Tag: family

Weekly update: “I had a cunning plan…”

“I’ve got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel….” (Blackadder, in Blackadder Series 3, written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton)

As ever, I had great plans for getting my revamped blog up and running, but things did not go accordingly. The week before last I was knocked flat by very painful endometriosis symptoms. Then last week was extremely busy with two wonderful occasions celebrating my goddaughter and godson’s First Holy Communions.

rosary

The travel involved meant that my chronic pain flared badly, though I am absolutely delighted and thankful we could go and celebrate with them. Their families have become dear friends. I realised I have known my goddaughter’s mum for 17 years. That’s incredible. Looking back it’s quite scary how the time has passed. I’m deeply thankful for her friendship and how she has made my husband and I part of her family, through so many ups and downs and so many times that I have not been able to be the friend I’d want to be and have not been easy to be around.

Here is some baking I did last week for tea with my godson’s family. It’s the first time I have baked since Christmas. It’s therapeutic for me as well as a good way to make a gift. These cakes and tea bread were all gluten free.

baking

Today, we got some more unexpected bad news about my husband’s health, including the fact he needs yet another surgery. A problem we had thought to be relatively minor could be or could become very serious. Coming as it does, clashing with what had been elation at his getting through his previous surgery, this is a shock for him. We are both somewhat stunned. I feel a certainty we can walk through this whatever it leads to, because we have each other, the sacrament of our marriage strengthening us, the unchanging love of God, and good and quick medical care here. I will say more in future posts but it’s another case of “thank goodness it was caught early”.

On the positive side, the doctors are still permitting us to go on our holiday to Greece next week. This will be a very important rest and please God, time of happiness, for my husband before he faces his next surgery. We are going to take things slowly in Greece and take plenty of time to appreciate the little beauties in each day. We will be by the sea for much of the time and I think that itself is healing, through God’s grace.

As you can see, this means I have not been able to do with my blog what I wanted to. I am sorry not to fulfil the schedule I had set out. I don’t want to let you down. I am going to postpone making any major changes until we come back from holiday and I can dedicate particular time each week to this blog. In the meantime I will update when I can and share some of the joy of our travels.

Ginny xxx

 

If he doesn’t realise he’s being abused, what do I do?

I’ve gone too long not saying anything. I need to talk to my dad about what my step mother is doing to him and to me.

What happened to my other family member, who was being abused for months with no-one’s knowledge, has made it clearer to me that I need to speak out. I know what can go under the radar; how for those closely involved in the abuser’s world, it can be impossible to see what is happening. And look what went under the radar when I was abused as a child. I’m trying to separate myself from my anger about all the times I “should” have been helped. Right now it just shows me how important it is to not let it go by when you see abuse happening. Another event that has made it clearer to me that I need to speak out is that third parties have commented on my step mum’s behaviour and how my dad is and how another vulnerable member of the family is treated – this was not based on what I told them but on what they themselves observed. It isn’t just me being crazy, or misinterpreting because I’m too sensitive because of my early life experiences, or imagining it, or because I subconsciously resent my step mother so somehow want bad towards her. It’s really happening. Then on top of this, my social worker and a psychologist I have been seeing at the pain clinic have both said to me that for my wellbeing the only course of action may be to restrict contact with my step mother. This is on the basis of the limited number of incidents I’ve described to them from the past 7 years or longer.

It’s really happening. It’s sustained (worsened actually) over time. My dad has no idea or if he does see it wants or needs to ignore it (because he thinks it’s normal? Because he thinks he deserves it? Because he doesn’t know what to do?). My step mum has been able to convince other members of the family that she is perfect, blameless, that she is the one being mistreated, that I am the one mistreating her or causing the problems, that I am the one doing wrong to my dad, that another person in the family is again a cause of problems and to be ostracised (and she has orchestrated this ostracisation), when actually they are vulnerable and desperately in need of help.

