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Written in Blood

Posted on September 8, 2014 by jenny

Church was good, but when I left I felt oddly lost. It was like I had dropped all the psychic stuff I’ve been processing. When I got home I didn’t know what to do. Finally I had lunch, did a dump run, and went to Neskaya to scan and print the writing in blood.

Something I don’t usually share when I talk about Journey Into Courage is my monologue for the “Fear” section. I used to cut myself with razorblades. When I looked back to see what was happening in my life, I realized it was the late 60’s and we were at war in Vietnam. I identified with the soldiers. I created a script where I was writing in my journal. I had the music of Simon & Garfunkle (Sounds of Silence, I am a Rock) in the background. I mimed actually cutting myself and writing with the blood. Part of the structure that Bess created for Journey was that we would have an object that represented our abuse in the first set of monologues, and we would throw it in a garbage can as part of the Courage section. I think I still have the notebook I used, but the razor blade is long gone.

This is a writing in blood. It was probably written in 1969. The words are from Rilke’s First Duino Elegy. “Who, if I cried out, would hear me amid the hosts of angels…” I do not know whose translation it is. I learned it from a friend. A later part of the same elegy begins: “Ought not these oldest sufferings of ours to be yielding more fruit by now?” These quotations spoke to the depth of my pain.

Went home and worked on the Journey booklet. Re-formatted the poems, wrote a page for the blood writing. Printed them out. Cut out the copies of the blood writing. (Now I have to tape it back onto the big autobiography page.) Trimmed and punched all the pages. Next step is to glue the pictures. I want to take it to Erica.

One of the last lines of the Poem “Blood and Stone” is:

Mommy and Daddy, if I cut myself and wrote you in blood
would you listen?

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Past Misery

Posted on August 29, 2014 by jenny

I don’t really want to write down all the details of yesterday. I think I’d rather explore some topic. This is a change. Possibly it started with the work with Erica. I know this writing is a daily discipline, possibly even my spiritual practice. I think the writing every detail was a form of hanging on when it was so difficult just to get through the day. From this place of feeling better, of feeling relaxed and like I’m OK just as I am (even if I can’t make conversation), I look back and see how much pain I was in. I really had no idea. I think of Erica’s comment about my stamina and endurance, I had my usual reaction of not believing it, but now that I see how really difficult my life has been, it makes sense.

I remember being at Kripalu, and unable to sleep, so I walked the basement corridors for hours. Another time, I was living in a house in the country, in the basement apartment. There was a clock that struck the hours and the quarters, and I simply couldn’t sleep. I was ashamed to bother my landlady by asking her if I could stop the clock. Again I remember going outside and walking around and around, chanting the “Prajna Paramita” chant that I had learned at the Rochester Zen Center. I remember being so terrified that I could hardly move. I made myself water the plants, and then watched the stream of water coming from that watering can and holding on to it like it was a lifeline. I remember gathering my notebook, books, teabags, and rushing from the house when the airplane noise began. Coming “home” from out of town, I’d start to feel scared, not like I was coming home at all.

The not having any conversation happens when I’m with “normal” people. I don’t read the newspapers, I don’t watch TV, I don’t see movies. They’re always talking about people and events I’ve never heard of. What I have to say is about esoteric things like “object constancy” and the physiology of trauma. When I’m with a group of ordinary people, even ones I love like with family this weekend, I feel like someone who’s come from a nunnery, or a mental hospital, I’m so far out of the loop.

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Lifelong Fear

Posted on August 27, 2014 by jenny

I’ve been thinking that most of my life I’ve been scared that I’ll do something wrong and everyone will reject and leave me and scared that I’ll fail to do something I’m supposed to do and everyone will reject and leave me. I never thought it out in so many words, but that unnamed fear has been with me most of my life. It’s only now, as I’ve begun feeling that I’m OK just as I am, that I can see so clearly what I was afraid of. I think of the refrain in my old journals “… then he’ll be gone and I’ll be left alone again.” and the periodic wail “All I ever wanted is for somebody to come and put their arms around me and tell me that everything’s gonna be all right.” I can see now, so clearly, the cry of an abandoned and frightened child.

I’m always watching myself to make sure I don’t make a mistake. I’m always worrying about what I might have forgotten. I panic when I lose my “to do” list. I think what I’ve been calling “days of grace” are when it feels like I’m OK just as I am, I’m not watching myself all the time. Now that I’m in this state more of the time, I can see much more clearly what most of my life has been like.

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“Thanksgiving”

Posted on August 25, 2014 by jenny

From the “Mimi” journal. In my adolescence, I started writing a journal. I had read the Diary of Anne Frank, and copied her idea of letters to an invisible friend. This was written in 1959 when I was 17.

