Recovery Updates : Vantage Point

As I get better and get back into having more regular days, I  have less and less time to think about my recovery. Usually when I forget, it pushes back to the surface, because I have more work to do. This week comes very intense. I’ve known big changes require a lot from us sometimes, but before now, I haven’t had the energy to deal with any of it.

I still get crazy tired and stressed at the end of the days, but at least I do things now. This week is still not too productive when it comes to work, but it’s very productive in terms of getting me in good, more positive working mindset…still very stressful, but much needed.

All I know is, at the beginning of that week I’m so stressed and exhausted that I really need a change. I need a new vantage point, I need something, to push me to get through the things that are hard to think about while getting on my feet. I find nothing at first.

One lovely blog award and very inspiring blogger award

This was send to me by PTSD-No Fear In Love, thank you so much, Jess! I have another award, much overdue for the same reason that Jess mentioned- wasn’t sure if I was meant to wait for something more to happen. So I guess soon I will have to do one more such post:).

Nomination for One Lovely Blog + very inspiring Blogger Award.

That, especially being a new blogger, means a lot to me.

Now, that I finally have time to write the post about it, here it goes.

1. Awareness

It all begins 5 months ago, which was exactly about 2 years after my SA.

There is no problem. I have no problem. Nothing really big happened that summer. I’m completely fine all the time. I mean minus the nightmares, not-sleeping, not-eating and feeling everything is completely pointless.

That first week back from working as an intern at a festival at the sea, I know something is changing in me. There is part of me that has enjoyed immensely the sea, the new people and memories, and that wants to save the experience and try to build from it. But there is the other part of me. The part I have pushed down for way too long. That festival, it has pushed me to the limit, and I can’t continue to deny what I have for 2 years.

 I can’t, but I have to. The free week I have until I’m back at work is enough to get myself together, or so I say to myself.

Tough love baby! I just gotta make it through few more weeks of work.

I’ve made it 2 years, swimmingly, this is a baby job, I can do it in my sleep.

*

That one week I circle the apartment like a ghost. I don’t call my best friend, or my other friends, they don’t even know I’m back yet. I go out to buy food, I skype with my partner who is then back at his city. I sleep and circle the apartment like a ghost, trying to get myself ready for the coming week. 

But I am not ready, not even a bit. 

{Just a Rant}

So I saw something today that reminds me of how I felt when my SA happened, one of them anyway and I can not have the patience to edit.

This is what came out of it, and by extension, this isn’t really a post, this is just to get this out somewhere, without shape and color and size, without order, dirty and messy and meaningless like it was. This is for nobody and nothing, this is just how it was.

*

…alone, alone, night, laying on the cold floor, him throwing out a condom aside, dirty, dark, cold, stripped, laying on the floor for what feels like forever, naked, weak, humiliated, disgusting…

Back in University pt.2 (on the ability to dream and other disasters)

“Hereon by, I live in a different world. My world has been stripped to it’s very core. I have no expectations, no hopes, no dreams. People that dream much, they can’t survive here. I have to find a way to tip the scales in my favor, but after everything, I feel completely lifeless and broken. I can’t really let myself try, because I’m already broken, and if I go on, I’m not sure I will make it. I’m sulking, not just miserable, but so much under I can’t remember, anything really. There might have been times I have been more, but they are too far to remember. I’m so out of options, I have never been before. I don’t talk about it. I repeat it’s fine, pick myself up and keep trying, because this is what we are learned to do. But it’s not fine, it isn’t.

It’s what people say when they know they have hit rock bottom.”

                                                                   –me, right after the rape, summer of 2010

Recovery Alphabet: Q for Question

“But I’m not the same. I can’t be the same.”

That’s the sentence coming to my lips every time I get overwhelmed with the recovery lately. Never once do I ask myself what would it mean for me if I am not the same. I’ve been struggling in my own way with the notion of change.

I have done the hardest emotional part of recovery, and I finally have energy to do something different…but I have no clue what that should be.

I mean I have the lists and all, that I have made in moments of desperation, with all the things I need to change. But when it comes to actual doing, they all seem too big, too hard. Because yeah, I have changed, I have more energy…but I’m not there yet. I can do some things…all of them just make me feel overwhelmed and panicked.

But then I realize. This is what we do as grown ups- we forget how to really accept and question facts. If you say to a grown up you got divorced, they will tell you they are sorry. A kid would probably ask why. Kids ask about everything. Somewhere on the way of growing up we forget how to do that. We take as granted having to do the job we have, be with a certain person or break up, do the things we do.

We don’t question facts. We accept them. The wrong way.

I don’t know how to live without that person.

I can’t lose all the weight I gained in 1 night.

I can’t do more than this.

I’m not the same.

I have to relearn everything.

Everything is a mess
…

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Here is a radical thought: use the old prayer. Accept what you can not change from that, change what you can, and then think about what is next. Question what is next. You may not get a clear idea, but eventually you will.

The Minimalist Guide To Recovery

When I started out this blog, I went deeply into research of the issue (i.e. rape, depression, PTSD) and I was trying to encompass everything. Taking care of emotions, going through memories, understanding my reactions, taking care of myself physically, and doing my work.

In other words, I was doing what every busy adult has understood to be a faulty concept- the one that you can do all you want to do in all aspects of your life.

Even work aside, I was in over my head.