As well as being angry with my step mum, I am angry with my dad. This is totally wrong. Misplaced. I feel furious anger at my step mother’s abuse going on unseen and unchecked, even when it is done in plain sight. Why do I have any anger towards my dad? My anger should be only towards her, and the immense control she exerts and deception she weaves, which allows her behaviour to be unacknowledged, unnoticed or excused. That’s all part of her abusing. Does abusers’ behaviour somehow get you angry with the wrong people too? Or is it because all the feelings are brought up from when I was a child needing my dad to help me, trying to tell him what she was doing? Because I can’t really understand why he couldn’t see what my mother was doing to me and what she was involving him in back then? He was deceived by her but he also did wrong, but that’s another story.

However, I am left with the fact that again he’s in a relationship where he and others are being abused, and either he can’t see that it’s happening or he can’t / won’t take action. I don’t want that to repeat for him, for anyone else I care about or for me. It went on 30 years in his relationship with my mother. I don’t want him to go through more years of abuse, never taking action or only taking action when much more has been lost. He is fit but not so young anymore and if he were only to realise what’s happening when he’s elderly, it would seem all the sadder.

I can’t force my dad to take action. I can’t pull him free from the situation. What I can do now, which I could not do as a child, is try to openly tell him what I’ve observed and what I’m worried about. I can also tell him how she behaves to me. It’s likely he won’t believe me or will refuse to acknowledge it. This is what has happened when I’ve told him previously what my step mum has been doing and it’s what happened when I told him what my mother was doing when I was a child. But now I’m not a child. My safety and my world do not depend on him believing and saving me. Sadly, his safety does depend on him acknowledging what is happening to him.

How do I help him do this? How do I raise what is happening without him being so hurt and angry that I’m saying it that there is no chance he will be able to reflect on how she’s treating him and how he’s feeling? How do I do it without him stopping talking to me at all? Then there would be no chance I can help him. If he just utterly blanks it all and changes the subject, or leaves (both have happened before), what then?

Whilst he is not isolated as we were when I was growing up, in a remote village in a shut up house, nobody allowed in, no relationships allowed outside the home, he is isolated in a different way. Apart from his work, the world he’s in is still hers. Her part of the world, her house then the house she chose, her choice of leisure activities, her friends. Almost everyone he has contact with outside his work is her world. Potentially controlled by her. I can think of nothing he does separate from her, apart from his work. I can’t think of any friend he has contact with who is not first hers. No way he spends any leisure time away from her, except for the rare occasions she goes away on holiday without him for a couple of days, or the rarer occasions he comes to see me without her. It seems there would be nothing and no-one to help him move away from her control.

This is worse than I thought.

Xxx

What do you do when you see someone you love being hurt by another person?

What do you do when you see someone you love being hurt by another person?

Strains in relationships in my family are becoming ever more apparent. It’s not just strains. For my part I’m watching two people I care about in the family and worry about be knocked down, put down, undermined and controlled by another family member. I’m on the receiving end too. Right now I’m more worried about the two other people. I can get a little more distance. I’m struggling myself and upset and every anxiety is worse because I find myself in situations that resemble my traumatic childhood and that’s triggering – and the very fact I find it upsetting is used against me to say I am the problem. Yet I have someone else who loves me and a day to day life full of so many blessings with them.

When you see someone you love being hurt, even emotionally abused, by another person, what do you do? When do you speak up? When do you ask them something about it or tell them what you’ve noticed? This is is a situation where the two people suffering seem in one case accepting of being treated like that (even as they are upset by it) and in the other case totally oblivious to it and actually idolising the person doing it to them (likely because they have come to accept it, think it’s normal, actually believe themselves to be the problem).

