~aloosefruit on TTBP

01 july 2023

It's been quite a while since my last entry here. Life has been a wild ride since then. I'm currently recovering from knee surgery (following the knee injury I wrote about in December of 2021) and my job is trying to screw me out of my paid medical leave in the middle of my recovery which is a fun experience. I don't feel like getting into the details but it's safe to say that I will not be returning once my leave is up, due to this and a whole grip of other ridiculous happenings that have occured since we hired a new CEO in January. It's time to escape from the circus...

Besides the work drama I am healing really well from surgery and overall happy with my life. I've been doing a lot of [trauma and/or substance use] recovery work over the past 5 years and I'm really noticing the results; I am more able to show up for myself and actually participate in my own life instead of feeling and acting like a puppet without agency. It's interesting to look back and reflect on how unaware I was of my circumstances because they felt normal. I was living life the only way I knew how. I suppose each one of us is.

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12 october 2022

I feel disconnected from life right now.

Two weeks ago my grandma fainted outside of her apartment building, fell onto her face and hit her head. A stranger helped her up and she went to bed instead of to the hospital but when her home aide came the next morning and saw her bruised face they called an ambulance immediately. My parents were out of the country at the time on vacation so it was up to my brother and I to try and figure out what was going on, which hospital she was in, and what happened. The hospital absolutely sucked and they took terrible care of her. Grandma is post-open-heart surgery with a history of atrial fibrillation and on blood thinners. They didn't even call her cardiologist to tell him she had come to the ER. My brother drove in from out of state to pick me up and go visit her and as soon as they heard family was coming they discharged her without a plan. They barely gave us any information about the tests they had done or what condition she was in. Grandma was disoriented, in pain, dehydrated, exhausted... she was dressed and ready to leave before we even got there and desperately wanted to go home.

Over the next couple of days I devoted all of my energy to communicating with her doctors, my mom, and the visiting nurse service while trying to convince my grandma to come stay with me in my accessible apartment in an elevator building rather than living alone in her 3rd floor walk-up apartment where she has fallen before. Eventually I convinced her and last Wednesday after an appointment with her cardiologist she came home with me and stayed here until my mom came to pick her up Monday morning. In many ways it felt like taking care of a child; I had to speak very plainly, make sure she ate and hydrated properly, struggled to get her to use mobility aides and allow me to help her. She was very stubborn at times and wanted to do things for herself, frequently saying she was good for nothing and getting in my way. It was heartbreaking because I wanted her to feel she still has her independence but also SO frustrating because I wanted to help her and keep her safe. I want to protect her. I also understand the grief she must be feeling at the loss of her ability, mobility, vitality.

As a physically disabled and chronically ill person since birth I've become accustomed to my fluctuating ability and made peace with the slow disintegration of my physical and mental being but I know most people don't contemplate that facet of existence until it hits them in the face. That's quite a weight to bear all at once. I suppose I feel my own grief at watching someone I love suffer and struggle to process the reality of declining ability. My grandma lives alone, doesn't have many living friends left, doesn't speak English well and sometimes even struggles to communicate in her native tongue as her cognition has slipped over the years. My ultimate wish is for her to find peace where she is and find some joy in whatever time she has left in this life. I love her with all my heart and I just want her to be happy. I know that's not up to me, I can't control another person's feelings or experiences of course. But I wish her well every day. May she be safe and protected, may she be happy and peaceful, may she be healthy and strong, may she be free from suffering. I send metta to her and to all living beings in this universe.

Writing this out has made me feel much better this morning and I will take the day one moment at a time. I guess I'm just experiencing may feelings that I can't name or understand right now and that makes me uncomfortable. The feelings are uncomfortable and I wand to alleviate the discomfort of them but I also know that they need to be felt and I should give them space even thought I may not understand what they mean. I feel weird not knowing what to do to take care of myself and part of me is afraid I'm doing the wrong things. I'm afraid that I'm not allowing myself to feel their full intensity and the suppressed emotions with bubble over when I least expect them. It's okay to be afraid too. I know I have support and I have made it through worse in life with less. Just keep going.

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13 january 2022

I don't write here all that often because I put pressure on myself to write a long "real" journal entry when my thoughts usuall come fragmented, in fits and starts. A two-sentence entry is still and entry! That counts!!

Just had my second therapy session of 2022 and it was more illuminating than I expected it to be. I'm still a dissociated husk winter ghost baby but it turns out I have cohesive thoughts and feelings underneath it all, even now. My therapist has been working with me for almost 6 years now and I don't think I let myself appreciate how much importance I place on having someone in my life who can help me dissect my trauma onion one-layer-at-a-time :>

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27 december 2021

I wish this vacation time progressed more slowly, it feels like everything is going by in a flash. I had a stressful holiday involving a miscommunicatioon with my roommate which lead me to cancel plans with my family and touched a deep C-PTSD trigger. I'm starting to pull myself out of it now by using the support and tools at my disposal: journaling, self-reflection and noticing bodily sensations, talking about my feelings and struggles in recovery meetings and with trusted friends, re-parenting and being kind to myself. Doing the work is helping.

Now that I've been doing this inner work for a few years, every time I notice that a thought or behavior is actually a trauma response I find it hilarious. So much of my existence is rooted in hypervigilance and anxiety! The trauma response is EVERYWHERE. How the heck have I survived 30+ years on this earth? (spoilers: I developed these coping mechanisms as tools for survival in a dysfunctional environment! Yeehaw!!)

Anyway... I'm not even sure why I'm writing this here. I guess every time I write about it I release some of the burden and make moore space for healing. Like cleaning out my internal closet. I've crammed a lot of shit in there over the years :]

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08 december 2021

Oh yes, let me write a feels entry to record some feels. Late afternoon sunlight is filtering through my windowblinds, my humidifier hums soothingly beside me as I click and clack away at my desk. I feel the weight of seasonal depression (much more than in years past) and I'm doing my best to move through it rather than analyze it too much. This too shall pass.

I dislocated my kneecap several weeks ago and it's made me even more sedentary than usual. No doubt this is also contributing to my depression so I'm trying to get some more movement into my daily routine but it's a challenge... I'm feeling pretty fearful about over-extending my knee and possibly injuring myself again. Connecting with friends is tough since it seems everyone is also attending to their own states of depression and/or winter hibernation. December is a time to slow down. I feel slow but I can't accept it and the need to constantly keep busy feels unshakeable. I read Jessica Dore's December tarot offering last week and bits of it have stuck to my brain ever since, especially the bits regarding rest:

" I’ve been thinking about what I relinquish in the endless state of feeling like there’s more to do than will ever get done and that that’s unacceptable. It’s a weird sort of scarcity with insatiability, unworthiness and shame mixed in. When I keep busy I give up tending to what’s torn at the seams and tattered with neglect; a tending which is painful. Reckoning is painful. The more I put it off, the harder it gets.

...

It makes sense that the compulsion to do anything too much, like work, could be rooted in shame. Because when you move endlessly toward something, like work, you’re pulling away from something, too.

...

I want to know what would be needed to really accept it, if someone were to knock on the door and say it’s not necessary to work all the time. That no one will die if you lay down. That you don’t need to earn the presence of loved ones as if love is a wage paid for your undying and limitless service. What would it take to believe them if they were to say, “you are forgiven.” "

This connection between rest and shame feels so concrete in my personal experience but (as often happens) I don't have the words to express how or why. Just the joy of feeling seen, the yes, this and so many mind pictures & memory sensations. I should be working but all I can do right now is contemplate and that's okay.

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