HATING THE DISABLED

This is just the sort of hatred and ignorance disabled people have to deal with: 

 "How do they justify, getting up in the early hours, preparing their dogs the same day or the day before, and if it is a coated breed bathing and grooming for hours on end, bending over baths, twisting and turning, using back muscles, shoulder muscles, leg muscles etc etc, bending down to poop scope, spinal cords in operation here, plus supporting muscles. The exercise that is needed for a dog to be at its prime, walking or running it according to the breed, week in week out. More than a normal office worker would use. The energy to get up in the early hours, drive for miles , unload a car, load a trolley, pull a loaded trolley, sometimes over the worst terrain, push the bonds of energy and strength, not to mention a day travelling and showing at a show...... Then they run around the ring..............bend over almost to touch their toes...........and say HEY...............I AM DISABLED!! Sorry but if you can do all this you are not DISABLED or IMMOBILE!!! Does not all this sound more like the commitment of an athlete.............. Oh I forgot they are on medication. would not the same medication be able to help them work!!!! Take a look in a hospital word...........see the true disabled and immobile......" 

 Some people seem to think only those confined to bed are disabled. 

 What people see at dog shows is me on huge amounts of drugs and huge determination. Am i supposed to cry as I walk? Am i supposed to show you all just how bad it is? Then you'd hate me just the same for being miserable and an attention seeker. 

 I have to take drugs to stop the chance of a bm so that I don't need to poo at a dog show because then I'd need help to dress again. I use an electric trolley pusher now and often had people helping me. The after a dog show, I am in agony and totally exhausted regardless of the drugs. My dogs keep me going and John does a lot for me..such as getting em dressed and undressed for the show. Am i supposed to attend the show in m y pj's like I do when I go to the pool for physio? 

It takes two days to recover from a show. I have to buy my food , like veg, already prepared because I cannot safely handle knives and I use the microwave because I can't handle pots because dropping pans of boiling water is not good and that is if I could even get them on the hob. It is more expensive for me to eat. 

 Because I can't create my own heat well enough, I have to have heat 24/7 Sept to April and sometimes beyond. I shower and dress over a wet body, my pj's are all slip ons, because I can't dry myself. My dogs are bathed downstairs in the kitchen sink. John helps me by lifting them in and out. When he can't I use grit! 

 On a day to day level, I pee in a bucket because I cannot go up and downstairs that often. i have to wear pads because I wet myself because I can't feel the stream. 

 Prior to the specialised bed, I had to roll out and crash onto the floor and then use the radiator to haul myself up. 

 As it is I spend most of my time alone and indoors. Dog shows are a reason to fight, a reason to live. without them I'd have nothing. How come I spend the time on here? It helps me feel less lonely. Simple. Although I like my own company and find being with people for more than a hour or so exhausting, I still need communication. Plus there are the many emails I get from hurting people that i must answer. 

 It seems people like me need to saty at home and not have a life. We are not supposed to show grit and determination. We are only punished for it. 

 I do not want your pity. I point these things out because it is clear there is much ignorance about disability and what it means. there is also much resentment and hatred toward people like me. I am still trembling with hurt and anger over these words sent to me by an acquaintance. the rest of the letter suggested that instead of moaning about the hatred shown us I should be helping other abuse survivors. Huh? Like I told them, excuse me, I spend time every day listening to and reply to other survivors. I have raised money. I do all I can. 

 It seems that because I refuse to lay down and cry, I get kicked for it. i think people like this think we should just disappear. I am still reeling from this email. it seems my status about people who resent us offended them and then they wrote this in their defence and saying I was unfair. 

One, they are exactly like that and two I had no idea they thought this and 3 I was not addressing them. 

I did not deserve this. I am glad though I found out before we became close. There was more resentment and hatred in the message but no need to go there. I am not even sure what the rest of it was about. 

 Why should I have to justify myself? Why should I have to tell anyone the little I have above? that isn't the whole story either, but I am not prepared to go into more detail about my diseases and its affects upon me. 

I choose to do the best I can. I could have chosen to give up and be more of drain on the public purse. Oh and John has paid his full whack of tax all of his wife and he too has never claimed any sort of benefit. And I am almost certain he has paid more tax than the person who wrote this to me. 

 Strangers writing like that to me I can dismiss or just feel annoyed and let it go. to have someone I have shown nothing but good will to is really very hurtful and I am royally pisssed off that I let it hurt me. Oh, i can easily think they are having a hard time and chose to lash out at me but this type of thing cannot be taken back. 

 I now wonder how many of my friends think the same way? People who know me only have to look at my face to know how I am. Why it is easier to say we are lying? Why is it easier to mock us? To disaprage us? What sort of person wants to? 

It really is no different to being racist. Just because someone happens to see one of 0.8% on disability who are not qualified for it, tehy classify all of us the same-spongers. This is just like seeing a black person shoplifting and from then on deciding all black people steal. What really really hurts though is that the enormous effort I have to put into having a life instead of being applauded, as the Right are alwauys quick to point out, the admire people who fight for it, yet not me and my kind. No they hate us and throw our grit and determination in our faces. Don't tell me the above quote written is not hate. Of course it is. It oozes resentment wirth every word and I did nothing to deserve that.

FAT BASTARD

My Facebook status today:

I don't believe it. I slept 10 hours! When I awoke I thought it was 11 until about 5 minutes ago when I noticed the mac's clock. My beautiful watch is till not easy to read thru bleary eyes! I love it though. A lot of pain this morning. I now know for sure that exercising causes it. Nothing I can do about it. I have to exercise. Not just to keep my weight down but it helps my body to retain it's strength and use. Doing nothing hurts too but in the long run it would mean me becoming weaker and weaker and less able. 

 You know, I hear people complain about the size of some people they see on mobility scooters and wheelchairs. They nastily conclude that if they were not so greedy they would not be immobile. BOLLOCKS! Any of you reading me will have realised I am sure just how difficult this is. One must have fortitude an courage to exercise when it hurts like hell. to go and exercise even though you are hurting. To go and exercise knowing that is all you will do that day and you will be paid in spade loads of pain later. And if these people do not have good and well trained in pain management Doctors they couldn't do it anyway. This last year I have gained a stone. I hate it. It is now going to be hard work to get rid of it. I will but it's hard. Gone are the days I could be rid of it in 4 weeks just like that. I have to eat less than a man my height would eat anyway just to maintain. 

Despite the exercise, I am not active the way an able bodied person is. It is also EASY when you are immobile and hurting to comfort eat. Those that really make me mad when they are judging the 'fat bastards' in chairs'who have no will power' are those saying it with a fag in their mouth. Those same people condemn drug addicts and alcoholics, all the time dropping ash all over the place and stinking to high heaven. Yes, I was a heavy smoker. I am horrified to note how much I smelled when I smoked. Yes, you smokers, you stink and washing and scent and mints make no difference. Yet this is another drug addiction that is hard to quit. I know. John and I both did it. John quit cold turkey and he was a nightmare to live with for quite a while. I cut down. I was told that wouldn't work. It did. What tipped the scales for me was not being prepared to smoke around John. 

