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Thursday, August 15, 2013.  This post follows my previous post:

+BLANK MIND – THOUGHTS WITHOUT WORDS – A HARD WAY TO GATHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Certainly what I described from my experience with extreme anxiety today leaves me wondering if I AM actually fighting for my life at those times words have no meaning to me and I cannot think in words.  Am I disappearing as a person as that state takes over me?  Is this experience at the core of having the diagnosis the title to this post describes?

When I applied for my social security disability after my cancer and its treatment I was sent to one of the government’s “shrinks” for assessment.  He and I discussed this, and I was assured unequivocably that it is possible to have DID without having separate identities.  I actually joked with the woman whose help I received today and so desperately needed that I was not even lucky enough to get separate identities along with my dissociation!  She complimented me on my sense of humor.

Only, truly — none of this is one bit funny.

Because of the intense and difficult work I have done to create the 10 book manuscripts that are currently awaiting edit I have come to understand my mother’s mental illness as it harmed me.

It was a unique aspect of her particular Borderline Pesonality Disorder (BPD) psychosis that not only was I the “all bad” child – a projective dysfunction not uncommon to BPD people who severely abuse one of their children and not the others – but in Mother’s case her psychosis did not even let her understand that I was a human being.

I was not “a human child” to her.  I was the devil’s child (not human) sent to kill her while I was being born.

Mother’s special psychosis demanded that I remain entirely within her personal hell in place of herself.

I could not get out.  I could not escape.  This is why I could never play.  This is why she forced me into severe and lengthy solitary confinements as she kept me as much as she could exactly where she knew not only where I was – but what I was doing – which was exactly NOTHING except suffering as her proxy self in hell.

I could not HAVE an identity.  Any time some tiny bit of Linda escaped and became visible to her I was horrendously abused.

This all began when I was born.

Tiny newborn Linda could not BE a human baby.  Neither could Linda be a human being with any identity during the 18 years I was so abused.  I learned to exist and to continue to exist this way.  The only other choice would have been death and I did not choose to die.  I chose to live.   And live.  And live.

I have one horrendous history of abuse that is – I really believe – beyond the range of what “ordinary” people can begin to conceive of no matter how kind they are, no matter how much they try to understand or try to convince me they do understand.

That social security shrink did understand.  But nobody helps me access the kind of quality therapy I could perhaps make some use of although I know perfectly well that the worst of the trauma I endured built itself and my physiological reactions to it permanently into my body.

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I am going to a local doctor on Monday.  Today’s anxiety experiences gave me more information I can use as I try to convey to this doctor my “condition” and what I want:  some kind of anti-anxiety medication that will assist me with two critically important things I need to do ASAP:  (1) stop smoking, and (2) get through this relocation and resettlement.

If I don’t feel this doctor comprehends what I tell him I will stop him mid-sentence (whether I am understanding his actual words or not) and request that he refer me to a shrink who will understand and help me.  I cannot wait forever for that appointment.  I need that help now.

I take no prescription medication for any of my difficulties.  I know myself and I know that my trauma-altered physiological changes from those 18 years of horrendous abuse and torture from birth are too complicated for any medication to “fix.”  I am very clear about what I need right now, want right now and am asking for.  Once I am through this tunnel of changes I will stop taking whatever I am prescribed.

Will this tact work?  Beta-blockers are sometimes used off-label to treat PTSD.  I have PTSD.  Will a regular doctor be able to admit if he does not know how to respond to my requests?  If not, I will have to catch him in the act of doing what doctors often do not like to admit – admit their ignorance on a subject.

After all, I was not born yesterday even though there are certainly anxiety-filled days within which I feel that way.

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I hate it when I disappear to myself and as I think back about my experiences today that is what happened to me.  No language = no identity.  I could not think and I could not respond – and it was hell.

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Thursday, August 15, 2013.  As far as I am concerned I am not an ordinary person.  I have found that if a person is not super-rich or famous in some way on some level other ordinary people are not prepared through their socialization history to process the information that would let them know every other person around them who they come into contact with might not be – well – ordinary like people evidently like to recognize themselves (and others) as being.

That seems a kind of oxymoron to me or perhaps even a paradox.  In a culture that seems to pride its national-self on being one-of-a-kind, uniquely as different as they are “independent,” and somehow unlike one another in their originality, at the same time our strangled sense of uniqueness does not allow us to be “so much” like someone else.  How can we have it both ways?  How can we be “alike” at the same time we wish to consider ourselves so uniquely special?

