Recovery Reflections: Going in Circle and Change

It’s been more often than not, in the past, that I take my recovery as some sort of a disease that I have to heal.

That sort of sense, the one that I am not full, not complete, not a regular human being unless I get rid of my past, it never quite goes away. It never will, I suppose, until I change how I look at it. It eases off at times when my life is going great, and then rears it’s ugly head the moment something goes wrong. I’m tough on myself, tougher than anyone else. If anyone else treated me that way, they would no longer be in my life. I try to change that, but at times of higher stress it appears again.

Lately, I go back and forth.

Yes, life has ups and downs, but we manage.

Lately however, I feel like a leaf being carried in different directions. I go up, I go down. I try to improve my life, I make leaps forward…then I fall into deeper fits of stress and depression then before. I improve, I regress. I have moments of high success and moments where I’m really close to destroying all progress. They come and go, really close together. Sometimes I think that’s just a more convoluted way of progress, of ultimately going in positive direction. Sometimes I wonder if that’s progress at all.

I realize lately, that I can’t be sure.

I can’t be sure that all the PTSD effect in my life will ever be fully gone. Or my anxiety. But perhaps, it can be managed in a way that I can be okay with. That I can have what I want to have in my life, even as I am managing this.

It’s a new thought, and it might be another step towards healing.

Maybe, it’s not about beating this. Or leaving it behind. It happened, and it affects me, period. I’m only human. People wallow over breakups and daily things, is it really that much of a surprise that I’m still affected by this? Perhaps the truly human, healing thing to do, would be for me to accept myself, as I am. Right now. With my past, with the aftermath, with all the invisible ways it intertwines with my life.

PTSD, aftershock, and financial issues

It’s another day of doing nothing for me – almost- but for a first time in a week, there is no hidden mounts of pressure, no insurmountable challenges and feeling of despair. I’ve just receive my next chunk of money, my next payment, and the suffocating feeling like there is a ring around my heart(or lungs) constantly squeezing, has released a little. I can finally breathe. For about 10 days, I’ve reverted back to whom I was when I was scared, panicked, in shock and generally depressed. Sure, partly for money reasons, but let’s face it, it’s not only that. Once again, I’ve went from a period of regular weekly income, to having almost nothing. Literally- nothing in my bank account or wallet. Spending my last money for the bus and wondering how I will pay the next bill. Again. It’s not such a novel concept. I freelance, which means I’m floating from periods of getting more than I need, to periods where I just have to be patient for a month or two while I am trying to get new work.
But this, it’s like a physical reaction, and I completely lose all my logic, and ability to get myself out of that situation. It’s debilitating. I’m just starting to think there’s no getting out of it, and it’s all dire and impossible, until, when I receive my money, there is a day of shock and relief, whilst I’m fighting to forget that paralyzing fear…And then I’m back to real life. Like I just awoke out of the haze(which I pretty much did) and became real. It’s like my reaction to losing weight. It’s one of the hardest because I wonder if I can ever get over it.

The Big R – for rape…and resilience

A while ago, as I watched one of the shows I like to follow- the Big C- I start thinking about definitions. The things that people know or don’t about us that shape who we are, who we become. The things that we have no control over, that just get attached to us and shape parts of us.

Like cancer. Traumatic incidents. Loosing a person you are really close to. Becoming an addict. Being homeless. Diseases. Heartbreaks.

Rape.

When I first started telling some of my friends about what happened to me, I feel like I have peeled off all my skin and then went out- exposed, sensitive. As if I had what happen written on my forehead. For the most part, I was wrong. My friends didn’t see me differently- they just saw that I was going through hard time and needed them.

Why trauma cheats you out of your own recovery?

So as I have been getting better, I’ve finally, mostly regained my ability to work 8 hours and even enjoy it (okay, that one depends on the day). So I have been leaving very little time for blogging, which wasn’t such a good idea. Suddenly, I feel overwhelmed and sad. I feel again constantly tired and busy, I get irritable. I often break and eat chips or sweet things- way too much of them. ..and then recently, I suddenly find out why. Or one of the reasons anyway.

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
…

*

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.