I’m sure some people would tell me it isn’t my business and I should not interfere. The two people I’m worried about are both adults with their own decisions to make, although if this were a professional environment, one of them would be classed as “vulnerable” because of her mental health. However, in my personal and even work life, I’ve seen too much terrible behaviour and even abuse continue when, if someone had spoken out earlier, it might have been stopped. When I was a child more than a couple of people who knew our family had concerns I was being sexually abused but did not say anything, or when they did say something the person they told didn’t act. (I found all this out as an adult.) In my previous jobs, on two occasions I saw colleagues be victimised and bullied and accounts of events be twisted by other colleagues and superiors who disliked them; after months this led on one occasion to the person leaving and on the other to the person being dismissed unjustly. I’ve also been treated like that by a boss who intimidated, bullied and lied daily, until I was forced to leave my role. Almost everyone saw how the bosses in these situations were behaving but nobody did anything about it; it was accepted because of the bullies’ enormous power and threats. Recently there was a TV programme about a couple who kept over 10 children prisoner in their house in two different towns, neglected and malnourished, sometimes restrained and tied to their beds. It was years before the alarm was raised and the children rescued. In this time neighbours and locals had realised something was wrong, sometimes when one or other of the children managed to get away and ask for help, sometimes when the couple’s bizarre behaviour was observed. Again, for the most part nobody spoke up about their concerns. Could the children have been rescued sooner if they had?

Basically I’ve seen too much abuse go unchecked and nobody saying a word about what they see. I’m hyper aware of this because it would have taken very little, in a way, for the abuse that I was a victim of through my whole childhood to have been uncovered. How might things have been different if the GP who suspected the physical abuse when I was 6 had contacted authorities, if the school had followed up why I was suddenly withdrawn from the education system and isolated at home when I was 4, if the family friend who saw signs I was being sexually abused by my mother had said something to someone other than my dad or if my dad had believed her… might the abuse have been uncovered? Might I have been taken away from my abusers and kept safe when I desperately needed it?

Possibly not; I don’t know. Someone reporting concerns doesn’t guarantee action will be taken. If action is taken, it doesn’t guarantee that the extent of the abuse will be uncovered or that the right help will be given. Abusers are very clever at covering up the truth and twisting explanations and beliefs. I should also emphasise that in most circumstances I don’t think anyone who does not speak up about their concerns is responsible for the abuse continuing*. The responsibility and guilt for abuse lies with the abuser alone, not with the victim or their friend, doctor, neighbour etc. People who don’t speak out often don’t for the best-intentioned reasons, such as not wanting to accuse someone falsely or not wanting to make the situation worse if the abuser finds out that concerns have been raised.

I recognise that the situation today for the two people I’m worried about is not the same as in my childhood. I’m conscious that the traumatised me may feel similarities a lot stronger than they actually are, when my memories surface. This situation isn’t about a child trapped and controlled by an adult who has total power over them. It isn’t the same intensity of abuse. But it is about power and control being used to manipulate and exploit people’s vulnerabilities – vulnerabilities made greater by previous worse abuse they’ve lived through.

It hurts to see loved ones being treated like this. It hurts that they can’t see what’s being done to them or that they think it’s okay they are treated that way. I wish they could leave the relationship but it’s not up to me what my loved ones do. I can’t make them see the situation how I do. Nor should I try.

Is there some way I can help them realise what is happening and that they don’t have to just accept it? For me, something of a turning point came when it was made clear to me how very much not normal my relationship with my abuser was and that the abuser’s view of me, the view she indoctrinated me with, was not the truth and was not how other people saw me. It took years to start to gain this understanding. It doesn’t happen in one conversation.

My main fear is that if I raise the matter now with my loved ones and tell them what I’ve seen happen to them or what the person does to me, they will become so angry or feel so insulted (bearing in mind they are in close relationships with the abusive person) that they no longer want to listen at all or even end our conversation or worse still, cut off / cut back contact with me. Thus they’d potentially get sucked deeper into the abusive relationship. If they told the abusive person about the concerns I raised, she would use it as further ammunition against me and to turn them against me. Our relationship would deteriorate and they’d be more isolated.

I don’t know what the answer is and I don’t know where to get advice.

Ginny xxx

*Sometimes, this can be complicated and I might write about it in another post.

***

Picture sourced with thanks, from istockphoto.com

Undermined

I’ve just had a family member to stay who I find it very stressful to be around. She rapidly and repeatedly undermines and dismisses things I’m experiencing and what I achieve. She makes it clear she thinks I’m faking my physical health conditions, that my mental health conditions are my own choice, that I’m lazy, a let down and a failure. She starts gradually drip by drip until nearly every comment makes clear what a waste of space I am, her hatred of me and any sense I have of myself apart from her statements and blame of me is gone.