How does that work in our cultural mind that we can be uniquely and independently the same – at the same time we view ourselves as being identically EQUAL?

Equality does not mean the same!  Do we understand this fact?

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I ponder these questions after having spent several extremely distressful hours today tracking down some very important information that I need to know before I move from one state to another.  I need to know how my $104 per month medicare premium is being paid, by whom, and if “someone” will pay it once I leave Arizona and move to North Dakota.  I need to know if this change process is automatic or if it is something I will have to stimulate – and if I do need to “do something” exactly what do I do – where – with whom – to make this changeover happen (assuming it is possible).

I telephoned an agency on Monday that as far as I could tell has something to do with how my $104 is being paid currently.  Of course I am very grateful that there is some program somewhere that somehow pays it now.  But once I move?  I left a polite and detailed telephone message with “the right person” on Monday requesting a return call — which of course I never received.

Fortunately I live in a small enough town’s area that it was possible to drive hither and yon today trying to track down the woman I left that message with.  Offices have moved and splintered.  She was certainly not sitting at her big desk where I anticipated finding her.  But i DID find her.

I so needed the information I – well – needed from her that I did not bring up the point that insult was added to extreme anxiety disorder insult (to my body, nervous system, emotions and brain) by her neglect in doing the right professional thing in returning my call and saving me this ridiculous tale-chasing.  When I found her she did not look particularly busy.  Of course she assured me she was “just in the next moment” going to pick up the receiver of her office telephone and call me.

Right.

As time went by I discovered that this woman was at least very patient, very kind and very eager to help me solve my problem.  She did not at first know the answers to my questions but she figured it out.  I am grateful.

The rest of what happened was in no way her fault.  Was it the fault of my psychotic abusive Borderline Personality Disordered mother who hated and severely traumatized me from the moment I was born?  Was it the fault of her terrible disease?  Was it the fault of people who did not see what she was doing to me and the harm she caused?  It certainly is not MY fault that the longer I sat there listening to this woman try to explain to me the convoluted process that are required to change all that relates to my disability payments and to my insurance by stress shifted to extreme distress – to terror at “threat to life” and to sheer panic that I could not regulate or down-regulate or re-regulate.

I could not understand language.  Words fled until either nothing but sheer force of emotional distress overcame me – or a deadly inner silence within which not one thought in words could come in or go out of my mouth — or stay in my mind in the middle.

My stomach churned and then it ached and then the pain in my gut took nearly all of my attention as I became dizzy and nauseous.  What fun!  When did I approach the threshold of panic?

A long long LONG time ago.  As I sat there my body remembered that infant terror and panic and would not let me forget.  It didn’t matter that my actual life was not under any threat at all.  It mattered that my “anxiety disorder” chooses its own time and place for taking over the helm of my life.  I am my body’s captive.  It is the captain of my life – any time when something of dire importance demands my mental acuity.  Acuity?  That is a stretch of the word!

There are many “adult” technicalities to moving that nobody can take care of but me.  I need an advocate!  I need another mind, a calm hearted person to be there with and for me as I try to wend my way through the complexities – as they seem to me – of moving myself from here to 1,800 miles away there.  This is why I gave myself 2 1/2 months to get through this move.  I need time to come home to my place of safety, quiet and sanctuary to calm down and regroup — before I have to tackle some other small part of this moving process.

I am forever grateful, as I have written about on the blog several times, that the worst of my anxiety difficulties did not appear until after the cancer battle I fought 5 1/2 years ago.  But I often think that if I had known what that stress and those drugs were going to do to me in the long run I would never have fought that cancer — to end up — what?

I cannot process information in verbal form in ordinary ways.  My mother’s screaming, raging, violent and violating abuse began against me long long before verbal language had become a part of my reality.  Her abuse interfered with and interrupted all normal, natural, ordinary language gaining processes an infant is supposed to go through.  Sound and words are separated in my brain.  If I am under stress/duress and anxiety ensues I cannot hear or understand words that are being spoken to me.  My mind goes – yes – blank.  At those times my own body seems to be my enemy, not my protector.

I am challenging myself with this move probably past what is reasonable.  It is necessary for me in my life to not be here anymore past mid-October – because I need to be THERE 1.800 miles away where my daughters and my grandbabies are.  I know I am tough.  I know I am able to marshal great determination to succeed over great odds.  I also know that I am no longer able to ignore what I must have ignored all of my adulthood until the cancer found me.

I must think without words.  Ordinary people are not accustomed to being in communication with a person like me.  This is not easy!