Well I never know what will come out of my mouth when I do these statuses. I just hope that maybe we can all be a little more understanding and compassionate in 2013. There was one of those anti-bullying things that I would have posted had it not been for the last line: 'I know 99% of you won't re-post this'. The moron who wrote it clearly doesn't think that that sort of emotional manipulation is bullying! I refuse to re-post anything that has that sort of crap in it. It turns what appears to be good into something vile and sour and says something really unpleasant about the writer. I do not trust people like that. Their so called compassion is fake. Sentimentality leads to the most appalling cruelty.

MEGAN WIPES THE FLOOR

A DAY AT A TIME

Phew! No Rain!!! I hope those flooded out also have no rain. No flooding here. I was thinking about how we'd be if the flooding was here. Just terrible. It bis bad enough for the younger and healthier. I feel for those poor sods who are similar to me and have been flooded out. Truly awful. 

I seem to be sleeping much more recently. I was up late yesterday, had a 1.5hr nap in the afternoon and was asleep my midnight and still slept till 8.30am.

Physically, things are rough. I am sure because of the rain and general dampness.  Am on a course of anti-inflammatories. Believe it or not, pain from inflammation is not dealt with by morphine.

I finally finished the pair of socks I started ages ago. The yarn is very soft but cheap. a 45% wool and the rest is acrylic and nylon. I bought in in a dept store in Frankfurt where we were for our honeymoon. It wasn't easy to knit with as it knotted easily and also split. I love the way it has pooled though. These are simple tube socks and I find they fit just as well as those I have knitted with heels.

The show season sort of kicks off with Cruft's on March 8th which I am dreading. I hate the NEC as it is always a very long way from the car park to the show benches. I have had to pay £10 to park as no free disabled parking and to add insult injury I have had to pay for a £12 ticket for my helper.

After this show comes April with a Championship club show and then an all breeds champ show. This is when it all kicks off right through till December.

I know I am projecting, but it scares me somewhat. I am neither physically nor mentally for enough for this yet and I feel under pressure to make sure that I am by then. There is part of me that wants to quit now and decide not to continue. A stronger part of me doesn't want to do that. A day at a time, Colin.

I AM VERY PLEASED

Tantra's Second Sight (Megan) 23 12 12

megan

CH TANTRA'S PLENTY O'TOOLE ISA KUTANI

This is Ch Plenty O'Toole isa Kutani. She is owned by Wendy Cain (Kutani). 

She is shown here winning G2 at the LKA on 14th December 2012.

She was bred by me and is out of BISS Ch Polielins Whitney with Tantra and sired by Eng Aus Ch Kutani Secret Agent. She was born 7th January 2011. She has 5 cc's now. Like her mother before her, she is a young champion. Hopefully, she has more ahead of her.

HATE CRIME ON THE DISABLED UP 75%

My birthday turned out to be very good. I was totally distracted from the fact of it. I am not at all bothered about getting older. I feel amazed and lucky to have got to 54. No I hate my birthday and Christmas because no matter how hard one tries memories of birthdays and Christmases past are always in the forefront at this time of year.

We had visitors yesterday. The owner of the father of my litter of puppies and her partner. We really enjoy their company. We got to talk about dogs for a short while. We all agreed on which was the best puppy.

 We also had two other couples arrive later in the afternoon to choose their puppies. The three puppies that I am selling are at now all sold and they will go to their new homes later this week.

I think I may be learning how to put the concept of pacing myself into action. I had my swim yesterday morning between 8 AM and 9 AM. I then came home and I bathed the puppies.  Then we had the visitors.  I spent far too much time on my legs. Five minutes is too long. By the evening I was very tired and in a lot of pain. I began to think about my plans to today and it occurred to me that  I ought not have any. I did not go swimming and I have no plans to do anything else. As it is, I am having a lot of difficulty walking today and have enough pain that it comes through even with the morphine.   I think by deciding to have a rest day that I am learning about pacing myself.

I know that I have to face facts but I do find this rather frustrating. I value my freedom very much and I do hate to be limited. But I have learned that by battling my body the way that I have been, I have just made matters worse and I have in fact progressed more quickly because of it. No, if I think about it, my problems are no worse. I think that I am just less able to force myself than I used to be. Part of this change is also to accept help when I need it. To this end, when a friend and shop assistant asked me if I would like them to do my boot laces up after I had tried on a shoe, I answered yes, even if after a little hesitation.

Within myself I feel very much better. It is clear to me now just how stressed out I had become and how this was clearly manifest for at least three months  before I crashed. Because I am feeling so much better my thinking is much more clear. I can see what happened and why. I can also see how I got through the crash very quickly because my previous recovery is indeed real and I used everything that I had learned to work through this much less painfully and more quickly. All that happened is what I have frequently said on this blog: we never fully recover and that the episodes of flashbacks and grief and night terrors and fear become less frequent and less intense. Even though my crash was pretty intense it was  short lived and perhaps would not have been so intense had I recognise the signs earlier. Although to be frank I do not think there is any point ruminating over the fact that I didn't recognise it sooner. It would seem that no matter how aware one is,  these episodes will still happen.

I am becoming increasingly angry with the government and its determination to make disabled people pay for the deficit. They are in the process of reassessing all of us and they are removing disability from many of us also. Their own figures show that only .8% of disability claimants are fraudulent. You would think that people like me with progressive debilitating diseases  would be safe but we are not.  Many such people have lost their disability and their cars also. This really worries me. Without a car fitted out with a crane to lift my wheelchair in and out I would be housebound. I would not even be able to get to my doctor. I have yet to hear anything. That in itself is stressful. 

I am completely astonished and angry that the government are picking on the most vulnerable in society in this time of financial insecurity. They have convinced the general public that not only are we a burden upon them, eating up their taxes, but that most of us are fake as well. Hate crime against the disabled has risen by 75%. I feel even more angry because there was a time when I thought that our Prime Minister  was a more compassionate conservative who understood because he had a disabled child. I now realise that was very foolish indeed. Having a disabled child did not make him any less rich and had his son survived he would never have had to worry about disability benefits because he had multimillionaire parents.  Mr Cameron just does not get it and he most certainly does not care.

THE JIMMY SAVILLE AFFAIR

 I am aware that other abuse survivors read this blog. This has made it difficult for me to think about writing an account of what has been going on with me recently.

This year has been a tremendously stressful year. As is often the case I'd did not appreciate this because much of the stress was caused by the renovation of our house and of our wedding. I really did not think that I could complain about these things.

I still do not really understand how I could have de- stressed. 

After the SKC  show in August  when John was rushed to hospital from our bed-and-breakfast I remember very little. Oh I remember certain things happening but I do not remember them in order and from August until last week things are pretty much a blur.

There are two things that I know really did stress me. Whitney's four-day labour and the news on the TV.

The news regarding Jimmy Saville  was very disturbing. I tried to ignore it. However, although I was not abused by this man much of the news reporting harked back to the 70s. This triggered off many memories for me. I began to not sleep well. My thinking became disordered. By that I mean I began to have illogical thought patterns. 

I was unaware that I was being affected. I was still swimming as much as I could but I stopped communicating in the way that I normally did with my friends on the telephone, on Facebook, and even here. Needless to say I also did not communicate with John nor with my doctor despite the fact that my physical problems were growing and my falling over was becoming really rather dangerous.

Through this period I also had two government  interrogations with regard to my health status. Talking about my health makes it very difficult for me to  stay detached  and thus the pain became more intense.

