Tag: God

The freedom of the sea

This weekend I went to visit family on the Sussex coast. I’ve wanted to do this for months and been battling with fears about the journey, being away from home, how my family would find being with me and how interactions would go. I’m so pleased this time I was able to do it, with the strength God gives and the care and support of my therapy group -and my family themselves.

As I cannot stand or walk for long at all at present, I was anxious about the journey and crossing London but it went as smoothly as I could ever have hoped.

underground_overground_wombling_free

(Thanks to http://now-here-this.timeout.com/2014/04/03/photo-of-the-day-underground-overground-wombling-free/)

Sussex is a beautiful county. Here is just one of the lovely views we took in:

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I especially like being near the sea. It’s just 30 minutes or so from where my family live. The beaches tend to be more pebbles, rocks and shells than sand. I collected this simple stone from the beach a few years back. As well as serving as a paperweight, I like to use it as a grounding object. Something about the cool surface is soothing. It’s one of the items from my Rescue Box  though more often it’s beside me on the bookshelf rather than in the box.

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In Sussex it’s still quite easy to find peaceful areas of coastline where you can listen to the gulls over the chalk cliffs and the waves, feel the salty wind and run your hands over little stones smoothed and polished by their journey back and forth over the beach and in and out with each fresh tide.

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I love walking beside the sea. I’m not looking for the baking hot days for swimming and sunbathing – not that I’ve anything against that (and being in the water can actually bring me some relief from the pain)! I like being there and letting the sea calm me and assure me of the Presence of our loving Creator. The waves and the tide soothe me and tell me of a Heart much, much greater than mine and an eternal Spirit that speaks to each of us and whispers a hope unchanging, an order in the apparent chaos, whatever storms we are facing right now. In my journey at the moment I often feel very lost and overwhelmed, like one of the little pebbles on the beach tossing in the waves, sometimes scratched and roughly sanded against other stones, feeling very insignificant. But perhaps each motion of the waves in our lives is part of our preparation and refining, it smooths and polishes us to perfection, so we no longer resemble rough stones but bright and shining jewels that delight our beloved Jesus, who sets us right in the perfect place that He needs us to be.

Ginny xxx

 

 

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed

The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

– Rupert Brooke

Today is the 100th anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916; the largest battle of the First World War and the greatest loss of life in the history of the British Army.

It is hard to find adequate words for this day as we remember sacrifice on that scale. I wonder if we think enough on the way and the reasons people gave their lives.

When I was at school we made a trip to some of the Somme battlefields and memorials, including the Thiepval memorial (pictured above*) where the commemoration service was held today. I am very thankful that we went there. We walked some of the tracks over the fields; we made our way through ruins of some of the dug-outs and trenches; we counted names on the huge memorials; we passed through lines of stark white crosses. I remember looking at the engraving of the name of one soldier not yet 16. We could not imagine the horror that was suffered and the lives given in those fields but it did give a lasting impression, just a little more, of the scale of the sacrifice and what we remember.

At school we also studied the poem above. Most of the analyses of it focus on Brooke’s patriotism. Yes, of course that love of and gratitude for our homeland is strong and passionate. But the way I read it, it is not an isolating, insular love of our country. It is a generous love. As England blessed The Soldier, so the Soldier is giving himself for a better world, and looking forward to the peace of the pure peace of heaven; he “gives somewhere back” the good that he has, in his life and in his death.

The sacrifices of these soldiers seem all the more poignant to me this year, given the current uncertainty of the future for the peaceful Europe we fought for, sparked by our exit last week. They also remind us that we have come through far worse times than now, and that we have so very much to be thankful for.

– We will remember Them. –

Ginny xxx

*With thanks to somme2016.org for the image

PS – for some reason my blog has decided not to let me insert hyperlinks in my post above tonight 😦 To read more about the 100th anniversary commemorations, you can visit: http://www.somme-battlefields.com/centenary-somme-centenary-14-18/commemorations-2016-countdown-has-begun 

Lost and hurting

[WARNING: this post contains content that may be distressing including mention of past abuse and things said and done to me by my abuser; it also reflects my very distressed and confused state. If this may be upsetting or unhelpful I would suggest giving this one a miss.]

