Why can’t I let go?

Posted on August 26, 2013 by borysSNORC

I’ve written many times about my IVF experiences and my feelings around having more children and my complete inability to let it go and accept my life the way it is. I’ve also written many times about my car accidents and my chronic pain and how I feel out of control and powerless, angry, resentful and often just plain useless. I’ve written about my deep rooted hatred for my own ‘traitorous’ body, which I feel has been stopping me from getting what I want and doing what I want, since the moment I hit adulthood. Most people only get a glimpse of the all encompassing sense of loss that I carry around with me all day every day, because while I know I could be a a cranky, short tempered bitch ALL THE TIME, I work really hard to keep most of my crap to myself.

I went to a personal development seminar this weekend… I wasn’t sure what I was going to get out of it, I only knew that having been out of the workplace for over ten years meant I hadn’t had any formal development, professional or personal, for a very long time. Sure I’ve been psychobabbled from here to eternity and back by a plethora or counsellors and psychologists and psychiatrists, and I know how to talk the talk and walk the walk in the consulting room. But none of them have ever been able to help me… they sit and talked me in circles, gave me drugs, gave me mindfulness exercises, attempted to recondition or hypnotise me or fuck knows what else. None of them have been able to fix my back pain. None of them have been able to fix my infertility. And none of them have been able to make me feel happy about being stuck in this shitty body and I don’t know why. This weekend I learned that I don’t let go of ‘stuff’.

I’m not talking about grudges against others here – people piss me off, or disrespect me or the people I love? I just cut them out of my life end of story. I don’t need any more negativity in my life – I’m pretty good at generating plenty of negativity of my own without accepting it from other people, thank you very much. And I don’t have the time, inclination or energy to waste on hating people or holding grudges (if it’s a grudge holding that can occur without the requirement to invest energy or time… that might be a different matter! 😉 ). So no, it’s not others that I’m talking about here – it’s ME. Why can’t I let go and learn to accept my limitations, accept my life, and accept my situation, and count my goddamn fucking blessings for a change instead of constantly wanting things to be different, or other than they are. Why can’t I just cherish my little family without looking at us and thinking ‘I want more’?.

I usually think of ‘personal development’ as being a bit too new agey, or a bit too touchy feely or a bit too self indulgent – so I’m not normally one to navel gaze or drink the KoolAid and get sucked into these things. I’ve been told in the past that I don’t have a ‘suggestive personality’ which I understand means I’m not easily led, not easily hypnotized, not readily reconditioned… alternately, you could just call it bloody stubborn. So I tried to go into this thing with an open mind. I reckon we were barely an hour in when the presenter, Nicky, started talking about Health and how it affects your entire life and if you have your health then you’re already well on your way to personal happiness. I’m sure without even really thinking about it, she trotted out a we need to look after our bodies, because ‘your body is a temple’ as cliched as it sounds, it is what will stick in people’s heads. At which point I interrupted asking ‘What if your temple is broken?’

Which started a discussion on how the body repairs itself and you can heal. I come back with ‘there are some things the body can’t or won’t recover from’… which led into her dragging my chronic back pain and IVF story out of me in front of 40 odd (and fuck me, but some of them were really odd!) strangers. Nicky suggests we have a chat during the break… So we do. And I got slapped upside the head like no damn psych has ever done to me before. She asked me questions that I couldn’t answer:

Who would you be if you weren’t this person in pain?
Why can’t you be happy with your family as it is?
What’s so bad with having an only child? He doesn’t know any different.
What belief systems am you hanging on to?

She flat out told me I have suffered an awful lot of loss in my life (Yes, yes I have heard this from soooo many therapists in the past so I thought I knew what was coming) – loss of physical strength, loss of control over my body, loss of freedom, loss of social identity, loss of career and work opportunities, loss children, loss of my identity as a woman, loss of my dreams… so much loss, oh you poor kitten. And here is where she smacked me – there’s been a metric fuckton of loss, but no actual grief. She looked at me and cut me to the quick… ‘You have never allowed yourself to really FEEL what has happened to you. You’ve spent years being ‘strong’ and sucking it up and soldiering on, and you’re still doing it. As a result, you’ve never really ALLOWED yourself to grieve any of these losses. And if you don’t grieve your losses, how can you move on? You’re stuck in your anger and resentment and frustration at this enormous amount of loss in your life and you’ve never let yourself really feel it.’