I also became much more forgetful and this affected my medication. I either would not take it at all or take too much because I had forgotten taking it. And I continued to not sleep well.

Then it happened. I had a  series of flashbacks and night terrors which led to a full-blown panic attack.

Leading up to this I think I knew that I needed help but I was feeling very ashamed. I think I knew full well what was happening and I felt just too  ashamed to tell anybody.

I really believed that this was never ever going to happen to me again. I went through six months of hell which started in September 07 and finished around about March 08. That experience was probably the worst of my life but the result was that I began to live a life in full colour instead of the monochrome life that I had lived up until then. I came out of that fully understanding at gut level that the abuse truly was not my fault and that the only reason I had been abused was because there was something wrong with my abusers and not with me.

I thought I was clear of my past for ever and that I could not experience that level of pain again. I believe that I had got to the very root of the pain and I had expelled it. I certainly felt that this pain could kill me and the physical pain of releasing it was absolutely tremendous. I physically hurt more than I thought possible. Most especially in my gut. I have since taken medicine twice a day that stops the constant contractions.

My thinking really went to pot. I stopped going out and if I had to go to the supermarket I went very late at night. I began to believe that my doctor would lose the trust she had for me if she knew the state I was in. I really believed that everybody would think I was a fraud and that none of my recovery had been real and most importantly the experience I had five years ago which  truly had left me feeling born again. The best way I have found to describe the difference between Colin pre-spring 2008 and Colin Post Spring 2008 is the difference between monochrome and Technicolor. It required no effort on my part. The colour just came into my life and stayed.

 PTSD can be a real bugger.  It sneaks up upon you.  At least it did me. It started with little overreactions, with little illogical fears,  in such little ways it is hard to detail. It eventually builds into the glaringly obvious but by that time denial has kicked in really strongly. I believe not just in me but in John also.  He says that he noticed that I was changing and becoming how I used to be before a crash was coming. Yet he also cannot pinpoint exactly when. It may be unfair to say that he was in denial because even if he said something all went to my doctor I doubt very much that I would have said "well actually yes I am having problems."

 Much has happened very recently which has slowly been bringing the colour back into my life and although we are not there yet.

I have had two 3 hour hospital sessions where I have been questioned and prodded and tested. Although I was dreading this and felt rather resentful, I'm now very glad that I was referred to the fall clinic.

 The tests show that my body reacts just as it should in somebody with the disease processes that I have. I had no idea at all about this and this is one of the reasons I feel very relieved.

I think only other abuse survivors will understand why I'm so pleased that my reactions and symptoms are true to form. You see, as a child I was always labelled a liar and disbelieved. I was also taught that one should not complain and that one should just get on with things and not be such a sissy. Consequently, this is how I have approached  my illness.

Instead of the acceptance that I thought I had I instead had a very unhealthy way of dealing with it. I truly believed that with enough determination, and the pain meds that I finally gave in and  took, that I could live as if I did not have a disease.  Not only did this contribute considerably to my crash but I now think it is probably why despite everything I have done in the way of exercise I have progressed quite a lot since 2004 when I was diagnosed. 

 I have been under reporting my symptoms. I have been not telling the truth when I am asked questions about how I cope. I have not deliberately lied. My answers were in accordance with the don't make a fuss attitude.

 For instance,  my answer to the question "can you shower yourself?"  My answer has always been yes. The hospital physician asked me to explain step-by-step how I showered. My answer showed that in fact I cannot shower myself because I do not do what a normal person would do. I dress over a wet body  because I am unable to dry myself. John noticed this when I showered at home, which is not usual for me. He asked me why I was sat with towels wrapped round myself. Was I not getting dressed? When I told him that I was waiting to be dry he pointed out that this meant I was not capable.

I have to learn  how to pace myself and how to admit that I cannot do something or that I need help. I also have to learn to accept help. I think I did that today. I was in a shoe shop with John and three other friends. One of my friends asked me if I would like them to do my boot laces up. I almost said "no thank you" but I realised that this was one of those times that I should say yes because bending even from a sitting position to try and do my laces up is time-consuming and painful. I did not feel ashamed or embarrassed. Instead I felt taken care of. I was pleased with myself for accepting the help. It is only a small step but at least it is forward.

I also had a good, very good, session with my doctor. Not only is my trust in her back, yes I realise that my fear that she had lost trust in me was in fact me losing trust in her, but I now know that she really does understand me. She told me that many people were negatively affected by the Jimmy Savile affair. She said many were my age and had been either children or teenagers in the 70s. This was helpful to me, knowing that I was not alone. We also discussed my medical needs and my underreporting to her. We both know that we have some work to do here.

I have also accepted an appointment at an incontinence clinic. This is a big deal for me but at least I finally brought the problem to the attention of my Dr's. I might add that it was John I first broached the subject with.

As I have so often said with my fellow abuse survivors in mind, we never recover but our flashbacks and times of distress, the nightmares, the fear, become less and less as time goes on and as we work on ourselves. I said as I was taught, and as was my experience, that the incidents that cause distress became further and further apart and much less intense. As you can see,   I did not see it coming and when I did I was too ashamed to admit to it because I felt I was letting everybody down.

I can now see just how stressful this year has been and how the combination of events both good and bad all came together and in so doing brought me to my knees.

It is important for me to recognise that I got through this much more quickly and much less painfully than before.  Although I did experience terror I was able to deal with it effectively because of my past experience.

As I have said and I continue to believe, we never truly recover we only gain the strength and insight to live with it without it destroying us and our lives. I am still here and I still have a very good life. I have learned much from this episode.

I am very surprised to find out just how much attitudes that were given to me by my family and society at the time I was growing up regarding keeping a stiff upper lip etc have infected me.  I also was very surprised at how reluctant  I am to ask for help and most especially to let anybody know just how I am feeling.

My very first reaction to pain, to feeling pain, is to feel ashamed. When I broke my foot, I was about 14, I've very clearly remember how it felt and how much I wanted to vomit and also just how much shame I felt and how I did not cry and I hated myself for wanting to. I still feel  this shame with regard to my disease and its effects. I know how illogical it is and how damaging it is and I am aware that I need to work through this, that it is my fathers attitude that has been forced upon me. I do not need it and I do not need to continue to think the way I was taught to think. (It is always astonishing to discover just how much we have taken on board what we have been taught. It can make me very angry when I realise just whose  ideas I am living by.)

What I am about to share now I share only because I really do not want to. The grief I experienced this time made me very angry when I realised what this particular nugget of pain was about. It was about the little boy Colin still wanting to be loved by his father. When I heard myself say this I was infuriated and embarrassed. How the hell could I possibly want that man to love me? I am not sure where I am with this but I am aware that it is not me now but me then. At least I have got that out. I never know during the buildup  what is going to come up. I am not even aware of anything wanting to come up. So when it does and I hear myself say whatever it is I am always taken by surprise. It is only this time that I have also felt very angry, not to say confused, at the feeling expressed.

Thank you very much if you got this far and I hope that it is of some benefit to you.

DANGER!!! DROPPED STITCHES.

Medics have said that John and I, but especially John I suppose, need to speak up at the first signs of stress reactions by my body or mind so as to avoid this crash into a tough relapse. Well, today, as I was about to cast off my pair of socks, I noticed not one but TWO dropped stitches, way down at the start of the leg. Mmmmm...that is a sure sign me thinks! Other than that I am not sure. 

