+++++++++++

OK.  Even though my computer seems very jerky – which is unsettling to me – I am going to attempt to write a little comment here on some of my recent thinking regarding the title of this post.

I was into my second day of handwriting my book when I received a call that my dear friend who runs the office I took care of this summer when she was on vacation was in the hospital.  So, an abrupt ‘hard left’ and I have taken the detour the rest of the week to watch the office again until she gets better.  Hence, an abrupt break in my writing process (but will get back to that).

I have been paying attention to my anxiety as it blossomed surrounding the infiltration of evil intention and destructive action — the Trojan virus that took over my computer (and that I am not remotely sure is finally GONE).  Why the anxiety?  Why is it so hard for me to touch this computer?  Why does it feel like I have to build an entirely new relationship with this computer, with myself and my ability to comfortably use it freely?

What about this process has created such a sense of lack-of-safety and security regarding my computer?  Is it the very real violation of ‘my space’ that the evil hacker truly perpetrated against me that bothers me so?  Why is it so hard to get ‘back in the saddle’?  Can I?  Will I?  I have to force myself back here…..  It all seems so strange.

Then in light of my current handwriting-book focus,  A Girl Trapped Alone in Sadness, and with the ‘extra’ time driving these past two days, I have thought about how I will write my story with the understanding that due to the early (birth) onset of my mother’s insane hatred and abuse of me I so absolutely DID NOT get to have peaceful calm built at the center of my nervous system-brain-self.

What IS at my center is sadness.  Terrible sadness.  A sadness I would call unbearable were it not for the fact that I have ALWAYS born it since my first breath.  The alternative?  Death.

So I am trapped in this sadness.  It is at my center.  But ‘professionals’ call this ‘depression’, which is by definition an anxiety disorder.  Anxiety.  Anxiety.  Anxiety.

Since my cancer diagnosis and treatment the anxiety that has ALSO been with me all of my life can no longer be denied, ignored, or vanquished.  Nor can the dissociation.  Nor the PTSD.

So, if I say sadness is at my center — and I know this because I can feel it — what do I ALSO know about these anxiety-related difficulties that were forced into my infant-child development at the same time the sadness was — through 18 years of insane abuse?

(I particularly ask this question because I believe some severe early child abuse survivors have a nervous system set point set not at sadness the way mine is, but at anger-rage, or at fear.  If I feel sadness at my center, then how is my anxiety connected to fear — which I say is NOT at my nervous system center?)

How to I juxtapose these points?  How do I put them together in my thoughts, in my reality?  What do I understand about how I ‘got made’ and about what I live with in this trauma-altered body?

‘The sky is falling!’

I had the thought today that even bugs know perfectly well when their life is in danger, and they REACT in some programmed bug way to attempt to avoid destruction so that they can continue their bug life.

I am no different.

It is very probable that because I have had to (chosen not to suicide, either) continue to bear my life with a nervous system center of unbearable pain (yes, a great paradox), the anxiety is connected because my body was formed with the knowledge that destruction was always very near.  The threat of destruction was as real to me on a daily basis from birth as any threat of destruction could be to a bug — or any other living creature.

So even though sadness is my center, anxiety creates huge problems to me (even anxiety over my computer’s virus) because my body believes that it CAN BEAR NO MORE.  No more stress.  No more DISTRESS (what someone with a serious insecure attachment disorder makes of regular people’s version of ‘stress’).

“I can bear no more forever.  I can bear no more and stay alive.  The very next potential trauma is going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.  The very next ‘bad’ thing that happens is going to kill me.”

My body believes this.

“So, what the hay?  What, exactly, Linda-self, is the worst that is going to happen if the virus reappears here and steals all my ability to operate my computer away from me?  Is my computer going to E-X-P-L-O-D-E?  Blow up?  Blow ME up?  Blow up this town?  How is a computer virus a life-and-death threat?”

Interesting realization today.

The end of the world, the end of my world, is very near me!  No wonder that being diagnosed with advanced, aggressive breast cancer wakened the terrors of my childhood — all my anxiety.  It WAS a threat to my life — and more than anything else, my BODY knows all of this.  All of it.

If I want to claim and reclaim any part of my own consciously-controlled and chosen life, I have to step into the soup, the volcano, the near-the-edge-of-extinction belief that my BODY has and wrestle back some reason.  “No, Linda.  Nothing about a computer virus is threatening your BODY with extinction.  Only your ability to maneuver in cyberspace.”

And, yes, while everything ‘simple’ becomes very complex for me, anything new I can understand about how my body formed itself in the midst of terrible and terrifying, dangerous, violent, painful, (etc.) conditions from birth, the more I MIGHT be able to creep toward a place where I might not only GLIMPSE some peaceful calmness — but also FEEL IT!

+++++++++++