Recovery

Lost in The Fire.

/ toseealife / 1 Comment

Well, the Oh Hellos released a new EP, and my Dad’s house burned down, so it’s been interesting since I last posted.

My dad wasn’t in it, thankfully. But he was pretty shook, as we say now.

Right now, it’s the third day of me waking up and seeing a yellow sky out my bedroom window. It’s so weird, like a post-apocalyptic teen movie. I guess there’s a strange beauty in it, and for a wonder, it’s been much cooler. I find it ironic that a fire burning had made it cooler, but one man’s loss is another man’s gain.

Fire does make rain too, so maybe in a few weeks we’ll reap some much needed benefits from this, but for now, no one is seeing it as a good thing.

People always say living on the West Coast is scary because of earthquakes, but the wildfires and arson every year are actually the biggest problem for us, way more than earthquakes.

Strange, my dad’s house was in danger a couple weeks back, but we prayed, and the wind actually changed direction just like we asked. So this time around, I didn’t even think about him being in danger of losing it.

When the ash starts falling down here in the valley, we know the fire is too close for comfort, even if we’re out of reach of it.

Falling Ash – Sam's Online Journal

I can’t explain why my dad’s house got spared once only to burn down two weeks later. Anymore than I can explain why Anne Frank made it to the allies winning the war, but still died in a Nazi prison camp.

In the fan fiction I write, I actually just had a fire happen in the story, literally af ew days before this, and was having the characters deal wtih the aftermath, asking some of the same questions that we’re aasking in real life now.

Why?

And what is the point?

When we get one miracle, sometimes it almost feels like mockery, especially if later we still lose the thing. Why get it longer at all? Why raise false hopes?

The Bible has examples of that too, the Israelites win one battle, lose the next. Get saved from their enemies, and years later, get taken captive. God warns them, but they probably were still confused, since when did they ever listen to the prophets, after all.

It could be that our idea that because we were saved once, we automatically will be saved the next time is actually foolish and not one God tells us to have.

God promises to always protect us, but not that it will look the way we want it to. Not that we will never lose anything.

Indeed, most of the Psalms is the author praying for emotional protection and protection from sinning, as well as physical protection.

There’s pretty much zero chance my dad will read this blog, (or listen to me, after all,) but I wonder if he’s thinking that all this just means he can’t win. He can’t be happy.

To be getting close to peace, and to have it wrenched away. Why does God allow this?

And me, personally, it’s a reminder that I may not be as far out of the woods as I think, in my own life.

Of course, safety is an illusion outside of God’s will. We never really know what will happen. We could walk out the door and get killed, or we could have an accident in our house. The only risk free thing to do it sit real still and never move…and then you die of starvation or lack of exercise.

God just doesn’t mean for us to do nothing dangerous our whole lives. Danger makes it worthwhile.

See, being better off from one minute to the next is something completely in our own heads, unless we measure it by how much we are trusting God. I am no safer this minute than I am on a mountain top in a lightning storm, it is just to me that it seems different.

It’s not wrong to think things are going well in our lives, or going poorly. The Bible certainly never tells us to throw out that standard, how else can we understand God’s goodness? But it cautions us to keep in mind that it is all a gift, not what we are owed.

I believe God does want each of us to be happy, in the right time and right context for happiness. But not a isngle one of us ahs a correct idea of happiness when we first walk with God.

My ideal of happiness as a new Christian was not to have trouble, not to have relationship problems, and to have a good career, husband, children, and be able to do what I loved doing.

To be honest, I still prefer all those things.

But I’ve had a series of rude awakenings that none of that gurantees happiness. To my amazement, I can be sad even if nothing is going wrong in my life at the moment, and I can be happy even if everything is going wrong.

Stasi Eldredge recently wrote a book titled “Defiant Joy” and I think that’s appropiate, the deepest Joy is usually defying the circumstances.

Suffering has a way of making us understand better whyt his world just cannot satisfy us, and our Joy is clearer when we see it depends on heavenly things, not earthly things.

I don’t just meant hat as a cliche, I mean that the ability to think about how heaven is, how God is over all, how we will live forever in that Reality, is the key to feeling true Joy.

You know, if I could give a pieve of advice to any new Christain, or curious seeker reading this, I’d tell them “Pay attaention to the cliches, the cliches are true.”

There’s hardly one Christian saying or teaching, which people usually roll their eyes at, that I have not found to be ultimately a profound truth.

“Just have Faith”

“You have to trust God”

“Don’t focus too much on earhtly things”

“God is in control”

We like to say that those just aren’t comforitng, that they make us feel liek no one is listening to our pain.

But I’ve come to see those sayings came form genrations of Christians going through trials, and finding that those really were the simple turhts they had to hold on to, in the end the simplest things are the most Comforitng. Like

“You’re not alone”

“God is in this.”

We say it because it’s true. Cliche or not.

I still think that God will “give me the desires of my heart” as the Word says, but I now know better that those desires will sometiems feel like a chore too.

I’m not married yet, but I do realzie once I am, there will be tiems my husband seems like more of an annoyance than a blessing. Same with children. Even if I live out my dream of adopting, I’ll certainly be tired of it at times.

I love teaching, but I don’t love it when I have a headache or didn’t sleep the night before.

Nothing mortal is always fun. Even worshipping God can be a struggle at times.

But, even so, it doesn’t make those things not worthwhile.

And losing them doesn’t mean you give up.

If I gave up every time I was disappointed, I’d not have anything left, that’s the honest truth.

I mean on everything, too. Deliverance from my personal problems, getting a job, getting a boyfriend, writing a successful book, getting a car, teaching.

All of it I got let down on a lot of times before I got any of those things, and I still am waiting on some.

I’ve learned the hard way that if you get knocked down, you really do have to get back up. Even if it’s not fair, even if it’s tragic, even if it’s tearing your heart out to keep going, you have to, or you’ll shrivel into nothing.

I think the Karate Kid remake actually summed that up in a beautiful way. (I liked the new one better than the old simply because I thought it had some deeper themes than just overcoming a bully problem, not that that’s bad, but of overcoming loss itself.)

The Bible says “For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.” {Proverbs 24:16}

I guess you know you’re the righteous by seeing if you got up again. It doesn’t take much to defeat someone who has no character.

