Tomorrow I am signing the contract for my new job! Made it! In August I start as Web editor in public service, in a regional unit with 4000 employees. I am very lucky, and very happy and thankful!
The situation at work and all we have had to go through these last months have take so much of my attention, all day and night, and now I can relax a bit. Feels good!
To sum up:
I didn’t loose my job this time, maybe later…(!)
I am loosing two good colleagues in a company that is making lots of money, they are being made redundant.
I gave in to my neck/head pain yesterday and got sick leave from my GP, who said I should have come two weeks ago.
My psychiatrist worries about my parasomni, and thinks I might do something stupid in my sleep, I have been sleepwalking… (feels stupid).
I have restocked on pain meds, sleep meds, sleep cycle meds and deep-sleep-relaxing meds. Feels reassuring.
It rained too much today for cycling, (which I shouldn’t do anyway because of the pain). But I will tomorrow!
I turned up the music and danced, as I cooked dinner for me and my husband.
I love to dance. Soon I will be happy again.
🙂
Well… I did not loose my job. Not in this round anyway. I got hired as the fourth of eight in my department, and the one hired before me, and the one hired as number six lost their jobs last week.
I did not get the job I applied for at my former employee either. So I have applied for a couple others.
There are quite a few things I don’t understand about this, and I see that I am naive, and have had a rather easy career.
I have a few new things to think about. It disturbs my balance, I have lost my sleep. I find that old patterns of thinking and feeling are 
coming back, and all my strategies for coping sort of escaped out the window.
It is temporary. There are more important things.
Try to keep this image nearby all week? 🙂 (Photo credit: danidelacuesta)
It goes to show that you are not properly grounded when (if) you say and think that Friday is just around the corner.
I look so much forward to every Friday, and sometimes, Monday just need to finish, and then I see the light… I wish to be present every day, to feel, to enjoy, to experience. To be mindful. I do it too to some extent. But the coming joy of Friday, takes focus away from those very busy days that I don’t like all that much.
It is all about being present, right now. And life is to short to waste those days, waiting for the weekend! 😉
I LIKE you too!
It has really been very interesting to see how this blog developed. It grew fast, and really a bit faster than I ever imagined that it would. The idea was that I was writing for me, for my own therapy, and it worked. I am very happy about that! And I am very happy, that what I have put in here, has been of help for others too.
And I am very very happy that I have gotten to know YOU.
Thank you, every one of you 🙂
I love my Roomba Robot. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I admire my excellent attitude towards house work.
Every weekend I set out to do at least some things. Do the bathrooms, wash some clothes, AND get them back in the cupboards (an operation that easily takes months).Start the vacuum cleaner robot, wash the kitchen properly. Some weeks I set out to buy new clothes, socks and underwear, because it seems to be empty. Other weekends, like this one, I suddenly discover I have 30 pair of socks waiting.
As I woke up this morning, I thought about the weekend, that it is just like three steps down. Fridays are high high up, Saturdays are something in between, and Sundays are getting things together for a new hard work week. Last chance for housework, only then it feels like trying to finish a marathon. For me, it usually breaks down to what I am going to wear tomorrow. What I need for work, and is my gym bag packed. Right now it is, because I haven’t had the time to use it…
I live alone most of the week, the girls have moved out, my husband works in a city one hour away, by air. He leaves monday mornings, and returns Thursday or Friday. And the house is not a disaster, yet. It’s basically me and the cat. We’ll manage another week, but next Friday, I will make a list, a plan. So that Sunday appears with a shiny living room, detergent smelling bathrooms, clean sheets and soft towels. :))
That’s how it feels at least. Today I haven’t done anything. NOTHING! Watched Olympics, read a bit in a book, made a very simple dinner (both of us are trying to loose a bit), and that is it.
My husband went out for a drive, alone, probably bored with me.
I did have more than my hands full both Friday night, and most of yesterday, so maybe I just needed nothing today. Guess it feels like a wasted day. I should have done some house cleaning, washed my clothes (seem to buy new stuff every week to avoid it), I should have done some blog updates, should have prepared some easy food for a busy week, should have gone cycling, or out to sea paddling.
And now I sit here regretting all the things I haven’t done. The next five days are filled up, “important” meetings, appointments, and no time set aside for good things, almost no time.
I don’t like this.
Guess I’m still suffering from kind of post-vacation-depression… Don’t really understand why this is always so hard! I mean, usually, I love my job, (or like very much at least). I have busy days after work as well, some of the stuff I have to do is good, some is tiring. I try to work out, so I need time to do that too, but right now, it seems like plunging into everyday life is something that requires a life west. I guess that after a couple of more weeks, everything will be back to normal. But right now, the thought of that is kind of awful.
