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I left home to fly the 1700 miles north to visit my family on Thursday August 30th – and I am still here. There are probably 100 posts I could write from what I have and currently am experiencing on this trip. I figure all that can wait until I get home again. The long and the short of it is that I barely have the inner resources I wish I had to manage my visit comfortably. I don’t. “Too much stimulation” is just plain noxious to me (as it is for a newly born infant) no matter the source or the positive/negative direction the stimulation comes from. I just cannot easily handle ‘stress’.
I hate this about my condition. Part of me says that if I do not NAME what I know about what I am experiencing here then it cannot hurt me. I am doing my best to ‘skip over’ the hard parts, wanting only to keep with me moment to moment the marvels of being with my grandsons and my daughters – no matter what else might be involved in this experience.
Life as we know it IS experience — ongoing and continual. Experience is so intimately connected and intertwined with every other experience we have ever had that they cannot be teased apart, this ‘present’ from that ‘past’. My past exhausted my resources. In my essence I feel exhausted. “I am tired out” is the refrain that repeats in my awareness — and at 61, that MAKES ME MAD!
Part of this process is about accepting my ‘disabilities’ – and because these ‘disabilities’ exist in direct proportion to the severe insane abuse I suffered from my birth – they are not minor ones.
I don’t want to name them right now. I want to go on with my day as if they do not exist. (Yeah, right!) That’s all I really know how to do. It’s what I have always done. Tired out or not, exhausted or not, I always reach for MORE resources, even when I can’t imagine where they are inside of me. I am greedy that way, I guess!
So be it. Life is NOT fair. Ask any human!
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Stop the Storm 
I so agree…I used to tell my children that life is fair..countless times..I also told them everyone is good on the inside..I remember waking up in the middle of the night… sitting straight up in bed and trying to catch my breath realizing that LIFE IS NOT FAIR…and that EVERYONE IS NOT GOOD INSIDE.. Had I been lying to myself and my children? Should I wake them all up and tell them I had lied..tell them there really are bad people in this world..that everyone is not nice on the inside?? Twenty years later I realize how idealistic I was..and I know at appropriate times I have shared my thought with each of my children that life is not fair..so sorry i told you that.
How can I help you let go of one or two of the anchors??….getting older is not easy..getting tired easily is part of it. needing time alone is part of it..to digest events, too get lost in ones own thoughts…and to sleep for a bit. Love you Linda..I am enjoying so reading your entries..xo
Welcome, Sistah! You are officially my ‘oldest friend’ – and such a miracle of having you back in my life I could not have imagined! Grateful, thrilled, awed – and HAPPY! The wending, winding roads of life. The eddies and currents and backflows.
Next time we want to disagree on something – well – we better not plan to wait thirty years to get things straightened out! lol
Glad we are BACK!!!!! (I think we have a Sistah book to write!!)
Love you!
This piece is absolutely beautifully written – and beautiful – Betty Lou! Thank you.
Your book of stories mentioned in our conversation today would inspire so many people. I remember working at Eventide Nursing Home – my one story of my favorite patient who died in my arms the last night I worked there before I left that job. I remember your gifts in caring for the dying – how you used to tell me of other workers who fetched you to go sit with their dying patients.
If you are thinking of beginning your own blog to help organize you stories and your writings – this is the best, I think:
http://learn.wordpress.com/get-started/
You can publish ‘private’ or ‘public’ –
Of course, I look forward to hearing from you on my blog – though I must let you know I feel incredibly shy at having you read my writing (I am WAY too sensitive to ‘criticism’ – and cannot even deal with it from Ramona) – I am used to writing what only ‘strangers’ I have never met will see. This becomes a different universe for me when I know people close to me – who know me ‘in real life’ – stop by. (They probably do so far more than I begin to know.)
Make sense???
xo
Just wanted to clarify that in my earlier post I my comment about ‘disabilities’ was meant to be about how I see ME, not anyone else…
Understood, of course! When I have time to think (!!??) will look at the ‘shame chapter’ – thanks for sending!!
Hi Linda,
Boy, can I relate to the way disruptions to my usual routine tax my energy. Even preparing for trips tends to raise my stress levels greatly, and I’ve learned that I need a lot of time, days in fact, or I’ll find myself freaking out with anxiety on the day of departure…
Your description of yourself as having ‘disabilities’ resonates with me as well. That’s how I’ve come to think of the brain-changes that we now know result from abuse and neglect. Fortunately, all the work on neuroscience is pointing towards the possibilities of ‘re-growing’ neural networks that were stunted by early experiences…
Bless you for helping out your daughter with her little ones. I think you’re having more of a good influence on them than you probably realize right now. Not the least because toddlerhood is when humans become particularly susceptible to being shamed; which is inevitable, but which can be repaired by attuned caregivers…there’s a great chapter in a book titled “Instinctual Intelligence” (it’s only 7 pages and I’ll send it as an email attachment if you’re interested). The chapter title is: “What Holds Us Back?” and describes how the capacity to feel shame evolved to assist parent in keeping their children safe from external dangers…
But it’s an easily abused parental ‘tool.’ If we saw to it in our culture that moms (& dads) got the support they need, especially when physically and emotionally exhausted, it would make quite a difference. There would be far fewer casualties caused by over-stressed parents abusing their kids, usually by shaming them in some way and then not repairing the attachment disruption that occurs…
Wow, I’d been thinking of how brave you are but that description really
Brings it home. Whew 2 hours sleep.. When I say brave I include the parents –
I think its marvellous how parents do all that and have to put the littlies in
Day care. Hard!
And a 2 year old probably excited to see you and adjustimg to a sibling. Challenges
Challenges..
And as you say on top of your other challenges..
How lovely to see the 1st smile!!!! 🙂
TWO hours sleep… WOW!
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We finally figured out why baby took 2 half hour naps in 12 hours – Mommy drank coffee!! Came through the breast milk – never again!!!!
xo
Coffee oh no!! 😀
An inner exhaustion is what I understand – maybe a tiny bit of what you experience.
Lots and lots of hugs! Life is so full of contrasts.. And contradictions. I’m thinking
Of your peaceful Alaskan mountains for you (never been there but imagination will do!).
Xxxxxx
Oh, thank you so much dear Gingercat!! A total interruption of normal schedule is part of it – very physical, added onto the physicality of so much of ‘what happened to me’ as a whole. My daughter returned to full-time (very taxing) employment on the 4th – we are working to alternate who misses the sleep at night. Of course we both do but some nights I have the baby – last night meant 2 hours sleep for me – etc!! Napping during the day away from home is not something I manage to do – so…….
Also the very powerful energy of a 2 1/2 year old evenings upon return from day care – if we all had the resources I could fly up for short visits often – but as thing stand the cost of trip and needs here required the long visit – my daughter doesn’t want little one in daycare so soon!! I was able to generate and WATCH his first smile at 6 weeks, watch the ‘opening’ of his new tightly fisted hands, his first new sounds – all these first interactions – as I so now so clearly understand – set the infant social emotional brain — AND the left brain happy center — off on the RIGHT developmental trajectory. He is developing quickly – and when I leave on the 26th he will enter day care – a great one – but never with the kind of focused concentrated loving attention a little one gets from Mommy and Grandma!
This is helping my daughter with her return to work – helping set this little one off right as possible – and of course such precious time for me with all of them — just the difficulties that drag like heavy anchors against the currents of joy. Life is what life is — all is well, but that sure doesn’t mean always that life is easy!!!!!
All the best to you!!!! Your kindness and love is much appreciated and valued!!!! xo