Random Picture

I found this piece of art on Deviant Art (a site I love completely and recommend to anyone), and it really struck a cord. It was made around the time of the Japanese Tsunami where so many people lost their lives, but it just hit  home on a completely different aspect and I wanted to share it with you.

A Fox for Japan by SilentReaper

In the comments section the artist wrote:

"Bad times pass slowly,

Good times pass quickly

But time itself passes,

Regardless of who or where you are"

It reminded me of the need to cover up our hurt and to find quick fixes when there usually isnt any. There are times when I wish I could put a bandaid on my past and let it fix itself but that isnt an option - at least not a healthy one. It also isnt something a bandaid can completely cover. This picture made me want to cry and made me happy at the same time.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edit: 16/3/12

I wrote this quite late last night and I dont think I expressed how this art work made me feel very well. While this picture made me want to cry (something I still struggle with doing) but in a good way, a kind of release. It made me reflect on my own progress and helped me to look inside - something I am struggling to do at the moment. 

The comment the artist made also made just as big an impact as the art its self. It really showed me that I am not so alone - even in those moments I feel trapped in my past. 

Falling

It has been over a month since I last posted and I feel bad for that. Not simply for the people who read this but more for myself. Writing this blog is extremely therapeutic for me - it helps me to really analyse what I am going through and help me to feel calmer. Margaret explains this as the thinking, logical part of the brain connecting to the emotional part of the brain and helping process things and calming the emotional part. It is why journaling is supposed to help so much. I have also been avoiding doing any art and this is also particularly unhealthy for me as art is a way of safely expressing how I feel.

The reason for all this is I have been having a particularly stressful couple of months. To summaries, Elmo fell and fractured his spine (he has a wedge fracture in his L1 for those of you who have knowledge about spinal injuries), I caught a nasty flu which exacerbated the Chronic Fatigue, I started getting flash backs in relation to a new and particularly nasty memory, and started getting pranks and threats from a man who has hurt me in the past. My house-mate, and good friend has also been particularly struggling with his own issues. Overall, the last 7 weeks have been more than a little difficult.

It can be interesting how things work out; this year I have become a lot closer to a wonderful group of people and started dating Elmo and now all of this difficulties have been dropped in my lap. Had it happened 6 months ago I don't think I would have coped however with the great support I have around me I have been able to get through with out completely breaking down (though there have been moments I have felt close). I am not saying that any of this is good, or even okay - more that it is amazing how the universe/God provides.

Before I began to write this post I entitled it 'Falling' because that has been how I have been feeling lately in a number of ways. I feel that I have fallen off the side of the planet when it comes to keeping in touch with people and keeping up with my blog and reading others. I was literally falling down I was so tired with the Chronic Fatigue (even managed to give myself a mild concussion one night and sprain my wrist). And I have been feeling like I am doing everything I can to not fall into all the emotions that have come with this new memory.

Things are getting better slowly. After 7 weeks in a full back brace, Elmo was given the all clear today to take the brace off, and is getting around just fine. I changed my mobile number and the threats seemed to have stopped (though Elmo is still being very protective). I am very slowly starting to get my energy levels back to where they were and I am not falling down any more. While I am still having a lot of nightmares and still struggling to come to terms with the new memory I am beginning to be desensitised to it and the number of flashbacks has significantly reduced.

I will be trying to write more often though my posts may still be short and irregular at the moment. But I do want to get back in the habit because as I said at the beginning of this post, it does help and when you guys leave comments it really is encouraging and does make a difference.

So to all those people who have regularly read and commented on my blog in the past, thank you, you have helped me get through some difficult times.

My Big Brother

Before I was born, my parents had a baby boy, Graham. He would have been 3 years older than me. However he was a trisomy baby and died when he was 5 days old. He should have been a miscarriage. My mum has never really dealt with it - not that I can blame her - how can any mother deal with losing her child?

For me, I have always said that it hasnt effected me. Graham died before I was born, I didnt know him and never had the opportunity to grow attached to him. And for the most part I believe that is true.

But a small part of me is angry that I didnt have big brother there to look out foor me. I know this is irrational and that it is something that cannot be changed. It is why I have never told anyone. I didnt even tell myself. It has only been recently that I have started to feel the anger inside, and it has been since then that I have started to discover this anger.

I have several cousins, but I was particularly close with my 2 older cousins - Sarah, who is 6 months older than me and Joel, who is 2 years older. Joel and Sarah fought a lot, but Joel always looked out for her. I was so jealous of Sarah - she has the most amazing father - who, when I was a child, was the only example I saw that showed men were decent. She has a big brother who looks out for her.

My grandfather never touched Sarah - because Joel was there. He didnt even know it and he was protecting his sister. And that is probably a huge part of why I am angry - where was my big brother to stop Papa? But it is more than that. I have always wanted a big brother who was there for me, protective of me and a friend who would always be there.

