Terrible Lessons
I am working out this week's therapy session. Feel free to skip this. The poem is here at the top!
A COVID19 Haiku today in honor of my trip to Trader Joe’s.
Tie top and bottom.
Open to cover the face.
Terrible lessons.
🎋 🐚 🎋
🎋 🐚 🎋
⚠️ Content Warning ⚠️
⚠️ Child Abuse ⚠️
Terrible Lessons I Learned by Age Four
No one is on my side. No one. No one is listening either.
Advocating for myself is dangerous. No one cares about my needs or my bodily autonomy.
I am only valuable when I'm soothing my Mother.
My anger, if seen, is dangerous. Clench your jaw and hide it even if it feels like your head will explode.
Many questions after just spoken aloud for dramatic effect. Don't answer. Clenching jaw helps.
Be invisible, be small. Be quiet when you can stand it.
Always go when your Mother calls you to her, no matter how terrifying she sounds, even if you know she will hurt you. If you make her get you it is only worse.
Don't resist. Open defiance energizes her. Meekness saps her strength.
Then she will let you go outside to play.
If you run fast enough away she can't hear you scream how much you hate her, hate them all.
Get back on time.
Not All Flowers
In my SAFE sessions I’ve developed a pattern that’s helpful; a kind of signal in the processing that I’m more in control of the memory. This also indicates I’m getting closer to installing it.
Today I got to that point with the current memoryI'm integrating. I start to step outside, seeing it instead of experiencing it directly. Then I can run it forwards and backwards, like a film. Like the most terrible home movie collection ever.
So I'm glad. I also have some ugly truths about my Mother to integrate. It was a good therapy session.
These dogwood bloom right breast my therapist's office. She's moving and next session it will be a whole new neighborhood. I'm happy I got to appreciate these today.
Dogwood bracht unfold.
Not all flowers have petals.
Tiny blooms revealed.
The Exploding Inner World
Tumblr reminded me of this quote I posted a while back, it felt fitting to revisit today
"To traverse the exploding inner world, a person needs to be able to not only name what’s going on but to cultivate themselves to be present with whatever shows up, learning over time how to welcome the discord."
- Deirdre Fay
Although our friend IK left this world 7 years ago yesterday, it is always the 10th it hits me hardest. Almost as if it took an entire day to integrate the loss and shock. Whenever I hit this date blip I feel shame, the echo of the shame I felt when IK committed suicide over how wrapped up we were caring for my Mother.
Teaching gave me a little boost, but much of the day I was in a fog. Astounded by the death toll, the ghoulish politicians, and stewing over trauma memories. No surprise I dozed outside rather than yard work.
A haiku for a groggy Friday afternoon.
Dozing in sunlight.
Apple blossoms nod along.
This moment is whole.
Together, Just
I wake up feeling like I’m made of gravel hastily bundled up in flimsy net; weighted down by dread and barely together.
I know I’m doing better than barely together, but when I first wake up, especially if I’ve bolted awake from another nightmare, I feel the heaviness of dread. I feel clumsy with anxiety, physically, mentally, energetically, spiritually.
Today I received my last paycheck from the City until we open. Until March 14th I was teaching 14 or more hours each week. I was officially laid off as of April 2. Although I could have done it sooner, today I filed my unemployment claim.
I also thought a lot about my Mother today. There’s been some anger present today! This is for a post written at a laptop!
It also occurred to me that I did most of my early yoga teacher training before I even had a PTSD diagnosis, much less the Complex Trauma add on. I thought of this seeing people share caution for a breath practice for folks with these diagnoses.
Once again I was hauling myself through trauma without any help. I’m really grateful I’m learning to ask for help more.
I’m also really grateful for these apple blossoms in our backyard.
These apple blossoms
Have been waiting all winter
To see the sunlight.
Self-care Isn’t Free Time
Scattered in clover.
Yellow faces gazing upward.
White petals unfurl.
Haiku turns us inward, teaches us to see tiny details deeply. Teaches us to pay attention. I return to it to get the pathways of poetry writing reconnected.
I started new medication to help with my anxiety; the stuff that arises out of my own special Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. I think it’s helping, although it is honestly hard to tell as I feel anxious and down.
CK and I water talking about people who keep saying online how they have so this free time now. We consider that some folks have lost jobs, which accounts for it. Some folks just were always out?
In theory I should have more since I’m not driving around, running errands, etc. I don’t have more time. It might be that the time is going to keeping myself grounded, which doesn’t leave me free time.
