These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

My answers to some of the questions from Cee’s Share Your World

1. Fond childhood places?  My childhood places that I liked the most, were the woods up behind our house, and the caves we would dig in the snowbanks around the driveway.
2. Thing(s) you are most proud of?  I think what I am most proud of was going back to school at the age of 28, and getting my degree five years later.
3. Have you been through any official rites of passage?   My one and only official rite of passage, I believe, was when I was baptized in early 2008.    Another was when I was sworn into the US Military. How about unofficial?  I cannot think of any unofficial ones.  My life has been pretty boring, I guess.
4. What is your role in your family?  I am the oldest of three children, the only girl.  I was also the one to get into more trouble than my brothers.
5. Define family.  I believe family is not what I was born into, but rather those around me, who love me and share life with me.
6. Do you get on with your siblings?  One of my brothers, I have not heard from since the day after our mother’s funeral.  That was more than four years ago.  I am in contact with my youngest brother and text with his wife.  Our plan, is for me to move in with them in Texas, when the MS has gotten to a point where I can no longer live by myself.  The only problem with that, is that I’m heat sensitive, and it can get pretty darn warm in Texas during the summer.
7. What small things have you seen or taken note of today?  I noticed the spaghetti sauce that had run down the front of my cabinet beneath the microwave.  I had a small disaster incident last night while trying to put my ravioli into the microwave to heat the sauce.  Due to my wonderful lack of coordination, there were ravioli here and ravioli there, and on the floor, with sauce everywhere from here to next week.
8. What makes you happy?  Being out in (is that an oxymoron?) the spring and fall weather, with a breeze blowing and the leaves rustling.
9. Do you have good self-control?  It depends on the situation.  If I feel I’m being treated inappropriately, or that no one is listening to me, then no, I don’t.  I can’t seem to keep my mouth closed and my opinions to myself.  But I have good self-control when it comes to not picking up that first drink (I am an alcoholic, sober 17 years now.), and when I’m trying to teach someone something, I have good self-control.
10. Are you good at making decisions?  I am good at making bad decisions . . . and then when I do make good decisions, I’m always second guessing myself.
11. How often do you cry?  I rarely cry.  The one thing that will make me cry is when I get extremely angry, usually over something I have no control over.
12. Have you ever had any altercations with the police?  I think there have been three, maybe four.  There were three, due to my drinking and driving, resulting in spending the night in jail.  The other was when I sideswiped a police car that was sitting in the middle of a 4-lane road, right on the yellow line.
13. How do your relieve stress?  Sitting down with my laptop, and playing Sudoku until I reach the point where I can’t make any sense of the puzzle.
14. What did you once love, but now hate?
15. Is doing nothing a waste of time?  Not at all.  Sometimes I need to just sit here, and fall asleep in my recliner with the cat asleep in my lap.
16. What is cluttering your life?  All the stuff I have in my apartment, that doesn’t have a permanent home.  I like the living room tables, and the dining table to be completely cleared off except for lamps, the phone, and the wooden napkin holder in the center of my dining table.
17. How do you help people, in small ways, in large ways, however?  I help people by carefully explaining or even showing them how to do something which is confusing them to no end.
18. When’s the last time you did something nice for a stranger?  Being a single woman, in a wheelchair, I try to avoid strangers.  But when waiting in line at the grocery store, letting someone in line ahead of me because I have a lot of time to do nothing anyway.
19. Who inspires you the most?  I think the person who inspires me the most is the pastor of my church.  He does not go up to a pulpit, and preach at us, but stands in front of us, teaching us about the Bible.
20. Do Apps help or waste your time?  I think, for the most part, Apps waste my time.  Usually when I get caught up in an app and can’t stop, and put it to the side.
21. Does Facebook make you feel bad?  I enjoy Facebook.  It gives me the opportunity to showcase some of my photography, serves as a place where people have access to my writing.
22. What music are you listening to right now?  Absolutely nothing.  Except for the cat complaining in the background, and the leaves blowing around outside my open window, it is quiet in here.  If I do listen to music, it would be Contemporary Christian of music from the 60’s and 70’s.