Thursday, 26 November

Dear Mimi,

Today is Thanksgiving Day, but I can’t think of anything to be thankful for. It’s awful to be so unhappy all the time. I feel constricted and grey in my chest and I feel as though I’ll never be happy again. I can’t even be thankful for a cherry colored sunset because even that thought does not open up my heart. I want to write poetry but I’m too discouraged, dried up inside, to do anything. Daddy says I’m unhappy because I want to be but I hate being miserable. I can’t figure out whether it’s because of Don or because I am utterly incapable of being normal and healthy and happy. Someday — I guess — but someday seems so far off. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day unto the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays light fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. We are all lost here on this rock, that goes around the sun without meaning. O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again. I shall always be a borrower and that hurts too. Why can I not create in any medium? Why, why, why? Why am I so discouraged that I can’t work and don’t care about college or the future or anything? It all seems so hopeless. I wish I could go crazy or get sick or something. For a girl who wants to do everything all the way or not at all, it’s awfully frustrating to be continually forced into the middle.

Yours in misery,

Jenny

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Depression & Apathy

Posted on August 25, 2014 by jenny

I was tired all day and I’m still tired but this morning I’m feeling bleak. It would be depression except that I know intellectually that help is just around the corner.

I want to think about the difference between apathy and depression. I’ve felt apathy many times in my life — “Why bother?” “What’s the use?” —but it’s almost always been accompanied by depression so there’s been also a hopeless, stuck, weighted down feeling about it. Apathy lacks the invisible weight of depression. I used to say that when I was depressed, it was like dragging an invisible 500 pounds behind me. That, of course, was after I knew what it was like to not be depressed. It’s not OK to be depressed and I would desperately try to get out of it. Or push myself to get things done. With apathy now it’s OK to be apathetic, to just sit here and stare out the window. The being OK is because I know this is something that happens to a baby when she’s left alone too long. It confirms that there was neglect in my childhood and validates the work I am doing to heal. I wonder if this basic apathy becomes depression when I start to have thoughts and try to make meaning out of it and decide that it’s my fault rather than understand that my mother was incapable of caring for me. I wonder if the basic source of depression is feeling miserable, believing you are responsible for feeling miserable — I remember my father saying “You just want to be miserable” — but I couldn’t stop it by my own efforts. Feeling responsible for making something happen yet not be able to stop making it happen — that double bind is at the root of depression.

I’m glad and grateful that I’m far enough out of it to be able to see it. I remember saying the serenity prayer: “God give me the serenity to accept what I can’t change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” When I found out about children of alcoholics, that we are damaged by our parents’ drinking, I realized that I learned from my alcoholic parents that I could change what I in fact had no power to change — namely their behavior — and that I could not change what I was really responsible for — namely my own thinking.

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Step One Again Again

Posted on August 23, 2014 by jenny

After the emotional blowout of Thursday, when I told Karen how the work on my car was going on and on and not getting done and cried and cried in her office for most of the session, I collapsed. I felt pretty washed out yesterday. Didn’t do much of anything. Didn’t even call anybody about trying to borrow a car. I realized it was just too much. The logistics were beyond me. I spent most of the day reading. Yesterday I treated myself as though I were sick.

I thought how the crash happened because I’ve been holding myself together so tightly while Erica’s gone that of course one break in my armor make the whole thing fall apart.

Yesterday, or maybe even Thursday night, I felt like I had arrived again again at Step One — my life is unmanageable. In the past I have felt hopeless and helpless at that point, but now I feel washed out, cleaned out of all that was bothering me. I see that I will be able to make a fresh start, but I have to rest first. I got out AA’s “big book” that Jack had left with me, and read the stories of the first people to come to AA. They went through so much baffled pain before they were able to surrender. Their stories comfort me, even though I’m not dealing with an addiction. I’m dealing with a physiological condition, where I get triggered into inappropriate and overwhelming feelings by something I don’t understand, sometimes don’t even notice. The baffled pain, the sense of having no control over your own life, feeling horribly lonely — that all resonates with the stories of alcoholics.

This doesn’t feel like other times when I’ve hit bottom. I’m not lying here wondering what to do. I know I’ve crashed badly but what I have to do now is take very good care of myself, to keep things as simple as possible, to not demand that I do something I don’t feel I can do. No push push push. I am a single mom taking care of a sick infant. She’s higher priority than anything else. And I know she’ll get better. There were times in the past when I was really afraid she was going to die.

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Box of Stories

Posted on August 21, 2014 by jenny

Once again I am feeling apathetic. This is the third week of my therapist’s vacation, and I’m feeling a little like she doesn’t exist, and it’s very hard to get my energy up to do anything, or even to make decisions. Recently I’ve been making decisions on how easy something is, rather than how much it costs, or if it’s something I “should” do.

I haven’t been able to get back to work on my box of stories project. It occurred to me that I could do a blog post about it. I’ve done an earlier post about the inspiration for the project, and now I’d like to show some of the process. That means taking pictures and downloading them. I can do that.

This one shows the top of the box which is almost completed.

