been this very special people whose compassion stopped them from rejecting me.  Now the time to place where I understand myself and how I used to be I can see why I had a quite lonely life for a long period of time.  The most painful relationships I had were with friends who knew that I was holding back something from them and they both promised me that they would not reject me once they knew what it was because they'd believed they might be able to help me. I trusted them and I told them and they rejected me.  however, and this is really importantly it you understand, I eventually did tell others who remain friends today. And of course my husband  of nearly 33 years who did not reject me.  he did seriously think about ending our relationship about 18 months into it and he began to see how disturbed I was but I was lucky that he had met my family and he knew why I was the way I was and he also felt that rejecting me might be crushing the only chance might ever have. I believe he was right. I do not believe that without him I would have survived. He does not like to hear this but he knows it's true because of his explanation as to why he didn't leave me at the very beginning.  My behaviour must have been incredibly difficult for him to deal with. Receiving phone calls at work from hospitals demanding that he come and get me all telling him that I was in hospital and would be staying for a while. You have to bear in mind that in those days gay relationships were not respected at all and in fact some of the medicos thought that John was the cause of my problems!

I have never given up hope except for once when I tried to take my own life it should have worked as I knew that I would be undisturbed for at least 12 hours and that is exactly what happened. Unfortunately I was barely just still alive and I was unconscious nearly a week and I remember very strange symptoms after that like how my taste changed and foods I previous enjoyed I found foul and cigarettes became disgusting to me. This lasted about three months and I knew it's to stop the day the person next to me later up cigarette and it made me want one and hence I carried on smoking again so I basically smoked from the age of 15 to 49. I love the fact that I don't smoke any more. That I'm not controlled by the craving cigarettes which I no longer have. I find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and people who smoke have a very vile smell to them. I'm sorry to see you who still smoke but it's true people who smoke smell disgusting.  However I stopped smoking because I wanted to not because I was frightened into not smoking all shamed into not smoking. What actually enabled me to stop was John's diagnosis of COPD and he had stopped smoking 18 months before I did. I could no longer continue to smoke around him and so I would go outside when I wanted one. This became intolerable and so I stopped and it still amazes me to this day that I stopped doing something that I never thought was possible for me to stop.