BECOMING DEPENDENT - DEALING WITH FORCED CHANGE

I am certainly no angel. People often say to meal how brave I am and whilst I appreciate that they are being kind something which I really do appreciate, it isn't really true.

For one thing I do get very down about the limitations my disease puts upon me or I get very angry and break things and shout, scream and swear.  For short periods I even find myself feeling that I have been unfairly given to much on my plate.

I am not going to go over yet again my rotten childhood. Most of you reading all about it and those that don't will search it out if they are that interested.

What has been bugging me a lot recently has been my loss of independence. I can still drive and I drive very well. I can also still knit and I still knit well.  However, I can barely walk and I need John to help me dress. If we are not going out anywhere together then I stay in my lounge clothing which is bright and cheerful at least.

With the use of aids  lot I can take care of myself when it comes to the bathroom and showering I hope that I will always at least keep that part of my dignity.

 I adore music and watching films and TV series.  When John is in London on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday that is all that I do  apart from feed the dogs and play with them and talk with them.

I certainly would like to go back to travelling next year. I realise that we will not be able to do the long distance thousand mile destinations. I have had many friends who have left me to get on with it.  whilst it was painful I am more circumspect in my choices now

HOPE...I CAN'T FIND IT

Every time I feel down the same thing comes up: I have no hope. Yes, I k now how lucky I am to have a husband who adores me and takes care of me. 35 yrs this coming July. I get to listen to music every day on the best equipment, can watch what I like on a 4k TV. (4k meaning resolution not cost!!). I have my dogs to love and who give me great pleasure.

But I have no hope. Nothing to look forward to. Since my disease forced me to stop showing, I have had nothing to hope for. So what if I can still breed a litter. What for? I will only be upset if I produce a stunner. No one will buy it. I don't have the next show to look forward to, the next litter, the next possible win. Nothing. 

It seems I just must enjoy each day I can watching tv and listening to music and reading until I die. The recession has put paid to my hand dyed yarn hobby.

I don't say these things because I feel sorry for myself, or because I feel depressed. I feel neither. I truly cannot find hope. 

HOW IT WAS...OR WASN'T

If you are an adult and I came up to you and slapped you or punched you or kicked you or tried to throttle you, you would know that I did and take appropriate action. No matter what I said, you'd never think for one second that I had not done this to you. Now imagine you are a very young child. Throughout your growing up, you were punched and kicked and throttled and called names regularly. Imagine also you were never hugged or told you were loved. Yet, within hours of being abused you were told you imagined it. It didn't happen. Not just one person told you this. The whole family did. (The other children behaving in ways their abuse taught them OR their lack of abuse and doing nothing about the one being abused.) You dreamed it. You are wicked. That bruise was from when you fell. Starved of love and affection, other adults were able to see that and if they too were abusers, used your need for love and affection to abuse you. Thus you don't see it as abuse and even if you see it as something you shouldn't do, you blame yourself because you were not forced. When the time came and you were forced, well, it was no more than you deserved. So the first 17 years of life, you are told what did happen didn't. That black was white and white was black. Then you are taken away to a safe place. A hospital full of kind Doctors and nurses. At least that is what you grew up believeing. Instead, you found some nurses were abusive. The Doctors told you that your memories of growing up were symptoms of mental illness. They filled you with drugs when you resisted their truth. After a while, you resign yourself to the fact that indeed you were crazy. That you had come from a loving caring home but you had a mental illness that made you believe differently. So if I was ill, why was I treated as if I was bad? Deep inside the real me still existed and knew the real truth. He just didn't know how to live with that all alone. Daeth was the only way to end the nightmare. The result was a coma and proof I was nuts. After about a year, I was finally the patient of a new dr who let me go, and suggested I never went home again and went and made a life for myself. That I did. It has been very difficult. Even today I struggle with my perceptions. It is why I am useless at choosing friends. It is why I keep myself back and don't let myself feel loved. I had got past that, I thought, until my wedding in 2012 and now knowing that more than a few were not my loving friends at all. I had humiliated myself again. I truly believed they cared for me. Hanging on to truth is hard. It's tiring. The constant 'am i good, am I bad' argument in my head all back again. Fear moved back in.

SCIENCE SHOWS THAT CHILD ABUSE CAUSES PERMANENT BRAIN DAMAGE

This is not popular. There are grades of abuse. However, when I listen to people, if they know mine, they often say 'but compared to yours it was nothing' and I tell them that pain is pain. It hurts. Abuse causes damage. I have often wondered how people manage to work. Whether it be on a checkout till or as a professor or a doctor or a nurse. I managed my O levels with nine A, 1 B and 1 C. and that was me done. by the time they were finished the damage and the state that I was in could no longer be hidden. It is known that constant moving home and schools is detrimental to a child's health especially to their self-esteem. When we bought this house I was 40 years old and it was my 34th home. Most of those homes happened before the age of 17. It is known that living in a violent household is detrimental to a child's well-being as an adult. It is known that the sexual abuse of children particularly long-term is detrimental to a child's health. I know all of the above and on days like yesterday and today I have to remind myself that I am where I am because of all that. However I am also where I am because of what I have managed to do to make your life regardless. I regret never having had a career or even a job something that I enjoyed doing. I am well aware that there are many people who have jobs that they do not like but they have to do them and I'm glad I'm not in that situation. I am aware also that people see me as being kept by a wealthy man. It could not be further from the truth. If he were wealthy we would not live where we live although we love living where we live. We have excellent neighbours and it is a quiet town and we get no trouble here at all. There was a brief period of homophobic abuse by children but I nipped it in the bud because I happen to know who the children were and I knew that my neighbour new the parents of some of them. I asked her kindly is she would tell the parents what their children were doing. That not only was it hurtful and unkind but illegal. I never heard it again. Even when I was showing dogs I know that that was the rumour that I had a wealthy husband. I reacted to that the way it deserves to be reacting to with laughter and saying how silly these people were and how much we went without in order to be able to show my dogs. Now that I don't show my dogs I know exactly what we went without. Now we didn't starve and I've always been aware that if I compare we've always been in a good situation. It was not so before I met John. I don't want to talk about that. It was a dreadful time. I don't know what I am getting at here. I know many people would think I was really lucky because I can do as I please. If they thought about it my disability stops me from doing as I please which is why I have no social life. I have very dear friends who visit me when they can and I always enjoy them and they always leave me feeling better. I spend my days watching drama via Netflix or Amazon on or DVDs that we have bought and I knit socks while I am doing it. I also read. I read for entertainment but I also read for knowledge especially about science. I read the science surrounding the work that they have been doing on the effects of child abuse on the brain. It is fascinating. It is also quite freeing. Because it shows that stuff that one has felt guilty about has been beyond one's control. It also shows that the things I have considered old about myself are easily explained which is quite a relief. When soldiers come back from war and many of them are badly affected we all see that and understand that and they are often diagnosed with PTSD which we also understand. And we raise money for them so that they can receive the treatment that they need. Indeed I support such charities. Yet when it comes to understanding that children have equally survived a war and are badly damaged by it, very few are interested. Be that people who survived the battle I survived or the battles of war such as is going on in the Middle East. raising money for charities that help people like me is very difficult. I do not know why this is so. I have had people say to me that they cannot deal with that but I don't see why it should stop them giving money to help people who can deal with that. As usual when I started to write I did know what I was going to write about but now that it is in print I don't know what is was going to write about;-)