They say the best way to heal from losing a pet is to get a new one soon. I think that is true. It’s easier to dare to love again if you don’t let the memory of your love fade away, along with the pain, by not loving anything else again.

Rebounding is not always healthy, but it can be far worse to close off forever. No, it is far worse.

All this to say, whatever you lose, you need to rebound. Wisely, but do it. It’s the only way to heal.

I believe that is why at the end of Job, God gives him all he had, doubled, save for his children, since God seems to count the ones who died as still being part of the number, a note of respect most people miss reading that story (I got it pointed out by someone else).

God’s message is not that the loss didn’t matter, but that Job, having lost everything, had to start again if he would be restored. That is the only way to heal.

Job is one of the only Old Testament men mentioned to have given his daughters an inheritance, treating them as equals to his sons. We aren’t told why he did this, but perhaps he realized that in life, you should bless people as much as you can while you can, because you really have nothing certain, and gender and age just don’t matter as much as we think.

Job loved harder after losing everything, and that is how I want to be. I want my loss to mean that in the future, I’ll give more to people I wouldn’t have before.

Well, that is all for now, until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

Why should we make our bed in the morning?

/ toseealife / 4 Comments

Yesterday marked my 4th straight week of being off coffee. This is from someone who loves the taste of coffee and has drunk it almost every day since I was 15 or 16.

I went off it because of my infection, coffee is bad for a sore mouth, too acidic, but I realized in the onset of headaches, energy drops, and cravings that followed that I am a little too dependent on coffee. I’m no addict, but still, I don’t love the side effects.

My mood changed too. I wake up and feel a little down most mornings, low energy, empty stomach, etc. Coffee can help jolt me into productivity, I usually work on creative stuff in the morning, and do actual work in the afternoon. Of course, needing caffiene is part of what makes that feeling, so I’ve created the problem I’m trying to solve. Who can relate?

Today, I felt better than I have in days waking up, but it’s funny how when my obdy does better, my mood tends to swing back to fighting off the blues.

I’ve noticed illness can be a distraction from other problems. Some people are forever worrying about their body, who are probably actually perfectly fine, because that’s easier than facing the fact that they are lonely, unhappy, or angry about something in their life.

Of course crippling anxiety comes with illness, for me, a lot, though I’m getting over that, but to me anxiety is an old feeling, and Im used to it. The feeling that my life has stopped, will never change, will always be this gray, drab indoor existance, that is what I prefer not to focus on, when I don’t feel well, that’s easier.

Not that I prefer feeling ill. It’s a vicious cycle.

This morning I was going to watch a movie (I bet some of you wish your mornings were so free you could watch movies on a Friday, but sometimes it just makes me feel like loser) and I was going to watch G. I. Jane (good film), but it was unavailable all of the sudden, so I selected a movie my mom recommended and I was planning on watching: “Julie and Julia.”

If you like cooking or human interest stories, I think you’ll like this film, but this post is not a review.

It’s just that the film brought some things to mind.

I dont know about you, but since quarantine really started dragging out–you know, after the first 2 weeks– I’ve had issues watching anything that reflects any of the emotions we’re all feeling. Fear, depression, a sense of purposelessness.

But converseley, watching anything about freedom, happiness, and the perfect ending also grinds my gears, it’s like its taunting me with a “You can’t have this. Your life is on a loop.”

I know I’m talking to someone here.

Basically, I’m tired of living through a screen, one way or another. But reading has had rather the same effect, it’s almost worse in a book, I get more into it emotionally. I just read “The Diary of Anne Frank” and that was a rollercoaster, but hey, being in hiding, being in lockdown, there’s a lot of similarities. Anne describes the living for the little things, the brief glimps of the outside worl through a window, or through friends coming over. The frustratation of being stuck with other people, the joy of finding solace in other people…etc.

The fear of something going horribly worng. Even if at times she felt her life wasnt worth living, she was terrified at the idea of losing it.

Yeah, it hits home, doesn’t it. At least I know Im not crazy.

I figure everyone feels the same as I do, so there’s no reason I should hide it.

I was walking down a street yesterday, and I heard some women talking very loudly, the hwole block could have practically heard it, about having troulbes in their relationships. One was, anyway, and she felt seh had no reason to have a meltdown, no reason to feel this way, she was supposed to be happy. The other woman loudly told her that the whole world has never gonet hrough anything like this, we’re all in it.

I felt both sympathetic, and like laughing at this.

On the one hand, I feel you, ladies. I really do.

On the other, its pretty narcissistic or else just ignorant, to say the whole world has never gone through something like this. Oh yes it has. This is still small compared to WWII, the Great Depression, the Communist Threat in the East and Russia. I’ve read the books, it was just like this, but worse, because we can still go out, still face-time our friends, and still lead relatively normal lives, just differently. Some of those people couldn’t trust their own family not to turn them in. Couldn’t trust they wouldn’t be shot if they left their house.

I know, there’s been rioting here in the USA, so some people don’t feel safe, but it’s not every single place in the country.

Things could be a whole lot worse. And as a Christian, I have it on authority, one day they will be. But this is not the end yet. It can’t last forever.

You know what’s strange, not a single person I know at my church has contracted the virus. I’ve not heard of one. Even their families for the most part. Fortunately, no one in my own family has got it either.

Even with the knowledge that we are relativley blessed compared to past crisis, I understand many people have lost someone, or are simply depressed because of the constant gloom.

You have my condolences if you have lost someone, but there’s not much I can say about something I haven’t gone through, so I will focus on what I can perhaps help a little with.

I honestly feel like, part of the problem is that we all have toom uch time to think, about all the things, not just that we wanted to do in the future, but that we have failed to accomplish in the past.

We’re not where we want to be, and now it feels like were not even getting there, because we’re stuck in the same place, with the same people, every single day. Week after week. Month after months, has it really been 8 months? At least for some countries, I think it’s 6 months here, soon.

Before, I could do things that distracted me from feeling like I wasn’t where I wanted to be, I thought, I’m at least working on getting there, but now it feels like that ground to a halt, not by my own choice, and I feel out of control. Hence the depression many people are feeling.