I have often jokingly said that I don’t know how to have the nervous breakdown I feel I so richly deserve! Turns out I might be right. I don’t know how to let myself just feel all the shit that has happened. I never really grieved my physical incapacities, I have just spent two decades gritting my teeth and fighting them. I never really grieved any of my five miscarriages, I barely acknowledged they happened and moved on – I certainly never allowed myself to think of them as five little babies that didn’t survive (in fact, I remember seeing a woman once with some three little children charms hanging around her neck and commented on them – she said they were her ‘angels’, her three little babies that didn’t make it, which at the time I thought was a fucking creepy thing to be carrying around with your everyday, but maybe it’s healthy?). I never even allowed myself to grieve my disappointments with each failed IVF cycle… the longer we were at it, the less and less my expressions of disappointment would be. It got to the point where I’d have another failed cycle and wouldn’t even tell Mr K about it in person, I’d just leave the (-)ve stick in the bathroom for him to see when he got up and go about my day. He’d give me a cuddle in the kitchen and say ‘I’m sorry.’ and we’d keep on going… with over forty failed cycles that were sending us broke, who has the fucking energy to grieve every one of them? Truth be told, I don’t think I grieved for any of them – I didn’t allow myself to think of them as little babies that didn’t make it, it was just another failed treatment.

I walked away from the deeply upset. I had reluctantly acknowledged an awful truth. That without my painful persona that I have obviously been living for decades, I am nothing – I have built no other identity for myself. I don’t know who I am, or who I would be if I wasn’t in pain all day. I have made my pain and infertility my entire life story. It’s who I am – an infertile, chronic pain sufferer. And I haven’t been able to move past it to define myself any further. It’s not like I have chosen to wallow in in, in fact it’s the complete opposite. I spend most of my energy trying to ignore it… and trying not to acknowledge it, trying not to let people in – because being in here sucks arse! I don’t want people to know how fucking horrible and hollow I feel deep down inside. I am just one tightly wound, short blonde bundle of anger, resentment, frustration and jealousy… and that’s all there is in here! I don’t love myself or my body. I don’t love my life or my situation – which is completely shit because I have so much to be grateful for. I have spent my life being angry and focused on all the negative shit surrounding me, and it has very likely hindered me from truly enjoying the good and positive things in my life.

I came home after the seminar and spent the night trying to figure out WHY? Why can’t I fully acknowledge and grieve the losses in my life? How come I don’t know HOW to grieve? So other more recognizable and common senses of loss came to the fore: My father’s death. I didn’t really grieve that loss either – I went off to training for a new job the very day after he passed away convinced that is what he would want me to do. My grandmother’s death. Went to the funeral, I got a speeding ticket while playing loud music and not paying attention to the road conditions on the way home – nope, no real grief there. The death of three of my cousins on Anzac Day in 1988 – still makes me sad, but did I actually grieve for them when they drowned? Not really. But then I poked around in that for a bit…

I didn’t grieve for the loss of my three cousins as an impressionable young teenager because I wasn’t ALLOWED to. If you read the link above about how they died, you’ll see I gloss over some very important facts. Yes, I mentioned that on Anzac Day in 1988 that my cousins had drowned as a result of the huge floods that were sweeping western Queensland at the time and the poor little kids didn’t know how to swim. I mentioned that the whole thing didn’t seem ‘real’ to me until I saw it in the newspaper the following day at the school library. What I don’t mention is that I became really emotionally upset by the death of these beautiful little children… the Librarian called for the Principal and that school sent me home for the day. So what?

Well, later that evening I got in trouble. My father sat me down and told me that I hardly ever saw these kids but a few times each year, that I barely even knew these kids because they were so young and had no cause to be feeling all upset at their death and that there definitely wasn’t any cause for missing school for the day. So my father, whose good opinion I respected and actively courted my entire life, taught me that when bad things happen we don’t feel them, we suck them up, keep working and move on. I always thought he was just very practical and pragmatic and not very demonstrative and that wasn’t a bad way to be. But now I think he taught me that grieving loss, any loss, is unacceptable. I’m sure that isn’t what he wanted to teach me – to bottle up my emotions and never allow myself to ‘feel’ anything… but I am starting to think that is the lesson that I came away with it from. I have never really grieved anything since. Not the my miscarriages, not the death of my gorgeous little dog companion Caesar who was my constant friend for nearly 15 years, not even my own father’s death! I don’t know how to grieve. He taught me it was self indulgent to do so and now I seriously don’t know how to.

So now I feel like I’m blocked, or bogged down or drowning in my inability to let myself feel things. Like I need to somehow truly grieve the losses in my past in some tangible, physical or cathartic way, that allows me to actually ‘feel’ the horrible things that have happened and hopefully allows me to finally let go of some or all of the emotional baggage, rather than bottling it all up and carrying it around with me everyday.