If I were to stay here I would die of isolation, loneliness and boredom.  I know I won’t die through making myself go through what has to happen to make this move happen.  I know what lies ahead of me at the other end of this process will be very good for me.  Meanwhile – if I can’t think in words when I need to – I will just have to suffer through that.  Notes are written – folders are filled with facts – and sooner or later this information will find its way into my life changes – with or without me.  I WILL find people who care enough to help me.  I will.

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Monday, August 12, 2013.  I woke this morning from a clear and wonderful dream that I know was inspired by a combination of inputs.  One came from pictures a dear blogging friend sent me yesterday of her flat in Africa that showed a low table between the couch and chairs of her light-filled spacious room.  Another came for the 25 years I was blessed to spend among Native Americans in the northern area of the United States and southern Canada and the sacred living heartbeats of their drums. 

Another most important inspiration comes from my own soul who knows clearly I have loved rhythm from the time I was 10 years old and was able to experience the most amazing classroom event of my childhood school career.  As I prepare to move to an entirely different culture I am keeping myself upright through the stress of all this change by letting myself think as I work on my sewing projects about what would make me happy!

Drumming would make me happy.  Percussion fun among all kinds of people of all ages done without ego, drugs, alcohol or ill-will would make me happy.

In my dream I was around a collection of young men ages, I suppose, 13-22.  They were experts at rhythm.  When they took a pause from their “play” I tipped their main instrument that seemed to be created out of a form very similar to the low table in the pictures my friend sent to me.  Most any kind of long coffee table would probably due – especially the kind with the spaces cut out for large plate glass sections.  The open space in this instrument was covered by some kind of a resonating material.

I could stand and tip this instrument against my body lengthwise, or sit and play it as it sat on the ground.  Funny thing was I was having such a good time playing fantastic beats that I broke the darn thing!  Uh-Oh!  I awoke knowing I had a lot to share toward improving the percussion experience of LOTS of different people – which would include the improvement (and creation) of the instruments used to play upon.

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I tried to find a group to play percussion with here in the area where I currently live and was extremely disappointed to find the 3 things present in the gathering of 20 adults that I must drum without:  Ego, drugs and booze.  This disappointment is definitely one of the important reasons to leave here – to search for my musical percussion flock elsewhere.

Yet I also worry that given the very low state of my financial situation that I will end up living in an apartment within which drumming silently – well – isn’t going to be possible!

My thoughts as I sew lead me to think about possible options to find community people – of all ages – and a gathering spot where we can play our hearts and souls out and be welcomed while doing so.

I did a quick online search this morning for “make percussion instruments” and the possibilities are endless!  It fascinated me!  Over the past months of listening to internet radio (Pandora and now Jango) I have a collection of hundreds of appropriate drum-along song titles that I can use to pull up songs on YouTube to drum with.  I have had in mind a “learning” group that can play together without the added weight of an ego-driven lead drummer.  This will be an independent group free of any direction that takes us down a road I personally do not choose to go.

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The summer I was 12 my grandmother came to visit us on our Alaskan homestead.  She received her master’s degree in psychology with a specialization in career counseling in 1918.  Testing for vocational placement and for academic rankings along with tutoring and career counseling formed her business that she practiced for over 40 years.  On this summer she administered to me and to my older brother the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory.  Some months later she sent the very detailed typed report she so sweetly and seriously created for me.

Of course my mother used everything about this intersection of interest by her mother with her hated daughter against me.  “So you think you are going to be a DOCTOR?  You are the stupidest child any mother could ever have!  You don’t even have a lick of common sense and would forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on!  So you think you are so smart!  You think you are smarter than the rest of us put together?”

On an on her verbal abuse went (of course).  But I kept that report safe in the envelope it was sent to me in.  After working at it for 10 years I achieved my BA degree in psychology in 1980.  Afterwards (all before computers) I went to the college library and researched art therapy master’s programs around the nation and sent for corresponding catalogs.

Like my dimly remembered career direction report from my grandmother I stored all these catalogs in a box and hauled it through my moves until one New Year’s Eve eight years later a bell went off inside my soul.  Out from under my bed the box of art therapy information was dragged.  Sitting alone that night as a new year began I opened and read them one by one and made my decision.  Even though I was “a welfare mom” I was going to find a way to get that master’s degree.

I did.

It also fascinated me that after I had spent many months getting myself and my children moved from northern Minnesota to Albuquerque, New Mexico to begin my program of study I found and read my grandmother’s report.  In it she had put together what she had discovered about me at age 12 into the suggestion that I pursue a profession which in 1963 did not even exist in the United States yet.  Grandmother told me my best profession would be ART THERAPY!  This was a combination she found of my medical, scientific and artistic interests.

