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.