My sister says that it’s human nature, not know what will happen makes us wonder if anything is worth it, but if we knew what was coming, we’d be afraid of it because of our mortality. I guess that’s why so many myths portray finding out the future to be a fearsome thing that causes people to make really stupid decisions, which end up leading to the bad things they knew would happen, or else, ruining the good things they were told would happen.

Yet, Jesus told us the future, and said “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

How?

Well, I’m still figurien that out.

I’m at the stage where one little dissappointment feels huge, because I have so few things to anticipate happening. I wanted to cry when I heard the next season of my favorite show would be delayed till next year.

And one good thing happening feels tenous. Like “but if this goes worng, then what?”

And, it has gone wrong. I can’t say a whole lot of good things have happened to me this year. Though my problems started before the lockdown did.

We’ve all heard that the little things are important. Like you should make your bed every day, you should brush your hair, take a walk. Cook.

And we’re like “why? Who cares?” I see it all over where anyone talks about quarantine, people aren’t showering, doing laundry, or cooking or anything. PEople thought they’d be productive, but now they are finding that if human approval was all you were ever after trying to work, and play, and such, then once it’s removed, you have no motivation.

Pays to be home-schooled your whole life and taught to love learning for its own sake, and to do work because it mattered to your God and your family, and not to earn browning points at school. My mom didn’t do grades. Now I make A’s and B’s. Guess not knowing all those years didn’t hurt me at all.

but I struggle with feeling like it’s all meaningless too.

But I had a thought today. When we do these menial tasks, as repetitive as they are, it’s kind of like an act of faith, an act of hope. We’re sort of saying, to our family, ourselves, and our God, that “I still care. This still matters. Because I believe that doing the small things leave me open to do the big things.”

I cook a meal today because I believe cooking will be important in the future. Even if it doesn’t feel like it matters now.

Even if cooking dosn’t matter, my family eating does.

Making the bed doesn’t matter that much in of itself, but doing your daily duty, it matters becaues it’s the daily things that remind us of the long term things.

C. S. Lewis got at the idea that th Present is the closest thing any of us experience to Eternity. And Eccleistates says that God has put Eternity into the hearts of man.

Christian think that heaven will be an eternal Now. All things will be happening at once, yet nothing will overlap. Something we can probably only even imagine though dreams, because time is odd in dreams.

And the every day things are important because, when you think about it, Heaven doesn’t really touch our lives at any time except in the present. We can’t live in the future, we shouldn’t live in the past.

If I try to live into even 6 days ago, I end up in a world of hurt, because I’m borrowing troulbe I already went through and going through it again.

I think this quarantine is kind of liek that. If we think about how long it’s gone on, we’re exhausted, and it feels like we’re serving out a sentance.

When Corrie Ten Boom was in soliatary confinement, she learned to make every little thing she did count. If she had a chore, she did that, if she had ants to watch, she would stop the chore and do that. She would read scripture “until the pain stopped” and it became more alive.

Funny, reading the Bible doesn’t make me feel worse. It truly is the book for the suffering person. It never minimizes suffering, but it promises a renewel of strength for those who suffer. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall laugh” (Luke 6).

The Bible also tells us to do everything we do as to Christ. I think this means what people are trying to say when they say “live in the moment.” Be fuly present.

You know what robs me of joy the most in my life is not sorrow itself, but being distracted by thinking about my problems. When I do things I ejoy, my mind will wander onto it all.

Take a second, ask yourself, how many times doing anything I liked lately hve I quantified it by a reference to the lockdown or virus?

Ive heard it from everyone “Right now we can’t do anything else but…”

“Everything’s crazy right now so I didn’t…”

“Because of quarantine I binged…”

If we were brutally honest, we’d admit we would have done or not done all those things even if quarantine hadn’t happened. It’s just a really convientednt exuse.

But here’s something I wouldn’t have done without this:

I wouldn’t have made a new friend in my ASL class probably, or not as fast.

I wouldn’t have tried as many new recipes and found out I liked being creative in cooking.

I wouldn’t have gotten to know the people at my church better from hearing their stories and seeing who was consistant enough to keep coming and trying to connect.

I maybe even will get a job because of it, fingers crossed.

And yes, I’ve spent too much time watching stuff, but I did find some new shows I liked that maybe wouldn’t have sounded as interesting without this.

I’ve read more books too.

And I’ve gotten closer to God, and my family.

Is it all good, no.

And do I still need to learn how to live in the moment. Yes.

But here’s the thing, what if we all stopped focusing on what we lost because of this, and started looking at what we gained? Or what we still have. What we can still do. And instead of measuring it by quarentine, look at it as outside of it. Something that isn’t really touched by this trial.

The Word says everything that can be shaken will be shaken until all that remains is what cannot be shaken.

So, maybe we should look at what hasn’t been shaken.

If nothing else, people will always be arguing about politics as long as free speech exists, which I hope is still for a long time. I get annoyed with it, but I’d rather have constant arguing than lose the ability to argue in public at all. Think about that.

I still get restless, and I’m sure I will again, even today. But if I’m growing closer to be able to just be present to everything here, then I am growing stronger.

In the end that’s what Anne Frank learned, and what Corrie Ten Boom learned, and what everyone who survives and thrives in these times learns. not to never be depressed, that’s impossible, but to live for the Now. Whatever the Now happens to be.

Looking ahead is good, too, that’s how we hope. But it’s good to appreciate what we already have.

Even if it’s just one or two things, that’s something. There’s some who don’t even have that.

I guess I’ll end this with a challenge, if anyone has read this far down (thank you) then how about you comment something that you gained or still have even after all that’s happened. Anything’ll do. We all need to talk more to each other about it.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

Where I’m at.

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What a month last month was for me. Crazy.

It’s not usually a good idea to list the bad things that happen to you, but sometimes you have to in order to just appreciate that you got through it.

So, in the course of a month, I:

  1. Got rejected from at least 3 job applications after an interview.
  2. Got a mouth infection (not fun) and had to be on antibiotics that made me feel nauseous.
  3. Had a huge attack of intrusive thoughts.
  4. Had a huge attack of anxiety about all of the above
  5. Then got what we think was mild food poisoning, along with my sister, and had a 2nd period in one month, a weird phenomenon that happens sometimes and made me feel even sicker.

