Literally, the best reward I get from keeping up this site are emails like this one:
It's been a week since I made the call to Survivors UK, the London-based child abuse organisation. Then I found your site, no.2 when I googled. I get a date for my therapy to start in a few weeks. I'm not brave enough to maintain a blog or site like you though I'm sure I'll comment on anything I find interesting when I catch up with all of it.....
Right now I am happy that I'm not alone even though you are in a different country.
That makes all the writing, thinking about writing and site maintenance worth it right there.
In a further email, this same reader posed an interesting question that I wanted to share with all of you, and solicit your feed back on.
How did you select which friends to tell first?
That's a tough question for me, because I think the first few people I told were people I already knew were survivors themselves. Then, when I had a very public breakdown, well, everyone already knew!
Now, as to who I tell now, it tends to fall into two groups. One is people who are going to be deeply involved in my life, on more than an acquaintance level, because the abuse is an important part of understanding who I am, so they need to know, and the second are people who I feel would benefit from know that they aren't alone.
I am interested in hearing what other survivors did in terms of telling people when they were first starting on the path to healing. What advice would you give to someone in this regard, what pitfalls would you steer them away from? What was your experience like?
In thinking about depression the last few days it occurs to me that so much of the battle to overcome it is simply about looking forward instead of back. I think this is obviously the case in depression caused by an abusive childhood, or any other kind of trauma, but I think it's also true in cases where it's not clearly related. Depression is all about losing the ability to enjoy life, and there's nothing more enjoyable about life than the anticipation of an upcoming event.
It seems to me the more people I meet who have suffered from depression at some point the more I can tell a difference between those that are looking forward, and those that haven't found that yet. The one's who are looking forward have accepted that they have to live with this disease, in some form or other, and are looking forward to what they can do with their lives now that they've learned that. The other group is still mourning what they've "lost" because of their depression.
The thing is, when you are suffering from depression, it's simply too difficult to look ahead to anything. You don't get any enjoyment from what you're doing now, why should tomorrow be any different? Yet at the same time, we all, for some reason, spend time regretting that our depression is going to make use change the life we're currently miserable in. I spent a long time mourning my first marriage when it was over, even though I was completely unhappy in it. It was only after I came to terms with the fact that being healthy was more important than not being single, was more important than any friendship I might lose because of my decisions, and would always be more important than anything else that might come along in my life, that I could then look forward. It was only after I was willing to make decisions that were healthy for me, regardless of what change that brought about in my circumstances, that my focus changed. Instead of looking back at what my life used to be, I began to look forward to the next healthy decision, no matter how small it was.
Instead of spending my time concerned with what had been, I spent my time finding things I could enjoy, and look forward to. Things as simple as watching a ball game on TV, or a trip to the library, or buying an ice cream. Choosing to do these things simply because I enjoyed them gave me a freedom I didn't have before. It gave me a sense of responsibility for my own happiness, and my own health. It made me focus my attention to the future. To the next activity I would enjoy doing, to the next day, the next week. As I focused on the next day, I became curious about what events would occur in the future that I couldn't plan, people I would meet, things I would learn, sights I would see. The more I allowed myself to focus on that, the less my depression had a hold on me. I was no longer stuck in my own misery, I was learning to anticipate what life had to offer, and what each day might bring.
I still have lost certain things. I have to spend more time watching myself for signs of slipping back into depression than other people do, I have to be careful about negativity and about expressing emotions in healthy ways more than other people do. Because of my past severe depression and dissociation I have to keep a close eye on things like my mental focus, how much I sleep, how much I eat, etc. to make sure I don't slip into a bad spell like that again. Most people don't have to do that, and I guess I could spend my time being angry about that, but who would I be hurting with that anger? I find it's much healthier to accept that as part of my life, and continue to look forward to what my life can be, instead of looking back to what it's not.
The 7th Edition is up over at Sadly Normal. As always it looks like there's quite a lot of reading material over there. Since we're traveling to visit family I'm going to have to just look forward to reading it when I'm back home.
Hope you all have a great holiday!
I have to confess. I got off the regular exercise bandwagon last month and haven't gotten back on it.
Looking back I can see the problem. I went from a vacation, straight into having and recovering from surgery, and just when I was getting back on my feet from that, I caught a mean case of the flu. It's no surprise that I fell off the bandwagon.