Right now I wish I’d cut off all contact with her as I almost did 5 years ago then 4 years ago when her behaviour to me, along with the circumstances I was living in, repeatedly put me in situations too closely mirroring those I was in as a child trapped with my mother’s emotional abuse.

But – and I almost didn’t write this – she’s my step mother and my father thinks she’s wonderful, and what do I do if I’m to allow him happiness… and keep some relationship with him… which actually, I think she would rather I did not have. It’s something else she’s gradually tapping away at. Rather as my mother did.

What obligations do I have to him? To her?

I’m seeing far too many circumstances repeating here. It’s very hard to try to go forward building up my recovery with this going on. But this kind of thing always will go on, and I need to make my own choices and change my own behaviour so I don’t act in the same way I did as an abused child.

Xxx

This boat is sinking

This boat is sinking

I feel rubbish that all my posts are negative at the moment. Like I can’t say or do anything good anymore or be thankful when there’s so much I really should be thankful for – am thankful for – but I’ve lost touch with it all.

Every single time there’s going to be a short moment or peace or rest the next disaster happens. That’s been life pretty much since I remember and I don’t even have things that bad. It’s stupid. Stupid because it’s insignificant in the scheme of things; when there’s so much deeper suffering everywhere around; stupid because I’ve got this far so why can’t I carry on.

But I’m running out of energy and mind and hope and everything else.

My fiancé’s been rushed back into hospital again today after months of fight with the doctors and being dismissed and going round in circles. We don’t know what’s going on or what they suspect or why they are doing the tests they are now. I’m useless for him because physically I’m so ill at the moment I have been in bed, unable to get up for more than a few minutes at a time.

All I can see right now is confusion, being overwhelmed, people I love hurting, me letting people down, mentally breaking apart.

We are going under Lord, is it nothing to you, the apostles cried out to Jesus as the boat was overwhelmed with the waves. I don’t know how much more storm we can stand right now. Where are you, Lord Jesus?

Xxx

How do you love someone who is hurting his/herself when it feels you can only watch?

WARNING: this post mentions self-harm and suicide and the point of view of carers of people who are struggling.

How do you love someone who is slowly hurting his/herself – and you wonder if actually, they’re taking their life gradually – when it feels like you can only watch?

I don’t mean how do you feel love. That’s not in question. It’s your love that aches and burns and cries inside you.

But how do you give love?

When it seems you can only watch. Watch, wish, long, weep, beg, scream, shake (you – and them?), speak but only shout into the distance, only shout up against a rubber wall that bounces your words of concern and pain and fear and help and whatever it may be right back at your heart – where they metaphorically stab you and mock you with their futility.

And the love you want to give is lost somewhere.

Your loved one get relentlessly weaker with irresistible self-consuming power. And you are powerless. Love does not force or fight and does not demand to control another person’s choices. Love can not force another person to choose the healing of their body or to choose life. The pain-and-longing part of your heart, when you love someone who’s breaking, might for a time wish it could force it, but the very centre of love knows really that it cannot be forced.

And then you cry.

Even if you cannot and do not want to make them choose, you wish you could at least penetrate the rubber wall, so that love could be heard for a little while.

****

I’m in this situation right now, actually with two people dear to me, and I don’t know how to give love.

Ginny xxx

The guilt I feel when I’m met with no response – Part 2

This is Part 2 of a 3 part post. You can find Part 1 HERE

I wonder how much of my misinterpretation of emotional facial expressions is because the people I grew up with, my current family members and I myself express emotions in a different way from the typical?

It occurs to me that I’m told that often I show no emotion outwardly, or that people can’t work out what I’m feeling. In a family member’s words, “we just have to have some kind of reaction out of you,” and “we have no idea what on earth is going on with you so it feels like – aargh – we can’t be dealing with this!” I’m often told this when internally I’m having really strong emotions of loss, hurt, upset, abandonment and fear, and having flashbacks. Sometimes I’ve wanted to keep my emotions hidden. Almost always I’ve tried to turn my feelings inwardly so as not to bother or hurt anyone else with them.