All these years later after I realized that my traumatic childhood has destroyed my own ability to practice my profession I have still paid the $100 per year fee to keep my Nationally Registered Art Therapist credentials intact.  It strikes me today that my drum-making, drum-playing ideas fall right along these lines.  There is hope I can do this!  Not for money – but for the soul of it.

I can PICTURE my future with the percussion and The Percussion People in it. 

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My thinking, my heart’s desires and my dream were all further confirmed by the automatic email I received today of the Baha’i Quote for the Day.  Today it read in part:

“Exert your utmost endeavour that ye may develop such crafts and undertakings that everyone, whether young or old, may benefit therefrom.”  –

From – Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh Revealed After the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Author: Bahá’u’lláh, Source: US Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1988 pocket-size edition Pages: 269,  Excerpt from LAWḤ-I-HIKMAT (Tablet of Wisdom)

How perfect! 

We can MAKE whatever instruments we want and need, we can play, practice and perform!  What possibilities!

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Sunday, August 11, 2013.  As it is with all stories about families it is impossible to know where the story actually begins.  This is a second-hand story so my part in telling it began nine days ago when I was first introduced to this drama.  Today I returned to our local laundromat cafe to hear from a gentleman I will call John what happened next.

The central heroine of this story is a child who was born October 1980.  When she was a little girl she lived with her mother and her young father, but when she was 2 1/2 her parents separated.  She was taken to a town where she was still cared for by her paternal grandmother.  Her father moved nearby so he could be an active part of his dearly loved little girl’s life.

The week before she was to begin kindergarten she was supposed to be taken to her father’s house for the agreed upon switch in custody arrangements.  The girl never appeared.  In fact she disappeared and stayed that way until two weeks ago.

Two weeks ago this girl was found on Facebook by her cousin.  Last Tuesday her father, her father’s son (ten years younger than his sister and THRILLED to meet her!) and his girlfriend and the girl’s 84-year-old grandmother drove a few hundred miles to see her.  Married for ten years with two sons ages 2 and 4, this girl was severely abused by her mother who married another man and changed her firstborn’s name so that nobody on her father’s side of the family could find her.  And until now – they didn’t.

What a sweet reunion!  Buried memories came surging forward for everyone involved.  A testimony to how much a very young child can “imprint” love, as the father calls it, detailed scenes and activities are appearing as if the passing 30+ years never happened.

The mother who stole her daughter from her father and her grandmother took a long dark, dark road.  She and her entire family has deliberately lied to the father’s family all of these years claiming that they had no idea where this girl was.  The mother had other children with her new husband and treated them entirely differently than she did this girl – who she severely abused out of resentment and hatred for her daughter’s father. 

The up-side is that this girl (woman now) had the umph and the smarts to disown her wicked mother ten years ago, as I mentioned in a previous post.  This is a miracle to me!

Now the coast is entirely clear for the reunification of this family who joyously and with much love met one another again last week after all these many years.  I am so happy for them!  This is probably the happiest turn-of-a-life story I have ever had the blessing to hear about.  It could not have happened to nicer people!

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This is my 1,500th post!

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Sunday, August 11, 2013.   Well, this might be my most boring post ever!!  This is something I needed to do for myself, to see if I could improve the disappointing pictures of my “sewing therapy” projects.  I am struggling with many things right now and forcing myself to follow the impetus to try to do a better job on the pictures just seemed to be one small thing I could do to try to fight my way out of my low-down feeling state.

For all the postive things about living where I do that I am having to grieve as I prepare to move far away, the truth is my most important needs are not being met here.  Those needs are primarily about “attachment” to family, friends and to community.  Knowing all this does not make leaving my home, my garden and my animals behind any easier.  I am grieving.

So, here just for the heck of it are perhaps some clearer pictures of my sewing therapy projects.

I am thinking about making a poster “garden for rent with house” to try to find a tenant for this place that will appreciate and care for – or at least keep alive – this garden.  It’s not really my problem as I don’t own this place – but…..  This is a long shot of part of the back yard but it is impossible to show this garden in 2D – impossible!

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There’s the adobe chicken coop I made a few years ago – and the softest bag of them all, complete with pockets.  To the left is a yellow Texas Bell – the plant is over 8 feet tall.  It is the first of its kind I planted in the garden and it thrives.  I tried to get 4 others going elsewhere in the garden and every single one of them died.  Why?  I have no idea but when people say, “Bloom where you are planted,” believe me there is usually more to the story.