It’s been a really bad day.

I’m sorry I can’t post quite what I said yesterday that I would although this is quite closely related.

I can’t do anything right now really. I’ve never felt so lost and fragmented. My thoughts are racing but I can’t get them into words. I’m freezing cold. I literally feel far from everything real. I tried to go for a walk to calm down. Everything around me – trees, people, sounds of talking around me, the ground – seemed to be existing and happening further away than usual behind a screen. The pain and exhaustion is intense and shattering.

Something inside me that was the last thing pushing me forward even in the mess things are, seems to have switched off. I can’t do anything. I don’t want anything except desperately wanting someone to hold me. I don’t know for sure what I feel apart from lost.

I feel a total failure. Failure as a friend. Failure in what everyone else can do. Failure as a Catholic. Failure at being. Not enough.

My friend told me he’s known for years I’m angry. That terrifies me. I have done everything to stop it getting out. I stopped eating. I cut myself. I overdosed. In the end it came back to stopping the evil getting out of me. It didn’t work. Everything I feared. There are evil things in me I can’t control. They got out when I was a child. What my mother said is coming true. I can’t even hurt myself enough to stop it getting out.

He said I’m too angry to let God in; that I don’t want God to love me,  I always want there to be a barrier, I won’t let God love me.

But I thought nothing could stop God’s love. I so want to love God. It has never occurred to me to think I don’t want God to love me. I don’t think I please God and I don’t think I love Him enough and it is very hard to truly believe He does love me. I find it very hard to think He does want me and I’m terrified whatever i do, in the end He’ll reject me and everyone will see how bad i am and I’ll be damned. But to think I don’t want God to love me? It terrifies me.

The thought terrifies me constantly that my real desires and motivations are evil however much i want them to be good and even when I think they are good. That God knows and other people know they’re bad really. That it’ll be exposed sooner or later. That it means I can never be loved and never be good.

Just like when my mother told me, she’d be taken away because of me or whatever she was threatening at the time, I’d fool people it was because of her but she’d know and I’d know it was all because of me really. Nobody would believe a child could be that bad but really it would all be because of me. When all along I didn’t know what I’d done wrong and desperately tried to do what she wanted and needed, it turned out that was how bad I was really. I took in totally on board.

And – they’ll know you enjoyed it, she’d say after she put her hands in me. They’ll know you wanted it and you enjoyed it. Mind you don’t do that,  don’t breathe like that,  or they’ll realise. It hurt and I was frightened but she told me they’d realise I wanted it. It plays over and over in my mind now. The thought that I wanted it, is  as bad again as what she did. And when she had me do things. You love that don’t you, you really like it…. I wonder if anyone’s listening. ..no one would believe it’s all because of you, daddy and I would be taken away and you’d be sent to a special school for morons. Are you a moron?

Another time, just because i couldn’t do something – Look, this is a toddler walking rein. This is what you put on babies when you go out. So if you’re going to pretend, we’ll put this on you whenever we go out so everyone knows you’re a baby.

As a kid I knew I was evil. But even as a kid I wanted to be loved. I wanted it but I knew I was too bad really.

I’m fragmenting now.

Now my friend has said I don’t want God’s love. I don’t want a relationship with God. I want to put up barriers. I’m too angry. I didn’t think it was possible not to let God love. My only hope was we can’t stop God loving. But he said I refuse to receive it. What I feel is shaken and darkness and alone and losing one by one everything that gave me any stability at all. I try to read the Bible and I feel fear. Where I should feel hope. Where my friend tells me i should feel hope and joy and I just have to keep on doing it and i have to make the choice and if hopelessness carries on it’s a choice. My friend said he doesn’t think I’ve really tried to pray. That I haven’t kept doing it. That if I don’t feel hope I have to stir myself back up to it. That it works for most people so why would I be different, why wouldn’t it work for me? I repeat words I cannot believe and promises I cannot feel and try to follow a God I cannot find, I am twisted inside trying to act against everything I feel and say only what I want to believe but isn’t real in my heart.