It doesn’t feel like abundance this time. I need to use it to stay functional. If it were truly free time, perhaps then I might be using it to tackle more projects.
Gifts Gratefully Received
Standing beneath trees
Abundant with bright blossoms;
Hopeful, tender Life.
I went out today and saw a dear student, physically distant as I admired her garden. She made CK and I each two cotton masks, beautiful creations that will allow us to more safely do necessary errands.
I’ve felt increasingly anxious about my rare trips out. A student asked if we wanted some and I took her up on the offer, gratefully, and shared with her hoe it was helping my anxiety! Ironically, as I was on this errand the CDC issued a statement recommending masks!
I feel loved. I am taking it in, trying to really pay attention. This gift, the sweetener of including CK, the money I’ve been making, the generosity. It is this reminder that I am valued, worthy. I’m not a toxic person who destroys people.
Poetry and Gratitude
Hey, it's April, which happens to be National Poetry Month, and I'm trying to think of creative projects. Reviving the old 30 Poems in 30 Days challenge!
April Haiku
Raindrops fill flowers.
Delicate cups overflow.
April showers fall.
I'm grateful for these fancy primroses CK grew from seed. I'm grateful for her exuberant return to gardening. I'm grateful her job is secure and she likes it.
I often have moments where I'm grateful that my Mother is dead. This ghoul of a President at least wasn’t elected by her, because she would have voted for his “straight talking” ways. She would have been the Boomer playing down the seriousness of COVID and telling me I’m overreacting, being a drama queen.
Her death freed me to heal, to finally see the full scope of the abuse, to really connect to the terrified child I was. Connecting to that child self is helping me to see how remarkable I was.
How remarkable I am.
Self Taught
Trauma Therapy Tuesday; it was productive and sad. Strange seeing all the shops closed, especially as I’d been processing how utterly alone I felt at age 4. Deeply melancholy.
In a family with intergenerational trauma, everyone had poor, to dangerous, soothing skills. I somehow, at 4, figured out how to soothe myself. I figured how to keep myself safe in a family that didn’t value me.
I’m appreciating what an amazing child I was. I was a badass.
I’m also sure that I would have learned to be the person I am without being terrorized. I’m both really proud and amazed by my child self while also being deeply angry that I needed to be a self-taught badass.
Childhood Logic
A few years ago I read Arielle Schwartz's workbook on healing Complex PTSD (recommended). I posted several quotes from it onto Tumblr and often they get reblogged. This one was over the weekend and, not surprisingly it’s been connecting with the current trauma memory I’m working on integrating.
"Self-blame is a direct link to childhood logic -- children will develop a fantasy that they are bad kids relying upon good parents to avoid confronting the terrifying reality that they are good kids relying upon bad parents."
I have a belief that I am so fundamentally damaged and toxic that I really should be alone. Prolonged exposure to me is dangerous.
This doesn’t really align with reality, but that’s why my trauma is Complex.
It’s what happened. Through abuse of all kinds, telling me repeatedly literally and metaphorically, that I was terrible, ungrateful, and deserved to be treated horribly.
I had bad parents. The one that was present was so damaged from her horrible Mother she was unable to soothe herself, had terrible boundaries, and lacked empathy. She terrified me so often, so young, that I didn’t dare do more than back talk and even that only mildly, as I grew older.
All of this gets tied right into shame around money. Which is coming up, right on time, as students send me money for online teaching! People giving me money, as opposed to a paycheck or transaction for an appoint, really trips me up. I get hit with shame and unworthiness.
This would be why I’m both glad I still get to go to therapy in-person, so long as I’m not feverish, and sad. I’m glad because I’m struggling and sad because it’s a reminder that my childhood was profoundly fucked up.
Global Trauma
Today I saw someone sharing a reminder online that this pandemic is exciting everyone’s stress response system, our friend the Sympathetic Nervous System. There isn’t anyone to fight, although racism is certainly trying to make it true. We cannot flee a virus.
Collapse, or “Freeze”, is the third stage of this system. Play opossum until the threat gets bored and moves on. This is why we’re exhausted.
The author noted that folks with Complex Trauma are worse off. We already have to convince ourselves we’re OK, but now it really isn’t safe.
Hence my nearly daily naps. I’m trying not to resent them. They keep me able to stay well and keep us well, keep me from collapsing under a blanket in years. Naps after facing the pharmacy and being at Freddie’s age also just fine!