It probably shouldn't be a surprise either that I've been feeling a lack of energy, and have struggled to establish enough mental focus to get much of anything accomplished, huh?
One of the "suggested topics" Lisa has for this month's carnival against child abuse is "What inspires you to heal?". I found that an interesting topic, not so much because I think there's any great inspiring thing out there, but because really the answer for me was a simple one.
I hit rock bottom in terms of depression, making unhealthy choices, and needing to do something to change things at around the age of 28. And when I say rock-bottom, I mean rock-bottom as in homeless, being found passed out (ill, not drunk) in an alley way, spending nine days in a hospital and having to be released into my mother's custody, because the psych ward wouldn't let the hospital release me to my own care. After your mother has to travel 1000 miles to get you at that age, and a stranger has to bathe you because you haven't the strength to do it yourself, there's really not much lower you can go, dignity-wise.
So, after hitting that point, I really saw a choice. Not to get all Hollywood on you, but it was a "get busy living, or get busy dying" moment for me, and since I had already failed at trying to commit suicide, I figured living was probably the way to go. The thing was, I was 28! Chances are, I was going to live for a long time from that point on, and I realized for maybe the first time ever, just how long life can be.
What I mean is, while I absolutely condone the idea that life is short and you should enjoy it while you can, in this respect it is also very long. It's one thing to have spent the first 28 years of my life being affected by my childhood and the depression, it's quite another to spend your whole life like that. Simply put, I wanted to heal because 60, 70, or 80 years is a LONG time to live like this. I didn't want the next 40 years of my life to be like the first 30. I wanted something better. I wasted those 30 years because of what other people did to me as a child, but I wasn't a child any more, and whatever I was going to do from that point on was up to me. It wasn't up to someone to "make it up to me", or to rescue me from my childhood, it was up to me to heal, to build a life for myself, and to find enjoyment from whatever life that was to be.
It was time to "get busy living" and see what happened with the rest of my time. Fact is, once I decided on that path, my own natural curiosity to see how it turns out would keep me going, and using that to keep looking ahead has helped keep me continue healing. It's hard to get suicidal when you're always wondering what tomorrow will bring. :)
Lisa from Sadly Normal will be hosting this months edition of the Carnival Against Child Abuse. She's got some great suggested topics listed for the last edition of the year, as well as an offer to host your writings if you don't have your own blog.
Her topics have got me thinking a bit. Hopefully, I'll have some further thoughts to contribute to the carnival in the form of blog posts about those thoughts in the next few days.
Sorry I've been out of touch, life's been a bit of a whirlwind thanks to getting sick, and then having a death in my wife's family. Many things, let alone blogging, have had to be pushed aside due to those circumstances, but I did want to make a note.
Normally this time of year I talk a bit about what charitable donations I am going to make for year. Normally there's a donation to a child abuse prevention charity, it's been the local children's hospital for example, but I think, in light of recent events, my charity donation is going to begin with something different this year.
You see, the death in my wife's family was her great-grandmother. A woman with many fine traits, a woman my wife has looked up to with the utmost respect, and who has been a source of inspiration to my wife since she was a little girl. Unfortunately, she is also a woman I never knew. For while I've known Angela for almost 7 years, and we've been married for 5, and I've met her great -grandmother many times, she has suffered from Alzheimer's for all that time. She wasn't the woman my wife told stories about, our spoke so highly of, she was a shell of that woman, and as the years went on, she became less and less of that woman. Her Alzheimer's took her away long before her life ended, it deprived all of us from sharing these last years with her, in my case it deprived me of ever getting to know one of my wife's heroes. That was my loss, I have no doubt. From what I've been told of her, I can see her spirit living in my wife, and will continue to do so for many years, I hope, but I never got to see the source of that spirit, even though she was right there physically for all these years. That's a shame, and it's something I hope you never have to know.
I've known it in my own family, and now I've known it in my wife's family. I've watched as my own relatives became distant shadows of themselves, and I've missed out on the opportunity to know a great lady because of Alzheimer's, I want to try and do something to help make sure others don't. I believe Angela and I will be making a donation to the Alzheimer's Association, in memory of her great-grandmother this year.