Only problem is… I have no idea how that is accomplished.

The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

Posted on July 20, 2013 by borysSNORC

After three days completely over doing it in Disneyland, I found myself having to take the day off. And by off, I mean sitting in my hotel room on a heatpack, drugged off my brain and trying to figure out what I was going to do to ameliorate the anticipated ongoing flare ups that the rest of my itinerary had in store for me.

The Small Child was with the long suffering grandparents at Universal Studios for the day so I sort of got to fall apart in peace… I don’t like him thinking of me as a sick person, or an
incapable person or worse as disabled or an invalid. But the truth of the matter is that all these things are fitting descriptions for people like me with chronic pain conditions and the associate limitations. 🙁

I know exactly why I did it. We were at Disneyland, 15,000kms from home, this is likely to be the only time he ever gets to do Disneyland as a child (I’m certainly not coming back any time soon) and I wanted him to make the most of it. We had only just managed to get him over his longstanding fear of roller coasters and I thought between us four adults we’d be able to keep up with him… but I wasn’t counting on being with two that are scared of heights and one that doesn’t like roller coasters much at all.

So next thing I knew, every time the Small Child said he wanted to go again; there I was on the damn thing again knowing full well how much pain it was causing. Sure it was fun at the time, and I even managed to put on a creditable face of having a good time. After all, I’ve had twenty-two years practice in pretending like all is well with the world and you’d be surprised what you can keep to yourself until you have time to fall into a tearful puddle of painful jangling nerves in private later.

It might have been ill advised, it might have been foolhardy even, but my heart was in the right place. I really wanted to make sure my son had a memorable time at the theme park with his Mum, and didn’t want him going home disappointed or bored… so I did everything I could to make sure that happened. But jesus titty fucking Christ I am totally paying for it today. 🙁

How to: Stay awake on long drives

Posted on July 14, 2013 by borysSNORC

Yesterday, I got up at 2am and drove to San Francisco via a side stop in LAX to pick up the Small Child. Which is pretty much like getting up and driving non-stop to Sydney, but putting a massive stressful big spaghetti junction of highways somewhere around Coffs Harbour which was really difficult to navigate and on which everyone was speeding. Now this in itself mightn’t be so bad… but we went to a show the night before which ran from 10pm to midnight.

By the time we got back to our hotel, finalized the packing we started earlier and had a shower, it meant that I was going to bed at 12:50am and setting an alarm for 1:45am hoping for a cat nap well any type of fucking nap really.

No such luck. Just lay there waiting for the alarm to go off. Hit the road in full darkness and headed out of Las Vegas. Unbelievable how much traffic was on the highway all the was to LA given it was 2am on a Saturday morning. Managed to pick up the Not So Small Child without incident after a 4.bit hour drive, and set Sondra to take us to San Francisco.

After much more white knuckled swearing and cursing at the freeway system we eventually popped out of the city and were speeding through agricultural countryside going north. By now it was about 8am, and I was starting to get tired. So I’m having a Red Bull for breakfast (fuck that shit tastes foul), and trying to stay awake knowing there’s about 4-5 hours more driving ahead.

The countryside was so dry and arid it’s amazing anything was growing there at all. Every now and again you’d go through a green section near an irrigation channel that was obviously getting access to water. But every few kilometers or so, I was seeing signs that said ‘Say No to Congress Created Dust Bowl!’ And I have no real idea about but could make a pretty good guess. Nonetheless about 40% of vehicles on this highest were carrying produce – tomatoes, lemons, onions, rock melons and so on. None of which is overly exciting as you’re hurtling along with two sleeping passengers.

So I’m driving with Adele for company and slowly but surely turning that music volume up and up (frog in a boiling pot style) to keep me awake but not disturb them sleeping. I was turning the air con up much higher than needed and kept flicking the vents so one side of me would get really cold and then the other. I was shuffling in my seat and constantly pfaffing with the cruise control to keep my mind alert. But my most effective tool in keeping awake on this ridiculously long and solitary drive was turning my head.

Now I’m pretty sure this won’t work for everyone but I’d been in Vegas on too soft beds for four nights and no access to heat packs so my back pain was in full gear before I even left. My neck and shoulder muscles were as stiff and sore as if I’d spent the week painting the house, not playing tourist in one of the worlds biggest playgrounds. So I was at the point where turning my head in any direction, putting my chin down towards my chest, looking left of right, leaning it over towards my shoulders – any movement really – was causing sharp pain. Which meant whenever I felt myself getting drowsy all I had to do was lean my head over and I had sharp pain jolt me alert again. :S

If I felt really bad, I used my air con frozen hands and just poked myself in the neck or shoulder muscles a bit and ow, ow, ow, fuckity ow, I was wide awake again. We made it safely to San Francisco… but I one big mess of absolutely shattered right now.