THERE WERE GOOD TIMES TOO

I was talking yesterday to John about the way that I think about my past. It came about because I learned that  human beings tend to remember the bad things more clearly than they do the good things.

I also felt that in some way I was betraying the abused me by talking about or even remembering the good times also.

Before I was six or seven I lived in a small English village for a couple of years having previously lived in Germany but with very little memory of that. I love that little village. The lady neighbours were always very kind to me and I had a best friend called Alex and another one called Hiroshima and another one whose name I cannot remember who was often sick and I used to take him round big chocolate bars. Those are good memories.

It is also where I saw Hiroshima murdered in front of my eyes. This is why I know that one can have repressed memories because all I remember is the newspaper headline:   The Boy Who Died of Hate.   according to what I was told we were together and there had been some confusion over who had been killed me or him. I ignored really what I have been told but I do vividly remember being shown the newspaper headline because it was on the front page with a picture of him and I was asked who he was and I said me. I do not remember Hiroshima at al Tto Singapore. It was a very exciting place for a child. And even though I was only 8 9 10 11  I was given free rein.  it was considered a very safe place.  I remember being taken into the houses of Indian people who celebrated the Diwali festival and fed food. There was this also pink coloured drink which was disgusting and I drank it very fast which was a silly thing to do because the sooner my glass was empty the sooner they folded up again. But I was a child and naive and it didn't occur to me to not bolt the drink down!  There were lots of wonderful sites in Singapore. The food was fantastic.

At tame time as I was experiencing all these wonderful things I was being violently abused on a regular basis by my sperm donor and I had also been attacked and sexually assaulted and may be raped by a total stranger in the jungle. The trauma was made worse because the man made me swear that I would not tell otherwise he would slit my throat but when something similar happened to a neighbours girl I spoke up about what had happened to me which when I think about it from my adult point of view I think it was a very brave thing to do. My mother didn't see it that way. She slapped me and told me I was disgusting and how could I have let that happen and why didn't I say anything and blamed me for what happened to the girl next door.

I don't wish to go on with this any more but I have illustrated I think quite clearly that along with the terror there were also these good sunny exciting times. It still feels like a betrayal though to talk about those things, the good things.  I can see another maze saying 'what about me?' Well I think I gave him plenty of attention and I can't look back over my life and only see the dark period Looking back over my life I have only ever seen a big dark cloud but there have been breaks in those clouds  and they formed good memories for me and that me also deserves to be heard.

A DREAM IN TWO PARTS

I decided I need to talk to someone as I don't seem able to see past this brick wall. I have made two appointments with two different people and am waiting upon a third to contact me. I felt better upon waking. I had the weirdest dream. Weird in that it was literally Part 1 and Part 2. I had dreamed I was with friends, no names, and I spilled a staining drink on his expensize greed cords. I said I would take them home and clean them. i did this and the stain came out really well. I then awoke because of Lydia letting me know the neighbours were up. She is so thoughtful like that. Anyway, I went for a pee, got back to bed and part 2 of the dream: I handed him the cords and he examined them. To my shame there was a fold in the cords and the stain was hidden in that. I then awoke properly and got up. This as about 2 hours after Lydia had alerted me to the neighbours. Weird. I don't think I have ever dreamed in two parts like that before. Not sure what the dreams were about. Was abut not looking more carefully? About agreeing to do something I am incapable of? I finished the final series of Perception. It was not a satisfactory ending for me. When I read a really good book or watch a really involving series, I often find myself what the lives of the characters are like now. I know they don't exist but for a few seconds I wonder about their present lives. Either that shows I am bordering on being really nuts, the writer is excellent, or the writer and actors are excellent. I also talk to the characters on the screen. The equivalent of shouting 'he's behind you' at the cinema. I call them names., tell them off, tell them not to trust so and so, she id it or he did it, he or she is a twat, and I can get quite riled. There are shows I cannot watch anymore: Holocaust, slavery, graphic history like The Tudors, burnings, tortures etc I can watch die hard type films cos the violence is fantasy same with the comic hero films. Films about abuse although I do intend watching the new film about the court case fought in the States by victims of RC church.

CALLING YOUOOOOOO

HI-does anyone read this blog anymore? It seems to they don't as there are no comments, or rarely. I have been feeling guilty a long time for not having kept it up as I did. Partly it's has been my illness and partly the immediacy of Facebook. I also think for some reason, my blog at wordpress (www.knitmanskitchen.wordpress.com) is read more. 