Is life meant to be work, obligations, and stuff you don’t have the conscience to NOT do? I need to work to earn money, and I like solving problems like I do at work. Like my colleagues too. I have a family that I love, but now they were just waiting for me to come home to grab hold of me and my time… I love my husband, but can’t wait for him to get back to work, so that I have evenings on my own (he works in another city, one hour flight away).
Guess basically it is the ME-time I miss, all ordinary things overwhelms me.
Before we went away, I said I’d focus on these things, here’s how it went:
I made the sleep thing anyway, which is very good.
This week I bought a small kayak, and went fishing (the plastic bag is for the fish!). Didn’t get any, sea is full of stingy jellyfish that always get into the line and tip off the real fish down there. Good recreation, and good training for any muscle above the knee, it seems… Weather sucks though. But this is going to be my new excuse, gone fishing! Me-time…
I am really happy to life a place where this is possible 🙂
Wishing you a lovely weekend!
She was old, my aunt, she was 94. Born in the last year of WW1. Second oldest of seven, four girls and three boys. Every one of them went away to study, engineering, chemistry, this one, she studied to be a teacher. Later on she got to be a special eds teacher, one of few. She worked at the same school for more than 40 years.
She never married, and she lived in the house next door. She looked after her old parents, they lived there too.
Yesterday she died, she had been in and out since the weekend, and there was no drama.
I am not sure when I saw her last. For the last ten years, she’s been demented, talking about the war… Mixing our names together, and been ill, so many times.
I don’t really feel anything.
Its not like I am suppressing any feelings, and there is no shock. No loss, no sorrow. A bit relieved, she was tired. I remember her talking about dying, I guess tomorrow, when we get together to plan the funeral, we will find that she probably made plans. Twenty years ago…
I don’t look forward to the funeral, the family (again) and all the stuff we have to do. It is me and my brother and sister who has to do it all. We just did this… four years ago. There has been so many deaths in my family, we are used to it. That sounds terrible. I know.
I wonder from time to time… And we have also discussed it in therapy. I think her approach has been to talk things through, and then it will be easier to handle, so much easier perhaps, that it is not a problem at all.
But when it gets real heavy again, she wants me to try out specialists in trauma psychology or EMDR.
It is really quite typical, when I talk about something very bad, something I can’t cope with, she must feel that my story is too hard to handle, and wishes for me to get help from somewhere else. The idea of even thinking about talking to someone else, when I am in such a bad state (it’s not often) scares me. So sometimes I wish I didn’t tell. That’s not very dynamic…
It’s very hard for me to talk at all. I am still scared that I am going to need somebody. (I know I need her though). I am afraid that someone else might get to know what I am thinking. Stupid after all these years of therapy… The thought that if I try to explain, and she doesn’t understand, also scares me, because then I won’t be able to make it right. She will have an impression or understanding of something I said, and it’s the wrong one. That doesn’t help me. However, she has helped me through so many things, and I am quite sure that if I hadn’t met her, I would have been far out on drugs, or maybe not even alive at all by now.
And then there’s the thing about all those memories that doesn’t have words. How can I tell? I know I have written about this before, sorry for repeating… but it is important to me. When those memories make me a total nutter at night, stealing my desperately needed hours of sleep, it’s only logic to conclude that they need to be explained. It’s like I don’t know the language…
So how about forgetting?
How about concentrating on the moment, on how to live on right now? Right now I am (at work…) writing about this, I am ok with that, it’s no big deal to make words and meaning coming out of my thoughts, and most of the time I am ok with everything I do. I get through the days; I even think most of them are meaningful and good. Nights are a different story. But concealing the memories into somewhere far away, does that make sense?
How about the mindful approach to this? That would be to be in the flashback, and consistently draw attention to breathing. I am not there yet. After the last heavy flashback incident I had, I have had difficulties meditating. I’ve had to take some steps back, starting again, doing shorter sessions, making even surer that I am safe and being a bit more scared that if I let my mind wander off, it will be right back in flashback-hell again.
Still I know that my mindfulness moments give me more control over my days, I have a busy schedule, but I am never stressed out. Sometimes I have to take important decisions fast, I am ok with that. So I am sure about the mindfulness approach. It’s going to make me better.