 I fit in a swim today with rather interesting results. I loved the swim I have to up one of the meds in order to do it relatively pain free. All I had to day was pins and needles down left side of left arm and then numbness. Unfortunately for my body, they decided to start the pool maintenance whilst I was swimming during the final hour of the day. The pool gradually got cold and as it did so, I got cold too. NOT a good thing at all for me. I got out when it became too much. trouble is I thought it was me and this worried me but as I was no able to swim straight by this time, when I hit the far wall it was not in my usual place and I could feel the cold water rushing in thru the holes in the wall. Okay, I thought, not good, get out. Well, since then, my jerkiness and shaking has come back with a vengeance. At least I know it is not connected to either use of or non use of my drugs as these happen with or without. 

 Hospital again tomorrow. Another 3 hour exam. I am thankful for all the interest and care but I hate this. Talking in depth about it brings it very much to the fore and I feel much more than I would normally and I also think much more about it's ramifications in our lives. A close friend hates it too because it makes her cry. It doesn't me. I am not detached from all of my feelings, just my body and it is hard to remain detached when talking about it in depth like that. I end up back inside myself and then I feel it physically which clearly is not so brilliant. I can't just say 'out, get out' to myself because I have no idea how I detach from my body. It isn't that i don't feel hurt, I do, but my mind is on other things. Sometimes, that doesn't do it, clearly, otherwise I wouldn't use pain killer's. 

So I am not sure if I have even explained cogently why talking about it in depth is something that causes more awareness of the pain and the future. Okay, the latter, the future, doesn't take a genius to figure out-awareness of my body as it is now brings with it fear of what may happen, MAY, in the future. It is not knowing that is hard to plan for and coem to terms with. It may not get any worse, though in this last 8 years it has, and over the last 30 very much so. That doesn't mean it won't anymore and my dr says what i do for myself has lessened the effects on me today. Who knows if that is true. It does indeed give me goals and achievements and makes me feel other than useless. I am also pretty surprised by my own tenacity and determination and capacity for pain. I would never have guessed this to be how I would deal with a debilitating, painful, progressive disease. 

 Whilst I accept my disease and do follow my dr's advice, I still under report. For example, if asked 'can I shower myself' my response would be yes. I can get my clothes off, usually slip on slip off. I would have much more trouble if wearing proper clothes. I have bars to hold, quite a few, at the pool which is why i prefer showering there even after converting the bathroom to a walkin shower at home. At the pool there is also an emergency cord. I can stand under the shower. I have not thought about this part which is the reason why i am told I cannot shower myself-I rely on the soapy water from my head to run down my back because I cannot get there with my hands. I also dress wet backed because I cannot dry myself. I never mentioned that. I just said I could shower myself. 

 I have got so used to what i can and cannot do or the way i do things that I no longer recognize whether it is normal. Meaning how much of what i do is not what an able bodied person does. Adaptations are slow, as the disease progresses and I become more normal to myself and less normal to others. This is so hard to think about and to see. 

 That is all I can manage today. I am pleased to say that this was hand typed with very few errors and no gobbledegook. Typically odd when my fingers and arms are jerky and shaky but I have been watching my fingers on the keyboard and paying attention to guiding the correctly. This not back to the 80wpm all finger typing I was once capable of. No just two finger typing but I am doing it accurately, for the most part, today, when mostly I need to use the speech to type program I use. I don't know if this concentration on my fingers so as to type this by hand is a plus or a minus or a nothing, meaning it makes no difference either way.

GETTING THERE

It is times like this that I find it the most difficult to write. Times when I find it difficult to be up let alone writing to my in-your-face journal.

 Before I lose the thought  the only think I can thing of for feeling  so low is the fact that I am feeling so low.  I feel ashamed of it and I just cannot think of a good reason why I would be feeling like this.

Yes, this time of year is never an enjoyable one but it stopped being  an awful one years ago.  I took to celebrating my birthday and ignoring Christmas. 

 And nothing tragic has happened.

Okay some more thoughts have come into my mind. In August and then again in November I had to go through two  all those awful government disability assessment forms. Not only are these very worrying they are also humiliating. What they really do though is make one concentrate on one's self, on one's body. I absolutely hate doing that. Just as with yesterday's hospital appointment, where I became aware of my body because of all the questions and tests. If I talk about it in anything other than a general way I start to feel it.

Yes, we have had the major house alteration this year and it is still not finished. It has taken very much longer than I expected although I was warned by friends that these things never go to time. I didn't realise how much I would hate having people in my house all day long. Nor how much I would hate and find unsettling the fact that everything is so different.  when we made the decision to do all this it was either do this all move and as when we bought this house in 1999, I was 40 and it was my 34th home, I definitely did not want to move. I did feel panicky about that but very quickly realised it was only because I was basically making the decision that this was going to be my last home. As it has turned out, other than a few traumatic moves when I was a child, these house alterations have been far more stressful than I would ever have believed.

I was interrupted by a phone call from John and we were talking about what I'm writing about here and he says that he thinks that the government forms are much more stressful than I give them credit for. He says he finds it very very hard just being with me going through them.

And then of course was our wedding. Yes I can see why people would say that is stressful but it was the happiest day of my life. I still can't quite believe that it's happened.

I made up my first champion, the first-generation Tantra's Plenty O'Toole Isa Kutani  and also gained the studbook number for my 4th generation Tantra's Mary Grace.  Dreams coming true.

 Now I feel rather stuck as to what say. Maybe I will just have to trust that what others are saying is in fact correct that despite nearly all of what has happened this year has been very good it has also been very stressful hence where I am right now. Even as I write it it just seems so ridiculous that one can end up feeling so desperate and tearful all the time.

I am doing all that I should be doing with regard to the dogs; keeping them clean groomed fed etc but have felt no joy in it no pride nor passion. Even my knitting IM doing that more like a chore. I'd really rather just go back to sleep except that I can't sleep very well right now.

Although I was rather surprised at what came up at dinner on Sunday regarding my father and my disease I now think quite differently about it especially when I know that it is certainly by no means definite and that people without my background have the same diseases!

All sit. Well actually that is not what I spoke  into my voice to type program but I shall leave you to guess what I did say.

My whole attitude to my health since 2004 when I was first told was that I was not going to give in to it and I was going to live my life as I wanted to. In translation I can see that what this actually meant was I was going to be the real man my father taught me to be and overcome it. And here I am eight years later with a disease that is far from cured and in fact has  progressed a lot. Perhaps what has kept me going this last eight years was the battle against my body and just trying to find the right combination that would enable me to feel perfectly normal and well all of the time despite having my problems which on the face of it I knew were not curable.

Old tapes are never erased from our minds but they can be quieted. The comment above about being a real man of course is absolute nonsense and he was far from being a real adult. However, when one has been taught me things from a very early age they do tend to stick and become quite bothersome later on.

It is true I can now see that I have been fighting my disease in not quite the right way. Yes it at least has got me through the last eight years. But now I need help. And I guess this is what I have more or less always  refused.