Still recovering from that last one, but I am feeling better. Still I felt so sick I barely ate anything for 3 days and just managed to eat a little better yesterday. Don’t know if it was hormones, allergies, bad food, or some unholy combination of all three.

Somehow, even after all that, I still have felt closer to God than before.

I don’t think God gave me all those problems directly, and with prayer, thankfully, some of them are going away, but God didn’t just lift them off immediately either.

It’s ironic that a lot of my problems are self-inflicted after the intial issue that wasn’t in my control.

I eat less when I’m stressed, so the more worried I get about feeling unwell, the less I want to eat, and the worse I feel as I get hungrier.

I worry so much about making it worse by eating, I forget that not eating makes it far worse.

My sister asked me why it bothers me so much to think of throwing up, and I didn’t really have an answer. It just always has. Even if arguably that’s not the worst thing ever ( I hate it), what I hate most is how ill I feel before and afterwards. It gets to where I’m more afraid of the idea than of the reality.

It goes back to when I was a kid and felt sick a lot because of anxiety. I would try to figure out what kind of sick I felt, and obsess over it, but I’d think “as long as I don’t throw up it’s not the worst.” I’d pray, begging for that. When I’d feel better a few hours later, it was relief.

The thing is, it’d ruin my time, whatever I was doing. All I wanted was to be at home, curled up with a book, or by the toilet, even if I knew nothing was going to happen.

I guess I never questioned if I could be any different. After I got older and my faith got stronger, this problem went away for the most part, but it rears up every now and then with my allergies, or stress, or PMS. I rarely ever actually get sick, even colds, but I freak out any time I think I might be.

So, getting sick twice in one month has me tripping, you can imagine.

At least, it would, if I let it.

But in another way, God used both these experiences to show me how deeply I worry about health. And let it steal my peace and joy any time I have a glimmer of sickness, real or false.

When I get worried, it’s hard for my body to heal anyway, or to even want to. I almost don’t want to try, for fear it won’t work, because then…then what? I guess I feel I couldn’t handle it.

The reality is that’s not true. As with most things, this fear is mostly just shadowy illusions, not based in what’s likely.

I can’t even say if having physical symptoms is worse than emotional. Some of you who have mental illnesses probably think you’d trade for a physical one in a heartbeat, or it might be the other way around. Every problem seems easier to deal with then our own.

Well, our struggles are tailor made for us, I think, in more ways than one. I inherited this struggle with my health from my Grandparents, like with so many other fun things I deal with. I had two who were obsessed with their health constantly.

My dad also constantly felt bad, and just lived with it, never feeling he deserved any better.

Now, me, I’m trying to kick all this. Not that I beleive I will never get sick, but that the same constnat problems I’ve had my whole life can go away.

I know that not every problem goes away, but so many of mine are stress related, and being stressed isn’t a state of mind I want to stay in.

I doubt most people think of me as a stressed person, who know me. I don’t come off that way, because external things rarely upset me as much as other people, my battle is always inward with my own issues. It’s hard to explain that to people.

God showed me how much I think of this stuff. And I am getting a glimmer too of how often I pity myself.

My dad always pitied himself, but he wasn’t compassionate to himself, and I can act the same way. I will feel sorry for myself for going through all this, and beg sympathy of people, but I will be hard on myself at the same time, with a frustration toward my body for not cooperating with what I want and not letting me do what I want.

As if what I want is always best. It seems better than doing what I used to and embracing it as an excuse to hide, but perhaps the pride of thinking I know best is not really better, just different.

Yet, after the first day of feeling really sick, to the point where I dry heaved and gagged, but nothing came up, my sisters and I prayed, and then I got up and danced around my living room, feeling better, but not completely, and I did manage to eat a little after that.

I didn’t get that bad the other days.

But I thought, I would have never done that in the past. Somehow, I felt fine, even though I didn’t feel fine. How is that possible?

God is weird sometimes.

I don’t know how all this will end, I’m learning as I go. I don’t even know how applicable it is for anyone but me, the reasons people struggle are so different.

But my thought it, maybe all this is happening now so I don’t spend decades of my life with the same problems as my dad had. Always thinking I couldn’t do anything about them.

Maybe it’s necessary to learn this now, to prepare for my calling. Certainly it’s interesting how much God can teach you just from living everyday life. Some of us go on big soul searching journerys, some of us stay home and live ordinary lives for 20 years till one day God tells us to move, like Abraham.

Whichever it is, I guess I’m learning, like Paul, to be content with where I am at, to believe it’s where I need to be, and God is growing me through this. Even if it seems painfully small at times.

Though, G. K. Chesterton thought that the ordinary things in life were the most enchanted.

I guess I’ll end with that thought, until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

More than Normal

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I don’t love the many days of Recovery that aren’t exactly good, aren’t exactly bad, just… repetitive.

But on days where you don’t always expect it, you can learn things.

I find the harder my mental, emotional, and physical symptoms push at me, the harder I push back, like that one Skillet Song puts it (Not Gonna Die.)

Why shouldn’t I do what I want? Even if I have issues.

And you know, I’m finding there’s a lot of people like me out there.

Before starting Therpay and ending an abusive situation, I never heard people talk about struggling with mental health problems all that much, I knew one or two people maybe, but I didn’t talk to them at length about it.

Since coming out about all this, I keep discovering people who seem otherwise happy are secretly hiding tormenting anxiety, depression, and mood swings.

Then again, people might have thought my Dad seemed happy too.

See, I’m not like that. When I’m going through something, it’s pretty obvious I don’t smile or talk as much, I’ve always been frustrated with myself for this, but now I am wondering if it’s a good thing. I wear my heart on my sleeve in many ways. When I’m happy I show it, when I’m down I show it. But people notice and can help me.

I’m surprised by how many people who seem cheerful are covering up pain. It kind of makes sense, you have to overcompensate for how you feel. I’m noticing there is a fragility to it, and those people tend to make dark jokes. They joke about their negative feelings too.

I guess it’s a way to ask for help, but knowing that others may not really be able to help you, it’s hard.