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There.  At least here you can see the embroidered roses – and the pocket on the back.  There are small pink embroidered roses, also.

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The one that makes me smile and its reverse side.  Colors are very delicate.

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Pinstripe with pocket

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Well, there’s TOO MUCH light on this one and the delicate Indian embroidery on the front of this light tan back with blue lining with roses doesn’t show up.  Oh, well!

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A fun fabric!

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Hard to see the space aliens on this one – but they are there!

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And the patchworks – which is where this project series begain –

This shows the wild looking pomegranate tree laden with fruit.  Part of my motivation to wait until the 2nd week of October to leave here was that I want to take that fruit with me.  I hope it will be ripe.  I am taking it even if it’s not.  This is the first harvest in 3 years due to hard freezes.  Once the tree froze to the ground and came back only to be frozen again last spring.  This year has been a kind one – lots of winter rains and all.

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Looking at these pictures I took today is disappointing.  My eyes did not register that the shadow cast from the corner of the house fell directly on top of these bags I have sewn recently.  They also needed to be stuffed with something to fatten them up to catch their details but no way was I motivated to spend time doing that.  These pictures are only the briefest (and evidently pitiful) presentation of the sewing work I have been doing these past weeks – my sewing therapy.

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How did I miss the shadow?  Maybe I will retake and repost better pictures than these.  I am having a very lonely and frustrating day today.  It didn’t help that I had a major allergic reaction to something today – very scary.  I think it was to the vitamin D3 I took.  I don’t know.  I had a milder but still scary attack 2 weeks ago, and both took place within 10 minutes of taking my vitamins.

So, needless to say – I am in one of those “I am doing the very best that I can” stages of my life right now.  It took a big summoning of willpower today to even get these pictures taken at all.

Back side of the above bag.  I wish the embroidered roses showed better on the front pic!  My own rose bushes are beginning to bloom – I hope we get more monsoon rains!  I will be very sad when I leave to walk away from my gardens, especially if they will not be cared for.  Then they would die.

There are butterflies on the fabric in the neck of this shirt.  The colors are very soft and subtle.  This one made me smile as I made and finished it.  These bags have (to me) a wonderful soft feel to them which cannot come through in these pictures – shadow or no shadow.

This is the reverse side – hard to see the buttons.

This one has pink and white pinstripes and a pocket front and back.  That’s the Mexican-American border fence line back there past the edge of my yard.  Soon I will be living less than 150 miles from the Canadian border.  Right now – I just feel like is very strange….

This is extremely soft fabric – made from pants, pockets retained.  All of these purse-bags are fully lined.

There are a few that are just patchwork – made from fabric I have scrounged and accumulated.  There is so little I can do in and for and with my life right now.  The move is anticipated mid-October.  Meanwhile my loneliness continues to erode me until I can get up where my family lives.

Patchwork

These sturdy tote bags are being stored folded – I did not have the motivation to iron them for pictures.  I have nearly 20 of them made.  I am hoping my daughter can go through with her plan to place our book writing needs on Kickstarter.com to raise money for ISBNs and a computer for me.  These will be among the “gifts” for donators.

I did not like the way this fabric fought not to have itself top-stitched.

Upholstery fabric

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Wednesday, August 7, 2013.  Well, I’ve rebooted my computer and the problem I see on this post writing page appears to be due to something WordPress has to fix.  Most of what is supposed to be visible at the top is just plain missing-in-action.  Oh, well!  Life is full of surprises and adaptations to those very same surprises!  I can hover my cursor over where things are supposed to be visible and they seem to work when I click on them.  Fortunately I have written nearly 1,500 posts here (and many more thousands of pages) so that I know where the invisible SHOULD be visible.  Lucky me!

In three weeks I will pass through my 62nd birthday.  I find myself hovering over these moments of my own life in wonder – in lots of wonder – about my life lived thus far and about my life as I might be blessed to continue to live it for some time into the future.

I am anticipating leaving my home here in the gorgeous high desert along the Mexican border where I have been humming along (some days more humming than on others) for 14 years.  I am returning to the far north not far from the Canadian border where 2 of my 3 children live (my daughters) and my 2 grandsons (ages 1 and 3).  I first visited and then moved to Fargo, North Dakota right after my 20th birthday.  42 years ago!

Why?

Why did an Alaskan mountain homesteading girl end up in the perennial very flat lands with not so much as a pea-grade hill to be seen?  Windswept.  Frigid Siberian winters.  Destiny is my only answer about then and about soon-to-be.