However at the same time I’ve frequently thought other people understand what I’m feeling inside (but don’t want to discuss it so I just have to keep going) when it may later transpire they had no idea what I was feeling. I will then find it really hard to believe they had no idea. I will also be upset because my attempt to keep inside the sad feelings I have, to keep going as you’re meant to and not draw attention to myself, then backfired and seems to cause anger and upset and accusations of being childish, spoiled, rude or disrespectful, and of making other people responsible for me. People have said things like “It looks like you’re accusing me of not looking after you,” “I’m not responsible for how you feel,” “Its not anyone else’s job to make you feel better,” “You’re a spoiled little brat”; I’m told I have to stop thinking about my own problems, should push them aside, should think what other people have gone for me, etc. Which is often exactly what I’ve been trying to do and nearly broken under the strain. I don’t know how I get it so wrong. I don’t know what other people are seeing at these times that is childish or rude etc. If I did I would have some chance of correcting it.

This reminds me that as a child being abused, I was daily really distressed, inevitably expressed it (til I learnt better) and got no help. I was at best ignored. More often the punishments redoubled and threats got worse – more threats of how I was breaking up the family, of how the couple of people I had and loved would die because of me and graphically how I would find them, of how my parents would be taken away. I was told I was a liar, faking what I was feeling, behaving as I was in order to cause worry and hurt to my abuser, to punish them because in some way I didn’t get what I wanted. One of my abuser’s paranoia about us being watched increased too. Her bizarre, possibly psychotic behaviour, and ridiculing of me, came to the fore. I tried my hardest not to express any feelings, even physical feelings. When I got ill I was terrified what would happen when my abuser and others complicit in the abuse found out. Basically I got no response or a terrible response, and none of the help I needed, from my main abuser and the person enabling her.

Both my abuser when I showed my emotions as a child, and family members now when I try not to show my emotions, said/say that I am childish, spoiled and hurting others.

When I do express my emotions now, the reaction from my family is rarely positive. Occasionally it is, but often it isn’t. The fact that it fluctuates is really hard to deal with. But that’s another story for another post.

My abuser’s emotions could change in a couple of seconds so I had to be constantly on the alert and do what I could to stay safe. She was either emotionless in all her expressions, or furious, or distraught, or ridiculing me. Occasionally she was happy but you got the sense it was only on the surface and sometimes it seemed like a trick, especially when it quickly flipped to anger or ridicule. (Her severe psychotic episodes were somewhat different.) Whilst I had to be on the alert to her emotions, I didn’t learn anything from her about normal emotional expression.

My other immediate family members’ emotions are also hard for me to judge, in facial expressions and verbally. I can fail to spot the onset of anger with me. At other times I’m overwhelmed by how they express it. I often interpret anger when they are actually feeling concern or upset. I interpret disinterest or rejection when they say there is none there.

So…. on the whole that does seem quite messed up, doesn’t it!?

To be continued in Part 3 (which will be what I thought I was going to write about originally!)

Frozen, slipping, returning

I’ve a list of things I need to do. Call my energy supplier as my current gas and electricity plan is coming to an end. Write Christmas thank you notes (I always have them done by New Year so this is late for me). Type up notes for some admin I do to help my fiancé’s work. Read the material to prepare for a meeting on Friday. Clear up the house. Sort the TV licence payment.

Why do I feel like I’m drowning… no, stuck in a block of ice too frozen cold to move again? I can’t do any of it. Waves of exhaustion, vacancy, cold, fear, dread, crash over me even though I can’t find any immediate cause. I slip in and out of presence and dissociation. The guilt intensifies on every return.

My to-do list is an insignificant lot of things to most people, I know. I know if I told someone I am struggling with this they’d say it’s nothing and just day to day responsibilities. This brings back so many memories of times I’ve struggled before and family members have told me I have no responsibilities and I’m a spoiled brat. Here comes more guilt and fear wrenching inside.

