The Fragility Index

It seems to me that it would be a public service to those around us if we could have a kind of warning sign, and indicator of our risk of collapse / freak out / bursting into tears / going into withdrawal / tipping over the edge into whatever form our particular brand of crazy might take.

So, I made some images, kind of like the ones you see at the provincial park to indicate the risk of forest fire – low, moderate, high, very high, extreme, and critical.

Feel free to use them on your Facebook, your blog, a t-shirt, a magnet on the fridge … wherever you think they might help.

Yoga and Journalling Workshop

Today I attended a yoga and journalling workshop run by a friend of mine. It was, apparently, exactly what I needed.

I realize that I’ve been fighting against the call to move forward in my healing journey. I’ve been resisting taking the steps I know I need to take. Today helped me move forward a little further on that healing road.

Below you will find some of what I wrote today. For those readers who are deeply religious, please do not be startled when I refer to the Divine in terms of the feminine … our Creator is both Mother and Father, and I speak to and of God in either fashion. I don’t think our human minds can easily encompass all that is God with just one mental image, and so I move rather fluidly between various ways of thinking of God.

That said, here is what I found in my heart today…

~

I have issues with control.

There, I said it.

I realize that control is an illusion … but it’s an illusion I don’t want to let go of. I want to believe that I can do it all. I want to just try harder to make my mind behave, to make my body live up to my expectations … but this isn’t a problem stemming from a lack of effort. More effort isn’t going to make things better. More effort is how I got here, for heaven’s sake!

I spent years and years holding down the trauma effects by sheer force of will, squashing my feelings, ignoring all the warning signs, just working harder so I didn’t have to think about what happened, didn’t have to face my guilt, my shame, my complicity, my sins.

But the truth will not stay hidden. When eventually I did look at all that I had been avoiding, when I finally told my story, I saw that the girl who lived through that mess deserved compassion and forgiveness … and things improved. I did the work, faced up to my past, changed the way I thought about my story and said, “whew, the hard work is done and now life can get back to normal and it will be all better.”

Only the injury was deeper than that, and the healing journey nowhere near done.

And I got mad.

I don’t want to do any more work. I don’t want to cry any more. I don’t want to learn how to manage my life so that I can live fully and make the most of my gifts while staying within my limits.

It’s frustrating having to pay so much damned attention. I want the ease of autopilot, the simplicity of routine.

Except that the life I had before was dishonest. And I wasn’t the kind of mother or spouse or friend or co-worker or human being I want to be.

So I need to find another road.

And the first step on that other road – the light only has to shine on the next step, after all – the next step is

surrender.

It’s okay not to be able to wrestle it all into submission by applying the not-insignificant power of my will.

My will, in this case, is entirely the wrong tool.

The divine, Ordol says, cannot fill anything but an empty vessel. When we are full of our own will, there is no room for the divine within us. We must make room in our souls, move aside so that Powers greater than we are have space to work.

I kneel before the Mother of Summer, the great Healer, and I say, “I can’t do this.”

And the Mother says, “You don’t have to,” and enfolds me in her loving arms.

~

I have been fighting for so long, and I’m tired.

I see now that I don’t have to keep fighting. I can choose to lay down my weapons and stand unarmed and vulnerable before the world.

They can, after all, kill me but once.

And I am, always, held in the hands of God … and I am perfectly, utterly safe.

It is my own weapons that convince me I am surrounded by danger. I am carrying a semiautomatic with me everywhere, cinching tight the buckles on my Kevlar and bracing every moment for the incoming barrage. But it is my staggering display of weaponry that prompts everyone else to bristle, makes them draw their own guns and train them on me – just in case, you know – because that bitch looks like she means business.

What if, instead, I walked up to them with my arms wide open, wearing my colourful silks and singing of summer and sunshine and love?

What if I were to say, here, have a cup of tea?

What if I were to listen, instead of shouting?