Did It Really . . . ?

So many years have passed since I left home.  I moved out at 17, when I went away to college.  Even the memories from that time are vague.  I soon learned I could drown it all out with a bottle of vodka, missing classes due first to hangovers, then the fact that I was too drunk to go to class.  My fourth semester, I totally bombed out at school, which resulted in the loss of two scholarships.

It only took me about a month to decide I had to move away again.  I joined the Navy.  Boot Camp was difficult for me.  I was going through withdrawal from the alcohol, but I didn’t want them to know that.  I wanted to get through it as quickly as possible, so I could move on to a somewhat less strict environment.  When I was diagnosed with mono, I was afraid that would hold me back in my training, that I wouldn’t graduate with the rest of my class.  But I did, though I wasn’t actually at the ceremony, due to my illness.

This proved to be my downfall however, which eventually led to discharge from the military.  Their reasoning  – “Unsuitability due to alcohol abuse.  Not recommended for reenlistment.”  That took me all of nine months to accomplish.  I was drowning in alcohol uncontrollably, with no clear way out that I could see.

Those memories though, continued to haunt me.  Some were very distinct, while others were just vague memories that I couldn’t bring to the forefront, but still knew they were there.  I remember fear.  At night, my heart would pound from the fear,  causing me to think that I was hearing his footsteps coming down the hall to my room.  Sometimes they were, sometimes not.  But this was tearing up the insides of a young child, eventually a young adult, with no clear path that would lead me to safety.  I dreamed of running away to live in an abandoned cabin in the woods.  I had read a book when I was in Second grade, titled, “The Boxcar Children.”  It was a story about three young children, who ran away from their grandfather’s house.  They lived in an old boxcar that was still on the tracks, in the woods.

It has taken years upon years to reach the point where I am today.  I’m not sure I know exactly where that is, but I now have psychiatric diagnoses, which explain why my life is the way it is now.  It explains the odd symptoms, which in the past led me to attempted suicide, more than once.  Thankfully, i survived those attempts.  I have been in psycho-therapy for more years than I can even count.  But I have progressed greatly. 

My blog clearly describes my life with childhood sexual abuse.  When your abuser is your father, well . . .

Taboo Word Challenge for 9/22/16

You can see today’s taboo word below. Visit Eric, author of the All In A Dad’s Work blog and creator of the challenge, for details on participating.

 

Click the blue frog to read others taking part in this fun challenge 

 

 

You Wouldn’t Like Me If You Knew Me

Taboo Word 9/9/16

Mental health is getting more attention today, than it has ever gotten before.  Why?  It affects something like 1 out of 3 Americans today.  More and more soldiers are coming back from war, forever damaged due to what they have seen and experienced during their service for their country.  It affects children, abused children, and these children, once they have grown are affected as well.

I was one of those children, and I was also in the military, and am now diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, PTSD, MST or Military Sexual Trauma, anxiety, and depression.  Including medication for MS, I take like 22 different medications daily, and have been unable to work for two decades now.  

My symptoms, besides those due to the MS, depression and anxiety, include fear of abandonment, intense, unstable emotional responses like anger, anxiety, that are difficult to control, and often inappropriate to the situation, and chronic feelings of emptiness.  

I often have anger, anxiety and feelings of emptiness.  I went through many self-damaging acts such as unsafe sex, substance abuse, self-injurious behavior which includes self-harm, attempted suicides and even excessive spending.  I have caught myself more than once pouring through catalogs or across the Internet, looking for something to buy.  I went through an entire catalog yesterday, before I realized what I was doing and threw it away,

The image I look at in the mirror looks back at me with sallow skin and sunken cheeks.  Sometimes I go for several days, or even a week or two, eating maybe one or two meals a day, and not eating the foods I need to stay healthy.  

After running up several credit cards, hospital bills, and store card bills, I eventually declared bankruptcy in order to survive, financially.  Ten years later, and I was signing paperwork, agreeing to the conditions set forth by the debt-management agency that I turned to, cutting off all my cards and agreeing not to apply for any new ones.  Mounting vet bills led me to apply for a Care Credit card which is used for vet bills, etc, and even dentistry bills for myself.