Sometimes there’s a solace in knowing others are going through it, but for me, it’s actually discouraging to know they haven’t conquoered it either, I was hoping there was just something I’m missing.

That’s why I was blessed, quite literally, to talk to a lady at my church who’s actually been through the whole intrusive thoughts/depression ordeal, and been free for 10 years now. Which was very encouraging to hear.

My struggle isn’t over, but it is better. I got some good prayer.

It’s got to sound so weird, treating my issues with prayer and worship. Not the most accepted method.

Still, it’s Biblical.

Not that I’m saying professional help is bad, I did seek it out, but it just doesn’t work as well as the other things did.

There’s a song by Rachael Lampa “My Remedy” that I have a new apprecaition for since all this started.

I know where to go, to heal my heart to soothe my soul…

Every time I cry, and I want to hide, feeling like I’m damaged on the inside, I come running to You..

(You know what I need, you’re the Remedy, that’s why I’m keeping you close.

You know what’s bad for me, my only therapy, Jesus your love is my hope.)

On point, off track, one step forward, two steps back. Some days are gonna be just like that.

You’re my medicine, relieve my pain again and again, you always take me back no matter where I’ve been.

Every time I’m hurt, and it doesn’t work, feeling like it never could get any worse, you know just what to do.

It can feel like everyday is simply the struggle to feel normal again. Whatever normal is. I don’t even remember, what I am at now may actually have been my normal beofre, I just didn’t notice what was lacking from it.

If I were to have been really honest, even before the emotional backlash to my Dad moving out started to surface, my life didn’t feel complete.

I spent years in that abusive cycle, feeling afraid, rejected, used. All of which I was. Of course I didn’t feel normal.

Like those stupid pot commercials that played after it got legalized. “Helps me feel normal.” If being high is normal, all I can say is you need a new normal.

And so did I. If that situation was normal, normal is overrated.

Of course for many people, a bad situation is normal. It’s all they’ve ever been in, they’re used to it, they know how to “handle” it, so to speak. Some people are addicted to constantly being hurt, and riding on the Drama high.

One reason I was able to break the abuse was because I had slowly stopped needing the drama. There was a time I fought with my dad on purpose, but after awhile, God showed me how stupid it was to keep doing that when it never worked and only made us both upset. My dad himself had to have drama, if we had a good day, he’d start a fight or give me a verbally scarring lecture in order to restore balance. It was horrid. But he was addicted to the chaos.

My normal was still not perfect though, my normal was not a thriving family dynamic, but simply “coping” until I could get out of it. And I’ve come to see that’s how I treat every problem in my life. I try to cope until an escape presents itself.

It usualy works, gritting your teeth and clenching your hands, up till a certain point. Most painful events only last a few days at most.

But when it goes on for months, and you start to wonder if an end is in sight, then coping becomes a death trap. It leaves you feeling hopeless.

It’s okay to cope, if you have no choice, but in many cases what we are coping with may be something imaginary. Our real problem may be we can’t let go of our perception of ourselves as the victim, or the only one who’s suffering, or worse, we can’t stop seeing ourselves as a failure, a worthless piece of crap, lazy or difficult, or impossible to love.

You can cope with being told that over and over again, like Cinderella in that old story does… but what happens if that situation ends, and you still only see those things around you.

The fairy tales have it right, you do need to be rescued from it by someone else, no one can get out of that place themselves. If they thought they had, that would actually be a terrible sign.

My mom said this to me yesterday, that I don’t need to get back to “normal”. I want to get “better“, to move on into a better situation.

Normal is the status quo, but Jesus promised us an abundant life. Not a normal life.

Normal really is overrated.

Now, if better becomes the new normal, then that’s good. But my mom reminded me of something I already believed, that state of being that is permanent is not possible for a Christian, not a healthy one. The Word says we go from glory to glory.

Stagnation is death, in the Spiritual. God never changes because He is a complete entity, and needs no growth, He already has it all. But all created things, at least in this world, have to grow to be alive.

Anyway, so my new attitude needs to become that at the end of this, I will not have my old state of mind back, but a better one. I will not be as happy as I was, but happier. More joyful.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

Not Gonna Die https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njJ7NZMH70M

My Remedy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXgcwHvsqTc

A difficult conversation.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Part of Recovery is facing your fears, and figuring out a new way to live.

I watched a movie about being in rehab, rehab for addiction and recovery from abuse have some striking similariaties, I guess abuse eats away at your life the same way addiction does, just one is self inflcited and the other is inflicted on you.

One of the reasons I’ve chosen not to drink for this period of my life is that I have alchoholism on one side of my family, maybe both, and drugs on both, and I don’t want to start making that my go-to during a rough period.

The Holy Spirit is the only coping thing I want to be addicted to, event hough it’s hard. It can feel like taking a pill or a drink would make it so much easier because physical symptoms suck, and make emotional symptoms worse.

I’ve had stress symptoms all this week, which seem to have been triggered by a difficult conversation with my aunt.

See, as part of not letting my dad control our lives anymore, my sisters and I have discussed telling our extended family about what happened.

The trouble is my dad cannot keep his mouth shut about any drama in his life, and he has already told half the family his version of the story. Which no doubt paints him as either the victim, or the person struggling to get over his difficulties (still the victim).

My aunt is the main person who informs everyone in the family what’s going on with anyone else, so all our uncles and grandparents are calling her asking about us…calling us directly would never cross their minds.

I don’t really mind it so much, except that a slanted version of our story is getting spread.

I called my aunt over the weekend, she’s my dad’s sister, grew up with the same crap as he did, and has a handle on many of his flaws.

She said she was wondering about it and would like to hear more, so I told her. I gave her the highlights.

The word that seemed to surprise her most was ABUSE.

She couldn’t seem to grasp that her brother could really have abused us.

I gave her the physical, verbal, and emotional examples. She actually witnessed when my dad punched me, and she said she would have probably done the same if her kid had hit her first. I explained why I did it and his history of barging into my room without knocking, etc, bu it didn’t sway her.

Though I told her that he’d threatened my several times before that point, and had threatened me afterward. When I said that it was over me not doing something he asked/told me to do, she said in her house she’d expect her kid to do chores too.