If I find many read this, I'll continue. If not I'll stop feeling like I have to and just stick with Wordpress or FB.

I do not feel it is a chore to write about abuse recovery. Far from it. I want to. I want in my small way to help. But I don't want to waste the limited energy I have either.

love
colin

MORBID START

John got up twice because our neighbours get up about 5am and leave their car running to warm it up and then they leave. Not complaining about that. I did that even earlier for dog shows. However it makes Lydia bark. John got up the first time to shut her up and the second time for the same when my neighbours returned at 8:30. I told him to cage the 3 who sleep in the kitchen. This worked and Lydia didn't make another peep.

However, I then fell into a deep sleep and awoke at 12 and all was quiet. I called out to John several times and got upset and panicky when he didn't answer. He didn't have his hearing aids in. I knew this but it is moments like this that I feel the terror of being alone, without my John. Which is why I reject it when people tell me how courageous I am. I haven't ever said the above before. I fear my own demise too. The one trip we all must take alone.

Anyway, I thought that maybe a different sound would alert him so I banged his show heel on the floor. He answered straight away. He came up. He didn't need to ask what I wanted. He didn't say anything. He just held me and soothed my back.

A morbid piece today.

A SADNESS THAT WILL NEVER BE CONSOLED

I feel sad. I also feel humiliated. Most of the people who attended our wedding no longer have anything to do with us. I chose those 24 people because I thought they were special and I wanted them to share our special day. As it turns out I was wrong.

My personality has not changed. My disabilities have got worse. My life started with me being abandoned and it certainly is looking like it is going to end that way too. I have two long-term close friends and it is very unlikely that I will see either of them again though of course we talk on the phone. I have one lovely friend where we live. One really special person in 16 years. But we are very close in age.

Yes I fear being alone being surrounded when my time comes by those who are paid to be there.

Two of the people that hurt me deeply because I never in 1 million years would have thought they would have deserted me at my time of most need. They did. One of them when I asked why she hadn't been round at least was upfront and said I have enough negativity in my life without dealing with yours. Now this was somebody who on a regular basis and come to my house to unburden herself, have a cry and a cuddle and a coffee. I supported her through some truly dreadful things that happened but I never once turned her away no matter how much pain or fatigued I was. this was over 16 years and the first time I needed her that was it. The other friend didn't have the courage to tell me why she had distanced herself from me but eventually she did and it was because of my disease.

The others have given no explanation at all. They have just gone.

I have heard other people who have debilitating diseases that slowly get worse and never better, lose the majority of their so-called friends.

You may indeed wonder why I am making such a big deal about this. It is because it feeds into my deepest fear which is to find myself powerless and institutionalised again. No matter how well people think a particular home is run there will always be abuse and neglect. I will not allow myself to become powerless like that again.

I really do not know why these feelings have come up today. Hazel and Anna came to clean and they are lovely and we have a good laugh. Thy paid me a really nice compliment. I was one of the few clients who treated them as equals and used their names.

Something must have triggered it off but I do not know what. Sometimes when John is not here I feel the feeling so dark I just cannot put into words. At least I know he is home on Thursday but what if he was never coming home? I felt this feeling first when I was stranded in Stockholm. I was in agony and I was frightened. This was in 2004 before I had been diagnosed. I wanted and missed John so badly it terrified me and I thought then that I might one day feel this but very much worse.

However, getting back to my original subject. I really am a lousy chooser of friends. I do feel angry and I feel bitter. One thing though that I have learned is that when a female becomes friends with me very quickly and is almost coyish, says I am like the brother they never had, and consistently tells me how lovely I am I know now that this will end badly. They will withdraw, sometimes turn very nasty, and leave me feeling hurt and bewildered.

Most of all, I feel humiliated. How could I have chosen such cruel friends? Why did I not see it?

The one person other than John their lives here and sees me regularly I know is not like any of the people I have been describing. She is genuine and would not think of hurting me. I have never met a person like her.

You know PTSD, survivor guilt, the parts of us that will always be stuck at a very young, toddler age, 5-6, puberty etc. It really depends on when the abuse takes place. With me it was daily all through my life. I am forever a child in a man's body. I am forever vulnerable to those who see it and take advantage of it.

On the positive side there are those who see me as a damaged child and they treat me with such love care it is astonishing. It took me a while to see thay were and then longer to accept it. But they are there. You wouldn't believe how much the people at Tesco feed my soul, nurture me. Even on holiday people will come up to me just to be nice. Sometimes generous with other than their time.

IT IS OKAY TO HONOUR ONE' SELF

Well I don't think I shall ask for your help to go to sleep again!

I woke up at 1:15 PM! But I did sleep soundly and it was only six hours.

John's home today and I can't wait. I love my time on my own because I can do as I please without having to think about him. This entails watching what I want on the DVD player or on Amazon prime and I can also have the music volume as high as I like. I have not lost the taste for my music to be allowed since I was a teenager. We are not talking heavy metal here. No. We are talking female folk singers and male folk singers and things like tangerine dream and Mike Oldfield. I just think they'll sound better loud.

This last few days have got me thinking about the theme which many of you have shared with me: that I should honour myself. Now for a British person this is really difficult because you on other people you hold them in high esteem usually because they have done something great.

Honouring myself seems not quite right. These last three days which are now over and done with have maybe shown me something different.

I am not at all sure about the honouring part that I certainly see that I really need to give myself credit for all that I have done to get to where I am now. I deserve to recognise that feat that I have accomplished regardless of what others might think. I only truly know what I went through and how the recovery process has been excruciating. Yet I am here and spiritually intact and my personality was not crushed. I do deserve credit for this and I deserve my own credit. I have been so hard on myself and was never able to accept compliments or the idea that I have done something remarkable. But I have done something remarkable and I did not have a whole team of experts behind me. I have the loving support of my husband and some friends who are no longer in my life and I'm beginning to see that that is meant to be.