Now, several years have passed and I have three, active credit cards, a store card and close to $5000 in debt again.  I sacrifice groceries, to pay more than minimum payments for these credit cards, trying to get the balances reduced and eliminate this newly acquired debt.

A service-provider calls in sick, the day of my appointment and I take it personally, which results in chronic fear of abandonment, and inappropriate anger, thinking that the appointment was cancelled because I felt it was because I had an appointment that particular day.  This has happened more than once within even just the last six months.

Relationships are something that are also affected, often very unstable and intense.  I have been through three such relationships, each lasting only five years, before I do something that ends the relationship.  This has happened every time, and I have spent more than 12 years by myself, avoiding another relationship that will inevitably lead to the same, sad end.

Today, we need to look into suspected cases of child abuse, and listen to our friends, partners, spouses and children, listening and looking for signs that all is not right.  I have managed to stay sober 17 years, and I quit smoking nearly nine years ago.  But that doesn’t mean that I am okay, because I am not okay.  

I experience irrational fears, go through sometimes lengthy periods of depression, and live in a constant state of anxiety.  I live alone, and can spend days, not leaving my apartment or seeing anyone.  No one comes to visit and I do not visit others.  I sit here with my laptop for the entire day, then spend all evening listening to the TV, still using the laptop.  It’s a wonder that I haven’t burnt the hard-drive, with all the constant use it gets throughout each day. 

Noises outside my apartment, I take personally, as though someone is deliberately trying to annoy me, and often do get very annoyed.  I get symptoms which suggest my MS is getting worse, that I have forgotten to take a dose of medication, or something has caused my blood pressure to shoot through the roof.  This often causes me to lie awake for hours at night, unable to sleep, with my mind racing a mile a minute.

If I had a choice, I would not choose to live this kind of life.  But I don’t seem to be able to do anything about it myself, so I suffer in silence, with only the words that come racing from the ends of my fingers and onto the keyboard.  This is my main outlet for these feelings I have to excess.  My search for others out there, who are living lives like mine, is something that starts my search through my email, looking for the emails about new posts, by those who are like-minded, and we share our experiences and help support each other through the trials we go through every day.  Yes, I am one of those who suffer from mental illness, and I no longer want to keep it hidden in the closet, the naked secrets I feel would be exposed if you really knew me.

You wouldn’t like me if you knew about all this stuff, and so I keep it hidden.

You can see today’s taboo word below. Visit Eric, author of the All In A Dad’s Work blog and creator of the challenge, for details on participating.

 

Click the blue frog to read others taking part in this fun challenge 

PTSD

PTSD, oh how hard it can be.
See things over and over again,
Some things, not remembering them,
Some things I’ll never do again.

PTSD, makes me scared of life,
Growing up, filled with strife,
Used to get the great big knife,
But something keeps me clinging to life.

I see things over and over again,
They hide deep inside my head,
I won’t do this, I won’t do that,
But other things, keep doing this or that.

Programmed deep within my soul,
What will it take to make me whole?
Memories keep rushing to the top,
I don’t know how to make it stop.

~ van ~

Turning In A Different Direction – Dungeon Prompts

As a child, I was abused physically, sexually, and mentally, and this shaped my life for many years to come. I started off in the wrong direction as a young child, causing trouble, and allowing others to abuse me, as that is the only way I knew how to behave.

It took many years of more abuse, drowning myself with alcoholism, and sinking into the abyss of mental illness. I was hospitalized, jailed, and put myself into relationships where the abuse continued. When I wasn’t in a relationship, except for the last, I subconsciously sought out people who would sexually abuse me. The relationships I had, were all abusive in one way or another, except for the last one.

After years of living alone, and staying by myself, I was diagnosed with a disease that was incurable, that would gradually debilitate me throughout the rest of my life. This changed my whole perception of what I was doing and where I was going.