The crowning injury for me was when she said that she thinks there is no good guy, there is no bad guy, that there were things I could have done differently, things that caused incidents.

??????????

I really hope you are horrified right now, and that this doesn’t sound familiar, if it does, you have my sympathy.

Let me define some things:

After a certain age, I don’t think a kid should be physically forced to do things like chores. There’s other consequences.

Which is moot anyway, because I was a grown adult when my dad threatened that, capable of making my own decisions. It had nothing to do with teaching me to be a good kid, it was about power. That’s all it was.

And if you are threatening your child with violence to get them to do something, you are acting like a tyrant.

I believe you can punish children for disobeying, then it’s a consequence, I do not think violence should be a motivation for the action to begin with.

But it doesn’t matter, since I was not a child. My aunt seems to not understand the obvious difference there.

My mom didn’t threaten to slap me out of temper, that I remember, but my dad did. He flung me out of stuff when I had done nothing wrong save for being there first.

I told my aunt this, I told her how he would tell us things he shouldn’t, like he considered suicide a lot. I told her how he verbally abused me with criticism, blame, and just horrible mocking that no one should ever say to or about their kids.

I told her about the manipulation.

She said some of it seemed like him trying to be a better dad than his father, by playing games with us. Though I said that wasn’t for us, it was for him. If we refused he’d whine about no one wanting to play with him, sometimes he got angry and yelled about it. Blaming us for making him unhappy.

Also, when he was trying to get over his gaming addiction, he’d blame us for not giving him a distraction by playing with him. Like that made it okay to play video games all night long and yell obscenities at the computer while we were trying to sleep.

Sure, our fault.

My aunt did admit some stuff, like how he makes everything about him, how he embarrasses people when they most want him not to, how he exaggerates what others do to him.

She puts it down to him having Aspergers (which I doubt after being in a program that talked about it) and not being able to get a sense of what other people feel.

But I know that is not true, I lived with my dad, he could tell what everyone felt as long as he wasn’t the cause. I’ve heard him explain exactly what people were feeling, and sympathize or use it against them.

He knew I had self worth issues, he knew I struggled with anger over what people do to me, but he would blank completely that he was the cause of that.

He could explain why my aunt was bothered by the behavior of everyone else but him, he’d own up to it if my mom pointed it out, and he’d laugh at it. He laughed at my hurt when I didn’t like his mocking and exposing me. He laughed at everyone’s hurt.

My dad liked punishing people. He liked bullying people who were weaker than him, who would let him. He hated me for getting stronger than that, but as long as he could get a reaction from my mom or sisters over what he said, he’d keep doing it.

He treated everyone like his parent, not his responsibility, and he still does.

My aunt told me he’s talked to her a lot about it, and owned up to some of what he did that she herself pointed out, but she focused on what bothered her the most, not what bothered us.

My dad told her apparently that he always thought we’d put up with him no matter what, that he wouldn’t be made to leave.

So, did he get married and have kids to ensure an audience for his bad behavior? A well of unconditional love? That he could withdraw from his whole life?

I guess so, he always did say he’d move in with me once he got too old to work (that’s not happening.)

Dad could never be accepted by his family, so he made one where he though he’d always have to be accepted. I heard him brag to people that my mom loved him despite all the bad things he did that she didn’t know about before they got married, so she was the best woman in the world.

I heard him yell at her for how disrespectful she was too, if she ever dared to question his treatment of me, or anyone else.

My dad wouldn’t always snap right away, but he’d snap eventually and make a whole thing of it, so you wouldn’t try it again.

I grant that our family was different from his, my mom made it so, but it wasn’t necessarily because he was a better parent.

My aunt knows the truth now, but she still encouraged me to think of what I could have done to cause all this, and to try talking to him. That I won’t know if he’s changed or not until I do.

Like I need to talk to him to know that 3 months of self reflection and 8 months of blaming us, are not going to undo 20 years of an abuser’s mentality.

if it could be changed, it would take years. Humility begins with realizing what you did, but you’ll realize a whole lot more once you start that process.

My aunt also told me that she feels we are in the phase of being angry right now, but when we are over it, and have kids of our own, we’ll understand why our dad was that way. We’ll see it was because of his upbringing.

My sister’s response? “I hope not.”

Mine too, I hope I never start justifying myself to my kids because of my past. I hope my husband never gives me leeway to be abusive, even if I sometimes act like a victim because I was one.

I want to adopt, for crying out loud. A lot of orphaned or foster kids were abused, do I want to add my name to that list? Heck no!

What my aunt is doing by saying this was my fault, is saying it’s not abuse. Because you never, ever tell a victim they did something to deserve that. Their abuser might, but you shouldn’t.

Believe me, we deal with that thought enough.

I don’t generally ask myself if I did something to deserve it.

I did about the hitting, but most of the time I knew he was overreacting, and had no right to treat me like garbage.

You know what’s sad?

If I had turned it on for my aunt, if I had cried and told her all my hurt feelings, Maybe I could have gotten more sympathy. My very calm, mature way of discussing it can work against me.

I’ve seen it with other people too, they get put off by me not crumbling, crying, acting like my life sucks.

I get it in a way, if this really happened to you, how can you be calm? It’s horrible, people in movies cry, other girls cry so easily, why don’t you cry? We can do the hug thing and say it’ll all be better.

Two reasons:

  1. When I did cry, people didn’t ease up on me, they doubled down. They told me not to cry, that I wasn’t being attacked, that this was because they loved me… crying was blood in the water to the people in my life.
  2. I did cry, I spent years sobbing alone in my bedroom, at night, trying to get past it. Trying not to be miserable. I was less depressed then than I am now when I can’t cry and let it out because I’ve become so “mature.”

 

I can’t beg for pity anymore, I once did. I got it twisted around and shoved in my face, by the one person who begs for more pity than anyone else I know.

He’s doing it now. He just can’t understand why we won’t talk to him, he’s changed! he realizes he was a jerk now.

Like he realized it scores of times as I grew up, and did nothing.

Any excuse will do for him, I’m sick of listening to them.

But I know why my aunt told me all this and won’t call it abuse.

She’s lived through the same thing with her parents, she’s heard terrible things from them. She broke the most out of the cycle of words and actions, I think she got resented for that the same way I did. No siblings to cheer her on either.