What if I were to trust the Mother of Summer to heal my wounds, to relax into her embrace, and allow the old injuries to be tended by the only Power great enough to heal them?

What if I were to fall asleep under my God’s loving eyes, and allow my soul to recover?

Then,

 

I would never need to pick up my weapons again

 

and my soul would be filled with song.

Let’s talk.

Today is the day to talk about mental health issues.

So, let’s talk about one of the things that makes living with mental health issues so much tougher than it needs to be: shame.

We all know we’re supposed to be productive. We’re supposed to be cheerful, contributing members of our families and our communities. We’re supposed to have our acts together, to behave like civilized grownups, to be capable of holding down a job, caring for our kids, and keeping the sidewalks shovelled and the grass mown.

When your mind keeps betraying you, though, when you don’t sleep at night so you drag your butt through the day in an exhausted fog, when your chest aches constantly and your head feels like it’s going to explode from the pressure and your memories keep escaping your grasp no matter how many times you try to make lists and set alarms and you are so freakin’ tired you just want to sit down and cry …

… when your day goes like that, it’s hard to be the cheerful, contributing member of your family and community that you want to be.

But we don’t want to tell anyone how we feel, either, because we are ashamed. It seems so weak, so silly, so … inexplicable. Do I confess that I don’t remember the conversation you’re referring to, or do I just smile and nod and fake my way through? Do I stop halfway through the short list of things I want to do today to sit in the chair because I’m just too weary to go on, or do I push through so that I don’t have to explain why we’re having frozen pizza for dinner again tonight? Do I dig deep to find the words (and the courage) to ask you for help, or do I just swallow my fears yet again and try to talk myself out of the gut reactions I can’t actually control?

Just managing my inner world takes more energy and resources than you can possibly imagine. It takes more energy and resources than I want to give it, but if I don’t do all the things that I know I need to do to stay on top of things, the Darkness overtakes me, and then I am undone.

But the things I have to do take time out of my day, time I want to spend on productive things. Time I don’t want to  have to justify or explain to anyone else, because it is hard to wrap the words around it all. I can’t adequately explain it … all I can tell you is that believe it or not, this is the best I can do. And I know my best is no great shakes, believe me, but this is all I’ve got. If I had more, I’d give it, please believe me. This is as good as it gets right now.

And I am ashamed that this is all I can do. I want to be so much more.

I realize that shame thrives on three things: secrecy, silence, and judgment.

We need to tell our stories – to deny shame the power to control our lives any more. Yes, it’s scary to shine the light into the darkness, but when I told my secrets, when I refused to stay silent anymore, instead of being met with the harsh judgment I expected, I was met with loving kindness and support.

I still want to run back into the darkness and hide sometimes. I don’t have that choice anymore – I’ve outed myself quite thoroughly now and I can’t go back. This is good: the accountability keeps me moving forward, and keeps me from slipping back into the darkness that still calls to me, promising that everything will be okay if I just hide everything once more, shut my mouth, and behave.

It’s a lie. I know it’s a lie. But I need the help of those who have heard my story. I need people I can lean on while the emotional bones that I shattered in that long, brutal fall are given time to heal. I need supportive voices who encourage me to be gentle with myself, to allow the healing to progress at it’s own pace, to help me drown out the judgmental, punishing voices that still plague me.

I need to hear 

You are doing a big job even though nobody else can see it, and we know you’re working hard. We understand that you need to rest, and that you hate having to do it. It’s okay. We’re proud of you just for hanging on. You’re getting better, we can see it, even if you can’t. And when you have bad days, we are here for you. It’s okay if every day isn’t a good one. We love you anyway.

I need to hear this. We all need to hear this. Those of us struggling with the invisible demons of our mental illnesses and injuries, we need more support than we let on.

Be extra kind to everyone you meet this week. You never know what inner battles people are fighting … that surly clerk at the store, the grumpy spouse, the distracted teacher … maybe this is all they’ve got to give today. We’re hard enough on ourselves, really, we don’t need one more voice saying “come on, is that the best you can do?”