I can no longer argue with destiny.

I don’t understand it but I still believe that there are parts of everyone’s life that are orchestrated by God (however we understand that Greatest Mystery).  “Now” and “then” hardly matter at this point in my life.  My decision has been made.  All that’s left now is the PROCESS of leaving here and arriving there.

I expect that I will leave my home here the 2nd week of October.  Somehow.  I do not wish to again “lose” my belongings.  Generosity of family and friends, even some borrowed money will be required to the tune of between $2,500 – $3,000 to make this move happen.  Seems unimaginable to me if I look at any of this rationally.  But “unimagined” is not the same thing as “impossible.”

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My actual home including the gardens is my place of solace.  It is my place of calm at the same time I have felt it to be on occasion my physical prison.  But, then, being in a body seems like being in prison to one whose soul never quite grew down into this world.  Severe psychotic abuse kept that from happening for me – and as I approach age 62 I realize I will never “make up for lost time.”

I am simply – or complexly – ME.  Sometimes I have songs for a brain.  This is our glorious desert monsoon season and the beauty is stunning all around me.  Billowing clouds against blue skies flashing immense shadows over the mountainsides as the clouds grow and pass us by.  Every seed that can be reached by the moisture the rains have blessed the land with have sprouted.  The land is luxurious.  This beauty makes even a troubled mind feel the same way.  I soak in this beauty as my last monsoon in this area bleeds its beauty into my soul.  I want to take all of this with me!

Can I?  Will I?

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Meanwhile – I sew.  In my odd collection of various thrift store accumulated fabrics there is a collage of color and texture I am turning into bags – shoulder purses, tote bags – as I create a birth with each completed object. 

What for?  What destiny does this growing collection of fabric reformed possess in the future?  In my future?  I know not.

Sewing simply grounds and calms me.  Making things with my heart, mind, hands, time – life – is something I have been doing at least for 60 years.  I know this because my verbally abusive mother often berated me during all of my childhood for being such an “unimaginative, stupid child” because I sat in the middle of the living room floor when I was two making things with my plastic pop beads.

(Perhaps I thought I was safe doing this.  If I didn’t move around I wouldn’t “get into trouble?”  Ha!  That didn’t work.)

But for myself I claim my creativity, humble as it is.  I claim the songs that take over my mind and disappear again before I get back home.  I don’t know what kind of a place I can afford to rent when I get north on my rather small disability income – but I know what I can dream of living in….

A STUDIO! 

I wish to haul my craft supplies and my tools right along with me.  I want to haul my storage shelving, my sturdy tables, my crayons and paper, colored pencils and paints, my sewing and weaving and spinning and mosaic materials.  I can do what I’ve done before if my living space is not really big enough for me.  I have built very sturdy “lofts” over beds, over chairs, over tables and UP UP UP UP everything goes.  It only matters that nobody bumps their head as they move around in my space!

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In other words I am in a transition time of great change a’comin’ and the many, many unknowns and potential surprises that await me.  I do know that so far I have lost 27 pounds on my changed green vegetable diet and out from under the middle-age (and climbing) body of mine is appearing the body I used to have (with a few adjustments due to aging) in my 20s.  This all fascinates me – like I am coming unburied from years of weight from depression and loneliness – as I anticipate a new life with my daughters and grandsons in it.

Mystery.  I work to remember that the unknown really is a mystery.  My future life as mystery, creeping along ahead of me slowly enough as if it is waiting for me to catch up.  Mystery.  The Great Mystery.  Mystery can be very, very sacred!

Maybe I can take a painting class.  Maybe a yoga class, or a dancing class.  Maybe I can take care of my age one grandson so he can be spared the chaos of big daycare.  Maybe I can volunteer somewhere and make some kind of a difference.  Maybe I can find a group to play my conga drums with!

Maybe……  Mystery is full of maybe…..  I am working to be OK with that!

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Saturday, August 3, 2013.  I have to be a bit careful here because what motivates this post and what I am reacting to involves a real person who I am not slamming — but rather attempting to learn from.

I don’t think this person I call Robert is still a friend of mine.  I am not sure he ever was.  I know he no longer wants to be my friend.  According to Robert’s final email announcement, I am “too much work.”  I could not, or did not, resist my urge to reply to his note with “Funny.  That’s the same thing I could say about you.”  I had written the night before when the proverbial caca hit the fan that I now know that the two of us are not compatible.

