Still Out Here, Alive And Kicking

     Hi, Nancy, I'm not sure where to start.......As the med has been taking hold, I've become more purposeful in my mind and in my movements, and have become clumsy.  While it's amusing, it's also not.  A week ago on Tues, about the time I would have been coming to our appointment, I literally walked into the floor fan and fell into it and over it.  Bent the sucker.  Jarred myself really well and tangled with the fan so that I hurt my ribs and my knee.  Nothing broken, just bruised.  One good thing, I found out my bones are still strong -- I'd been wondering about that, I'm getting shorter by leaps and bounds.  :o)  Didn't really want to fall to find out, though.  My self talk is finally taking hold so I am starting to listen, which is wonderful.  I'm getting a handle on the pervasive feeling of fear that has been ruling my life, and have remembered that's it's just a feeling.  I confront myself many times a day when I start to sink back into fearfulness, and I'm able to pull myself out of the morass, now, at least for a while.  It'll get better and better.  One day at a time and all that.  ANYWAY, may we meet next Tues am as usual?  Still out here, alive and kicking,

Unconventional But Not Doing Harm

     We 4 (my sister, Dave and Barb, and myself) had to totally make our own way, figure the universe out for ourselves, and believe me, abused by a group of crazy adults, the facts we had to work with made no normal sense whatsoever, so how could our answers make much normal sense?  And children make such deep abiding vows to themselves, you know?  What you vowed to yourself as a child of 4 to 11 years old can stay with for a lifetime, even if you grow to forget the specific vow.  It's deep inside for the rest of your life.  I made vows.  Not while I was loved, nurtured, tenderly guided into mature adulthood by wise ones, but while I remember being raped daily, trained to be able to endure pain and deprivation, starved, tortured, ritually abused, my obvious plight ignored by teachers, neighbors, relatives, unprotected, hated by my parents....it's no wonder that my inner convictions can be somewhat skewed from the norm.

          I was sincere, though, and wanted to do no one any harm. That's a big deal for someone with my background.  My sincerity and desire to do no harm didn't make me turn out "normal", but it did keep me from turning out badly.  Unconventional, nontraditional, inexperienced in quite a lot of what those around me take for granted, yes, and that's all not an easy life.  Not consumed by hatred, or in prison for the rest of my life, or cruel.

Dreams Of Mine That Say That I Don't Trust Myself

     I had dreams last night.  One dream had the message that I don't trust myself and attempt to sabotage my conscious efforts.  The dream involved a smarmy, slimey kind of character (one part of my personality) going around "telling" on a business-like character (another part of my personality), like, what the business-like character was planning to do was wrong and obviously needed to be stopped before anything could actually be started.  Two points:    

     1) What the business-like character was hoping to accomplish was NOT automatically bad for me. 

     2) Stopping the business-like character before she could even get started -- that sounds like my life!  I HATE it when I have good ideas for what I should be doing, or make good plans to accomplish meeting my goals and I just stay quiet and don't even begin to do them.  That is absolutely the bane of my existence.  I want to get rid of the part of my personality that has me being this way.  It's like being paralyzed.  I want to claim my own life, to take charge, to be in control.

            I recently learned about what the term "learned helplessness" means, and I wonder if that is going on in my life.  It could very well be, given my background.  I kind of think there is something deeper going on, though, maybe in addition to the learned helplessness.  I want to get rid of the deeper stuff, not just go for the shallower stuff.  Now, if I could just figure out how to do that.

Going To The Doctor Without Insurance.....

     Hi, Nancy, I made it to the doc's yesterday, and she was willing to start me on an anti-depressant.  Yes!  It was a complicated 5 hours with me being (as happens these days) disappointed in the lack of professionalism displayed by several people -- at first I was supposed to pay $401 between the 15 minute doctor appointment ($175 basic charge, yes I said $175 for a basic doctor appointment there) and the med, but over 5 hours I got it down to $123, $4 of it for the med.  I'm never going there again, but luckily I have an appointment at the People's Health Center in time for the first med check.  Anyway, yippee, and I know your letter helped, so thanks.  Jan H