Hurts so good.

Posted on May 31, 2013 by borysSNORC

After playing bridesmaid last weekend, I have been feeling more than a little broken all week… so I finally decided to book myself a massage and see if we could smooth out some of these muscle spasms and kinks and things.

The regular guy, Joe, who I used to see out at the little oriental massage salon no longer works there, so it’s always a bit of a risk going to see someone new in case they exacerbate my pain problems rather then help them. Not to mention that it feels like half the appointment is spent explaining my farcical medical history and chronic pain condition. You know, I think there’s a tipping point in there somewhere – I have to tell them I’m pretty fucked up from four car accidents, but if I tell them too much they start to get that look in their eyes that kinda says ‘Ahuh, yeeahh… I’m not touching your back with a 40′ pole!’. Which is understandable I guess, because I’m fairly certain they don’t want their clients leaving feeling ten times worse than they did when they walked in!

Anyway, with Joe gone to places unknown, today I got Emma. Now, normally I dislike female massage therapists. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that they just have teeny tiny little hands, that are more than usually strong for their size which means I literally walk out of the appointments with little tiny bruises all over me from their pressing really hard on various trigger points and accupressure points etc. I imagine this is largely my own fault and very likely stems from the fact that I rarely squeal any more. I’ve been so fucked in the back for over 20 years now and have seen more specialists than I could possibly count… which means I’m really used to being poked and prodded causing pain responses. So used to it in fact, that I rarely respond at all… few yelps of pain, no alteration in breathing, rarely tensing of other muscle groups, no clenching my fists or anything. The result of this appearance of stoicism is that they often just keep going harder and harder with the pressure until they get some sort of response to let them know the pressure is too much – by which point: ecchymosis. Meh, whatever.

Today, I went in for my massage and half disrobed and went to lay on the table. Now if any of you out there have… how do I put this politely… tits 🙂 then you will know what I am about to say. There’s no way you can lay on your stomach comfortably, with your head stuck down a paper lined hole, without squashing the beejeebus out of your boobs. If any of you work in massage or physio or any profession which might require you to disrobe and lay your clients down unsupported (I’m not questioning your employment choices here…), can I just suggest that a couple of rolled up hand towels (one for under the front of each shoulder) wouldn’t go astray to make things more comfortable for those bustier individuals amongst your clientele. There is nothing quite so relaxing as the anticipation of the prospect of squishing the living shit out of your breasts for the following hour!

remedial massage techniques pain chronic

Massages always seem so inviting, but when you’re on the table it’s more like a torture rack!?

Anyway, I tried to get as comfortable as possible under the circumstances and subsequently attempted to zone out a bit listening to the Japanese mediation music being played in the massage establishment… but instead all I could hear with this ‘doof doof doof’ from turns out to be the BOSE store next door! What sort of moronic mall planners put a stereo equipment store right beside a relaxation massage place? I must have spent the first five to ten minutes of my massage wondering how stoned were the Centre Management when they made that decision?! Oh well, apply more effort to ignore the addiction to bass going on in the next room… and just try to breathe. Breathe and relax. :/

Emma as it turns out has very pointy hands (as predicted) but I forgot about the elbows! And OMG did she know how to use them! By the time she got into my tender spots with her elbows, I totally forgot how uncomfortable my poor abused bust was! She was digging in around my shoulder blades with her elbows, all up and down my spine in various place, down in behind my hips (fuck that hurts!) and just in with the pointy elbows from hell. When I finally got some respite from the pointy elbows hitting all my tense bits that I didn’t even know were sore, she did the weirdest thing to my hands and arms… kinda flicked and punched them all up and down both arms. I have no idea why. I didn’t ask, indeed, it’s rather hard to talk when your face is shoved into one of those hole-y massage tables which squish your cheeks in a rather indecorous fashion… but it felt like I was being ‘pinched and punched for the first of the month’ all over the shop! Wanted to tell her ‘Hey! Tomorrow is June 1st, lay off, lady!’

After going half a dozen rounds with Pointy Emma, I was quite surprised to find that I could actually still walk at the end of it, which is always a huge bonus in my book! Now, the proof will be in the pudding… will I be able to actually move tomorrow, or has Pointy Emma left me feeling like I’ve been hit by a 5′ nothing little Asian Mack truck?!

It’s only a problem if you know about it.

