Content AND Happy... Two Birds with One Stone

I'm too happy to sit down and blog.  How many times can I come up with different ways to say I'm not only content, but I'm happy too.  I've been happy and I've been content, but I think the times of being both have been very, very rare.  The only time that comes to mind is sitting in front of the fish tank, rocking Jacob, and watching Jeremy fall asleep on the couch.  Even so, those times were very situational, because it was only moments of time, interrupted by daily traumas and worries.

I FEEL different.  I've been here almost 8 months.  I have made 2 friends that I feel comfortable asking if they would be my emergency contact here in California.  I'm happy with my social life, such as it is, because I'm a loner type anyways, but not I don't have to feel guilty for not being more social. 

I LOVE the feeling of being anonymous.  I like no one knowing I have MS.  I like not being worried about.  I like walking out of my apartment with a plan, and no one talking to me as I go along, making me forget my plan.  I think some of my friends at the apartment in Idaho will understand that.  Steve, Connie, Lorene, Suzanne.  I miss my friends back there, but at the same time, I didn't really realize just how much it takes out of me to be human in front of other people, to fulfill expectations that I put on myself, knowing perhaps someone was counting on me.  All of my own doing - I don't want my friends to think they were too much for me!

For the first time in my life, I feel like the other shoe is NOT going to drop.  Fifty two years old, and I finally feel like everything is okay, and whatever is not? Will still be okay.  I have no idea how to explain that any further either.  

In this city of 808,976, almost a million, I feel safe and secure.

In this tiny studio, I have space in my brain to watch TV or read and/or listen to music on purpose, with purpose - not as an escape from whatever.  I now know what "whatever" was, but I'm not going to mess up this post with talking about it now.  Reading and music win out more over TV lately.

My only worry is the cats... wondering if they are happy, or should I give them a chance to go to a better home.

I wake up in the morning to this view:                                                                                                                      

 8am in the morning, and I WANT to get out of bed to go walk.  I don't lay there and let the pain take over.

I remember a long time ago, how the statement "God will provide" had such a huge impact on me.  "God" "provided" all right, by relatives, or friends, thereby creating obligations/expectations.  Or more likely then not, I worked my tail off to "provide" what I wanted.  To say "God will provide" was a negative for me, for the most part.  Actually, I didn't think God had anything to do with it.  I lost God when Jacob died, so I'm afraid my faith during his life was a fraud, I'm ashamed to admit.

But the serendipity-ness that is my life now...?  There IS something to "IT"... a greater thing than me, that is giving me peace of mind in this city of nearly a million, inside 49 square miles.  When I am at my most poor, living on $770.00 in the 5th most expensive city in the USA, I am content with having exactly what I need, and feel that it's finally time to save money, instead of spend it. 

I had given up on moving here, but I put it at the top of my bucket list on January 20, 2011.  Half jokingly, I "Oprah-ized" it, putting it "out there in the Universe", the 'The Secret' way.  It was one of her Book of the Month selections, and it basically went viral.  I've got the book.  I haven't read it.  I got the gist of it from her show, and reading.  Unfortunately, my attitude is much like Emily Yoffe's, who writes a column called "The Human Guinea Pig" for the Slate website. 

As everyone in the Universe now knows, (it's the least I can do... to give credit where credit is due, so I continue to tell the story), the very next day after putting "Moving to San Francisco" on the top of my bucket list, I got a letter from San Francisco Housing Authority, saying my name had reached the top of the list and a studio was ready for me, should I want/accept it.  This is after waiting over 5 years, and basically giving up.  Did I mention THE VERY NEXT DAY?

Sooo many things have happened since then that further prove there is something bigger than I am - I would wish for something, and I'd find it on the sidewalk the next day.  

I'm being ridiculous.  Who cares if I'm happy!!!
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So Laurie. How's the weight loss going?

Well, it's like this.

16 pounds so far.  I've been here for 6 months.. 

I have a hard time with the hills.

Take the bike out once a day on MOST days.

Walk at least a mile each day with Annie, in the park. 

All my excuses are out the window, down the chute, up a creek, gone Johnson, moot.  It's almost always cool enough.  The pain is manageable.  There's lots of places to go, to see.  I'm so damn happy and even better - content.  I'm just so damn happy.

Which makes me so sad to think back on the last 50 years.  My childhood memories are very few, because there was sexual abuse at ages 2, 4ish, 7, and 14ish.  Aways a dark cloud hovering over the outwardly cheer and leadership at school, but the acting out at home cause there was something wrong, but I didn't know what. 