I was asked yesterday at the hospital what did I think that they could do for me. It took me a long time to answer and we got talking about other things while this was cogitating. I finally said that I needed help to sort out my day-to-day living within my means routine. I am sick of going full charge only to crash. In other words I no longer know how to take care of myself. I know it is very important that I keep up the swimming and the dogs.  I need to find a way of pacing myself and understanding what that means. I am not even sure if I'm explaining myself to you clearly enough but  the hospital understood. Just as we needed an accountant to sort out our finances, I need the medical help to sort out my daily living because I have run  into a brick wall. I guess in the end I needed more help than I was willing to let on or even to think about. I am so terrified of becoming dependent that I spent the last eight years running away from my disease thinking that I was being terribly brave soldier and just dealing with it. And now I am not knocking myself because it has taken enormous effort and courage to do what I have done but it was all done with that thought in the back of my mind that I could cure myself.  while not cure myself because I knew that wasn't possible but I could not just slow down the progression but I could stop it altogether. But that is what I mean. Yet the comparison between me in 2004 and me now it is very obvious that I did not succeed in slowing down the progression well at least not in my mind although my doctor says that everything I have done has in fact slowed it. I hate to think where I would be if I hadn't gone into overcharge then!

 Facing facts, I can only slow the progression I cannot stop it and I need help now to live a different way because I can no longer do it for myself because my way is not working.

Grrr.

WHAT?! THAT AGAIN? BULLIES

Lunch out with friends turned expectedly emotional. I found a conversation led me to a place I didn't know was there and didn't have a chance to avoid it once it was obvious what was coming into view. 

My dad.

Came into full view.

I thought I had buried him. 

I had won. Despite everything, I became myself and am living a very happy life.

Then my Dr tells me there is a chance that my neurological problems stem from his hitting my head so many times. The one I recall the most is the throwing a bookcase at me my which slammed other side of head into ornate coffee table head. And other fun times.

Now I knew something was brewing but I couldn't' think what. Maybe I am not so accepting of my physical problems after all. Maybe I am a fraud and really resent this or just can't pretend I have balls can deal with this like it appears. OR, and this was more like the truth, I ought to find all of my dog's homes now, because anyway John is old and can't hear and he'll be dead soon and then I won't be able to look after myself, let alone the dogs, so I might as well go now because there is no way I am ever ever ever going back into an institution and where could one be assured of one with no abuse or neglect. Exactly. Nowhere.And besides, why on earth, even if the carers were all angels, would I want to be in a place like that waiting to die and in the meantime need daily humiliation. No thank you. Not for me, Seriously so. Not for me. All of this sure to happen. The houser enovations ahve been a utter waste of time and money because John now needs ear aids and can't wear the damn things because of an ear infection which won't go away, so he must me dying sooner than I thought and then I won't be able to look after myself nor the dogs and I don't want to be on of those people who let their house get smelly and their dogs ungroomed and unwashed and shit filled cages so I have to rehome them  BEFORE I then do the obvious, except I have to wait until John has snuffed it and what if I become incapable of doing it before he dies? then what? I'd still be alive, he'd be dead, and I would be taken  into care and straight back to childhood.

So that was what the thinking has been like recently.

When really the chat with the Dr brought something I didn't know I felt and I didn't want to feel it either, more to the point. 

You see, I have been really proud of becoming the man I have become because in order for me to become me, I had to beat him. I had to undo all the damage his mind fuck of me did. I pretty much succeed. Great life, successful long term marriage, living a good life and not only that can deal with physical pain 24/7 showing I was not weak willed, soft, cissy he always siad I was, with such disgust on his face. 

Well, if he permanently damaged me physically and my neurological problems are the result of all those head knocks as a child, whilst my brain was developing, then I had not beaten him at all. He'd won. He's permanently damaged me. There is no getting well from this. He'd won after all.

My friends and John all roundly disagreed with my assessment of this, as they think, even if it were the case he caused me permanent physical damage, I still overcame him.

All I know right now is I am very confused about it. I feel such an ager toward him which i have not been aware of before, I feel like I am grieving yet again over shit that has been raked over and over and over and I thought I had well and truly killed him dead, out of my life forever.  Meaning, I felt I ahd finally become myself, the biggest victory I could ever I had and i could live with the knowledge of what he did to me, knowing he didn't want me as his son and know deep in my heart that HE was the problem and not me. I still know this. I know I was  not the one who needed to be different as a child. I know that aman who does that to a child is not an adult and is a coward. I know that. Those who have known me the longest know it too. They know Colin prior to the epiphany which gave me this knowledge about where the problem lay, not with me, and how that knowledge changed me. And let me become me.

Now I feel that if he did damage me physically, I didn't survive him after all. This is with me for life. Which means he is. No matter what, what i do, what I think, what I feel, epiphany or no, he is there 24/7. 

So this is what has been bothering me and the crazy stuff up above about John dying and my house being the papers as a den of bad dogs and mad owner was the crap going around in my head to avoid me thinking the above about my dad.

PLUS on top of this, I have felt bullied by certain people in my dog show breed fro quite some time. Recently i wrote an article, correctly factual, and it has started up all over again. The same few people are out for me. Now when I first came back to the UK in 75, it was clear I was disturbed and later mentally ill. In the late 70's early 80's when  i was trying to get my life together and fulfills my dream, I was also mentally ill. It showed. People could see it. Well I know for a fact there has been gossip, current, about that Colin who no longer exists but he did exists and for truly terrible reasons, and shame on you people, you ought to feel compassion for me as I was and not use use it now to shame me into shutting up. What you have been told about me is lies but I am sure you don't even care about. What you are doing is bullying. Yes. Plain old bullying. Shame on you, especially on those who I have felt compassion for among and tried to help you out and you turn around and thank me with this. Well, the mentally ill boy you thought you knew doesn't exist and a good caring and compassionate man does, but also no longer a fool and not blind to the malice of others any longer. I believe in giving people chances. I know when that chance has gone. It has gone. I am not ashamed one iota of my past, of having been mentally ill. I had the spirit to overcome it all and more and took more courage and strength than you will ever understand. I think the biggest mistake was thinking I was stupid. 

Well the paragraph above is quite clear and I understand that. I know what i think and feel about it and I will ignore it or stand up when and if I need to and make it very clear to these people that their behavior is unacceptable and they will not bully me into lying or hiding genetic facts.

The f*cking dad part, I am lost on. I need to find a way past it. I know what i have written and usually I come to my own conclusion but with this I can't. Today I feel physically weak, cold, trembly, the way I do when having an emotionally gruelling ordeal which this discovery today has been for me. I didn't expect to talk about it tonight. But I have. 

It is no good pretending oh it probably wasn't his actions but is unconnected. That could be the truth. We will never know. So I have to fin d a way of thinking I can live with this knowledge, than much of difficulties, those that will not go away and may continue to get worse, might have been caused by him, and not have it feel like he is back with me 24/7 and that he has in the end beaten me anyhow because I cannot fight this one. I could fight for my soul and I won that. I found who I was, I found my spirit, and I know me and my inner self HAS survived him. I cannot make my body well and if he did that too, I find it really to explain the rage and greif that makes me feel, that he can still control me until the day I die,  through my fucking disease! I had no control back then over what he did to my body but I really felt free of him. Do you see? If HE damaged me permanently, I will never be free of him.

Okay, so now through writing I know what the issue is but have no idea how to resolve in a way that adds to my life because right now I feel robbed of all my hard work. 

I don't know how to get past this.