A voice that says, “It’s tough, eh? Anything I can do to help?” … now that would be welcome.

At some point, you know enough

I went to visit a friend of mine a little while back, to talk about … well, life, the universe, and everything I suppose. He does personal coaching work and leads group spirituality workshops (after leaving a successful career in software development, believe it or not) and has generously offered to help me any way he can. He’s one of the few people outside of my family to have witnessed all of my story so far, and he’s been a great support to me through so many parts of this difficult journey. I am blessed by his friendship.

Anyhow, as we were talking, I realized that what I’ve been feeling most often these days is frustration: it seems as though further treatment is a waste of time (recognizing as I say this that I’m probably wrong). It feels like there’s no more to ‘uncover’, nothing else to ‘dig up’ or ‘unearth’ or ‘face squarely’. I’ve done all the thinking. I’ve processed all I can stand to process, at least for now. Yeah, there might be more stuff buried down in there (actually I know there are a few things that still need to be washed out, but they’re just now starting to appear, and I have the sense that it’s not quite time to do that work yet). He had a good answer for me:

At some point, you know enough.

You can keep reading the self-help books, keep attending workshops, keep searching and reaching and trying to find the answers … but at some point, you know enough. At some point, what you really need to do is just pick yourself up and start living. Wherever you are, with whatever you have, no matter how inadequate your resources may seem to be.

After all, life keeps on happening while we’re reading and attending workshops and meditating. Our inner lives most certainly need attention – even more so if we have unhealthy thought patterns that need to be changed – but maybe, just maybe, I know enough now to just get on with getting on.

My acupuncturist had said the same sort of thing to me: she encouraged me to stop thinking about “when I get better” and to instead focus on the moment, to realize that “right now, this is what my life looks like”, to learn to live right now with the resources I have, few though they may seem to be. Who knows what better will look like in another six months? Right now, this is what my life looks like. Better is a relative term. I am better now than I was before. I can do more. I sleep more soundly, often without waking at all in the night. The chest pain is now only occasional rather than constant. I can drive to town, do a bunch of errands, and drive home. I’ll be tired, but I can still make supper when I get back. These are major improvements.

I’m just getting on with getting on. I do as much as I can, and sometimes I do a bit too much and sometimes I don’t do as much as I’d like. Okay, I rarely do as much as I’d like, but we all know that my concept of “a reasonable day’s work” is badly skewed, so that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. In the fall I was doing chores every morning, hoping that come winter I’d be able to be the farmer on duty. As it got colder, though, my body called a halt by taking my feet out from under me for a couple of weeks. I didn’t post about it, but it was kind of scary … the palindromic arthritis that occasionally affects my ankle joints flared up noisily for awhile, forcing me to walk with a cane for about two weeks, and to walk rather gingerly for another week after that. It passed, as it always does, but I took it as a clear sign that I had been overextending myself. The Boy has taken up the chores now – fortunately it’s not a huge job, just 15-20 minutes twice a day, and I help out whenever I can, but I had really wanted to do it myself this winter. I don’t like being unable to do the things I feel like I ought to be able to do … I feel like I ought to be well by now, like there’s nothing more to be gained by resting and I need to get off my lazy behind and get back to having a busy and productive life.

But when I overextend myself, I end up shouting at someone, or crying, or in physical pain, or putting myself to bed at 7 pm so as not to inflict myself on my family any more than is absolutely necessary. I do know that overextending myself isn’t a valid option. it isn’t a smart choice. The smart thing to do is to carefully try adding one more thing and see how that goes. Then adding one more thing after that, and seeing how that goes. Unfortunately, I still haven’t figured out the subtle clues that indicate “you are almost out of spoons, you need to slow down now” and I only realize that I’ve overdone it after it’s too late.