I am completely lost. The relationships that meant most to me all broke down and it turned out I’m not a good enough friend, that when I was trying everything I could to do good and to keep all the frightening horrible evil things inside me, I was just a burden.

I have lost any grasp on what I can trust. I’ve lost any grasp on my faith. I think I desperately want my God – i thought I did, at least that was sure, although I found it impossible to believe He could want me. The terror of the harm I do and the evil that will come out of me and knowing I can never really know if I think or mean or want what I think I do, was too great. But now I have been told I don’t even want God, am too angry to want God’s love. I’m utterly shaken. Have I never had any faith. …if despite everything I really don’t even want God and everyone but me knows that then I’ve never had any faith and I’m lost.

This is absolute pain now. I cannot function. I am so frightened.

Ginny xxx

I wish we knew we’d get to the end of this together

I feel so sad today. Too many people are leaving in all areas of my life.

Someone has left our therapy group and will not be returning. I can’t post too much about it so as not to break confidentiality. I’m scared for her. We don’t know why she left. We did not get to talk with her about it because she stopped coming suddenly a few weeks ago and then the therapists told us today that she isn’t coming back. I miss her. Already. She saw herself as so bad but clearly had so much good about her. I really really wish we could have helped her. I’m scared for her – for what will happen to her, where she’ll get help and what she may do. I felt a lot in common with her. Often she spoke what I was too afraid to. She had been so so hurt by terrible experiences in her life. I so wanted to keep her safe but feared she was so hurt and kept running into so many circumstances of further pain and not being able to trust people, that she would not be really happy this side of heaven. I have to accept her decision and know I can only give her into Our Lord’s hands and pray for her now.

In the last couple of sessions people have been leaving group early because it has been too distressing or unhelpful for them. I panic when someone leaves. Or people withdraw and don’t want to talk anymore. Again I panic. I don’t want anyone else to go away. So often it seems to be my fault and so often I’m flashing back to being a child and my mother threatening to go away because of me or that she and my dad would be taken away because of me. ..or to the times she stopped speaking and I couldn’t elicit any response or her “absences”… and I wish, please please don’t go away. I wish we knew at least in group that we’d all get to the end of the course together.

I miss N, I miss two other people I thought were close and I’ve lost in the past weeks. I miss the hope there was in the existence of that relationship that I could do some good for them or be needed. I miss what little sense of safety there was that I wouldn’t be left that time and wasn’t doing harm.

I miss any sense of there being a few narrow circumstances at least, where I could think I did a good job or the right thing. The last part of that was lost with my failure in my last job and the loss of so many important relationships.

I cry and cry again but it doesn’t go away.

Ginny xxx

Did I actually just enjoy something?!

Since I came back from my lovely weekend stay with my friend L and her family a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been thinking back to it thankfully and often. In that weekend I felt genuinely positive emotions that have been absent for me for a long time (we’re talking years). Things like happiness at my goddaughters’ interest and excitement at our little activities and projects.  Their unboundedly curious questions showing perspectives so different from mine, especially different from my exhausted autopilot. Time with L. and real thankfulness for the strength and comfort her non-judgmental empathy gave me and really wanting to be there for her too, glad to be able to talk and share in her life, worries, joys, and so on.

Yes, the hard things were still there too. Voices, doubts, exhaustion, anxiety, it doesn’t magically go away. But the good experiences were so unusual for me that they particularly give me pause and I am all the more grateful for them.

Their good is lasting beyond the days I spent with L (nearly 2 weeks so now) in a way that’s more than just a happy memory. Perhaps it’s because it isn’t just a memory in my factual thought; it’s an emotional memory too. That’s stronger and more active and has a more continously creative effect on how I feel. I’m enjoying it and trying to nurture it, in thought and in prayer and in trying to build up some more creative, good experiences, especially where I can give or share something to someone else in even a small way. One thing I’ve been doing in recent days is making greetings cards, which I used to love but had completely lost all motivation or creativity to do. And I’m actually enjoying it, even looking forward to it. I can’t think when I last genuinely looked forward to an activity like this.