LIVING IN TREACLE

 It would be nice if I could think of something witty or terribly intelligent to say but I cannot.

One of the things that has concerned me about the new bed is the possibility of falling out of it. Well, I need not have worried because I automatically woke up and stopped myself from turning. I was right on the edge about to fall. Now I know that my subconscious will take care of it for me.

It has been a dreadful day with regard to my health. I cannot think of any reason why.  I was not good yesterday after my swim and I had not swam the previous two days  so I don't think I could have been overdoing it. Yesterday, after my swim, I more or less did nothing I had difficulty getting to sleep last night and I was convinced I had the flu when I woke up but of course I do not. This is part of my problem it just has not been as marked as this for a while.

We went to a local computer shop as I prefer to support local traders if I can but the information they gave me on the telephone did not match up with what was actually available. I found it very difficult because I could barely talk and I must have appeared really confused. I wasn't but I just could not get my brain and my mouth to cooperate. I did meet Fay there who is the mother of my friendLaura Granger.  it was nice to see her because it just made me feel better because I knew that she could tell that I was not with it and I didn't have to explain anything.

We ended up going to  Currys. I was on the edge of losing it there but I think the sales man must have picked up the vibe or something because he suddenly said I'll leave you to have a look and make up your mind what you want. I was so relieved because that is exactly what I needed him to do was go away and leave me alone. The effort of trying to think and talk was just too much.

I did find what I wanted and that half the original price. I got a Samsung laptop with the correct bells and whistles for the two things I need to use it for-music and HD video.

It is extremely cold today. It was cold last night that today it has not been above 2°C.

The puppies are doing very well and they are eating regularly now. Pussy is not eating very well at all about this is very common with pregnant females at this time. Between three and five weeks pregnant and they often go off their food. Whitley not only goes off her food but refuses to eat raw food which is her normal diet and which she is now back on and eating like a horse but while she was pregnant and feeling the puppies she only eight the Royal Canin.  weird.

I have no idea if today is the beginning of the more difficult phase or if it is just today. It is normal to cycle with good periods and bad periods or rather bad periods and better periods because there's never really a good period. However, when I am so challenged mentally like this I find it much more difficult to deal with. It is not easy to explain to other people although I do not explain anyway but they are used to seeing a physically challenged man who is very chatty and friendly and not this physically challenged man who also appears to be in another world. It is such a difficult thing to explain. Inside I seem to be working perfectly all right and I have am thinking alright. At least I think I think that is okay. It is just difficult to get it out into words and so I seem to be mentally damaged. I am using my speech to type program for this and it has taken me a long time just because going from thinking to speaking is very difficult right now. I have no idea why this happens. I made myself a lovely latter-day coffee and then I went to sit down in my chair and John said to me "where is your coffee"?  I had made it and then just left it there on the side. I'm physically very slow as well today.  in fact it would have just been easier for me to say today has been Crap! That I always feel I have to explain! Besides which it can help me seem clearly when I write things out but this is not particularly helpful today. All it is doing is confirming that I am f*cked today.

 I still have not got accustomed to John being retired although he works Tuesday Wednesday Thursday. I keep thinking that today is Saturday because he is home and I have done this ever since he went into retirement mode back in May! I think when he retires fully in five years time I might have worked it out! And then it won't matter anyway! We have to do Tesco tonight because we both need to pick up our drugs and we both need food.

MY BOOTS AND SHOES

BI-POLAR AND ME

I have been promising for a while that I was going to talk about my experience with bipolar disorder. I have mentioned it before but I've never been into any detail about it. I guess it is not the easiest of subjects to discuss.

No matter what people say there is still a stigma attached to mental illness and people are afraid of it.

My mood swings started in my teens. They in fact started in my early teens but I guess they were not so obvious then. They did not become really obvious until I was 16 and 17 years old and even then nothing was done about them and in fact they were not even recognised.

I had long periods of the most crippling depression. I did not want to go out I thought that I was the ugliest and most repulsive person on the planet. I thought that just by going out people would know that I had been violently and sexually abused throughout most of my childhood and they would see what an evil person I was. This is what I remember the most. The crippling depression.

However I also had periods of elation. During these periods of elation I felt absolutely wonderful and I felt that nothing but nothing could stand in my way and I could in fact do anything. I was accepted into drama school. I cannot remember the name of it but I believe it was in  Chiswick. Of course by the time term time came around I was no longer manic so of course I did not take up the course.

These periods of elation became more frequent and more extreme. I would talk non-stop to anybody and my subjects would flit from one to another.

John came home from work  one day to discover that between him leaving in the morning and him returning we had somehow gained seven Persian cats.

These highs had their downsides because I could turn nasty in a split second if I felt that you were trying to make me unhappy. The man I was during these periods of being high was not the bullied victimised sexually abused little wretch. No! I was the very talented Colin who could conquer the world and show the world just how worthy and just how talented and just how truly wonderful he was.

And then, just like that, the little pathetic self hating terrified Colin would return and with it the consequences of my manic behaviour. I had to turn up at a hairdressers to tell them that I did not indeed want to be a hairdresser. I did not go as far as to say that the very idea horrified me. They were not at all pleased with me because they had put quite some effort into a person they thought had a talent and flair. But those poor people did not know that the person they were dealing with did not exist.

The worst of this to me was that I was then involved in the passion of my life the  Lhasa Apso.  Now I know I do not need to tell you who are involved in the world of dogs just how awful people can be.  I quickly earned a very negative reputation. I would perhaps be more understanding of it if that reputation was based upon my inability to look after dogs well, or cruelty towards dogs. However no matter how ill I was my dogs always came first and they were always spotless and loved.

There was a very well-known lady named Daphne Hesketh Williams who was one of the people who took me under her wing because she knew that I was very disturbed young man and she had met my family and had immediately understood why was so disturbed. I will always remember that woman with gratitude. 

There were other people  who also accepted me as I was. They did not seem to object to the constant phone calls. Let me explain that these phone calls might arrive 30 minutes after the previous one only to repeat everything that I'd said in the previous phone conversation. You see, I did not remember. When I was manic my memory was like that of a blackout. And so coming down from   a manic episode was a pretty terrifying experience to me because it meant that I had lost weeks if not months of my memory. And I would find that there were people in my life that I had no idea who they were and I would also find that I had upset or offended other people  whom I knew before I went into my manic phase.

This story could become extremely long and probably extremely dull. The trouble is there are people still involved in my breed who remember the mad and unstable person that I used to be and those people still judge me for how I used to be and they still cause me trouble.  They don't appear to understand that people can change.  I guess if I am honest I think these people do not give a shit  about how painful my life was then nor how painful was my recovery to become the man that I am today. No, I think these people feel superior to me. I think that this is what is behind some shit that has been flung in my direction which I cannot really talk about right now  but there will come a time when I shall be able to talk about it and I most certainly will.

 The other thing of course is that some of the so-called friends that I had who often reminded me what wonderful friends they were for sticking by me when others did not, turned out to not be friends at all but people who were able to see the advantage that could be taken of my mental and emotional state.  This they certainly did.