Posted on April 22, 2013 by borysSNORC

Ever forget where you left your keys? Ever forget an appointment with your accountant? Doctor? Manicurist? Ever forget to send permission forms up to school? Ever forget to turn the iron off? How about forgetting your passwords or forgetting about the Tooth Fairy? Shit happens, right?

What about these then… ever forget that you have ordered a book and went and ordered a second copy? Ever forget that you bought someone’s birthday present and then spent a week trying to come up with an idea for it? Ever forget a conversation you had in the morning about the Goat Pie Guy and then wonder why you’re unexpectedly presented with goat pies for lunch three hours later? Ever forget that you’re out shopping for a toaster and come home with a new kettle instead? Ever tell the same person the same thing three or four times and watch their face glaze over as you realize you’ve already imparted that information? Ever forget what the family said they wanted for dinner even though you asked them every half hour from 3-6pm? Ever forget to turn off the TV or lock the door or set the alarm or close the garage and just leave the house and come home to find the place wide open? Ever forget about a ‘to do’ list in your own handwriting and have no recollection of writing it? Ever forget driving your child to school and spend the day believing someone else took him? Ever completely forget something you only just learned the day before? Ever scarily forget you’ve taken your nightly medication and promptly turned around five minutes later and taken it again?

We have been laughing about my goldfish memory for about five years now. So what if you accidentally order the same book twice? It was on medieval gold smithing and the extra copy made a great present for Surly’s next birthday anyway. So what if pink Tupperware turns up in the mail and you have no recollection of ever having ordered it? So what if you arrive a day early for your doctor’s appointment? So what if you boil the kettle three or four times before remembering to actually make the cup of tea? So what if you get frustrated trying to logon to your PC using a password you changed two years ago? So what if you forget the Small Child’s basketball training…again? So what if you have to keep the world’s most complex calendar because you can’t trust your memory to remind you of ANYTHING.

Well, this is where I’ve been at for the last five years. Too many drugs with too many side effects. Not the least of which it turns out over long term use include diminished cognitive abilities, loss of concentration and drumroll please … memory loss. Woulnd’t be so bad, in fact I doubt I would have come to call it a serious problem at all, if I weren’t trying to learn Classical Latin at the moment. You see, I’ve managed to get through two semesters of Latin (I still have no idea how I did that) and am in the middle of my third (and fucking final) semester of Latin Language and Literature… and I CAN”T REMEMBER ANY OF IT.

Now, this isn’t the usual, ‘I hate Latin and brain is resisting learning Latin’ thing that often comes if someone is forced to deal with something they think is unpleasant (like me and income tax returns). I like Latin and was finding it challenging and enjoyable, even though it comes with more than it’s fair share of monumental mind fucks. No, the problem here is I am being taught grammatical concepts one day and the next day being unable to recall what the concepts were, what they were called, how they are applied or how they are translated, which is seriously hindering my ability to complete the course. Homework assignments that should take only a matter of hours are taking me two days to complete as I look up words and then look them up again three lines later having already forgotten the English translation over the duration of about ten minutes and facepalming the minute I see the English again. Seriously frustrating. At the moment, with some changes in medication, I can’t seem to recall anything we learned last year – not even simple noun declensions, verb conjugations and tenses or principle parts. Asking me to explain the mood or case of something, when parsing, is like asking me to teleport to Ancient Rome to run Cicero to ask him why he’s inflicted all this shit on us in the first place! Impossible!

So struggling with Latin has gone from being challenging and enjoyable to being frustrating and riddled with anxiety, as I just can’t seem to remember what I need to know. And it has bought home hard, like a slap upside the head with a wet haddock, just how bad my memory has become. I can’t remember the Latin I learned yesterday, but to test a theory, I started working through an online self taught French tutorial program and have been sailing through it on high school French that I learned over 20 years ago! I’m paying more attention to the memory problems now and I’m noticing more and more that I can’t remember shit. I can’t remember important stuff, I’m losing track of menial stuff and I’m now officially getting worried about it because after a tiny bit of research and a meeting with my dealer… err I mean doctor, it turns out I have developed some serious prescription medication dependencies. Or flat out drug addictions if we want to do away with the niceties.

Problem is, I can’t give them up. I don’t want to give them up. Go ahead, make my day… just try and take them off me and see what happens! For without the drugs, there is no sleep. Without the sleep, there is no coping with being in pain ALL day. Without the coping there is a bottle of the most ludicrously expensive champagne and ALL the pills at once in my foreseeable future.

So… my name is Borys and I have a prescription drug addiction. But somehow I doubt there are meetings for people with no desire or motivation whatsoever to kick their habits. 🙁