She finally accepted the excuses her parents made, and accepted her place in it. She blames herself for causing some problems because that is easier than seeing it as senseless.

Abuse, cruelty, neglect, they are all senseless. I’ve said this before.

My aunt’s view is too cotton candy for me. It assumes people cannot just deliberately do wrong because they refuse to do right.

That’ just not true. I believe the bible, it says people are wicked. On purpose, and on accident. And all of us will do both. A good person might just be one who does the least on purpose.

But that’s a human standard.

A good person is one who can own up to dong all they did, and doing it knowing it was wrong, even if they didn’t see how wrong it was, they knew it wasn’t right, and then, they try to change. Failing to change, they admit they can’t, and fall back on God. That’s what the Bible calls being righteous.

The sacrificial system in the Bible is an acknowledgment that we will sin, we cannot stop, but God’s grace makes us right with Him, if we confess our sins. We can stop sinning when God gives us that ability.

I have not stopped getting angry, but I have stopped bullying my sisters over it.  I haven’t stopped feeling insecure, but I’ve stopped blaming the wrong people. I’ve stopped demanding my parents fix that for me.

There are days I hate being an abused kid. I hate the stress of it, and how my body breaks down under it after awhile. I hate how people misunderstand, and still think it’s my fault

As if you blame the slave for trying to run away from a cruel master, and say it was their fault when the master whipped them almost to death for it. Sure, they caused it by running, but would they have run if the master was kind?

I loathe many things about this process.

But I don’t hate my aunt. I feel sorry for her. She still thinks it was somehow her fault. She couldn’t tell me that if she didn’t believe it.

I’ll admit to all of you, I find the whole thing depressing and hard to accept.

But I’ll get through it, because I am doing something about it. In the end, the survivor is still the lucky one.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

 

When you miss your abuser.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

You know what one of the freakiest parts of abuse is?

When you miss it.

No one likes admitting it, but victims of abuse generally experience feelings of fondness and longing for their abuser.

If you’re like me, the scapegoat, then you can also “miss” the feeling of being blamed and dumped on.

Now, miss means two different things in this context.

There’s the actual feeling of “I wish they were here, I’d like to talk to them.”

Then there’s the weirder “I just feel off without some one being a jerk to me at least once a day, or every few days.”

When my dad moved out, it had gotten to the point where I could predict him making a biting remark or losing his temper at me about once a week, maybe more often. There were periods of time it was a daily occurrence.

I was remembering today one startling example of how far this had gone.

I have frequent allergy attacks, sometimes bad enough to resemble a bad cold, and I take medication that makes me sleepy, the symptoms themselves can make me tired also.

Well, it was a miserable day,  and I had taken the medicine, my sister was taking an art class at the time, just a few streets away. My dad got home in time to take her, but sat down in front of the TV and told me I should do it instead. I told him I wasn’t feeling well and shouldn’t be driving (I’m sure I sounded stressed at the time, this happened a lot.) My dad went ballistic, saying he wasn’t feeling well either (he seemed fine,) and I had better obey him and do it. I refused, he grounded me in a rage–for refusing to drive on medication to go two miles away when he had a car. His main reason was he wasn’t wearing pants, and he was livid that he had to go put pants on, because that was so hard.

My dad can act like a five year old sometimes.

I wish I could say this ended well, but in the end I felt guilty (for no real reason) and went and picked her up, which did not get me off the hook. I got grounded. I was 19 or 20 when this happened, if you’re thinking there’s a red flag to some kind of power imbalance in that, then you’re right.

That might have been when I told my parents to stop punishing me for stuff, a conversation I never should have had to have at 20, but…

The crazy thing is when I asked my mom about it, she was mad at me for acting that way, calling it unacceptable…when I was clearly not in a good position to be driving.

That kind of thing happened all the time. My dad used everything he could to have power over me, and over anyone else he could feasibly control. He got frustrated with people he couldn’t control.

You might wonder how one could possible miss that?

Well, it’s like my therapist says, it was my normal. I don’t miss it because I liked it, I miss it because it was the centre of my life, even if I didn’t choose it.

The Israelites missed Egypt after they left it, they complained that they could get food and water there, and they wished to return to it, thought hey were brutally treated slaves, who had their own sons taken from them and killed just as a power move to keep them second class citizens so they couldn’t overthrow the Pharaoh.

How do you miss that?

How do I miss someone who actively tried to ruin my life and make it as hard as possible. Who resented it if I or my sisters were ever happy, especially doing anything that he had no part in.

I believe the missing that feels like a regular type of longing is what comes in cases like mine where the abuser could seem like an okay person. When they were happy, they could please and be thoughtful. But so can most of us, it’s a very broken person who can never be nice. They exist, but it’s rare.

My dad took fits of “kindness”, saying nice things, trying to be caring, supportive, etc.  They were not wholly feigned, as C. S. Lewis put it, nor much dearer than dishwater, a single prick of any little word or event would burst his bubble. The rage would be back.

Often my dad would contrive a fight after any positive day or conversation we had, like he was not comfortable without the resentment being present. This was how I cam to see he hated me.

My mom can be the same way, only she is not comfortable till she’s made it so she feels you’re disappointed in her and unhappy with her. Even if it would have been simple to not say or do something to cause that situation. They are quite a pair aren’t they?

My parents are not really happy the way they are, they are just content to be miserable. If that makes sense.

I, who am not, have always been an anomaly to them, someone they cannot really understand.

My dad’s resentment really became demonic after awhile, he seemed to be incapable of wishing anyone else to be happy, even for a moment.

My dad was also always a bully, even from his childhood. He got picked on, but he also picked on other people as much as he could get away with.

He picked on a young man who had the misfortune of working for him, he went so far as to write and produce a soundtrack mocking the poor guy, and got his friends to help him, I’m not sure why they did, other than my dad’s friends have a lot of issues.

The man finally stopped taking his calls after quitting working for him, and my dad bemoans the fact to this day that he doesn’t get to torment him anymore, he never truly realized why it was horrid. I’m glad the guy had the sense to get out.