What I have to do overwhelms me but it’s not really what overwhelms me – the waves, the cold, the dissociating and returning do. It hurts and takes all of me and if it weren’t for my fiancé I don’t think I’d be able to come back at all. I’d have no strength left.

Why now? When so much has been so good? (Ungrateful little brat, look what everyone’s done for you, why isn’t it enough – the voices scream, preventing me telling anyone about what’s happening because that’s what they’d say again.)

Is that just what trauma and depression and borderline do?

How can I try to escape from this ice and reach out and reach forward again? I know sometimes doing even the tiniest thing can make a difference at first. I forced myself to get up this morning, get dressed and put on makeup. Afterwards I was shaking and exhausted. Being more ill physically than usual doesn’t help. After some rest I made a little start on the paperwork I’ve just been sent that needs to be read for Friday. My mind was a blank for hours after that and I was gone for much of the time but at least I had achieved something not absolutely nothing. I’ll write this down in the journal I resolved to keep, to see if this helps me when I look back. I will be able to acknowledge what I did and somehow find a way to see good in this day and give thanks. Creativity sometimes breaks through the ice so I made a paper origami ball and did a few steps towards decorating the photo frame I’m giving my dad as one of his birthday presents. Then I really, really struggled with so much pain in my head and inside me, anxiety, hallucinations and unbearable voices and just… numbing cold.

I want to sleep now and I will soon and hope rest can shut off this state for a while. I don’t know if I believe even that right now. I forced myself to write this post bit by bit over a couple of hours because when I wake up tomorrow and read this, I’ll know I got through it thanks be to God, and something, however small, will be different in the morning.

Ginny xxx

Furthest away from those closest

[Begun writing yesterday 30th December]

I’m really sad, angry, lonely and hurting. I feel excluded, blamed, not believed, not wanted, a disappointment, right when I am trying the hardest, giving the most I can, in the most pain and most need to find some understanding; not necessarily help but simply acknowledgement and belief of what I’m experience and some love nevertheless from those closest to me whom I might hope to trust.

I’m on the journey home now after staying 3 days with my dad and step mum and I am ashamed but I could not have coped with one day more. Again and again in my flashbacks I was back to being the child with my mother and my father and the constant terror and trepidation and dread. I live the same situations over and over. I’m terrified of the next time she’ll think I’ve done, said or thought something wrong and get angry. I am exhausted from any time with my step mother and her utter insistence on her right and my wrong. Even simply talking with her and Dad, it’s as if we’re back where whatever happened I was the problem, I was the one behaving oddly, I was the one causing damage – when actually my mother was the abusive one, she could get away with anything, when I was crying for help nobody heard, nobody helped me and my father appeared to agree with her entirely. Similarly now, he can’t believe my step mother and everything she does is anything but fantastic and wonderful. I know I’ve said before, in a family situation he is utterly loyal but to the exclusion of the point of view of anyone but her, just as he was with my mother. I think that’s at least in part how I went unheard for so long when I was clearly massively distressed and when I needed his help, and when I told him what she’d done.

It was a bad enough time through all this but it has also become very clear how little my step mother believes or understands about my physical health and disabilities, how much she blames me, holds me responsible as though being ill is a choice, how annoyed and disappointed she is I don’t live up to her requirements. I’ve known for a long time how she doesn’t understand but it came home this week. It isn’t only me that it’s directed at. She shows the same attitude to my step sister over her mental health and to one of her friends who has a lot of physical health problems. It is beyond me how anyone can show as little belief or understanding of what someone is going through, as little compassion and as much blame, but then I have been ill or physically disabled most of my life so admittedly that gives me a different starting point.

She is not open to hearing what day to day life is actually like for me or even seeing it when it’s right in front of her . I don’t make a big issue about my health. I try to make sure it affects anyone else as little as possible. But when she is lecturing me about why don’t I do this or that, things are only a problem because I imagine they are, and so on and I have to try to explain eventually why I may not be able to do something, she refuses to hear and insists on her solution and gets angry if I can’t do it. When I’m physically unable to do something when I’m right there with her, for her it’s something I’m doing deliberately, it’s a real problem for other people, I “just have to do it”, I am not making enough effort… it’s like when my mother accused me of pretending not to be able to do things if I didn’t succeed academically as she required, and the resultant rejection and punishment of me is similar too.