RESPONSE TO SOMEONE WHO THOUGHT MY MUM WAS AFRAID OF MY DAD

My mum was not afraid of him. Once when he his hands were so tight around my throat, I was going blue, she stopped him and he raised his hand to her and she responded with a knife to his chest and said 'you ever touch me and it will be the last thing you do'. I believed then I must be really evil because they didn't love me and I was completely on my own. I now know it was them and not me. However eventually I did break and it has taken much of my life to put myself together as best I can. The neurological problems, most of what is wrong with my body, is the result of years of my fight or flight mechanism being set off with me unable to do anything but freeze and disassociate. All the cortisol did me no good at all. Thus inflammation is now a major problem, including my heart. However, I won the battle to be myself and that is what counts.

I know that many people upon hearing my story assume my mum was a powerless victim. She wasn't.

GOING WITH THE FLOW

I do feel a weight has left me. I had seriously been considering contacting the person I wrote about in my blog post. John thought it a very bad idea. When I thought it through I realised he was right. When he said they had been cruel I thought that was OTT but again he was right. I just was still in denial. Not now.

Denial has got me into a lot of trouble in my life! I was taught well though. I grew up in a family where denial was mandatory. Despite me going into denial through my life, I did eventually break the family rule and thus was excommunicated. Best thing that ever happened to me.

I sit here with my dogs around me, hubby at work until Thursday. I am content again. I know the recent changes are genuine because I can sit and watch tv without being restless, even without knitting, if I choose to. I have never been able to be that relaxed. I have finally let myself off the hook. Accepted where I am. Accepted it all really. No constant battling to force change.

Going with the flow.

I NEED TO BE MORE DISCERNING

I have been thinking a lot about a 'friendship' that went down the tubes some time last year. I don't remember when because I was very ill. This was a relationship with two people lasting about 15 years. I didn't know what I was feeling this last couple of weeks when I have thought of them daily.

Then I was able to recall what took place. I texted to ask why I had not seen her for a long time when she knew how ill I was. I got 'I have enough negativity in my life.' This from someone I sat with, listened to her and her pain and held while she cried. The pain was real. She had much to cry about. It was always at my house because her house was 'full of men' and besides she couldn't share in her house. I understood that.

I was really hurt by her response. My gut twisted. I was so hurt I knew I had to get my wedding album re-done so that I wouldn't keep being re-hurt every time I saw them. I texted this. I can see clearly how it may have come across as spite. It really wasn't.

The man left me a really nasty message on my answerphone. It was clear that the woman had lied to him. He thought I didn't go to their house for a reason he said he knew what it was. He didn't know. She had not told him it was her choice. I was never invited after '07 and besides which we did frequently pop in. He then added that from now on he would be polite but I was dead as far he was concerned. I am not sure of the exact words but the intent is the same. As if he thought my friendship would continue with her. The man never did like me. As much as he tried to hide it, he was not comfortable with homosexuals. Ironic when his work is about reducing prejudice and promoting equality. His discomfort could just have been he did not like me. So of course I was uncomfortable around him but it never stopped me trying to get past it.

Anyway, I had been thinking about letting them know how sorry I was with how things went.

Then, sorting it through in my mind, I realised this: they were both very cruel. The threats and lies. The threats particularly were designed to make me paranoid.

All this done to a friend of 15 years who was extremely ill and close to losing the battle all together.

I am glad I allowed myself to think this through and stopped denying the cruelty with which I was treated. I think I have just been missing the friendship I thought I had. There is no way I can ever have any kind of friendship with them. It never was. It never will be.

Another friend I was really hurt by because I knew they had withdrawn from me and every time I brought it up they swore they hadn't. Yet most contact was initiated from me. I am not daft. I knew their feelings had changed. I did at least get the truth though. They had withdrawn. Why? Because they knew I was getting ill.

I have several females do this. They have were very keen to have a friendship and then somewhere along the line, they cooled and sometimes, in fact mostly, they turned nasty. This one didn't do that at least. However, from my side, trust has been destroyed and I won't get that back.

I have John and perhaps 3 friends who accept me as I am and do not desert me at my most vulnerable. However, if John pops his clogs before I do, none of them are able to be anything more than they are now. I love them and they love me it seems. I am not so short sighted that I can't see how age and disease prevents at least two of them being able to physically help me. Never mind the fact two live far away and only one on my doorstep.

When I die, if John has already gone, I will have no one, except the close by friend, to take care of me and attend my funeral. I am frightened by that.

A whole life time and this is where I am. It is really hard to not think I am at fault. It can't just be my health that has always put people off. Certainly this time, those I lost coincided with my disease progressing really fast to how it is now because I stupidly fought it and denied that I would get worse. If I continued my life as normal, I could stop it. I now know different.

I have had to accept my disabled status and my dependancy. Dealing with pain 24/7 and then a deep depression which came very close to killing me, then a fall that almost killed me too. (I now know I did knock myself out because what I said happened I made up. I didn't know I had. It was only when the cleaning lady who told me what happened , did I realise that I filled in the blank spot.) The fall left me shaken, feeling totally dependent, vulnerable and scared.

I was kicked viciously when I was so down I couldn't get any further down. Friends don't do that.

It has taken me a long time to stop denying what happened and how I feel about it. It makes me feel very sad. 

And scared.

ON SHAKY GROUND

This has been the best day since the fall. I think I know why I have been so shaky since it happened 3 weeks. Once again I cheated death. It was totally different than I thought.I wasn't completely floored until the person who ended helping me told me what I had asked her to do. I had lost a chunk of time. I hit my head several times, really hard. Yet I am still here. Always my damn head. My dads favourite spot. As a boy I also feel about 15ft str8 onto it, was unconscious, spent the night in hospital.