 I truly cannot believe I have just written all this. I have never even said any of this allowed - to anyone. But the last two days it has been in my mind - I am not even sure what triggered it. I needed to let it out, to share it - because, no matter how irrational it is, it hurts.

Forgiveness

I have been thinking a lot about forgiveness - why I need to forgive and how to accomplish it. For a long time the reason I felt I needed to forgive was because God told me to, as a Christian that should be enough, however this didn't help me know how to achieve it. It wasn't until recently that I realised that I couldn't answer those questions until I figured what it meant to forgive.

My mind and some of my little ones have been raging at me, why should we forgive HIM? He hurt us and he took pleasure in it and you want us to forgive him? The pain and anger with those questions is so overwhelming that it has left me shaking in the past. Anger is something I don't deal with very well, honestly it's not something I deal with at all, some of my parts hold a lot of the anger -but for the longest time I haven't been able to get angry, I simply hid within myself and let another part deal with confrontation. I am getting better at this, I now get frustrated and even a little angry at times. I stand up for myself more and I am more likely to voice my opinions. This blog has helped me with that last part. However anger still frightens me, even anger that comes from within (maybe even more so) and the anger I feel with those questions terrifies me.

This is where my epiphany stemmed from, it was from this that I realised why I should forgive: because I don't deserve carrying around all that negative energy, the anger, hatred and pain. Several dictionaries describes forgiveness as "to pardon an offence or an offender", to absolve*. I am starting to see forgiveness as more than this - to me, it is letting go of the hurt, anger, hatred. It is accepting what happened and choosing to live on without the negative energy.

I created this in Polyvore after I wrote this post and decided to add it...

The key word here is acceptance. When I say acceptance I do not mean pretending that what happened was okay - if what happened was okay then there would be nothing to forgive. By acceptance I mean acknowledging what happened, understanding it was beyond our control and choosing to let go.

understanding... accepting... letting go... forgiving...

Not that I am saying this is easy, it is anything but easy. And this sudden epiphany doesn't mean I have suddenly forgiven and let go of the pain and anger. I beginning to understand that forgiveness might not be something you just decide and move on. It's a process and sometimes a process that needs to be repeated several times.


I am starting to recognised that this is even more emphatically so when relating to myself. The few times I have felt anger it has usually been directed at myself, there have been times when I truly hated myself and believed that I deserved all that happened and more. Yet I hadn't thought really of forgiving myself because I do not see what there is to forgive - what happened was not my fault. And yet there are times when I still need to understand this, accept it and let go of the hate. I need to forgive myself.

---------------------------------------------

*  forgive. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved January 29, 2011, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/forgive

Expressive Arts Carnival: A Self Portrait

When I first read the activity for the Expressive arts Carnival I planned to submit Natalie's portrait that she did last year. However on the way home I started to consider the project and the way I view myself and I realised that this was something I really wanted to explore. As I spent more time contemplating the way I see myself I realised there was so much I wanted to represent.

I wanted to show how much hurt I still feel inside from my past; I wanted to show how fractured I feel living with DID but I also wanted to acknowledge how much I have achieved in healing and how much my self esteem has improved in the last few years. I was overwhelmed with how I could achieve all this in one portrait.

The inspiration for my self portrait finally came when I was reading one of Nadia's poems:

Reflections

Staring in the mirror
We are angered by what we see
The reflection of a girl
A single face, standing in solitude
The mirror tells a lie

For a second the anger spills over
Unable to be contained,
The fist flies at the image.
The crash breaking the silence
Like a thunderclap on a calm night

Now the mirror lies in pieces
Shattered into a thousand fragments
Each containing a face of girl
Now we see our reflection
The mirror shows the truth

As well as showing how broken I sometimes feel with so many parts, I thought that the broken mirror was an apt metaphor for how the abuse has distorted my view of myself. I drew a number of drawings however none of them really captured what I was trying to portray. This is when one of my little ones suggested I try Polyvore, which they had discovered through castorgirl's artwork.  

Reflections: a self portrait

I am really proud of how this turned out, though it is nothing like how I originally imagined it. Despite this, I think it does capture all that I wanted it to. There are so many symbols in here of how I see myself I don't think I could really explain it all - I am not sure I understand it all on a conscious level anyway.

Having spent this time really looking at myself and the way I think about myself, I realise that I still struggle to not see myself as broken, as damaged goods. However, I am proud that a part of me is trying to fight that view and that while I still see the bad, I see good along side of that. I recognise that I am a strong, loving person, that I am creative and a good friend.

When the Tears Don't Fall

Please be warned this may be triggering to some survivors

please take care of yourself

------------------------------------------

A few days ago I read castorgirl's post "Expressive Arts Carnival: Self Portrait". I was really blown away by her artwork, which triggered some very strong emotions for me.  I found the images very confronting and could relate to them on many levels. In the comments section I explained what I saw however it was castorgirl's reply which really articulated what I saw:

 I can see why you would see the perfect face people want us to present to the world, and the hidden damage we feel. That was another motivation for taking the picture – to show the dissociative coping, show how others see us, or how they want us to be. 