However, the blog is “my story, shared”. I haven’t touched the issues with no language, perhaps I never can. It feels awful to write, but good too. I cry sometimes, it makes me concentrate, and hopefully finish some issues. Maybe getting those little pieces together, will help me.
Been humming Paul Simons “I am a rock” all day. Took the picture of a really nice rock (on an island, get it?) this weekend. Here’s the lyrics:
A winter’s day
In a deep and dark December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
I’ve built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
Don’t talk of love,
Well I’ve heard the word before;
It’s sleeping in my memory.
I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.
I write for myself… The idea that writing is going to help me is what makes me do it. And I write in English, it’s my work language, so no issue really. Maybe it is easier to keep a distance when I write in a different language than what I speak and think, most of the time anyway? But I also write in English to have more readers, and to have some comments and make some as well. Now I have done a few very hard posts to write, and feel absolutely exhausted.
So tired… A bit confused about my feelings. Very scared of feedbacks and comments, although that was the idea in the first place, to dare to share.
I don’t know… Does this help or not?
I must get some sleep tonight.
My first grade teacher was pregnant all the time, at least that’s how I remember it. I think I might have tried to make a connection somehow. It failed as she went away on leave. We had a substitute teacher when the first Mother’s day came. Cardboard paper cuttings, making silly looking cards for Mother. I could hardly remember her face, all the pictures we had, photo albums, wedding pictures, it was all gone.
I sat there doing nothing.
The teacher would say; “I can help you, what colour would you like it to be?”
“I don’t have a mother”, I’d say. Being rather cheeky about it, knowing that I couldn’t let anyone inside my lack of feelings.
She asked: “Why, everybody’s got a mother?”
“She died”, I said.
The first year I ended up doing something silly for my grandmother, his mother. The second year I made a drawing of “there must be something you would like to draw”. The third year I didn’t show up for school before Mother’s day.
All other occasions were difficult too, like making presents for birthdays and Christmases, I hated making things for him.
Other children would ask me why I didn’t have a mother. I said she died. It must have been scary for them. I learnt how not to feel anything. Once I almost started to cry, as one of my friends cried, I am not sure why. I hope I was sad, I hope I felt something, but I am not sure. And I learnt to see those situations coming, new teachers, parents day at school, Christmas plays, concerts… those were days of special alert. No-feeling-days.
I had few friends, but they were quite close, three, I think, but rarely more than one at the time. They knew what to avoid. The only way I could be together with other girls was to be a bit tougher, a bit rougher around the edges; always being the one who stuck my head out. I had a quick answer to anything, and nobody would know that this was the wrong way of coping. Least of all me.
I survived.
I loved to swim. Once I swam from our beach over to the other side. I guess it’s almost three kilometres each way. When I got close to shore on the other side, I waited for a huge ship to pass. Then I swam back. I was 11 I think. Big enough to not tell any friends that I was going to run away, they would tell… big enough to stop hiding in the garden, where he would find me… big enough to get out of the house from my tiny veranda on the second floor. I climbed down a pillar, and made sure that there was something to thread on in the shingle I had to pass to get to the lawn. Without making noises. I use to remember to always have some sneakers in my room, and threw them out on the lawn. Big enough to get out of the way when things got dangerous, without making a sound.
In the summer I had friends staying over. We put up a tent in the garden, and read comics till late with flashlights. We made breakfast and ate outside. We went swimming together in the sea. It was fun. Safe.
I sometimes slept in my brothers’ room at weekends, but he never liked it. We didn’t have much in common. Or maybe, we could never speak of what we might have had in common. Still can’t.
I never had my own room till after my mother died. He rebuilt some of the second floor after that. I got a small room, with a veranda, and a way of getting out. As I’ve written earlier, the house was old and worn, and there was not a floorboard that didn’t have its own sound. Sometimes I knew he was coming and I was too late. I couldn’t get out. I HATED the colour of that room. It was like mint green-ish… like hospitals…
Other nights I went out anyway. Just in case. I went down to the sea, sat there looking and listening to the waves, thinking.
Sometimes I cried, I think mostly because I was so tired. And I thought of swimming. Then I would think that it was so cold, and that I WOULD make both over to the other side and back, anyway.
My mother was never really there. She would care about the clothes I wore in parties or on Christmas. When there were others around, she would make sure I behaved properly. She never spoke much, I can’t remember her smiling or laughing, but I have pictures of her where from when she was younger, she had a lovely smile.