I no longer put myself into the hands of others, but into the hands of the Lord. I stopped abusing myself, and letting others abuse me. I wanted to obtain goodness and a different direction in which I wanted to walk, and eventually roll, in a wheelchair. I thought that everything was about this disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and where it would take me, and decided that there had to be more to life than just sitting in a chair.

I started going to a biker church, which is quite different from the church your grandma went to, to quote my pastor. The majority of people who were going to this church at that time were, of course, were motorcycle riders. And they did not act like what most people would think. They lead decent lives, try to raise good families, and try to be quite faithful to God and to the Bible. They also ride motorcycles, and even I got a chance to ride along with someone on three separate occasions, during a church retreat for bikers and anyone else who wanted to come along.

My behavior at home changed. I started to treat others with respect and kindness, and was shown the same in return. I started learning about God, and the Bible. I started to live my life, as best I could, according to the Bible. I no longer look at the disease I have as ‘my MS’, but just plain MS. And I want more out of my life than being a recliner potato. I learned how to play the guitar, which I seem to have an affinity for, to play the piano, and a host of computer abilities, where I took courses in programming, and in accounting.

I was also introduced during that ensuing year, to wheelchair sports, adaptive sports that were designed for veterans from all over the country, and Puerto Rico and Great Britain, that use wheelchairs to participate in adaptive sports. I started going to the National Veterans Wheelchair Games every year, each year in a different city, all around the country, including Denver, Dallas, and Tampa, to name a few.

I had found my niche. I started to spend more time out of that recliner, and started seeking out different venues for adaptive sports, and become involved with the Valor Games, which are held in the Southeast, which is in North Carolina somewhere, Chicago, which is the Midwest, the Southwest, which is held in San Antonio, and the Farwest, held in San Diego.

I am also discovering other events held for veterans, all around the country. There are the Golden Age Games, for 55+, the Endeavor Games, and the Wounded Warriors games, which are held in Quantico, I believe.

Starting this past year, I have tried playing different events, pushing myself to become active in different sports, such as Track and Field, Hand cycling, Kayaking, and even wheelchair basketball.

To this date, I have won medals in almost every sport I have participated in, including two silver medals in Kayaking, a silver medal in basketball, a bronze in hand cycling, and numerous gold medals in everything from 9-Ball and Table Tennis, 100-meter track, and both the motorized Slalom, and the manual slalom, which are obstacle courses, with the difficulty varying, to accommodate different levels of ability, to name a few.

I have started living a whole new life, with sporting activities, doing volunteer work at the VA Hospital Clinic, in the next city, and going to church. I am meeting new people, and making a lot of long-term friends, both locally, and from around the country.

I have found a life where I don’t put myself in abusive environments, except for the physical abuse upon myself playing wheelchair basketball. I have also discovered that I have the ability to write, both prose and poetry, which sort of just started on its own, when I started writing a blog. I found great satisfaction in photography, specifically things that are in patterns, things of beauty, and pictures from cities all around the country.

I have learned that I am not a bad person, that I can live a positive life, that I have a plethora of abilities, and that I can help others obtain what I have obtained, not just sports or writing, but in living in the way of the Lord, by what is written in the Bible.

I turned from a life of self-abuse, and abuse from others, to a life filled with many different types of activities. I am not going to sit here and let myself decline both physically and mentally, but push myself to be a better person, to take part in new activities, and most importantly live as godly a life as I possibly can. My life no longer revolves around ‘my MS’, but in positive activities and adventures, that have become available to me, both as a Navy veteran, and as a good person; I have learned to love my God and myself, and to live a life free from abuse. I am living a life filled with as much as I can find available to me. And I love every minute of it.

A Letter To My Self

Today, I see the hair that’s grey,
Today, I see a brand new day,
Today, I see an aching soul,
Today, I see within that soul.

Yesterday, came and went so fast,
Yesterday, is not meant to last,
Yesterday, I did not speak my mind,
Yesterday, the words, I could not find.

Today, I see all these things in my head,
Today, I think of all that I’ve read,
Today, I see myself so small,
Today, I see, I don’t have to go.