I wasn't completely floored until the person who ended helping me told me what I had asked her to do.The fall also forced me to see how vulnerable I was and I couldn't carry on as if nothing were wrong with me. I look back over the last 3 years of showing. killing myself with pain, putting myself and others at risk. Was I being stoic? Brave? No. I was still showing my dad that I was not the weak sissy he always said I was that he had no reason to be ashamed of me. I saying look dad, despite the agony and fatigue I am fighting it. I will not become dependent and disabled. I. have had quite enough of his fucking shit. He can have it back. Why on earth would I want to please that monster? A Big Man who beat on very young children. Who was cruel, sadistic, and just plain nasty. And a great liar and actor too.

It wasn't just that old tape though feeding what I was doing. I felt it was grossly unfair that I should survive mentally, emotionally and physically only to find I was becoming disabled. No way! This is NOT going to happen. But now? I accept it. I am defeated. In a good way. I just let it all go. I can deal with this too. This too is not my fault. Half a dozen Drs have said that my ailments are a direct result of the abuse. I suppose living for so long with such fear and torment and physical pain from violence and sexual abuse outside the home is bound to take it's toll. The evidence is all there.

I don't understand this. I still think it is grossly unfair. But so is a child being born to starve to death grossly unfair. So is the slaughter of 8000 muslim men and boys 20 years ago by Xians in Bosnia. The Holocaust. One can go and complain it is all so unfair.

Or one can find out one's purpose now. Look for the good in it all. The fall was definitely a demarcation line for me. The end of an era and the beginning of new one about which I know nothing. I seem to being pushed to write and write and write. I am sick to death of that suggestion. So I write and write and write. A book? Why? So I can placed among all the other abuse stories that now have their section in the book shops. I find that incredibly distasteful and I now doubt the voracity of those stories. They are a big money industry. Yes, I think some readers may be helped. I also think there are those that get their kicks from being voyeurs to our pain and suffering and so it is know these stories sell. I don't want to be part of that. I think I reach far more people right here on the 'net. Much more immediate. And much honest too. No editor. No one to say 'change this' 'change that' make it more 'dramatic. 'No, embellishing is not lying.'

FEAR

John is not a rare man. John is not a rare homosexual man. There are many heterosexual and homosexual men who are just as loving and kind.

Homosexual men and women are just as likely to make excellent husbands and wives to their same sex spouses. It is not rare. Homosexual people do not lack the ability to be loving and faithful and loyal. Far from it. Much more likely to be these things, I would guess, because of a life time of abuse and rejection although these same conditions also damage one's ability to be these things-just as it does in heterosexual people.

Times are changing. Those growing up homosexual now do so in a very different world, at least in western culture. Bigotry is not over and it will take time but that of course it could all change.

The Nazi's didn't just murder Jews. The far right here if they had power would not just deal with immigrants! No, homosexuals would be dealt with too. Women also. I'll never understand how supposedly loving caring people end up supporting hatred and death instead of love and life.

Fear is behind the spread of this evil. I understand fear all to well. I have managed not to allow it to become hate. I felt fear when I saw the media images of people from far away brazenly forcing their way onto trucks etc coming to the UK. I wasn't afraid of them. I was afraid of those in my country who lose the ability to think because of the fear they. I am scared of how they will react.

One of them was a 14yr old boy who had got to the Port of Calais all the way from Afghanistan!

Most of them wrongly believe that the UK is rich and there are jobs aplenty. I don't disagree that we have too many people, none in particular, on this island and I wonder why France, a HUGE country with a population less than ours last time I looked, do not help.

This was all bound to happen. People the world over can now see, via the internet, the vast disparity between us and them. They realise how much we took from them. The see how our wealth came from exploiting them. Now we have what we want, we turn our backs, shut our doors, deciding to live with the fear of what the starving masses might do, and denying the fact that no amount of security is going to stop it. We see daily how the illusion that we are protected is smashed.

OH, BOLLOCKS...

Some time before I lost the battle to stay in the comfort of sleep (yes, surprisingly, sleep is good and restful, unplagued by fear), I vaguely saw a man in a dark suit putting stuff on my side table which somehow my mind knew was Pepsi Max and my first lot of drugs for the day. He was trying not to wake me and I wasn't asleep but also not awake. In my memory it is all foggy. I reached my hand out to his, and I think kissed goodbye. I would think it all a dream if it were not for the fact of the drink and drugs next to the bed and John not being here. 

It is but two weeks today since The Fall. It seems longer ago when I think of it now but at times it feels like it was just hours ago. The Fall has irrevocably changed me and my life. I try to ignore tomorrow but it picks at me, like birds in confusion and terror tearing at my skin. I feel it but it is known to me that this is just my fight or flight system firing off and breaking through the pain killers. So much so that John lifts a hand to scratch is ear or something mundane and my body reacts by ducking and beginning to run tho it just starts to fall and John grabs me, effectively keeping me on my feet. He said I should sit and I told him I was okay, that my body just reacted quickly to his movement. I feel bad because he has never hit me in 34 years but my body isn't reacting to John but to events many years ago. And there are still those who dismiss PTSD (I used to be one). I read the other day that muscles do indeed have memory otherwise we couldn't make them grow through exercise. All I know is I jumped out of my skin because of the distant past not because of that moment.

I am afraid. I have been all of my life. I have always had adrenalin and cortisol flowing through me, ready to fight or run but unable to do either. I didn't know any of this at the time. I didn't even really know I was afraid. I just knew I was bad and weak. I didn't know I was neither of those things. I didn't know my brain was doing it's best to save me. As I could neither run nor fight I shut down, disassociated, depersonalised until I was no longer present. I do this still today. Something triggers it and I am no longer present. John has seen it. Only one friend has seen it and I think she found it eerie but she wasn't phased and just waited until I came back. She had heard me tell her these things so I think she knew pretty quickly what had happened. 

Fear, it is said, is the opposite of love. I only know that I did not love those I was afraid of. I also knew by the time I was seven that to love meant to be wounded and abandoned all over again but no matter how hard I tried not to I could not help but like or love others and pets. I could not feel loved. I longed for it and this me easy pickings for adults who violated me and told me it was love and as they did not hurt me and touched me gently, I felt safe. And I blocked out the memories of whatever it was that caused the bleeding. I was in my 30's before this little bombshell exploded and I realised how duped I had been, how foolish. And I knew then what caused the bleeding.