Presumably there are subtle warning signs that will tell me what “approaching empty” feels like, but I haven’t learned to recognize them reliably yet. I suppose that would be the next thing I need to learn … not quite sure how best to go about learning it though.

Hmm. Maybe that’s what I need to work on next.

I don’t want to do that work yet though. Right now, I’m going to finish my holiday knitting (projects 6 and 7 are both underway, and both are more than half done!) and drink tea by the fire. Maybe for today, that’s enough.

Breathe.

Just breathe. There is lots of air.

Quite often, it doesn’t feel like there is enough air. I take deep breath after deep breath and still don’t feel right. It’s just part of the anxiety, I know, and there really is enough air, I know that too, but knowing it doesn’t make it more comfortable or make me feel like I am getting enough oxygen.

It’s a year, now, since I woke up realizing that I couldn’t go to work because I was too much of a basket case to be productive. It’s a year, now, since I started trying to unravel the coping strategies that got me through the chaos and then continued on long afterwards as ingrained habits that generated more problems than they solved. It’s been a year of resting, knitting, writing, crying, breathing, panicking, sleeping, not sleeping, thinking, remembering, running, collapsing, and healing.

I am getting better, I can tell.

I still have a long way to go. I can tell that too.

Ah well, life is the journey, they say.

I think I’ll see if I can finish this shawl design. Maybe accomplishing something, even something so minor as writing up a very simple, almost mindless shawl pattern, maybe getting something done will bring the air back into my lungs.

Aftermath

This past week was a busy one.

We had several trips to Barrhead for school events and final exams for The Boy, along with some of the unpleasant last minute drama that, apparently, is an essential learning experience for teenagers. After all, until things actually go to hell in a handbasket because you didn’t confirm something and just assumed it had all gone as you anticipated … until something unexpected but certainly within the realm of likely possibility actually happens to throw the schedule off … well, how is a kid supposed to know that Mom’s insistence that the devil is in the details and being proactve makes a huge difference in real life … how’s a kid supposed to know any of that applies to him?

Well, he knows it now and as life lessons go, it was a cheap one, so that’s all good. However, cheap lesson or not, it cost me a decent chunk of energy on top of an already packed schedule that was likely  a bit over-ambitious in the first place.

Add in the unexpected crash at the dentist’s office yesterday, and I’m utterly knackered.

My body is telling me loud and clear that that was way too much. I’m listening – I’m taking it very easy, and The Boy is being very helpful about picking up the slack. Today I find it tiring just to sit in a chair – so I’m reclining on the couch, alternately puttering on my laptop and working on a new shawl design.

Forward Movement is a shawl specifically designed to make use of the long colour repeats of Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn – two skeins of which I won from Flannelberry’s blog contest a while ago. The yarn is really interesting: very much like a handspun single, with thicker and thinner spots, slubs of silk every so often, and a wonderfully varied texture. I hear this yarn washes up to be much softer than it is right off the skein, so I’m interested to see how it is after blocking. It is a silk/wool/mohair blend and not as soft as I’d expect given those ingredients, so I imagine there might be some sizing agents involved in the spinning process that will wash out once it’s knit up.  

The reason for the shawl’s title is that the two halves of the shawl curve forward, over your shoulders and to the front of the body. With all the lovely colour in the yarn, the pattern can be very simple so I’m not planning to add much in the way of lace or other effects … we’ll see what it needs as it gets a little larger. So far, it’s only about 13 cm long (measured down the center back) but it appears to have the shape I was hoping for. I expect I’ll add some decorative yarn overs lower down the body of the shawl, and I’m still pondering the best way to do the bottom edge so as to accentuate the idea of forward motion and give it a bit of swing. Tassles, maybe? Still thinking.

I’ll post a picture when I have enough energy to get up and find the camera … meaning not today.

Back to my restful knitting and my cup of tea…

Exhausted and wide awake

It is very strange to be completely exhausted and at the same time full of an odd, formless sort of energy.