There were definitely periods of happiness.  Marrying Dan, having Jeremy, and having Jacob.  Jacob will always be tied up with our divorce tho.  When Jacob died, Jeremy kept me from cashing it in, which was a very heavy burden for a child to have.  Many, many years of figuring it out thru counseling, and learning even more as I counseled others and facilitated support groups for sexually/physically/emotionally abused children, teenagers, women, men, couples and perpetrators. 

The years 40ish to 43 were gaining on happiness.  I considered myself healed from childhood abuses, and Jacob's death, as far as one can heal healthily.  I was happy alone, and not needing a man after all.  Men flocked around all of a sudden.  I was having true fun!  Then at 43, in 2000, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.  The symptoms made me have to deal with alot of geriatric issues at least 20 years too soon.  Pain and depression set in for the next 10 years, until now.  It was a different kind of depression from losing a baby, or a relationship.  One can't "heal" from a chronic disease and one with chronic pain to boot. 

So how can simply moving away to a different location change things so very much?  They say you can't run away from your problems, cause they'll just catch up to you.  MS certainly is still here.  I have yet to really tap into the MS clinic, my first appointment is in December, so I haven't benefited from better medical care yet. Nor am I skinny yet. 

So many things are better. 

Tomorrow, I'll list those things for NaBloPoMo.  A post a day for a whole month.  I SWEAR.  Oh coolbeans, when I went to look for the link, I noticed they provide a "prompt" to give you ideas what to write if you want.  If I don't choose to use the prompt, I'll try to give it a short answer.  Today's prompt is "What is your favorite part of writing?"  Since I don't have a creative bone in my body as far as writing stories, my writing has always been reality-based.  Literary real life.  For me, it's also about not being able to remember so many things, unless I write it down. 

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Thinking

Something weird happened to me this year about Jacob's death anniversary, and it's really been bothering me.

I didn't read the poems this year.

Normally, I read them at least once a year, either on his birthday or his death day.  This year, I started to, and all of a sudden, 3 or 4 poems into it, I became critical of ... grammar, punctuation, sentence structure.

Normally, I'm happy to read them, because it brings me back to having him again.  They were written straight from the heart, with very few edits or proofing.  Straight from the gut, actually.

One thing about this year is that there's no lilacs here in San Francisco.  So I don't get that reminder seeping slowly into my brain, the pre-warning that his birthday is coming up.  So the dates couldn't sneak up on me.  Lilacs were blooming when he was born, and smelling them is forever etched into my brain.  Every time I left the hospital, I could smell them.  .

Reading the poems puts me RIGHT back there, in a happy way for the most part.  Squirming in shame about his first month, but forgiving myself too.  It's weird to think of my ex mother-in-law reading them.  There was so much judgement going on during that time, from both sides of the family, so to remember Jacob is to remember those things too. 

I was in hell back then, but every night, rocking him in front of the fish tank would bring us out of it - till morning.

From the moment I saw him, there was a white light around him, and this was before I knew anything about auras.  I never mentioned it to anyone because it partly scared me, and partly didn't want to be thought even more crazy.  Looking back at it now, I wonder if it scared me because I knew he wasn't going to stay mine? 

But why I couldn't read the poems the other day?  No clue.  Feel free to weigh in with your comments - maybe it's obvious to someone else.  :-)


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And so... the Honesty Begins Again

I used to post every day in another blog, which I eventually killed.  It got so I couldn't write.  I blamed it on stage fright, because I had invited family members to read.  By family, I mean my son, mother and sister.  I truly thought it wouldn't bother me, but when the writing stopped, that was the only reason I could figure out.  Ha.  Just like me to blame the family - I blamed the family for a lot of things over the years.  Family = the 'go to' blame factor. 

But.  As in a big BUT.  As I tried to write, I would think of how my family would take it, and I couldn't write.  To fill in the back story for my non-family readers on certain issues would require writing about things that we/family definitely didn't talk about in person. 

A son and 2 brothers are dead.  My father may as well be dead.  I don't even remember how long it's been since I've talked or seen him.  My son might remember, because I have a vague memory of us driving down the road, seeing my parent's vehicle on the road, and I remembered it was the day they were to move out of town.  I had given my father an ultimatum months before - either get family counseling (for me, my siblings, mom, and him) or my son and I could not be a part of his life ever again.  I vaguely remember telling my son that we wouldn't be seeing grandpa and grandma anymore OR something along the lines of Grandpa choosing not to have his family around him and why.  I seem to remember him saying that it was okay because his grandpa didn't deserve to see us.  Out of the mouth of babes. 