I am still reeling from the shock of discovering that people I looked up to and trusted were not my friends but were people who used my good nature and generosity and also what they knew about my psychological state in order to benefit themselves. I cannot think of anything more wicked than to  become a friend and confidant to somebody who is severely disturbed because of the abuse by others, only so that they may use that psychological disturbance to their own advantage. This they clearly did. When I think of the years of painful self-doubt that I suffered with because sometimes I did feel in my gut that something was not right with my  friendship with these two people but instead of acting upon it I punished myself severely for being so wicked as to even think such a thing of people who were so good to me as they kept telling me.

  Today life is very different. My mood is stable. I enjoy happiness and fun and joy and excitement and pleasure. And like anybody else I have my dark days.

The miracle for me is that I dress the way that I do and I dare to attend dog shows with thousands of people dressed in a manner that I know makes me stand out. I love every minute of it. Yes, it really does terrify me but I do it anyway. The amount of times I have arrived at a dog show and the first thing that I do is throw open my door and  retch; but then I pull myself together and I enjoy my day and I can honestly say that I do not care one jot about any negative comments I may or may not receive. Instead I concentrate on the good and decent people.  One need have no fear of me suddenly becoming manic at a dog show and attempting to show my dog completely naked!!

 I have put in an enormous amount of work into becoming the man that I am today. Even this year which has been extremely stressful with the house renovations and with my wedding has not brought upon any serious mood alteration. Yes, I have had periods of hyperactivity and I have also had periods of depression but these are very mild when compared to what they used to be.

Just to show how far and how genuine my recovery is I have remained unmedicated for bipolar disorder for over 10 years now.

For those of you who would bring me down, or who would try to because there's absolutely no way that you will succeed, I feel nothing but sorrow for you. You must truly be hurting deep inside your soul to wish to add misery to a person who has had such a life. You also betray yourself by revealing how much less you think of yourself and how much you think of me. Instead though of hating me and trying to pull me down you could try working upon yourself and ridding yourself of the poison within you that causes you to attack me. I am well aware that I'm not your only target but this blog is about me and I'm just letting you know that not only do I know the game you are playing and the moves that you are making, I am also letting you know that you will fail and you will feel as miserable as you always do because bringing me down is not where you will find your happiness.

For the rest of you the mostly kind and generous people, there truly is nothing to be afraid of when it comes to mental illness. What you see with me is what you get. I am recovered. I am who I am. I am who you see me to be. It is up to you to decide whether you take a chance and gain one of the most honourable friends who could possibly have or you decide the opposite and play safe and never get to know me.

Whitney pups 4weeks 21 Nov2012

SELF SABOTAGE

 As old as it may seem I feel more comfortable writing on my blog than I do on Facebook. I think because most people on Facebook would not bother to click on a link to come and read this. I also know that my blog followers follow it precisely because they identify with what I write about and quite often we do or think or feel the same things.

I am in a situation that I just do not understand. John tells me that it is all to do with the stress of the house this year. We started the renovations back in March and it will not be finished now until Christmas. I certainly did not expect it to take that long.

I also had a great deal of success at dog shows and I really loved them. Not just because I was winning so well with Whitney but because I felt so good about myself and this was shown in the way that I dressed and the fact that I kept my weight at the right level for me for a period of a few years.

Now it seems I'm sabotaging myself. I have absolutely no idea why. Yesterday, we had friends come to visit which was really lovely. We went out for the day. Now my best friend has multiple sclerosis and yet she walked whilst I was in my wheelchair. You could see the pain that she was in and have much tired she was getting. Eventually I persuaded her to use one of my walking sticks. I'm not sure why even mentioning this. I can't see that this would have upset me in any way. Yet I chose, and there is no point me saying anything other than that, because I did choose, to eat bread last night for dinner. And of course I do not mean just plain ordinary bread I mean bread full of seeds and heavy and Brown. Now I allergic to these foods. Seriously so. Not only does it make me bloated. It makes me in flames and gives me diarrhoea. And I wake with a headache and feel truly terrible and miserable.

I have done this quite a lot in this last year.

On the positive side of things I have started to use my light box every morning. When I get up and I am having my coffee waiting for my drugs to work I sit in front of my computer and my lightbox is on and I am getting my 30 minutes of light therapy. The other positive thing of course is the fact that I'm going swimming almost daily. I don't want to but I am making myself do it. I very much enjoy the swim and I feel very pleased with myself once I have done it. And whilst physically the effect is not immediately good in that my gate is very wobbly and I am very likely to fall over and it takes me a long time to get to my dressing room and to change to come home I don't half feel good with myself.

And yet I find I'm still sabotaging myself by eating foods that I just cannot tolerate and which can cause me serious gut problems. My mother died because of this although as  I'm aware she was never treated.  like me like me she alternated between diarrhoea and constipation and eventually her bowel burst because of constipation and she died.

There is not much that I can do about my brain damage or my spondylosis other than take the medication. I find the medication works really rather well. Yes, it does really piss me off that I get so tired and cannot do everything that I would like to do in one day. I have to plan my days so that on a day that I bath and groom one dog I have not got anything else that I must do. That annoys me. It annoys me that going to a dog show in effect costs me four days. But anyway all of that I am quite used to and that is not what the problem is.

But I have no idea what the problem is. I just do not understand why I am making life more difficult for myself and why the man I became and was so happy with is now slowly becoming the man he used to be.

Was my epiphany false? Did I not really recover?

As I wrote the above something else came to mind. I also lost what to me were very dear friends. As it turns out they were not friends at all. I feel really bad about that and in fact I can feel the emotion in my voice as I type this (I can can no longer type so I use a voice dictation program.) the main reason I feel bad about it is because I feel so humiliated that I did not see what these people were really like a long time ago. Yes, I did have my doubts but I just thought of myself as being wicked and paranoid and I shut my doubts away. In many ways it was a huge relief once they showed their true colours because a great weight was lifted off me. I no longer felt wicked and sick for having doubts about them.

On top of this I have also had a few people become very nasty towards me for no reason that I can think of. Meaning that I have done nothing to them. In fact I have very little dealing with any of them. And much to my anger I feel hurt and upset by their behaviour.

Winning with Whitney had its downside which at the time I did not know about. I had heard people say that dog people could be very nasty and once I started winning I would find this out. But I never did. The only thing that happened was that a friend stopped being a friend the minute Whitley won her first CC. I was not devastated because I expected it. The way she continually tore other people down  warned me that this was not a friend because if she could do that to other people then she could do it to me.

I also became well-known and popular just because of the way that I dress. It came very much as a surprise to me. I did not plan it.  in fact as naive as it may seem it took me quite a long time to realise why I got such attention. I enjoyed it. Of course I did. I was a lonely child. I did not get attention apart from being bullied. So of course I very much liked what was happening at the dog shows.

So why the hell am I ruining it all for myself? I know that my weight gain is not disastrous but it is enough to make it not feasible to wear the clothes that I was wearing. It only takes a few pounds to make one's trousers too uncomfortable and I have put on a stone (14lb).

 So I have written all of this. I can see that this year has been stressful and it has been hurtful. And I have not even mentioned my wedding! And that is the most wonderful thing that happened this year. Yet until now I thought not to mention it.

