Eating and Other Irritations
Lunch defeated me today.
I felt like a failure. I made a lunch for CK, but she couldn't really eat it. Today that felt like I'd dropped the ball of the I've thing I was getting right.
I kept reminding myself, and her, that it wasn't really about the lunch. It was about the pandemic and the protests and the lack of accountability of the police and the Mayor of Portland who's on the side of Money instead of the City and the People.
I wanted to bake cupcakes, testing the gluten free version of the cupcakes I made for CK on the first of her birthdays we spent together. Instead I got so nauseous that I couldn't eat and we played a game until I felt better.
A decent day overall, but I feel exhausted and all I want to do is curl up and read all day and nap.
Telling
I went to the dentist and he cleaned my teeth toast and I didn't cry before, during, or after!
I got to practice telling a new care provider at the practice how my anxiety is heightened at the dentist due to intersection of multiple traumas. She was awesome about it and so was my young, less experienced dentist. Again.
It will never be easy revealing trauma history. I am learning that sharing it can be helpful. I'm really touched at the consistent patience I'm down. I never am made to feel like I'm overreacting.
Over 1000 people lay down on the Burnside Bridge this evening. I gave advice to a protestor on using a neti pot to help recovery from tear gas. Students asked me to facilitate a discussion on, essentially, how to be better white people.
Worthy/Unworthy
Had a friend tell me today they had scheduled the whole day around a call with me.
They said something along the lines of, “Tell that to your sense of unworthiness!”
In response I felt good about for a short while but the rest of the night I kept catching myself in moments of self-loathing about my body, my ability to keep house, about past actions I regret.
I know it isn’t really me, it’s the trauma and the pandemic, but the work to keep reminding myself that I’m safe feels just exhausting today.
So Tired
The CDC website doesn't yet report 100,000 deaths from COVID19, but that's only because numbers are taking time to come in after the Memorial Day weekend. We're already there.
We watched How to Survive a Plague tonight. It was both uplifting to see what the work of activists accomplished. Sad because as we're watching it the current time feel even worse than during the AIDS epidemic.
It reminded of the anger and grief I felt then. How much deeper, stronger, hotter both those emotions are right now. We're at a number of people dead in this country in a matter of months that took AIDS years.
I'm just exhausted by it all. I needed a nap today and yesterday, I'm reminding myself I went to therapy yesterday and it really sucks energy out of me. Trauma sessions are always intense and all the grief, anger, and fear right now, with the related exhaustion, is a normal response to these pandemic days.
Resilient Always
I was writing something else, will use tomorrow.
Trauma Therapy Tuesday was my big day out. I enjoyed my little post-session walk and was glad to keep working a little at integrating a terrible memory from age 4.
It's one that had unfolded new memories, it was worse. The last few sessions have me appreciating how remarkable I was as a child. I was brilliant at figuring out the least terrible option then getting through it and getting myself out of the house for a while.
I'm also marveling at how well I am, considering what examples were put before me as a child and what I endured.
I was, and am, a resilient bad ass.
Harvest
The garden gave us Sugar Snap Peas today. Just a handful we ate while playing a game together this evening. They weren’t amazing, the way very freshly harvested produce is sometimes, but they were good.
I picked up the mail. It contained a handmade card and a linocut print, both made by students. “That’s a pile of fan mail”, CK commented when I got home.
I am, again, deeply moved at the offerings of my students. I’m also really impressed at how well people are adapting and growing.
Now that I’ve spotted the backdraft of shame in response to these mail days, I’m hoping that will begin to ease. Sometimes recognizing, then articulating these insights to CK, a friend, and/or my therapist, starts to break up the hold the Childhood Logic has on me.
Tomorrow is Dinner 70 and I have no idea what it will be, nor do I have anything thawing for CK. It might end up being very easy if we garden a lot. We’re also spending a bunch of the weekend playing games and discussing more ideas to make CK’s 40th extra special.
Exhausting
Same calendula today. Taken during a break in the rain.
A friend is dealing with complex rental issues and asked about moving and school districts online. They're from another country and were surprised at the way a move disrupts schooling and how you have to plan moves around it.
Well, that's why summer parents think about it.
My Mother was never satisfied. Once she got to something she wanted she'd immediately start in on all the things that were not living up to her expectations. She also burned bridges often. Usually all of this would result in us moving to a new place that would fix everything.
Between first grade, age 6, and graduation, age 17, of attend 17 schools. There's a couple middle-to-high-school transitions in there, but even with that it represents 15 moves. We also moved repeatedly before age 6 and experienced a period of homelessness when we sheltered with my Mother's sister.
Another friend shared thier high count. We comiserated over being asked if we're from a military family and having to respond with, essentially, "No I had a terrible childhood."
The original friend noted they were sorry I'd gone through that, it sounded exhausting.
"Yes!", I thought. Life with my Mother was exhausting. She was an energy vampire. Years after her death I’m still remembering new, terrible things and still resting to recover all the energy she stole from me.
All this is so heavy, when you layer on the pandemic it explains why I have days like today where my body feels like I’m made of rocks.
Mothering
For most people the word mother has pleasant associations. Mothering is a special kind of nurturing, "a mother's touch" confers special care.
Unless it didn't.
I realize that my Mother was good at what I've taken to calling "Performative Mothering". When they're was an audience to see how good she was, she left there impression of being a good mother. She'd terrorize me where no one would see and when they were watching she'd shine.
I said to my therapist it feels like she was setting me up to be gaslight by everyone. "Your Mom's great!" I so often heard from friends.
If CK finally hadn't witnessed the mental/emotional abuse going on I'm not sure I'd be able to articulate it. It feels like that was there key to unlocking the secrecy.
Day 60 of sheltering-in place.
Eighty Thousand
While the rate seems to be slowing, the ever rising number leaves me breathless with despair.
The rest of this is about therapy and alludes heavily to child abuse.
⚠️
Therapy was hard. I brought up how I'd thought of the Childhood Logic that last year I'd found lurking within me last year around this time. The lie I'd told myself because the truth that I was terrified of my Mother was too awful.
The closer I get to integrating this memory, the easier it is to notice when I’m searching for proof that something was wrong with me, that it was my fault. I was a terrible child with a good Mother. This is the false logic that hides the awful truth; she was cruel.
The drive to make my Mother good is so strong. My therapist brought it to my attention again today when I said my Mother was "out of control" in the memory I'm integrating.
While it absolutely felt that way to my four year old self, my therapist pointed out how in control my Mother really was. How she had a pattern of getting me alone so she could abuse me without any witnesses. It only felt out of control because she wanted me to feel that way.
Therapy Eve
The night before trauma therapy the day after Mother's Day; I feel really tired. Have had the heavy feeling much of the day, wading through tar pits in order to do any work, physical or mental.
It's all that and the USA death toll at nearly 80,000 and rising. Even as the rate slows, states reopen and keep the danger high.
Then there's this brave act:
I shared in an online community of adaptive teachers today that I may not return to teaching in person until there is a vaccine. I specialize in helping older adults; I can't encourage them to gather in even a small group! It's the first time I've shared it publicly. It's so sad; I miss seeing my students so much.