Maybe I’m starting to understand what a doctor told me when I was an inpatient in 2014 – that the more good experiences and memories you create, they can slowly begin to replace the terrible re-experiencing of traumatic past events and the automatic nature of obsessional thoughts and the power of the voices. I could not understand how this could work at the time though I really wanted to believe it. Later, in the most desperate times I was furious if anyone began to suggest anything like it. The suggestion seemed to trivialise the terror I was locked into. Yet now, I think I might be beginning to understand it.

Ginny xxx

“Be soft…”

“Be soft.

Do not let the world make you hard.

Do not let pain make you hate.

Do not let bitterness steal your sweetness.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Too often, I do not know how not to be taken over by bitterness. It’s one of the most frightening things about the out of control emotions in BPD. That anger comes from nowhere. That nothing else exists of me but unbearable pain and I cease to be able to conceive of everything I most care about.

How do I keep on going, holding on to a truth of a permanence greater than my emotions? It’s one of the reasons faith matters to me so much. God is Love and always Love, unchanging and infinitely greater than me or anything I can feel or conceive. God made us in His image, ultimately good, for unity with Him. No matter what we fear or feel, our hearts are His. We cannot lose Him. No matter what we suffer, He is not a product of our emotions or our actions. No matter what we cannot see, He is giving us a purpose and a share in His work in this world.

xxxxxxx

Be soft.

Your heart is a fertile ground, tilled and turned in pain as in joy, to receive seeds of hope and love and newness. It is not a comfortable process, yet what tender flowers will grow there.

Be soft.

Receive the sun, receive the water, sometimes gentle as the evening dew and other times torrents of salty tears. Precious grows the rose from these streams.

Every flower has value, from the most elegant rose to the tiniest blade of grass or timid daisy. Just so, each heart and each step upon this way .

Be soft, still when the rose bears thorns. Let this pain be turned to purer love and stronger hope; let compassion and mercy spring unchecked along this path of testing and pain. Do not let this ground freeze over, to try to flatten the land, hide the barren earth and cover the sharp edges of the pebbles on the way. Anger may be swifter, indifference may be safer, indifference is cold, and nothing can take root in its frozen land. Freezing ground may be hard and seem strong and impenetrable – but then it shatters, fragments and is gone to nothing. The tilled earth, soft, accepts beauty taking root and good multiplies, gives and gives on.

Be soft, let the vines take root and bear much fruit, sweeter for the gentle ripening, sun and rain. The grains of sand and stones are slowly refined and turned, polished and strengthened, and become the brightest gems and precious stones. The fruit is rich and plentiful and feeds many needing and hungry souls, for this is love, compassion and mercy.

Be soft. Be soft and you will give and sustain so many more than you imagine. Be soft and you will shine, much brighter than you know.

With thanks to Cathy for the inspiration of the quotation “Be soft…” – visit her lovely blog at http://www.cathylynnbrooks.com 

xxx

Group and no more trust

Tomorrow is MBT (mentalisation based therapy) group. I don’t know whether to go.

All trust I had in the service has gone. It’s been completely wiped out by the lies and let downs of the past months, the proofs they don’t believe me, the tricks, the cuts that open me more and more vulnerable then leave me with nothing and noone.

I don’t really want anything to do with a service that does this, but I’m desperate and have nowhere else to go. I’m desperate for help but it’s denied, it’s promised then withdrawn, or I’m deemed not in need or not believed. I want to do the therapy but I can no longer go forward safely with it. I cannot cope between sessions except by overdosing to black everything out and self harming to punish myself, temporarily quiet the voices, temporarily be something other than the utter pain. I’m not allowed any of the things that would keep me safe between sessions.