The term “attachment village” recently crossed my mental desk through the work of Dr. Gordon Neufeld who is a life-spectrum attachment specialist.  He was speaking at the moment that term appeared about shrinking families and the “orphaned elders” that are just one of the sad consequences of the changes in modern families of our culture.  I realized as I heard that term that is what life is about for we members of a social species:  We MUST HAVE an attachment village to be healthy and happy.

Now, down here far away from my family I have relied upon people I have met in this community for friendships that could help meet my attachment village needs.  Robert was one of those people I attempted to form a friendship with.  Now, here comes my assessment – and this is not statement of fact by any means.  I don’t KNOW anything.  I only wonder, guess, conjecture, and suspect what the dynamic was that did not allow a friendship between us to form or flourish.

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Robert is gay.  That is fine with me but it was not fine with his mother or his family while he was growing up.  Robert’s mother wanted a daughter and entirely rejected her 3rd son from the moment he was born.  She gave him no love.  She hated him.  Robert grew up remembering his mother’s response to some violent TV show after which she had said, “I don’t understand such killing, or how people can do that to one another.  Unless, of course, the victim is gay.”

Robert grew from very young believing that if his mother ever discovered he was gay she would kill him.

And on and on his story goes – as does the stories of all early abuse and trauma survivors.  And in the here and now it was the acquiring of HIV virus and the devastating effects the medication Robert has taken for over 20 years to control the virus that has left him physically quite unwell.  While I have had compassion and shown concern and caring to Robert all along I was not intent on making this the focus of our friendship.  I thought we could be peers, equals, respect one another, value getting to know one another – and other adult attachment village related occupations like having some fun together.

As it turns out although to my knowledge Robert is encircled by women I am evidently the only one who is “too much work.”  What the heck does that mean?

I insisted on being respected and NOT disrespected.  No, I did not give this man permission to criticize me, something he evidently desperately NEEDED to do.  I don’t give ANYONE permission to disrespect me that way.  There are adult reasonable ways to talk about how we feel when someone does this or that, etc.  But outright bad-mouthing harsh criticism is out of the question for anyone I will keep in my life.

But there is more to this pattern.  I have learned now that being myself means the MOST to me.  I was not allowed to ever be a self, let alone myself, during Mother’s reign of terror against me.  Any time in this relationship with Robert that myself appeared and what I felt, thought, did, believed, wondered about, wanted or desired did not 100% agree with HIM, he wanted to cricize me.  Go figure! 

Emerging as myself was evidently a threat to him getting HIS needs met, hence the projections of “bad mommy” onto me.  In any relationship I will be myself and I will be respected, appreciated and valued — something I am equally able and willing to offer to everyone else.

I am sorry his mother was crap.  I am sorry my mother was crap.  But there comes a time when consciousness must be achieved by survivors of early abuse in order for balanced, healthy REAL relationships to be possible.  A healthy adult attachment relationship is a dance of need and fulfillment with a LOT of space in between for just being one’s self with another one’s self.  Badgering someone to be a pretend “good mommy” and condemning them when they won’t play the game as being “bad mommy” won’t do it.

I tried to bypass and work around our differences until it all blew up.  While other women are evidently Robert’s “good mothers” once I insisted that I was my own person to be valued and respected as such I became, I am quite certain, his “bad mother.”  Every abused child grows up with an image of their bad person internalized within them.  It takes the willingness to confront those patterns in adulthood to consciously make choices about how to live in spite of the harm done to us.

To my knowledge Robert has never done that.  Projection is too mild a word for how these “you are my bad parent” pattern destroy happiness in friendships.  There is no working with it.  I refused to pity or caretake this man.  His mother did the same to him.  Well – you can see where this has been going all along — until it got there.

The end.  The end of my even trying to get along with this man and vice versa.  That’s OK.  I am learning quite a bit.  I am nobody’s therapist nor am I anyone’s victim.  I don’t “do transference” with people.  I had enough of that for the 18 years I was abused by my psychotic Borderline Personality Disorder person (for whom I was her projected all-evil self). 

But I have feelings I am processing as I let go of this relationship.  If there is any kind of a personal investment in any relationship there are feelings that will have to sort and play themselves out as they heal once an end point arrives. 

But there are certainly times for me when compromise and negotiation are so completely absent in relationships that there is no REPAIR possible — because the truth is there has been nothing but RUPTURE all along.  Such is the contamination of the present with the trauma of the past.  Trauma drama is not allowed to be a part of my life and being anyone’s “bad mother” projection is trauma drama in action.