Love and faith and trust and security were all denied me. I had hope to see me through but it was damaging hope. I took the blame and responsibility for it all because then I could imagine myself just getting it right. Right enough to stop the fear and the agony under it.

It was a false hope. In reality I was powerless. I did not know there was nothing I could do, no change I could make, that would stop all of it. It wasn't me. It was them. I was 50 when I realised that. I was not abused because of who I am but but because of who they are.

Now I am in this dark place yet again. I fought so hard live life regardless and I was going to allow my body to stop me. I really did believe that if I kept active and positive I would not get worse, it would not progress. I was going to be happy and successful dammit. 

I now know this isn't true and my body did stop me and there is this hole in my life which is full of fear  and I am naked as I reach out for help from a power I don't understand at all.

I have this awful feeling that I need longer than I have to heal.

DON'T COMPARE

He has lost his foot but he cannot complain because the person next to him as lost half his leg and he can't complain either because the woman next to him as lost all of her leg and she can't complain either because the next two people have lost both legs. So everybody swallows their pain because there's always somebody worse off.

The pain and suffering caused by comparison and the pernicious feeling that only a selfish weakling would complain anyway of us some of us" harm to ourselves by becoming the hero who never complains and who forces himself to live as if his body were not diseased. Sadly, people go to the grave feeling that they just did not give enough effort, that it was their fault. We do this to each other because of our fears of death still believing that bad things only happen to bad people and so those that do die do so because they didn't work hard enough not to.The fact

19:00 GMT Friday 26.06.2015

I awoke after deep sleep not disturbed by tendrils of a bad dream reaching out to pull me back into the darkness where my fear is naked and fresh, despite having always been with me. No, the night had been free of that.

Luque, Mary-Grace and Whitney were all on John's side of the bed. He was up and not there. The room was dark and sultry and I had to call him several times, so loudly I thought I would have a sore throat. 

I bit down on my panic. I couldn't move, my body as yet refusing to awake despite it's obvious presence being felt with shards of pain shooting around my body, as if my body were a gaming machine with various areas competing to see which part could hurt the most.

Eventually John appeared. I wanted to scream at him about how he should have his hearing aids in but I resisted. After all he had entered our room carrying my relief, medication, and a bottle of Pepsi Max.

He found the remote that controlled my side of the bed and he handed it to me so I could raise myself into a sitting position. I am feeling low and tearful, my body trembles as it comes to the full cacophony of it's life.

Slowly I start to swallow my drugs, starting with the small leading up to the large, the final one having to be chewed, once a pleasure now chewed with a plea not to gag.

Now I stayed sitting glad for the slight breeze though the open window and the light brightening my face. I look at John as he stands, side on to me, looking out of the window. I feel a mixture of deep love for him, gratitude for the way he takes care of me without asking and without resentment, and a deep shame toward myself for having become so dependent.  

Teetering on the edge as my tears were, I made them stay put as I told John that all my teenage fears had come true-I was useless and pathetic and the terror of once again ending up being 'cared for' in a home only kept at bay with the knowledge that I know how to make sure this never happens. I assume that my husband goes on that journey before I. I don't want him to live in the shadow of ice that is the cruelty of loss and this only after finding ones way back to the surface and breaking the ice that encases one or there is no fight, no reaching up to the surface in which case I have no idea what would happen. 

I have fought for every breath all of my life and do not know how not to. 

Tiredness brings me to an end. For now. 

LONLINESS-IS LIFE BETTER? The more my disabilities worsen, the less I see of others.Yet I don't talk about my ills to visitors but life, about them, I want to know about THEM!!!

 I think it is a much better idea if I write my longer comments on my blog so that I can get back into the habit of writing on my blog for my own benefit and for the benefit of others as they have told me such.

As you know last year was a very dark year for me.

The show's season has started again and I feel bereft all over again. I have been lonely most of my life. I was lonely in the way only an abused child knows loneliness. I was with John Long time before I began to be able to do things, artistic things, like knitwear design and knitting on machines. I did very well at it and I had some patterns published. So although I was very busy I was still lonely until John came home in the evening because at that time we lived in London and so he was home every evening.

I resorted to friendships, if you could call them that, with people I'd not normally mix with-criminals and dealers. It shows the level of my esteem that I was pleased they took me. It took a long while what I had put myself in line for. I used to take my carless neighbour shopping. I didn't mind, I just wished she would not go to so many shops. One she came running out of a shop and told me to go, get away from from here. I drove home, and when she asked about another trip I said no. I was in all sorts of mess or could have been were I not so lucky.

However, they kept me alive and am from going dolally.

Loneliness seems to be the theme of my life mostly because I was too shamed to make friends. What if they found out what an evil person I was letting those men indulge themselves in me or on me. I lived in constant fear that people would find out.

 I don't ever remember feeling depressed like I did last year. I spent most of my years numb.   I only want seriously kill myself knowing that I would not get caught. I would come home from work grant hello the same as I was grunted hello and then I went to my bedroom and no one expected to see me till seven in the morning. This was more than enough time for the concoction of the hundred or so pills to work.  they should have. I came around just as the doctor was saying to my parents that it was highly unlikely that I was going to survive. They thanked the doctor but more or less ignored me.  I did it because it was the only way I could see of escaping.

I have been driving at the normal speed according to the speed set up. For some reason this annoys other drivers  and survey to their horns at me as they overtake only to be stopped by traffic lights!

 Unfortunately the drugs was still not allow me to swim and I long for the day that I'm able to get into that water where I feel so weightless and where I can go somewhere else. 

 it isn't just the competing of the dogs the I miss but the people and I felt part of it and not excluded. I might well have my talents but they are done singularly and on my own they are not something one can do with other people.

