Monday was warmer than its’s been for a while. Sigh. Up at 4:00, I was able to do chores and water all the garden beds thoroughly before Her Highness and I went to meet our friends for a long forest walk together. When we came home, it soon was lunchtime, and then I had a brief soak in the sunshine before coming in to recover on my bed in the wonderfully cool house.
The fountain needs my attention, but I just wasn’t into doing anything at all. All I wanted to do was nothing except read. I had shopping to do, but it could wait. Like I said, nothing was what I wanted to do.
I idled my way through the day until mid-afternoon and then Sheba and I went for our afternoon walk in the Elder Cedar grove. It felt so, so good to walk without worrying about anything (like cakes) and not having to hurry on the walk. And when I got home, I got my family a new veterinarian. Our vet on Gabriola is closing, so I was very happy to find a vet in Nanaimo who will take us on. Today, I will arrange to have Sheba, Fred and Ethel’s records sent to the new vet. I’m relieved that’s done!
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I saw a cartoon online. I may have mentioned this before. A man bearing an enormous sack with the word, PAST, on its side. A man standing observing him says, “Why don’t you leave that behind.”
Dear cartoonist, fuck you! Don’t you think I wish I could. Should Jewish people leave the history of the holocaust behind? Okay, I’m sorry I said, ‘fuck you,’ but some people living with trauma can’t forget because the world is full of triggers for many of us with clinical diagnoses.
Last night I had a frightening moment of insight. It shocked me, making me see my tired old story a different way and, as so often happens with me, it comes down to one word. This curse of my history.
Then this happens: nervous breakdown and diagnoses of Complex PTSD and Functional Neurological Disorder. And then, that word, my N word: Neglected. It has really, terribly hurt me to be described that way, although it didn’t really mean too much to me at the time of diagnosis because I was dealing with constant seizures and extremely poor speech. I had to put off acceptance of all I had learned from Dr. S. and concentrate on adapting.
The N word that keeps coming up in my head and I’ve struggled to understand why it hurt so much. I’d always called Don and Connie distant. I’d rarely seen them and I felt unwanted. And most of all, no one at either graduation. That killed me. And yet late, late in life hearing Dr. S. call me neglected gutted me.
I have an appointment coming up. I take notes between appointments of insights and thoughts for Dr. S. Last night I watched a movie about a brother fighting for custody of his sister from their mother. It hurt. It hurt to see the brother fighting so hard for his sister. It hurt to see someone wanting to protect someone so strongly. I wished someone had fought like that for me.
I got to thinking about that after the film ended, and out of the soup in my memory, through the lens of new understanding, I saw my story as being one of a child, a person, no one loved. And that really overwhelmed me, to understand myself that way. Unloved. Unwanted.
Unloved. That had never occurred to me. Not ever. It explains a lot. I have greater understanding of myself, due to one word: Unloved. I suppose “unloved’ is just another way of saying the N word. This word, like the N word, has been added to my list of Key Words.
My Key Words:
Anxiety:
Psycho-neurological
Neglect
Unloved
Key words have all come from Dr. S. (except for ‘unloved’), and each of them has been uttered casually by her. She hasn’t ever said, ‘Now I want to talk about KEY WORD HERE.’ Just, as we are talking, she utters these words that open my mind to clearer understanding. When she has ssaid them, suddenly, for me, ‘the lights went on.’ Key words help me understand myself, and understanding myself, theoretically, helps me. Well, it has. So have drugs.
A great many people have helped me learn to like myself through their kindness and affection. All my life I’ve thought kindly, lovingly of Mr. Jackson, a childhood neighbour, and Aunt Audrey, Don’s sister. I have never missed Don and Connie, but I have missed Mr. J. and Aunt Audrey terrible all my life. All my life I’ve lived with regret that I couldn’t thank them for their kindness. They allowed me to believe that I was loveable.
Everybody has a story.
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