I find myself driven to work on too many projects, I start something, walk away and come back an hour later realizing I had completely forgotten what I started. I can’t get myself to bed at night or to sleep once I get there … but at the same time, I am worn out and weary. I have multiple books on the go and can’t concentrate on any of them. I hesitate to even count the number of knitting projects I have on the needles.

It’s the effects of adreanalin poisoning, I suppose. It will pass, it’s all part of the journey.

I think I’ll knit. It’s productive, uses up some of the energy, but allows my body to rest.

Endings/Beginnings

Well, the final verdict from the insurance company arrived today: the ‘experts’ there (who have never seen me, just the reports from my GP and my counsellor and some documentation that I submitted along with the appeal) are not convinced that I am unable to work at my job, and so there will be no income replacement, no disability coverage.

There are all kinds of public service announcements that ask us all to be understanding of mental health challenges, to be compassionate towards people who are dealing with mental health problems, to encourage everyone to get help if it is needed … but insurance companies don’t make money paying out on claims, so I suppose they don’t listen to those kinds of announcements. All the other people I’ve had to deal with seem to have paid attention though, and for that I am grateful. It makes a difference when folks see your pain and say nice things like, “you take care of yourself.”

Thus it is that I join the ranks of millions of others who have learned the hard way that insurance is there to provide peace of mind - as long as you don’t actually need it.

Ah well.

I submitted my initial request for disability in June, right after my employment insurance benefits ran out, and it has taken nine months to get to this final verdict. “Thanks so much for continuing to pay your premiums all this time, but we will not be paying you anything at all. Hope you got your teeth cleaned while you could.”

By this stage of the game, we really just needed to know one way or the other, and so it is good to at least have an answer, even if it’s not the optimal answer from a financial point of view. I am certainly very grateful to The Reluctant Farmer for being willing to work as hard as he does to ensure that we have everything we need.

When the phone call arrived from the insurance company, I happened to be in town, so I drove over to  my office in order to tell my manager in person that I will not be returning. I realized a few months ago that I will not be well enough to do that kind of work again for a very long time, if ever. PTSD is an anxiety disorder characterized by constantly being on the watch, scanning for trouble, and jumping into high gear as soon as anything dangerous is spotted. This is a highly adaptable set of behaviours when you are in a dangerous situation – if something bad can happen at any time, you need to always be ready to react as quickly and decisively as possible. However, when you’re just living an ordinary life, this is really not a helpful approach. It makes you jumpy, testy, quick to anger, quick to explode. I spent years allowing these skills to settle themselves firmly in my mind and body, and learning different skills is a long, slow road. I’m having some success, definitely – I don’t startle as badly as I did anymore, I am more able to control my reactions to upsetting experiences, but I am still really fragile and I still have a long way to go. I do have complete faith that I will get there one of these days, but in the meantime, it is essential for my recovery that I avoid practicing those less-adaptive skills, as the more I use them the harder they are to unlearn. And I’ve used them for a lot of years already.

The peculiar thing is that the work that I was doing (software quality assurance, plus technical documentation, analysis and design) actually relied rather heavily on my ability to constantly be on the watch for trouble, to immediately notice things that were out of place or out of the ordinary and to react quickly and decisively whenever something set my spidey sense to tingling. Unfortunately, that just meant I had daily opportunities to practice the very skills that I am now attempting to unlearn. The world is safe, I am not in danger, and I do not need to jump into full defensive mode every time something startles me or seems somehow ‘wrong’. Thus, I need to not do the kind of work I was doing – not until I am completely healed and can manage to avoid slipping fully back into the old habits.

So it is that an era has come to an end, and I am leaving information technology for the foreseeable future. I really enjoyed working with my team. We did good work. I was with the company for over six years, which is, in fact, a personal record. I said often that I could not have continued working in the field as long as I did anywhere else, and I still feel that way: I have nothing but gratitude towards my team. If I am ever in the position to look at doing this kind of work again, they would be my employer of choice.