I wrote a lot about what my step mother said to me and did which I’ve deleted because listing a load of hurts and speaking badly of someone does no good. When I was leaving, she started up again about “New Year, new you”, how everyone needs it needs to be a healthy year, we don’t want any more of this, I’ve got to be completely different  and I’ve “simply got to” make sure of that, and it’s all about positive thinking, it simply has to be mind over matter, as if it’s a choice not a number of lifelong health conditions. She loves telling me what I’ve simply got to do, always things which I literally physically or mentally cannot, so she exerts a great amount of pressure and certainty that I’m a disappointment when I can’t meet her simply-got-tos that she heaps on me even when they’re medically not possible.

In the face of all this, my father blanks me, ignores what I’m experiencing, denies what has happened or ignores what I say if I express as much as the fact that some of what she says is hurtful, to the point of refusing to answer and acting as though he has not heard or changing the subject. He literally will not hear a single thing against her, or even not 100% agreeing with her. It’s just like how he withdrew and ceased responding and cut off and rejected me and to say the least did nothing whilst my mother continued all kinds of emotional physical and sexual abuse. Then he is able to say he doesn’t know what’s happening.

***

My step mother’s growing obsession with weight and Slimming World is hard for me too. The fridge looks like a diet advert, even though it’s Christmas, brimming with vegetables and low fat yoghurt and very little else. Food is such an issue and has to be done her way. She will not stop telling me how I’ve “simply got to get healthy… simply got to prepare proper meals”. I don’t want anything to do with her diet. She has no concept of eating disorders and how hard a combination of the voices, my physical disabilities making cooking and the resulting cleaning ever so painful, and my eating disorder make it to cook. Yet she can’t see past her own obsession with vegetables, fat free, going to the gym…

***

I’m at the point of ceasing to expect anything but rejection, judgment and accusations from my step mother and from my dad, withdrawal from me and utter support of her views. At best. The glimmers of understanding I thought I had from my dad just seem like a trick now that opened me to trusting, making the inevitable return to rejection and accusations all the more painful. I will not go to stay with them again any time soon.

It would be easier for me to cease all contact with them. My step mother does not often behave as if she likes me. I often think they might well prefer me to have only infrequent contact. After all, I’m seen mainly as a problem. Morally, I don’t feel I can cease contact. I have a duty to them. I want to forgive. I can’t expect total understanding. If I ask forgiveness from God when I’ve judged other people I need to forgive them. I try not to act angrily but the hurt is much harder to control. If I did not have a dependence or need for their understanding, it would not matter to me so much. Though my father’s withdrawal and denial of my experience hurts as much as what my step mother does.

It hurts so much in my head right now.

Ginny xxx

Pet therapy

I visited my dad and step-mum a while ago. They have three cats. It turns out one of them is a bit of a diva. Usually, unlike her brother who is very cuddly and lets me pick him up, she is wary of me and doesn’t hang around much to be stroked and so on. Then this time, I was taking a picture of a pretty rose when she did a purrfect “photo-bomb”:

IMG_0545.JPG

After this, far from stalking off when she sees me as she often does, she was delighted to sit for several minutes posing to have her picture taken:

IMG_0553.JPG

For some time I’ve been considering getting a pet. It would be encouraging to have something to take care of and I’m sure it would bring a lot of fun, cuddles, joy and company. I’m looking into getting a guinea pig. It’s early days yet as I want to research first how to look after them and also, look into costs to make sure I could afford it. A friend of a friend has some baby guinea-pigs that will soon be needing a home and this has spurred me on to find out more about looking after them.

I remember that when I worked at a hospice, a Pets As Therapy (PAT) dog used to come in once a week with a volunteer and visit patients in the Day Centre. They did the same at a nursing home my elderly friend was in, for a while. It was always popular and an undemanding kind of company for people who found talking harder.

Ginny xx