Child Abuse Survivor

Enola has the “Back to School” edition of the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse up over at her site, if you haven’t taken a look yet, like me, head on over and get caught up.

This is the first time I’ve popped open my laptop since Thursday, after traveling for a family wedding, and even now I’m in Washington DC for the week to attend a conference for the day job, so I’ll have to find time to get over there an check out the post myself! Hopefully I’ll be able to do that, I know there’s always such great stuff in each carnival!

This past weekend, as I do most every year, I spent some time at the Dublin Ohio Irish Festival. As we listened to one of the many rollicking Irish songs being played, I couldn’t help but think about the history of the Irish, and the way it’s captured in song. The lyrics speak of oppression, sadness, famine, etc., and yet the songs are so lively, fun and full of life. It’s a real contradiction, or is it?

Does Irish music not hold a deeper truth about life? That yes, it can be miserable at times, and we’ll have our share of suffering and pain, some of us more than others, but it can also be joyous, fun and full of love at the same time. There’s something to be said for a people who have suffered as much historically as the Irish, and yet continue to embrace and celebrate the good things in life. It’s a heritage I’ve come to embrace the last few years. Not just because it’s where I come from, but because it represents the hope I have for all survivors, that we’d have our pain and our suffering, and then come out the other side of healing and have plenty to celebrate. So, lift a pint, or whatever you fancy, and toast to the things that are worth celebrating in your own life!

This past weekend being a three day holiday here in the US, not to mention also my birthday, we took advantage and took a little road trip down to Lexington, Ky. With everything that life throws at us on a day by day basis, it was very nice to get away and do something different for a few days. Instead of focusing on work, and other things we “have” to do each day, it was quite a refreshing break to simply spend a few days exploring, taking photos, and just enjoying each other’s company.

I highly recommend taking the time to enjoy today every once in awhile. It really helps to put life in perspective, and allows you to come back to the every day stuff with a renewed energy and healthy attitude!

Tonight when I went to see my massage therapist, as usual, she asked me how my body felt and what sort of tension I was feeling. I responded that I really felt pretty good. I’d been so busy with work that I haven’t had time to wear myself out with any sort of physical activity, so either everything was mellow, or the stress from work had affected me so much that I just got used to it and didn’t even notice it.

It didn’t take much of her poking and proding to realize that it was the latter. I was ridiculously tight in the shoulders, neck, and all the way through the ribs. That’s bad, and worse, I didn’t realize it. I know it’s not good to be that tight, and I know how much better I feel when I’m not, yet I still just got used to it the way it was and didn’t think there was even a problem.

Sounds like a metaphor for life, eh? If not life in general, certainly the life of a survivor. Sometimes we are so familiar with the pain and other affects from our past that we don’t even realize how much better life could be with some small changes. We simply get used to what we have and convince ourselves that there’s nothing really wrong.

Something to keep in mind. I know I’ll think about tonight the next time I assume my body isn’t feeling any stress during what should be a stressful time!

I know a few of you wrote me, or left comments about the stuff I couldn’t talk about yet, hoping it wasn’t anything bad, and well, it really isn’t. Since it involved work I wrote it out in more detail over on the other blog last week, and wanted to point you there to read about it, if you’re interested.

Needless to say, with all the changes going on at work, and finding myself trying to adapt quickly to a new role, my mental focus has been spent there much of the time. What little mental energy I could muster into the survivor community has been spent over on the Survivor Network, and naturally, things here have been a little slower than normal. Yeah, I’m looking at the dates on the latest posts and seeing the same thing you’re seeing.

Anyway, even though I’m not coming up with many original thoughts worthy of a blog post around here, I’m still here, and still plugging away. As time goes on and maybe I start to figure out everything I need to figure out, I’ll have a bit more mental energy to write some things out. In the mean time, please sign up at the network and join in the conversations over there!

Well, if nothing else, this past week proved that yes, there is still definitely a limit to the amount of emotional energy I can muster up, and when I hit that limit, while I’m healthy enough to know how t not dissociate anymore, I still want to do some of the same behaviors.

This week was very stressful, on top of getting ready for my wife to be half way ’round the world, my mom was in the hospital, work was crazy busy, and there were a few other surprises that I can’t really talk about online yet. Add it all up, and by the weekend, I really just wanted to ignore all of it.

I had just reached the point where I just had no more emotions to give. Mind you, there wasn’t anything major, it was stressful, and my mom’s getting better, and things caught me by surprise, causing kind of a rollercoaster of emotions. It wasn’t depression or anything like that, and it won’t be anything that causes major problems for me, I have just sort of hit my limit!

The scary part is just how much I wanted to do anything but think about any of it. It really was quite reminiscent of dissociating, only I know better than to go down that road, so I had to find ways to spend my time doing other things, only without the benefit of hanging around the house with my wife, which is what I’d normally do when I’m stressed. These old defense mechanisms don’t die easy, do they?

Hopefully, all the alone, quiet, time will get me through this week. Promises to be another crazy week at work, and a week on my own at home. So long as we can keep the extra surprises from popping up this week too, I think I’ll be alright!