And see?  This is why I quit writing.  In order for my NON-family readers to understand why I haven't spoken to my father for over 20? years, I'd have to tell the story of how he molested me and why I told my young son about the abuse issues in our family.  I knew I'd get a bunch of emails questioning the wisdom of telling a 9-10 year old child.  There was a time when I cared about educating anyone and everyone about abuse, and I didn't mind using my own story to elaborate, but after years of dealing with it via counseling, working in the field, and professional trainings, I got DONE with my own issues and put it to rest as far as the fighting the good fight against childhood sexual abuse was concerned.

I understood that my mother was stuck, as many woman back then were - having never worked outside of the home for a paycheck, dependent on him for all her adult life.  I never thought she knew about it.  I never blamed her.

My sister quit speaking to me at some point years ago, because the man she was seeing, the man she allowed in her 3 small daughter's lives ... his children were in my support groups.  Support groups for children because of abuse issues in their lives.  My co-workers and I knew what we knew; we were considered the "experts" in our area at the time.  I had to figure out a way to tell my sister, without breaking the children's (the clients) confidentiality.  There were staff meetings galore, while we tried to figure out what to do to protect my nieces, and keep my job.  Back then confidentiality was everything.  It is why we were so successful at getting the clients to tell us the truth - they trusted us.

When I tried to talk to my sister about it, to warn her...she already knew. 

Huh.  

I knew the script for talking to a mother whose children might be or were at risk.  I didn't have the script for talking to a mother who already knew.  I also knew that she was most likely a victim of my father too, but she didn't think so (at that time), and to this day, we have a running joke about how I think she needs counseling and she thinks she doesn't. 

At one point, my son was going thru a very bad time, and I was swept into it, partly at his request, and partly because I am easy to talk to.  It used to be my job and I was trained how to listen and how to help people get their feelings out in a healthy way.  I wrote a post about his situation, how it affected me, and he said it was very hurtful towards his new girlfriend.  I was horrified at myself for hurting her, because that hadn't been my intent.

And see?  This is why I quit writing.  In order for my readers to understand, I would have had to provide more details and dis-respect his privacy, despite him telling me I could write anything I wanted.  I re-read what I had written that offended him so, and I honestly could not see how it hurt them.  Sometimes, the truth hurts.  If anything, the vagueness of the post irritated me, because I had to talk in circles in order to get my point across about how hurt I was, without giving out more private details.  Talking TO him hadn't helped, so I took it out in writing, which has always helped me before.  Get it out of my head, on paper, and I could move on without it swirling around in my brain, making me crazy.

I realize now, that he simply didn't have the ability to deal, nor did he have the skills.  My "getting healthy" came too late for him - he didn't learn the coping skills I had learned too late in life.  I also realized that perhaps he'd taken it personally because … he should have taken it personally.   He knew the scoop.  He had said some unforgivable things to me, and of all the people for me not to be able to communicate with, to not be able to solve our problems … to have to keep all my feelings to myself in order to keep him in my life… all the education and training in the world didn't seem to work with the most important person in my life.  For me to move on without having the problem solved on my end was 100% against my nature.  I was living a lie again, having to pretend I was okay when I wasn't.   I had to stuff it in order to have a relationship with him.

In return for stuffing all the secrets, from childhood to maturity-hood, I raged on the outside and tried to control everything else to the nth degree, for a good majority of my early adulthood.  I was 32 when I started dealing with the abuse issues.  I had been in counseling for years, trying to figure out what was wrong with ME.  I blamed so much on myself, yet I KNEW better - I just couldn't make it mesh with me being the only bad guy in the family.  I was the bad guy cause I had told the secrets.

And see?  That is why I quit writing.  All my life, I had stuffed the abuse, in order to continue having a family.  I stuffed the emotional and physical abuse in my marriages in order to stay married.  And despite all my hard work over the years, suddenly I had to stuff shit down my throat in order to keep a relationship with the most important person in my life.  So much for stopping the cycle of abuse.

I had worked for an agency advocating against child abuse for 8 years, heart and soul, and I was very good at it.  I could not mesh the accolades I received from my work, but my family not respecting my knowledge and my DUTY to protect children. Not only the moral duty, but I would be fired for not reporting suspected abuse.  In the case of my sister and me - it was a heart-wrenching quandary, so I accepted the silence between us, in order to keep my job and not have to report her.  The only way I could 'prove' to her about her man... I would have had to take the 3 inch thick, confidential file out of the office - the file that included every police charge, every court incident, everything that his children had said in the groups.  I couldn't mesh my duty to keep the victim's confidentiality with the need to PROVE to my sister that I wasn't lying.

I believe firmly, that telling the big bad secret of my childhood sexual abuse is the only way for the cycle to stop.  Keeping secrets allow the abuse to continue, because there are no consequences for the abuser.  I was not ashamed to tell my story - I told it many times in public forums, and made people cry, and gave people courage to finally tell their own stories of being abused.  More money was donated to the agency because I'd tell my story.  I couldn't understand why everybody else liked me, respected my knowledge and skills, but my family didn't.  Instead of sticking around to solve things, they either disappeared or threatened to.  Arguing and disagreeing would have been fine.  Instead, our history was to make me the bad guy, leave my life, or threaten to leave my life. 
 