 I have some lovely friends that they live a long way away from me and are too busy to spend time talking on the  phone  or on Facebook because they have proper lives.

I WAS WRONG

My physical pain has increased a great deal recently. I cannot stand up for more than a few minutes without severe pain from my hips down my legs, both of them. Feeding the dogs has become very difficult because I have to be on my feet for longer than five minutes and by the time I am on to the last two the base of my spine has started to wobble like jelly it is the most peculiar feeling.

The result of this is that I am going to be put on the maximum dose of gabapentin which is for neuropathy and epilepsy although in my case it's for the neuropathy. I'm also to be given 10 mg tablets of morphine which I've only just been taken off to go onto the pink 20 mg tablets and my doctor has told me to take an extra 10 when I am feeding the dogs which means I am going to have to take them an hour before an time it properly. Sometimes I don't think doctors quite get it. I am just going to have to feed the dogs as normal and hope I get to the last two before I fall. 

Yes, I have been falling much more. Only once outside when I went all the way down. This was at the swimming pool. Other times I am with John or talking to someone in Tesco and they grab me when they see part to wobble. People are very kind.

 I have been on 200 mg of  sertraline for almost 2 weeks now and it has definitely made all the difference. I'm not sure that I'm quite back to Colin yet but I'm close.  200 mg is the highest one can go with this drug so if it doesn't do the job completely something else will have to be added. I just hope it doesn't need it. Time will tell. I can't believe though how much I have changed since I've been taking the medication.

I did not believe in depression as an illness before. A lot of the people I knew who were on antidepressants were still flocking depressed or I believe they were just a unhappy or liked to my moan.  I thought that antidepressant drugs were a calm designed to make the drug companies billions in profit.

I was absolutely completely wrong. I had never experienced depression  until now and it has taught me a great deal.  that there is absolutely nothing I could do about it apart from take the medication. It was nothing that I did, it was nothing that happened to me, all the things that did happen to me this year yes caused me to feel grief which is completely different.

With the depression all I wanted to do was die. I lost interest in everything my talents, watching TV, and I could only do the basics for the dogs.  I could see absolutely no point to living and I convinced myself that John would be better off without me.

On the day that I decided I was going to take the mixture of morphine and sleeping pills that would work painlessly by stopping my lungs breathing while I was asleep I received an email from my friend Jane and the cause of the time difference between arrived as I was basically counting out the pills. Whilst I have not read any me emails for a while I read hers and she said something in it that I understood and made sense to me.

She told me that depression has a mind of its own and no matter how much I wouldn't do it because it would hurt John and my friends depression didn't care and depression would make me do things I wouldn't normally do and would make me very easily over the top upset by something somebody said and also one comes to believe that no one truly likes m let alone love me.  all I was to John was a mill around his neck. I really believed all these things and more. 

 Thank goodness for friends with insight who could tell just from my Facebook writing that I was severely depressed and not just unhappy and was rightly scared that I was working up to topping myself. Thank goodness for Facebook. Thank goodness for my ability to write as truthfully as I can. I say as truthfully as I can because we can never be completely certain. A good example was some of what I was writing when I was severely depressed-I was writing truthfully as far as I was concerned but what I was writing wasn't true but because I was in denial I didn't know that. W

SIDE BALL

 Writing on my blog has been very difficult of late.

I have been suffering from depression and I have tried to hide it. I felt unable to write on here because after all the main reason for writing my blog to help my Fellow survivors.  To share with you how I had recovered from my childhood abuse. Therefore, when I became depressed my first reaction was deep shame and I felt unable to continue to write here. I was writing on Facebook because I was getting instant feedback and it saved my life because two people who knew me and knew how unlike myself I had become and they could read between the lines of what I was saying, that I no longer wanted to live.

This could not have happened on my blog. However I made the fundamental mistake of connecting my depression with my childhood abuse. I have very good GPs and may have explained to me how depression can hit anybody at any time for any reason and to no reason and that it was particularly hard on people like myself who are intelligent and who want to know the ins and outs and the reasons. This has been the most difficult part of this disease. I have no doubt at all now that it is a disease. I started on medication and have gradually increased the dose and I think the next time I see my doctor in two weeks it will be increased once more but that will be the maximum.

Depression can sneak up on you as it did on me. The last 2 1/2 years of my showing dogs that was all I did because I was fighting my disease, my physical disease, which I wasn't going to allow to beat me. It took all the energy I had. I stopped knitting I stopped reading  I stopped everything but swimming. Because all I could do was sleep and bath and groom dogs. I eventually realised I had to stop.

This could well have been the trigger for the depression but and this is the difficult part to understand it is not the reason I am depressed. I have come to terms with the dog showing and I am glad that I no longer do it it is such a relief for me to not do it any more. What is much more telling of my depression is the fact that I do not die yarn or knit any more because I can't find my muse for it.When a person stops doing the the things they love, like I have also stopped listening to music, this is another sign that one may be depressed.

Depression is NOT having an off day feeling miserable. It isn't feeling down for a day or a few days. It is like being swallowed by a big dark cloud and one is trapped. One often wakes, if one can sleep, in tears. Or one doesn't get up at all, stays in pj's, take care of washing themselves, cleaning their teeth etc.It is barely being able to do anything. I have dogs so I have had to feed them. And let them in and out of the garden so I have not been able to stay in bed duvet diving.

I fear that I may have given the impression that once recovered from child, abuse, it was all over and done with. Though I feel sure I must said that there is no no getting over it, just learning to live with it. I don't think I ever covered depression because it never came up. Well now it has and so I am sharing it with with you. 

It is NOT a sure sign of abuse and isn't even a necessary apart of abuse or recovery. It can just happen as it did with me.

I always said I would be honest here and I have avoided being so. Well, now I have been. I am still depressed, depressed enough that I still considered a suicide risk but I have a lot of support and self knowledge and knowledge in general so I am safe.

None of this means that my recovery from abuse was fake or that what I have been sharing with you is fake. It just means I was hit in the head by something I was not expecting.