This shows some of the little booklets of stories:

The box is a tomato box. It has a nice solid top, and holes in the sides. Because of the holes, adding collage is a little tricky:

Here is some of the raw material in the form of very large pictures:

Some of the stories have appeared as blog posts:

Winter Solstice at Stanstead

Ocean of Compassion

Wild Turkeys

Little Group of Jennys

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Healing with Art

Posted on August 17, 2014 by jenny

The Daily Good sends out a piece of positive news every day. I don’t always read them right away. Today I went back and started reading old ones that I had never looked at. This one is from early January — I had never looked at it. I’ve heard the name of the artist Lily Yeh, and her healing work. This video shows her process to help the survivors of the Rwanda genocide build a memorial to their dead that would not only be a remembrance, but also a work that would bring healing. I find this video to be incredibly moving and inspiring. The use of mosaic reminded me of a wonderful book called “Broken for You,” which is about taking the broken pieces and creating a new whole.

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A New Stage of Healing

Posted on July 22, 2014 by jenny

I started a new medication in May. It’s one of a class of medications that are mood stabilizers. I felt very odd after taking it for the first time, and the same sort of oddness each time I raised the dose. I felt slightly speedy and not quite myself. That faded after a couple of days. I’ve been on 75mg for four weeks, and I feel pretty solid, and solidly myself. I haven’t been depressed in weeks. Sometimes I feel a little blue, and sometimes I feel total apathy, no motivation for anything.

I’ve also been working with Karen on seeing that I really have gotten somewhere over the years. When I get depressed again, it feels like I’m back in the same place. It may feel the same, but I have a lot more resources now. I have supportive friends to call and ask for help. I have church as well as circle dance. I even have a support group for the summer. It’s a NAMI group that meets in St. Johnsbury. It’s not really a peer group because most of the people are struggling with more difficult symptoms, and don’t have the resources that I have. I do feel supported, because they acknowledge that they need help and are trying to change their behavior, and I also find it very comforting to be in a group where I seem to be one of the healthiest, instead of feeling like the weirdo in a group of normals. The other thing I have that I didn’t have when I started out — I first started seeing a therapist in 1967 when I was 25 years old, and I’ve been in therapy off and on since then — was an understanding of what I was up against: not just born defective, not just a child of alcoholic parents, not just systemic yeast, not just suffering from clinical depression, not just suffering from low thyroid. The biggest thing I’ve been struggling with my whole life is PTSD.

Being traumatized in early infancy affects the development of the brain and nervous system. Everything I learned after that was distorted. Knowing about the physiological effects of trauma has helped me in trying to manage myself. For example, I discovered something I started calling “false urgency.” I went out to “rescue” a car that was halfway up the driveway and couldn’t get farther because the driveway was solid ice. Looking back, after I slipped and broke my wrist, I saw that the car was perfectly fine. Its feelings weren’t hurt, it wasn’t going to freeze, it was in a driveway so it wasn’t likely to be crashed into, there was NO GOOD REASON that it had to be moved. Because of PTSD, my nervous system is always on “red alert” so of course it’s easy for something to appear far more urgent than it really was.

I’ve started seeing a new therapist. Her name is Erica. She specializes in PTSD and attachment issues which means very early stages, infancy, the need to bond with a caretaker. When I knew I was going to see her, I felt a lot of hope. Just before I saw her for the first time, I was scared. But she was wonderful, soothing and caring. I saw her three weeks in a row, but then she went away for a week, and I had a very hard time with that. Abandonment was the issue I needed to work on, and here was this woman, who I had got attached to so quickly, and she was abandoning me.

My friend Lynelle, who has done a lot of research into mother-baby dynamics, told me that when a baby is left alone too long, it gets apathetic. That’s how I felt at the end of the second week. I had no sense of hope that she would help me, I thought things like “Why bother?” and “What’s the point?”

But after I saw her again, as I was driving home, I felt that what we were doing was real and serious. That made me feel contained and held. I hoped it would hold me through her next absence, and I was fine for the first week. Today is Tuesday, and I’m sure some part of me feels abandoned again. I had a lot of things go wrong yesterday, mostly technical stuff like not being able to get my email, tracfone not working. Today I feel apathetic again. I’ve just been sitting inside reading. No energy for working on my stories, it’s too hot to go outside. I have a whole week to go before I see Erica again. Well, all I have to do is hold on.

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Forgiveness

Posted on July 5, 2014 by jenny

Someone told me recently that she thought I should forgive my mom. I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve forgiven her many times and then later found that some tight cramp in my psyche was still there. Recently I’ve been thinking of her with compassion. She didn’t know she was damaging me. Although I’ve heard of research which proves that someone know when they’re lying, deep down inside. This may have been one of the sources of my mother’s drinking. When I think of the pain that she was in denial of, and how much she had to drink to keep the truth from surfacing, I feel enormous compassion for her. Is that the same as forgiveness? I guess I have got to the place where I don’t think of PTSD as something to blame mom for, instead I see it as an entirely separate thing which is part of my shamanic training. I wish that I had got farther with that training, that I had been able to do something bigger for the earth and all her people. Instead I’m spending my time, energy, and passion in my quest for healing. Sometimes I can see that even that healing work is not something entirely selfish, but actually DOES help that earth in a shamanic way. Right now I can’t see anything to forgive mom for. I guess that is true forgiveness.

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