I want a HEALTHY and HAPPY attachment village, not one that is made up of people  who are as unhealthy as the anti-attachment family I was raised within.

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Saturday, July 27, 2013.   Sometimes a blog post title appears all on its own.  I’ve never had the stamina to argue with such titles.  “When is life NOT life?” I ask the title popper-upper.  All I hear in my thoughts in response is, “When you are THINKING about life you are not aware that life is just life.”

I am very aware today that life for me right now is simply LIFE.  I am aware of the simplest things.  How tasty my organic green vegetable juice is and how pleasant it is to know that there is probably nothing better in life that I could consume.  How I have been beaten by a bunch of bugs so small they’ve been named no-see-ums.  (Ceratopogonidae are tiny biting flies barely visible to the eye. Referred to as no-see-ums because of their minute size and also known as punkies, sandfleas and biting midges.)  Oh, these BUGS certainly have humbled big me!

We are supposed to be in the middle of our Arizona high desert monsoon season.  It rained buckets from the 1st through the 11th of July and not a drop since where I live.  Usually we have afternoon daily rains for 6-8 weeks.  But we have had enough moisture to bring out the worst of those tiny monsters whose bites I am quite allergic to.  I have burn-blister red legs and red swollen patches all over this body I live with/in.  Quite the deal.  I am hiding in my house and still they are finding me.  (I tried four different bug repellants today including 100% DEET and they still attacked me!)

Besides green juice and wicked teensy bugs a major decision has made itself in my life.

I notice I am not quite ready to boldly state, “I have made a major decision,” which is exactly what I have done.  I actually feel like I ended up in a deadend in a maze of my life — and am fortunate that at least ONE WAY OUT is available to me.  I will take it.

Two and a half months from now I will most likely be living over 1700 miles from here in the northern large town where my daughters and my two little grandsons (ages 1 and 3) reside.  Siberian COLD WINTER COUNTRY and FLAT FLAT FLAT.  (I hate cold and I hate flat and I hate cities and even large towns.  I am a mountain girl.)  Yet……

I am very clear that with the changes that have happened through no choice of my own down here where I have lived for the past 14 years that if I stay here — I will die of loneliness.

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I honestly don’t feel like I know myself — coming or going.  I know that I am alive.  That much seems about as obvious as I can find right now.  I am in transition.  My life will be transforming with me in it.  I cannot guess at my future, really.  I cannot even accurately anticipate the life I am moving into.  None of that matters.  I am simply moving, and oh!  How many times have I moved in my life?

“In my life.”  I write those words as if I know what they mean.  I actually don’t.  Not really.  I just stay alive and life keeps on going with me in it.  LIFE keeps me alive.  Life.

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I read a spiritual quote last week whose words are imprinted in my thoughts.  I can paraphrase it like this:  The soul has two wings.  One wing is love and contentment.  The other wing is self and desire, and it is this wing that gets us into trouble.

Hum……

I have been doing a lot of thinking about this — because I don’t really know what those words mean to me.  “Love and contentment.”  Sounds wonderful!  This is why I am moving.  I want some of that — LOTS of that!

“Self and desire” gives me a lot more trouble.  Is it my SELF and my DESIRE that struggles with making peace with moving too close to the north pole?  That struggles with leaving mountains that I love for some of the flattest land on earth?  Is it “self and desire” that tells me in restless ways that “I want it all” even when I logically know that is not possible?  Self and desire, does this light the fire of my DISCONTENT?

Well, phooey on discontent!  I am way, WAY too good at feeling THAT!  I want to feel content.  That is my desire but evidently that is a healthy, productive, useful, spiritually advantageous desire!  I certainly know there is lots of love for me up north and lots of people for me to love up there, too!  That will win the day, of course. 

I am adjusting myself to changes coming coming COMING!  I am taking this slowly.  I am giving myself time to adjust, time to let go, time to say goodbye, time to grieve before it is time for me to leave here, this place that has been so good for me and to me for the longest period of stability in my 62 year lifetime.

I have lived in that northern town up there before.  I have friends there I’ve known for 25, 30, 40+ years.  I have family up there.  I have much to look forward to — yet also much to fear if I let myself go in that negative direction.  I will be leaving my home in this house and my big quiet yard filled with flowers and more flowers to live in a cramped little apartment (as I imagine the scenarios) cooped up like a wild caged animal during the dark frigid six month of winter.

“Stop, Linda!  Just STOP!  Go back to what you were doing before you started writing this post.”

“Live, Linda, live.  Live in the most positive way that you can!  Choose that.  Do that.  Live.”

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