LIFE WITH A WONKY BRAIN

I have put our holiday forward yet again this time to 22 February. I realise that 4 January is only eight weeks away and my antidepressants have not settled yet and my eating is not settled yet and I generally am not settled yet. As usual I always think I can do too much too soon. We're still ahead financially because we only had to pay an extra 200 bearing in mind that we'd already been refunded 800.

Last night in bed I suddenly realised I had not taken my nighttime set of pills which are important because they are for my liver and my heart and my brain I started the process of getting up and John said you stay there while going get them and he was gone before I had time to argue but when it came back I said to him why do you do that? I can go and get my own tablets!  he said the kindest thing in reply: I hate to see you struggled to get out of bed when it is much easier for me to just go down and get your pills and get back and you'd still be struggling to get out of bed.  I hadn't even thought of that because I just take my "problems" as part of my daily life and I don't think about them and for two nights a week and days a week I have to deal with myself anyway. I'm afraid I would not be as kind as him not because I am mankind but because I just wouldn't think in the way that he thinks.   I nag at him about his hearing aids  but for completely selfish reasons. When he is not wearing them he does not speak loudly enough for me to hear and I also have to shout at him for him to hear me and I get very tired of that very soon.  It is also dangerous for him to not wear them because he can't hear traffic coming at the   Zebra Crossings. he thinks they will just stop but he is not a driver and doesn't realise that we often don't have the stopping distance that he gives it is taking quite a while to get him to act set his hearing loss fortunately we have a very good audio system and I bought him Grado PS500's  headphones. Yet again I must have foreseen the problems that were going to arise. I can't believe we were both sick during the week of the holiday we had booked and that I moved to January and they have now moved to February. But that move is just more sensible for me to give me enough time to get well properly.

 I do read and take in everything that is written on here even though it appears that I haven't. It just takes some time for the penny to drop with me I can't just read something and change just like that I have too slowly digest it and understand it.  it can take some concepts months to settle into my brain but once it has it has the good and I no longer make that same mistake. I think also because I have followed ill given advice before but I am very wary of it now because I have believed some utter shirt in the past because I have looked up to people while I don't look up to people any more and I don't look down on people any more I look at their eyes. Even beggars on the street I make eye contact with whether I give them anything or not. The eye contact is to show them that I recognise that they are a human being just the same as me but in different circumstances. I do try to keep to the point honestly you should hear me when I'm talking I go all round the world back. So anyway I just wanted to let you know that your messages of encouragement never go ignored even if I forget to click like it's not because I dislike them if I did I have a dislike button I can press.

On the subject of stubbornness: I thought my hands were feeling better and so I started to net a pair of socks on 2 mm needle is after 20 times of having to undergo it having not been able to get past the first two rows. And yet my toes on 2.25 mm needle is went like a dream. So I guess 2 mm needles are no longer a viable option for me and that really does upset me. Only knitters would understand this. 

GETTING THERE A DAY AT A TIME

We have just taken Luque to the vet because we believe he is becoming senile because he is behaving rather oddly. The vet says he is otherwise healthy and he now has tablets to take twice a day which will ensure that plenty of blood gets to his head and see if that makes any difference to his behaviour. he seems quite happy within himself but as just behaved oddly and he did seem to have trouble with his balance on Sunday and sometimes he looks pretty vacant. I think nine years old is a bit young for something like this to happen but it might not be senility but something else which I don't like to think about and like human beings dogs get things the same as we do and it's not all hereditary it's just life and sometimes life isn't smooth and comfortable and happy as we would wish so we would just make the best of it or sit and cry from the rest of it which is not just pathetic but a complete lack of any self worth and strength. It's not fair we are people scream. Well life isn't fair and we just have to get on with it.

I am surprised how quickly I got over the troubles with my friends and it's because I realised that they weren't friends at all and that she had just been using me as a sounding board. Dick head hear loved her and saw her through the many problems that she has had and don't get me wrong they have been serious her death mute son developing epilepsy see developing breast cancer losing a grandchild and she is to come over to me and talk to me about all this over coffee and have a cry and then she would leave and the reason she came to me was good she didn't want me at our house because she wanted to be away from the man however that is not what she told her husband on Monday. she said I wouldn't go to their house because it was too difficult for me. This when he called and threatened me I knew then that I had been right about him all along and also unfortunately right about her role along.

This is going to prove rather expensive because we are having to have our wedding album redone to remove both of them from it. Not out of spite but because I do not want to be reminded of them every time I look at a book that is supposed to bring back just the happiest day of my life and not remind me each time what a decade I was in letting her be one of my witnesses and not following my gut a long time previous that she wasn't really a friend but because of her problems and her cancer I just felt too guilty to cut her out of my life. I got what I got because I didn't do the right thing out of fear. And I often find I don't do the right thing out of fear. I am learning though. I have defended people who I know don't give a toss about me because they haven't written at all during my illness and there can't be anybody who doesn't know about it. I find it very strange that the most support I've got the most loving and caring support that I have got has mainly been through people I don't know and befall those who get upset with me that I do know I am fully aware of your loving support as well. I truly appreciate all of you but I still must give the Goldstar to Jane Kruizenga Brown because she really did save my life and that is not an exaggeration she explained depression as a disease in a way that she knew I would understand and she was right. I don't like to boast but I am a very over intelligent person I say over intelligent because being well above average in intelligence is flocking pain. My doctor fortunately accepts it and never tries to fob me off because she knows I will only go and look it up. I read a lot on physics and the like and so Jane understood that if she explained to me in a simple but scientific way I would get it and I did get it loud and clear and within an hour of her phone call I had my first script and soon after that I had my first antidepressant. They were the wrong one from me but I only took them two days and on the third day I took the right one. And you can all see the change it is made in me. It isn't magic I'm not flying around and I'm still having down days but they are further apart and mostly I feel fairly normal for me.

Anyway I am off to the pool now love to all xoxo a

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