If I go tomorrow, I will be so angry. I can’t say I’ll keep it under control in the session. I can’t say I’ll stay “stable”. Nothing keeps it in anymore. I can’t mentalise like this and really I don’t want to. These things just are as they are. There’s nothing to be “curious” about or explore my feelings or someone else’s thoughts. Their thoughts have been made totally clear – they don’t believe me, I’m not allowed help, they’re tricking me, they’re cutting me open then leaving me and finding more and more ways to do it. My feelings are exploding and total. Fury. Hurt. Trapped. Over the edge. Liar. Fake. Fraud. Pain. Screaming.

If I go to group I can’t avoid it being clear I have no hope and no trust left. If everyone or anyone else does trust the service and does believe they’ll help them, then maybe that gets them through and helps them and is a lifeline for them. I don’t want to destroy that.If I say what’s happened to me, even in the last couple of days, I could destroy it.

I could go and just try not to talk about anything to do with me and just be there for other people and listen to them and try to mentalise about what other people bring. But I’m so far gone over the edge I don’t think I can trust myself not to explode.

When the group started committed to do it all. I committed to not leaving. I committed it to everyone in the group – not out loud, we didn’t do that, but in my head I did. I promised to God and Mother Mary too. If i leave I break my commitment to everyone, not just the service. I really don’t want to do that.

Yet at the moment I’m just ending up in more and more danger. It seems as if I should just accept this’ll never end, dissociate as much as possible, hope for something sometimes bearable…. but I think I’m too far gone for that. I wish I’d never trusted them.

This week, I will…

I’m trying to turn things around. It feels as though things have been spiralling down and down since Christmas. Since I spoke to the police, I think things are starting to shift almost imperceptibly. It is true it hasn’t been easy and I cannot change the hurt, but I think there are a few positive things I can try to keep doing, which I have given up on in the last months because it was just too dark and painful.

Inspired by one of a2eternity’s posts (you can visit her wonderfully frank and brave blog at https://a2eternity.wordpress.com/ ) I am making a list of some things that I am going to commit to trying to do this week:

  • Every day before bed, I will write down 5 things that I am thankful for in that day.
  • I will do something creative every day – a bit of my colouring books, make a card, take a photo, write a card to a friend, whatever it be.
  • I will do something positive for my body every day (like do my makeup, have a nice bath with some bath foam, put on some moisturiser) even when I am hearing voices telling me how ugly, foul and disgusting I am.
  • I will choose a passage from the Bible that encourages me with hope in God’s unconditional love for us. Whenever the voices tell me to hurt myself, whenever I hear them saying I’m evil and a fake, when the flashbacks come, I will repeat this line in place of what the voices say.
  • Something that I have meant to do for a long time: I will think about what I could put in my memory box and find a box to use (I’ll post again about what this is for, later in the week).

Here’s to thankfulness.

Ginny xxx

“I will not abandon you”

“Can a woman forget her nursing child And have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you,” says the Lord God (Isaiah 49 v 15)

These lines from the Bible came into my head just now. Thank you Jesus. It’s very hard to hang onto anything when everything I trusted in, so much – too much – seems to be taken away. The Lord alone suffices, St Teresa of Avila wrote. The Lord alone will never forget us and never fail us, even if His face is hidden from us for a little while. He loves us like a mother or a father, and more.

“When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.” (Psalm 27). When everything else crumbles, when we are totally alone, still God who is love remains. One translation of the Aramaic actually says “Because my father and mother forsake me,”; “because” rather than “when”. The Lord knew we would be abandoned, and so, He never leaves us and He takes us up in His arms.

I struggle very much to pray when I feel as I do now. The hurt and obstacles and anger and frustration and alone-ness, all obscure my hope in God and too quickly I allow them to cloud who God is and who He created us to be. If all I run into is this pain, He must be angry, He must wish me punished, He must take pleasure in my pain. I must return to His Cross and return to listen to His Word in the Bible. This is God, not my pain of itself. Love surely brings pain, but it is not the pain and hurt and isolation itself.

And then in prayer, came my Jesus’s tender promise – “My gaze is longing love.”