And see?  This is why I quit writing.  There are so many big holes in my life, and for me to be real, and truthful in my writing, sometimes I'd have to write about the black holes of my past in order to make sense of the present.  I'd have to risk hurting someone.  My family was now reading and I did not want to dredge up what was now the distant past, and some of them would be hearing my story for the first time since I confronted my dad all those years ago.  Because my blog is linked to my Facebook, there might be relatives reading who still have relationships with my father.  Even though I felt very, very done with it, it's STILL a part of my life, an open book part of my life, and until I invited family to read my blog, I didn't realize the impact of the family knowing EVERYTHING - the way I'd always been with all my friends, co-workers, boyfriends, clients, etc.  

I had chosen to live an open life without the big, bad secret in order to stop the cycle for years.  I hadn't be able to live that way without cutting some people out, and suddenly I was letting them back in, and I didn't think it mattered cause I was "done" with those issues.

I had moved on and bought a flower shop.  I had started dating good men, and knowing ahead of time whether they were good or not, trusting my instincts.  Started having fun, sure in my healing and not wanting anything to do with "fixing" anyone of the male gender, nor was I afraid of being alone or lonely.  I was happy, for the first time in my life.  Happy, contented, and at peace. 

Hello Multiple Sclerosis.  But that's another story.

And see?  This is why I quit writing.  I now had MS and I NEEDED my family because I was scared, and I now peed my pants, and fell down, and wobbled alot and couldn't remember things.   For me to dredge up the past in any way in my blog, which they were now reading - what if I said the wrong thing, and they disappeared again?  I didn't have the energy for abuse issues, for helping others, for being there for them if something came up for them because they knew my truth - I had been done with it, and suddenly I had something else to deal with - just plain walking straight was a chore.  Also, the loss of control over my body triggered the loss of control I had as a child and a teenager, being molested.  I wasn't so done after all, but I knew it was okay.  It is normal for it to be triggered in unexpected ways, probably for the rest of my life.  The issue part of it... I feel confident that I've healed the majority of it, but there will always be reminders of how it affected me. It is part of who I am, and for me not to be able to talk about it... makes me mentally ill again.

In order to fill in the holes in my life that happens to come up when I write... I have to write without fear.  I have to write in order to stay healthy mentally... if my voice gets silenced again about the abuse... I will have been a fraud, and the hell that I went thru will all be for nothing.

This stuff was so done for me... until it started acting and feeling like a secret again.  In my very own blog, I couldn't be 100% open about whatever came up that wanted to be written about cause family was reading now.

So the bottom line, dear Mom, Sister and Son, is this.  If I'm worried about how something I write will impact you, I will let you read it first, and we can discuss.  If I've said something in an offensive way, we will work together to re-word it without it losing my truth.  I can only believe this will be a good thing… getting to know each other and communicating more.  If I've written something and I haven't talked to you ahead of time, then it means that I've written it without realizing it might have a negative impact on anyone - I've NOT done it with the intent to hurt.  I don't operate that way - I am an open book and a good one, I might add.  I ask that you realize that MS affects me cognitively, and I sometimes don't put 2 plus 2 together, or connect the dots.  Sometimes I can't see the forest because of the trees.  If you are impacted in a negative or confused way, it becomes YOUR issue, and YOUR responsibility to call me up, and SAY so.  I will take the post down immediately, and then we will talk ourselves to an understanding, and I will take care of the post accordingly, based on what we agree on.  Again, I can't help but think that it will be a good thing… getting to know each other and communicating.  My son's done it before, and I count it as a HUGE plus that he was able to talk to me rather than hold it against me and it coming out some other way.  I disagreed with him, but I understood his point and I took the pictures of him off Facebook.  We were grown-ups together.  That will be what I expect from my friends, family and readers.   

Best regards,
 

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I shall begin the New Year pondering this...

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"You don't have to outrun the bear.  You just have to outrun one other hiker".

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Best regards,

PeeLister@yahoo.com

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Watched 9/11 shows all day yesterday ... depressing. I can't believe we then went to war in the wrong place, and we're just now getting serious about going to Afghanistan and Pakistan. I would LOVE to see Osama Bin Laden in a cage. And that Ground Zero mosque debate is stupid. Americans are Americans. Not Catholic, Muslim, Mormons, or Democrats, Republicans, and Tea Party-erers. That is too a word.

Best regards,

PeeLister@yahoo.com

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