I realized the other day that this blog has been pretty quiet recently. I’ve been posting stuff to my other blog, the reviews blog has kept up a steady pace of stuff, but this blog has been a little slow. Given that, I thought it’d be a good time to let you know how things have been going over on the Survivor Network site, since that is part of the reason why things have quieted around here!

In a nutshell, that group has had pretty good growth for something that’s only existed for a few months! There are currently 161 members, and there have been a number of really good discussions, ranging from new member introductions to questions about parenting and blog posts with survivor stories and insights about self injury and many, many more!

There’s also 4 sub groups now, and I’m planning on doing some experimenting with the new chat feature that Ning has implemented. There’s been so much going on over there, I can barely keep up with it all!

Overall, the response has been awesome, the group has been so supportive of each other, and of me as I try and work behind the scenes to keep things running smoothly. There have been a few growing pains, but it’s all been well worth it so far. I hope that all of you, whether you are Survivors, or a survivor’s supporter (we have a few of those over there as well), will consider joining, taking a look around, and jumping in with your own contributions!

It’s been an interesting few days. After surviving layoffs, I find myself with both the opportunity to step into some more of the limelight at work, posting to one of the firms blogs and doing some presentations at outside events, and the need to be more visible and show the value I bring to the firm. At first, I was really excited about the opportunities, and eady to accept the new challenges. Today, however, as I finished up researching and editing my first post, I heard an old, familiar voice. The voice that seems to crop up at these moments with all the old doubts I’ve always felt about myself.

So, rather than being proud of the efforts, and looking forward to sharing what I’ve worked on with other folks, I’m feeling abject fear that the increased visibility is only going to show that I’m not very good at this.

I guess we’ll find out if that is true soon enough.

I do know, though, that voice is not the truth, and has never been the truth. It’s the voice of my childhood, always making sure that I know I’m not good enough, but I’m not a child any more, and I won’t accept those lies any more. I may try and fail at many things as an adult, and I may prove to not be very good at some things, but I won’t let the doubts of my childhood keep me from trying any way.

It’s New Year’s Day. I hope all of you had a safe, fun celebration last night and I’m betting more than a few of you have already given up on your resolutions.

Given that this marks the start of a new year, it occurs to me that it’s also a good day to take stock. It’s a good day to look back at where you were at this point last year, and how much you’ve grown, healed, or simply improved yourself since then.I’m betting that many of you, who may be struggling with your own journey toward healing, can still manage to look back and see improvement. That should encourage you to continue, and next year when you again look back on where you started the year, you will see more improvement and personal growth.

For myself, 2008 wasn’t exactly the year I expected. We were presented with some opportunities we hadn’t seen coming, that changed some of our plans, but the overall personal improvement goals, I think, have seen some definite imrpovement. As always, I wanted to do some more networking, develop some new friendships, give more of my time toward meeting and connecting with new people and generally learn to be more social. Compared to Jan 1 of 2008, I’ve had the opportunity to speak at an Ignite event, meet a large number of new folks online through Twitter and other tools, and can point to at least 2 new friendships that have developed in the last year and already mean a lot to me. I’ve leveraged Facebook to reconnect with friends from elementary school and some of my own somewhat distant relatives whom I hadn’t seen in years. I started an online network for survivors of child abuse and their significant others just a few weeks ago and have already seen so much of the vision I had for that start to take hold.

My professional life and home life have continued to be important parts of my life, and even though I’ve managed to put more efforts into other areas, I’ve not taken either for granted during this time, They are the core of everything. I’m not nearly as succesful without the support of my wife, and of course, we all need to work and support ourselves financially. In this economy, that means working hard and improving your skills at all times, in order to prove your worth to your employers!

Overall, I can say it’s been a pretty good year! I see the affects of my efforts, and I’ve enjoyed the opportunities that have been presented to me. I wonder what sorts of opportunities await, and what sort of things I’ll be able to point to as highlights of 2009? I hope you have many of your own!

Going to the doctor. I hate it. I’ll do just about anything to avoid it. Especially if I’m going to have tests done. Tests that might tell me that there’s somthing wrong, etc.

So a few weeks agao, after having pain in my knee for a couple of weeks, I went to find out why. Turned out to be a small case of tendonitis. No big deal. But while I was there we talked about the fact that I turned 40 over the Summer, and that it was time to think about having tests for diabetes, cholesterol, etc.

Monday was the return visit to draw blood. I really don’t enjoy that. *L*

In the mean time, I waited for the results. I wasn’t really nervous, but as any survivor will tell you, waiting for results with no ability to do anything about it, sucks. It’s not one of our strong suits. Neither is convincing yourself to not worry. I worried a little bit, and the longer I waited, the more I worried. This is why I don’t go to doctors. Part of me would rather just not know.

As it turns out, the tests came back fine, and there’s nothing to worry about. The doctor wants me to lose some weight, which is no real surprise, and with my wife’s help, that’s the goal for now. I’ll get more details on the exact results in the mail soon.

So, I guess I worried about nothing, but I bet the next time, I still worry just as much. It’s my nature.