I need to sort this out and sort it out quickly. I need to understand why the old Colin who feels bad and wicked and undeserving is suddenly back with a vengeance. I truly never thought I would see him again. That day when I realised that I had been abused because of who my abusers were and not because of who I was made such a huge difference to my life. It turned it from monochrome to Technicolor. Seriously. I would never have dressed the way that I now dress prior to that day.  I would not have had the nerve nor the stamina to turn up at each and every show even though being amongst so many people terrifies me. I know without a shred of doubt that I was not abused because of who I was, that I did not deserve it, that I did not ask for it, and there was nothing about me that asked for it. That has not changed. I still know in my heart that this is true. Yet why my behaving now is this I no longer thought that was true.

It has crossed my mind that this last few years have been really very very good. And this year with our wedding and the house renovations and having my first homebred champion made up should also have been very good but in fact I have to say that it has been awful. The wedding wasn't I will never forget the wedding I was so happy that day the happiest I have ever felt. But the rest of this year both before the wedding and after the wedding has been pretty much a nightmare.

I also find it very very difficult to deal with the fact that there are people out there who don't just not like me but actually want to harm me through gossip etc I just do not understand this I have never been a malicious person. Not ever. I have never wanted to hurt another person. Not even those people who abused me. All I ever wanted was for them to stop and for them to recognise what harm they were doing.  I just do not understand people who want to hurt.

I can see from what I have written that perhaps the self sabotaging behaviour is hardly surprising.  I don't know and I would welcome any thoughts on this.

KNITTING MACHINES

LIVING IN COLOUR

I get very tired of those people who moan about the Internet and how bad it is for people especially social spaces like Facebook. These people clearly are able-bodied and have such lives that they have no time to discover new people and new experiences and new intelligence. I first came upon the Internet in 1997 in July. My life changed completely as a result I have travelled from Norway to Barcelona to Budapest to Stockholm to Denmark all over Germany France Belgium Holland. I would have done none of these without the Internet. I started my line of Lhasa apso because of the Internet. On a much more serious note on days like today where I am barely able to move what the fat could I do with myself? Just sit and watch telly and listen to music and feel lonely. No instead I am able to communicate with real people through this medium. That is all that this is it is a medium through which people are able to reach out to each other. Yes the place is full of Dick heads but you soon learn to worm them out all you tolerate them. On an even more serious note I have found that by writing my blog and being open about the effects of childhood abuse both physical sexual and emotional upon children and adults has been the most rewarding thing I have ever done. Without this Internet I could never have done it. It started out as an anonymous blog and just as a way for me to vent and to write about the abuse to make some sort of chronological sense out of it because I lived in firmly different countries and was abused in each one of them. My memories consist of which country are losing and which abuse happened. That is how I remember things. It is perfectly natural. If you ask me about Singapore the first thing will come to mind is being accosted and worse in the jungle. I have been into detail on my blog but I'm not going to do so here. However I also have some very exciting memories of Singapore the point I'm trying to make is that for all people who have been abused this is how we remember things. It is always marked by the abuse it is insidious it effects absolutely everything. In fact it is more wise to say that it infects absolutely everything. It infects the way that we react to people today. It can appear to others that we have been traumatised by something minor that has happened this week old today but which for a survivor it is not the little thing that has been the trauma but rather that the little thing has brought up something far more dramatic. Hence our reputation for overreaction. It has nothing to do with being a drama queen it has nothing to do with wanting attention. It just happens and we have no control over it all very little control over it and it takes a long time to learn to control it. There is no way of getting around it we are most definitely weird people but one always have to remember why. And one has to realise that the weirdness is our way of coping it is our way of keeping hold of our shattered selves. perhaps people do not truly understand that at the moment of the abuse a child psyche is split into 1 million pieces and those pieces will never ever come back together. They may form and a semblance of being a joined up whole but they never are. Instead our lives are an act. No I do not mean that we pretend to be somebody else although to the unrecovered survivor that is exactly what we do. We pretend to be many different people and the people that we pretend to be very much depends on those people around us. Carly Simon sings a song in which she says that she isn't necessarily the person you think you see and she will be whoever you want her to be. To me this describes the succinctly what I'm trying to describe. today I do not do that I am who I am. My friends understand this and they know that there are days that Colin is completely different to the Colin of yesterday that he is still essentially Colin and he will come back to being the Colin that they know and love. These are my real friends those who truly accept me as I am. Writing as I do not just here but on my blog has brought me so much personal satisfaction that I could never have dreamt it be possible. I have had professional people, those whose job it is to work with abused children, write to me to tell me how much reading me has helped them understand their clients better. I have been told that they often think of me when dealing with a particularly challenging child and they wonder what Colin would want in this particular situation. I cannot tell you how this makes my heart feel to know that just by writing how I feel and what I think can have such an effect. I have also had mails from people who have told me that on the day that they found my blog they had decided to end their life but that reading me gave them hope that the terrible pain that they were suffering could indeed get better. This is all that this is about. Be abused person just wants the pain to stop. The pain is not just the pain of the rape all the violence. That pain is over very quickly. It is the psychic pain that stays and eats away at 224 and was a day seven days a week 365 days a year without a break. I am living proof that despite the most devastating effects of abuse one can end up with a happy life. It is never a good idea to compare abuse. We all react differently to different abuse or even to the same abuse. The abuse that I suffered nearly destroyed me physically and mentally. Even when steps were taken to make sure that I could never physically and my life again, it was knowing that John would have to live with always wondering if he had done enough. This is what kept me alive. I knew that I could not do that to him. And I can tell you that I continued to waste my life to end right up until the end of 2007. The last few months of 2007 were the most agonising I have ever experienced but I came out the other side truly understanding that the abuse had never been my fault and it had not even been about me. I had not been abused because of who I was I had been abused because of who my abusers were. Since that day I have lived in colour whereas prior to that I lived a monochrome existence. I know that every time I open up and I talk about how I really feel at any given time I am helping myself but at the same time I am fully aware that I am also in the very privileged position of being able to help other people. I have come to realise that this is the purpose I have two my life. Regular readers of me will know that I have often struggled with the point of my life. I am completely dependent upon John and upon medication. I may be a survivor but I cannot function on my own. Much of my physical condition can be laid squarely at the feet of those who abused me as I grew up. This to is yet another affect of childhood abuse. However I do not dwell upon that. Instead I have come to realise that I do have a sense of purpose and that I do have a reason to be living. And it is my writing. Through my writing I am reaching out to other survivors and on any given day what I write may help another survivor to get through another day and learn something that will eventually lead them to not just getting through each day but actually living each day. The difference between existing and living. existing is just trying to get through another day from waking up to going to sleep with doing as little harm as possible during those waking hours. Trying not to starve oneself or purge ONESELF or cut oneself or maybe even to avoid harming somebody else. This is not living this is a living hell and existence it is a monochrome existence where all one feels his pain and whose only goal is to stop feeling pain. It was many years into my recovery before I realised that there was possibly more to recovery than just the cessation of pain I began to realise that I could actually enjoy life that I might actually feel joy and that it was okay to feel happy that there was no guilt in feeling happy. Of course this was a slow process and it came bit by bit. Despite the physical challenges I still have and the mental challenges, which will never go away, I do indeed live a life in full colour. I FEEL.. I I feel laughter I feel joy I feel silly I feel pain I feel tired I feel my body from which I was switched off for many years. Will that is enough for me now I had no idea that this was what I was going to write when I started and I wonder how many of you got this far today has been a good day because despite the fact that physically I feel terrible I have not fought it and I have still had a productive day just sitting in my arm chair.