However, it’s time for a new beginning. I don’t know what kind of work I will be able to do in the near or distant future – in the near future, I am still not well enough to tackle full time employment, but I’ll be there eventually, so it’s time to start pondering the available options. I don’t think that ‘full time author’ actually pays the bills, at least not for mere mortals such as myself who aren’t writing about young wizards or courtroom drama, so I suppose it’s time to break out the old “what do you want to be when you grow up” books and see what they can suggest.

In the meantime, more rest, more writing, more tea. I have faith that the universe will unfold as it should.

And yes, that’s a Star Trek reference. I’ve been a geek for a long time: just because I’m not working in IT anymore doesn’t mean I have to give up my geekiness!

Prayers from a Healing Heart

You made me just the way I am, God, and You know me, and You love me anyway. You forgive me when I make mistakes, even when I have a hard time forgiving myself. You stand beside me when I am scared and hurting, even though sometimes I don't realize you are there. When I am afraid, when the old memories come back and I can’t breathe, when I can’t sleep at night because my chest is still aching, please help me to be compassionate towards my own feelings. Help me to sit with the old fear and the old pain, to tell the hurting part of me “I hear you, I know, it was scary back then, but it’s over now, and it is safe.”

~

God, please help me to forgive myself for being human and imperfect and in need - it's so hard. Jesus said "love your neighbour as yourself" and we need to hear that in both directions. If you would extend kindness to your neighbour but refuse the same kindness to yourself, well, you're still not getting it, right? There are a lot of things I’d do for a neighbour that I feel silly doing for myself. When I get like that, please remind me that you expect me to treat all of your creation well ... myself included.

My garden is a sermon

As I work in the garden, I am repeatedly struck by the thought that there is a sermon somewhere in the dirt and weeds and vegetables.

¹⁷ Do not let your heart envy sinners,
   but always be zealous for the fear of the LORD.
¹⁸ There is surely a future hope for you,
   and your hope will not be cut off.

Proverbs 23

Do not let your heart envy sinners – in the garden, I suppose the sinners are the ones with picture-perfect, weed-free gardens bought at the price of industrial agriculture’s cancer-causing chemicals. In truth, I don’t envy those gardeners – they have sold their souls (and our children’s future) for pretty gardens. A few weeds or bugs aren’t the end of the world, and really, we’d all be better off if we spent some time on our knees in the garden, separating the weeds from the vegetables. Yeah, I'll admit that I’d love a garden like the ones at the English castles but really … I’m fortunate to have so much land, and the time to work it. Even if it’s never as pretty as Prince Charlie’s lovely gardens, I’ll still enjoy the potatoes and carrots.

There is surely a future hope for you – yep, gardeners always hope. Next year, we say, next year, the quack grass will be under control, I’ll get the seedlings in a bit earlier under cover, more of the tomato plants will survive. And really, each year has been a little better than the last. Learning to garden in each place takes time and practice – no two garden plots are the same. What worked in my city backyard doesn’t work in my country garden, and it’s taking me awhile to learn what will work out here. That’s okay – I am learning it, and that’s the important thing. Next year will be better. :)

It’s true that my garden isn’t any kind of prize winning space – although, all things considered, it really has come a long way. When I started this spring, the entire plot was filled with runaway quack grass, and now, at the midpoint of our growing season, there are some potatoes, several carrots, a few rows of beets, a few tomato plants and one pepper plant that looks like it might actually make it. There’s a sunflower coming up along the edge, and two morning glories … the grape vines survived the winter and being munched by sheep … the compact cranberry bushes that I thought dead have new leaves and are grateful for the breathing room my regular weeding has provided. Some of the pea plants came up. There are six or eight corn plants growing. The lettuce is nearly big enough to eat, and there are four squash plants of some kind or other (I can’t remember what I planted) that have big leaves, even if there are no blossoms yet. There is hope of a harvest, even if it is smaller than I had dreamed.