When I was reading the post and viewing the artwork there was a lot of internal conflict, for many of my parts and for me as well this images and some of what castorgirl said really reflected how we felt about the abuse of my childhood. The sense of feeling dirty, used, broken. It really made me want to cry, not just for the hurt we had, and continue to feel - but for the huge number of people out there who feel the same pain.

I still struggle with the ability to cry, to let the tears fall. Its not that I don't want to cry, because these days I do - I want to let it out and feel the release that comes from a good cry. In the last few years I have started to be able to cry - but I can still count the number on 1 hand. I believe the reason I struggle so much is because I was punished for crying and so I learnt not to, and now I don't know how to undo that learning.

Generally when I feel I want to cry, but can't, I draw the tears. Its not the same thing but it does help me to reflect on the emotions and to find a sense of calm. I have drawn hundreds of these pictures over the years and generally they have a similar look to them. This time, when I drew in relation to cartorgirl's post something different came out.

In this picture I didn't just see the tears I wanted to cry, I saw the deep hurt, shame and fear that I have been unable to face for years.

Over the last few days as I have been reflecting on my reaction to castorgirl's art and my own drawing I have found a deep sense of accepting that all this hurt is not my fault and that I did not do anything wrong. It was not my actions that cause my grandfather to hurt me the way he did. While I have intellectually acknowledged this for a while now, this is the first time that I have had a deep sense of accepting it.

miscarriage

One of the girls in my bible study is pregnant and I am so happy for her. Tonight we were talking about her pregnancy, how she was going, morning sickness etc. Now I am as close to crying as I can get. I remember 2008 and being pregnant and the ultrasounds, hearing my 2 daughters heart beats. I remember how scared I was but how much I love I felt and how all I could see of them were two beautiful gifts from God out of something so horrible.
To me Life is something only God to make and they were God's gifts from a horrible night - thats how I felt. I held myself together so that I would be strong for them. I did everything all the books and research says - I ate the right foods, avoided the bad - I even gave up my cups of tea. I took the vitamns - I did all the right things. and then I miscarried.
I fell apart and tonight I just remember all of it. I was so ready to love them and be their mum. That hurt more than all the shit that has ever been forced on me. That I thought something so good was coming from that horrible night and then to have them taken away from me.
What did I do wrong that I am punished over and over. That men use and throw me away like some worthless object. That good things a put in front of me only to be taken away.

I know I sound selfish, and self-pitying and I hate that. But I already loved them so much. I was ready to do whatever I needed to so that they would have a good life filled with love. Even if I one day do have children - they will never replace those 2 girls I lost. They will be just as loved but I dont think I could ever forget that pregnancy, the sound of their heartbeats, the love I still have for them.

I feel bad that I still grieve for lives that were never born. I feel like I am being stupid but I cannot help how I feel. I want to be a mum - but I am scared that I will never carry a child to term.

These memories hurt so much just now. I thought I had put this behind me - not forgotten but moved past the hurt. I wish I could really cry. I wish I could let the pain out.

Not Coping

Not coping. feeling bad. Just want to cry. Everything feels too hard. Trying not to cut. Jazzie wont talk to anyone - except Kyle - and I am not even sure if she would do that today.
Kyle wont answer on MSN. feel so alone. really want to cut.
Most inside not doing well. Falling apart. its too hard.

Really not doing good

I am feeling so crappy today. I have a cold on top of everything else.

I am struggling to accept that I am going to need help if I dont get better soon. I am too tired to cook so I am eating frozen dinners which is expensive and not the healthiest way to eat. I am struggling to keep on top of washing - both clothes and dishes. General chores around the house just isnt happening. Charlie, my beautiful dog, is filthy and scratching but there is no way I can lift him into the bath and wash him myself. He hasnt had a proper walk in ages - I feel really bad.

Sarah C came over for bible reading which was the highlight of my day - she is really good to talk to and we have great talks about the bible and living in this world as a Christian. I told her about what I was struggling with and that I might need help and I was struggling that. I also told her that I didnt know where to go for that help. She has offered to look into what is available around here as far as help.

Mum & I are also talking about her paying for a house cleaner once a fortnight till I am better.

I feel bad that I need help. I am supposed to be a young healthy person. And being on a disbility pension already for the DID I should have all these things under control. I mean I only study one subject a semester - a normal load is 4 subjects. And now I cant even do a little of one subject. I struggle to wash my hair. Its so frustrating.
I just want to cry just now. And I cant and because of that I just want to cut because thats the only thing that has helped me in the past. I know I shouldnt start again and I am really trying to fight it but I feel so bad - I cant even play wow for distraction.