And of course, me. I got picked on for years. My dad eventually stopped doing it much once I stopped reacting to it or giving any sign I even heard, he found other ways to get a reaction out of me. But really, as I stopped reacting even to direct insults, he just ignored me as much as possible, blowing up whenever he got the chance to take some control back,

It puzzled my dad why I became immune to him. I think the song Titanium describes it best

“You shout it out, but I can’t hear a word you say. I’m talking loud, not saying much.

Criticized, but all your bullets ricochet, you shoot me down but I get up.

I’m bullet proof, nothing to lose, fire away, fire away. Ricochet, you take your aim, fire away, fire away. Shoot me down, but I won’t fall, I am titanium.

Cut me down, but it’s you who have further to fall, ghost town, and haunted love.

Raise your voice, sticks and stones may break my bones, talking loud, not saying much.

Stone hard! Machine Gun! Fired at the ones who run. Stone hard as bulletproof glass!”

This song perfectly describes how verbal abusers treat people. the “fired at the ones who run” signifies how the people who are intimidated get shot at more. 

And, like the song says, if you want to survive, you can end up like titanium. Hard.

I’m not sure there is any way, even with God, to avoid some hardening of yourself when you live with abuse.

The Bible says if you remove the cause of strife, it will cease. People critisize the Bible for it’s insistence on cutting sinful, wicked people out of contact with others, even to the point of death, but the Bible is wiser than we are, God knew long ago how sin works.

Abuse is one of the ugliest forms of domestic sin. Maybe the ugliest. the only things that might be worse are the perversions people do to each other in the name of science, or religion, or some other strange system.

Abuse could be the prototype for every other sin cycle, as it traps not only the abuser but the abused in their private and public sins. Hypocrisy and deception naturally follow abuse, like rain follows clouds.

My dad brought out the worst in all of us, he made us crueler, more spiteful people, because he played off all the worse parts in us to keep in power. Abusers rely on the fact that you have human weaknesses to keep control over you.

Actually, the anime remake Fruits Basket released an episode yesterday that portrayed this perfectly (that anime is genius by the way, using a curse + Beauty and the Beast type story to represent abuse, it works almost too well.) The main abuser manipulated the best boi Kyo by reminding him he was a monster. Till he broke.

Abuse makes you feel you are the monster, my dad set me up to feel that way from birth. All your faults are blown out of proportion, all your virtues are ignored unless they want something from you. You are told no one will love you but them. Or they are doing this because they love you.

God himself must want to gag when an abuser claims to love their victim (hey, it’s in Revelation if you don’t believe God has those emotions).

But because they lied to you, you think you are stuck with them. You really won’t be loved by anyone else.

My dad and his friends used to go off on me for not having people skills, no one ever bothered to teach them to me. That’s the point, abusers don’t want you to get better.

When I obviously had, when I made friends, my dad criticized them for being twits. He criticized my church fro not being like his. He criticized anyone I liked. I should associate with anyone he didn’t approve of, you see.

My dad is no one to miss, but because he could play the part, my mind can easily rick itself into thinking otherwise.

I want to give some advice to anyone reading this who might be recognizing this tenancy in yourself, maybe you even have an ex like this.

The Bible says to forgive, and we must forgive, if we ever want to be free, but it does not say to always forget. In fact, sometimes we need to remember when people sinned.

If you are a victim of abuse of any form, you have a difficult journey, but it is doable.

You must let go of your resentment, but you must remind yourself regularly that you were right to get out of that situation, that you deserved better, and you should get to be happy.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. The player is at fault, but they probably have no more power to leave the game than you did, until you were rescued form it (even if you left yourself, something happened to open your eyes, we don’t just suddenly become wiser).

Sad as it is, my dad cannot control himself, not because he cannot make different choices, but because he cannot change his own heart. He refuses to be helped, and so he cannot help it.

I wonder sometimes if someone who is abuse might read my posts and wonder about themselves. But they would never change unless a work had already begun in their heart, proof will never change an abuser.

I may someday get told I was stupid to call it abuse, if I ever talk to my Uncle or my dad’s friends gain, no doubt they will protest. But I no longer care if they think I’m over reacting.

Another thing about the Monster complex.

My dad used to feel like a monster growing up, and the truth it, he was one. He still is, but that does not mean he is also not God’s child.

Sadly, sometimes a person is just barely saved. But they do trust God, they just should not be around anyone else they can control.

The Victim feels like a monster too. When you suffer a lot, you can feel like you must deserve it, it’s one of the way we struggle to make sense of the insensible, but Cruelty is always senseless.

Cruelty is madness, that is why it is so horrifying. We can live with anything we feel happened for a reason, but when reason is gone, so is our courage.

That is why one of the paths to healing is through letting God redeem your suffering, bringing about a good out of it. Giving it a reason. But people confuse God giving it a purpose with God having a reason for it to happen in the first place.

God, being outside of time, can have a purpose in something He knows was going to happen, but didn’t want to happen.

It is more like how a mom can see her child get shoved off a junglegym and rush to catch them. They didn’t want it to happen, but they have a response ready.

Why do we have medics on standby at sports events? We know accidents happen. Why do we have laws for punishing crime, we know crime happens, but anyone who says the law causes crime is out of their mind and should be ignored.

God has a plan in place for what will happen.

The Bible says “my life and times are in Your hands.”

We should feel relieved that when suffering happens, God already had a plan to make it work for us for good, even if He didn’t want it to happen.

God is our Insurance Policy. He fixes the damage when other stuff happens to us. When you rely on God, you admit that you cannot protect yourself.

When my dad hit me I could not understand why God allowed it, but a year later, I thought I had an idea, that God allowed it to push my mom and sisters to agree enough was enough. I didn’t really get hurt (outside) and it took the blinders off.

Was it good? No. But it helped keep more stuff like that from happening. Much like a vaccine can only exist because a disease does, but if you survive the disease, you can help more people with the vaccine from getting it at all. It would be better not to need it, but humans don’t get a life free of trouble.

Anyway, this ended up running long.

Missing my dad is kind of an illusion, but if I don’t buy it, it’s not a delusion. A delusion would be to let yourself be fooled.

And the road out is to remember the truth, and then know that God does have a plan for helping you, if you embrace it.

Until next time–Natasha.