The garden is full of lessons. like the lesson of the mulch and the quack grass, which is one I am given to contemplate almost every time I’m out there.

Digging up quack grass roots, I have discovered that the areas where I tried to mulch the stuff into submission with straw and newspaper developed the thickest mats of roots. You can’t cover this stuff up and expect it to go away – the grass just winds it’s way through the mulch, forming new roots as it goes, creating an even more solid mass of weeds that’s twice as much work to remove. In the areas where the stuff was dug out at the beginning and the new shoots were pulled more or less as they appeared, the soil is nearly clear of runners and roots, and keeping it weeded is a much simpler matter. Where it was left to hide under layers of straw, it takes some serious muscle to haul up the tangled mess of roots and nodules, and a day or two of inattention is all it takes for green shoots to reappear in those places.

This lesson, of course, strikes home. A bunch of really unpleasant stuff happened to me, back in my Other Life. I never tried to pretend it hadn’t occurred … I always admitted that these events had happened, that it had hurt, and that it was really a rough time. But once I admitted it, I did only the bare minimum to deal with it: I mulched my troubles, hoping that under the weight of day to day life and the passage of time, the roots of the pain would die out and I’d be left with a clean inner landscape.

Of course, it doesn’t work that way. You need to dig it all out at the start - look at those ugly white roots, shake the dirt off of them and toss them out of your garden so they don’t take root again. If you mulch your troubles, when the green shoots of those old troubles finally poke through, you discover that you have no choice: you have to dig up the whole thing, including the additional mess of roots and tangles that grew while it was all under cover and you weren’t paying attention. It’s way more work than if you’d just taken care of it at the start, but you know, we all do the best we can, and sometimes, a season or two of mulch is the best response we can muster at the time. The mulch didn’t help the actual problem – in fact, the problem got bigger while it was buried – but in the meantime, the garden wasn’t entirely unproductive. Yes, there were a few more weeds in the vegetables than if I’d taken the time to get it all cleared out at the start, but honestly, I didn’t have the time or resources to get it all cleared and a few weeds were the price I had to pay for just getting on with growing things.

By mulching my troubles I was able to get on with life for a few years. In the end, of course, it caught up with me, and I am sad to look back on my life and see how these buried troubles poked their heads up and caused me to behave badly without actually realizing what was going on. At the same time, I know that I did what I had to do to get from one day to the next, and I know that as soon as I realized the extent of the problem, I stopped mulching and started weeding in earnest. Now I’m digging up all the old roots of hurt and pain and fear and anger, knocking the dirt off, and tossing them out of the garden. I’ll always have to watch for those little green shoots, but if I can take the time now to really get things cleared out, then I’ll have a better harvest next year, and the year after that.

There’s always hope.

No loose ends

After all the things I’ve been through, one of the lessons I have learned is that one should not live with loose ends: don’t put important things off until tomorrow, or next week, or next year … don’t assume you’ll always have time to make it right later, that ‘someday’ you can do what you dream.

Someday may not come.

This isn’t meant to be a morbid thought, but an empowering one: after all, if we patch up our differences quickly instead of letting them fester and grow, then we are happier. Who wants to live with old, fermented anger, anyway? It’s no fun. Makes you miserable. Yes, it’s hard to be the one to put down your weapons first, to be the guy who takes the first step towards reconciliation, but it’s not impossible. And being at peace with the world around you is a much more pleasant way to live.

If you have a dream, if there’s something you long to do, why wait to pursue it? Yes, sometimes you have to choose which things you’ll do right now and which things you may do later … but if you can do this thing you long to do right now, then why wait?

What’s got me thinking about all of this now? This morning, in downtown Edmonton, a young woman died after being struck by a bus. She was on her way to work, just another routine morning … and she won’t be coming home again.