She was brought up in a boarding school in South Africa. Her parents brought their two little girls to Africa to work as missionaries. It was common to put the children off to schools far away, and if they were lucky, they got to see their parents in the summer, or maybe for Christmas. The travelled out just before the war. First they went to language training in Paris 1936, then a long travel through Europe, over the Mediterranean Sea, through the Suez, and south. Because of the war, they stayed out for 11 years. Normally the missionaries were allowed a year at home every four year. So my mother was a little girl when she went away, and came back almost as a grown up. She was fluent in French and English, but not very good at her mother tongue.
That I can remember, she spoke different then others. And that was even after I was born, some 12-15 years after returning. She must have felt like a stranger.
When tidying up after my parents some years ago, we found this little red book, fragile, almost falling apart. It was written when she was at the boarding school. Her English was naïve, although she was a good writer, even as a child.
I immediately recognised the story, well of course not her story. But the story behind; the one of hiding, getting away, trying to escape, not having the attention a little girl should have. And it was indicated, as much as a little girl her age dared to indicate, that she was a victim too. Not a victim of her parents abusing her, but staff at the boarding school. Her older sister later confirmed that to me.
My mother was never happy. She had one girl, one boy, and them five years after, me. I remember her smoking constantly. I remember her knitting. I remember her being in a terrible state if we, (mostly my brother and sister) were arguing, just before he was supposed to come home. I remember her panicking if dinner wasn’t ready at 4pm. She would cry if she thought she’d done something wrong. I remember how scared I was, once, having wet myself playing in the garden, I must have been four.
I remember her dying.
She was ill for about a year, cancer, and away for most of the time, at a hospital far away. So he was away too, for long stretches of time. I did not know what was going on, children were not supposed to get involved I think. I knew something was wrong though. I was moved around to different relatives, we had different housekeepers, and I can only remember visiting my mother once at hospital in my home town. She wore a wig, it looked weird. She told me I had to pray to jesus that he would make her well again. I didn’t. So it was probably my fault.
One day, my sister was crying, I was playing with a lot of toys on the floor. He put me on his lap; we were in my sisters’ yellow room. My brother was sitting on my sisters’ bed. I remember wiggling wanting to get down. Then he told us that my mother had died.
I went down on the floor again, and continued playing with my toys. My sister cried.
We found my mothers diary from when she got ill too, a couple of years back. She was so scared. She had this control issue, writing down all examinations, all vomiting or other symptoms, and all medication. The last months are almost impossible to read. I imagine they kept her on heavy tranquillisers or painkillers.
He kept that little red book, her boarding school story in his nightstand for as long as he lived. I’d like to think that he loved her, or that she felt that she was loved at least. I don’t think he could love.
I weren’t allowed in the funeral, but being next door neighbour to the church, I heard the church bells. I think I got a new toy.
After the funeral, he, my brother and sister, and me, went away on holiday, I remember the fun fair. None of us followed her coffin to the graveyard, none of us met the rest of the family grieving. Soon after, my mothers parents would move to a different part of the country. He wouldn’t have anything to do with anybody else in the family (or others, for that matter). I think he wanted to show that he could make it on his own. He couldn’t.
She died in July. I was seven starting school in August.
Writing really wears me out. I can sit and just let the fingers go, though I think a bit before I start. But it is after, that it gets to me. I feel so tired. I feel that the sorrow that I really never have taken in is catching up. I don’t like that feeling!
Always liked green… Today it made me think of a large cypress we had in the garden, I used to hide inside it.
It must have been five metres tall, the branches were enourmous. Though I do remember bringing a doll out, and some ropes to make a harness in one of the branches, pretending it was a pony, iI went there to hide.
After I started school, and had friends coming over (hardly ever happened), I never showed anyone the tree. It was mine… My hidingplace…
He must have known I was there, but I can’t recall he disturbed me there. I stayed for hours.
Safe.
I was never safe in the cellar, or under the veranda…
Not very good day this, we are still on the road, going home tomorrow. Usually I love to travel… Regret not bringing my bicycle this time… Look forward to straigth work days again from Monday:)
We are camping, and woke up at 5am by a helicoptre over our head. In the sea, just over 100 metres from where we are, a teenage boy, 19, had fallen out from a boat one hour earlier. They were five in the boat, most likely they’ve been drinking.
Even though this happened just a couple of hundred metres from where we are now, not far from shore, they haven’t found him yet. Rescue teams are out at sea and going along the shore. Currents are really strong here. He can’t be alive, it’s too cold.
We are vulnerable, life is never to be taken for granted.
Take care of your self and appreciate your loved ones!
Hugs!
Colour the day 