I knew her husband. We were close friends, years ago, but we’ve been separated by time and circumstance and I had not met his beautiful wife, though I could see that she made him very happy. Today, she is suddenly gone, and my heart aches for him. He now faces the long road of grief, a difficult road that offers no bypasses and no shortcuts. I have walked that road so many times, and I would spare him the journey if I could … but I can’t. All I can do is offer to walk any part of it with him, if he needs me to, and send him my love.

None of us are here forever. Every moment of life is precious. Honour the One who gave you the gift of your life by celebrating, loving, and living well every moment you are blessed with.

This healing thing takes a long time

If you read the post titled Listen from awhile back, you will have gathered that I am off work until the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has eased and I can get back into regular life.

Yes, I am still off work. The current “projected date of recovery” is some time in September, but really, that’s just a guess. PTSD is one of those things that takes as long as it takes, especially when the triggering incidents unfolded over a long period of time, as mine did, and it’s very difficult to predict what the path of recovery will look like.

For me, apparently, this part of the path of recovery looks like the life of an adrenalin addict with an unlimited supply of juice. I run for days on high throttle, unable to rest or relax, but also unable to sustain any kind of focused concentration for long. I go from one project to another, knitting a bit on this, then a bit on that, spinning some, carding some, restoring a wheel, surfing the web, reading a book, figuring out a lace pattern, starting another project, pulling it back and starting something else with the same yarn … on and on I go. After a few days of this, I feel utterly exhausted, but, poisoned by my own adrenalin, I still can’t rest. Eventually, I crash and sleep for ten hours at a stretch for a day or two … and then it all starts again.

It is getting a little less wild: the adrenalin high isn’t quite as rough as it used to be, there’s way less chest pain and I suspect my blood pressure is leveling out … and the exhausted crashes don’t last as long.  I’m also able to do a bit more on any given day than I was at the start – early on, just getting out of the house to see the doctor was enough to knock me out for the rest of the day, despite the adrenalin overdose. This weekend, I survived a family trip to the waterpark without any chest pain or subjective anxiety. Today, though, the bill has come in -  my body feels like it’s been through some kind of wringer, the chest pain and throat tightness are back, and I’m rattled and unsettled. It’s better than it used to be, though. Eventually, my body will reset to a more even keel and riding out the highs and lows is how I can teach my body that all I really need on a day to day basis is a really, really low dose of the juice. Just enough to stay awake and concentrate would be fine, thanks.

Despite that knowledge, it’s easy to feel like nothing productive is happening. Mostly I feel like I ought to be better by now – I mean, come on, I’ve got stuff to do, places to go, people to see! I said that to my counselor during my last appointment and she laughed at me … then apologized for finding it so funny. “But you are doing a lot of stuff!” she said. “Look at what you have written, look at all the work you are doing processing this. An awful lot happened to you, and now you have to work through all of it and let it reform into a new shape in your mind. It takes time to sort it all out, to take down the old pathways and build new ones.”

So, yes, it takes however long it takes. If a friend of mine were living through what I’m living right now, I’d say “Of course you need the time! The story you are reliving now unfolded over the course of ten years, then you tried to get by without really looking at it for another six. Get things sorted out and reorganized so that it stops making you ill. Take the time now, or you’ll find yourself in ER in another year or two, probably with something worse than psychosomatic pain.”

So I write, and knit, and weave, and putter, and lie awake at night, and do yoga, and follow the whims of my overactive mind, knowing that the only way out is through.

I discovered after writing Listen (and more importantly, after hitting the Publish Now button to release the story to the wider world) that telling the story sets me free from the weight of my history. When the words are out there, then they are not stuck in here. They are no longer my burden to carry but are transformed into my contribution to the unknown and unnamed strangers out there who will find strength or inspiration or the small shred of hope it takes to carry them through their darkness into the inevitable light.

There are more words coming. Writing them is part of my journey – and though I don’t know how, or where, or when, I know that those same words will be part of someone else’s journey too. It’s my job to put them where they can be found.

If I’m not back in a month, send ink. :)