i’d really like your thoughts on something but first, a wee update. life got annoyingly life-like recently, hence lack of bloggy goodness…between the ongoing tension headache stuff and the coordinating transcontinental property transfers and the generally being insane, running my own business thing and my mother being in hospital this week it’s all a bit exciting around here. i am le tired.

thank you (!) to those who sent kind wishes re: my neurospastic brain. it seems to have stabilised, for the moment though tension headaches abound so very likely gonna need to see an actual doctor about that at some point. acupuncture maybe? hrm.

also, came to mind, funny how many of us over the rainbow types seem to get weird neuro events like migraines. not my point today…

But have been pondering Psych-flavoured things, never fear.

A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive. “I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived.”

any thoughts?

because for me, the first thing that sprang to mind was PTSD. but of course.

somehow i couldn’t help feeling that this particular metaphor felt so right for us, for the survival instincts we use, somehow, some unfathomable distance from the selves we thought we knew so well…

not a cell untouched.

perhaps the before and after images we have around our identities because of the trauma aren’t quite as distinct as they might first appear to be?

perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. it felt like the image reached that well beyond words. you know the one. that well that those of us who have gotten through it can only describe in halting steps and intense dilemmas, paused and paused again. but which we know so intimately as to travel with it, constant companions, beyond all present notion or past belief. it filters through us… like daylight through the curtains, even though they’re closed.

this is a decidedly curious ‘migraine’.

it has been about 72 hours now, give or take. i could call something at the start of the week a prodrome. or not. i could just as easily have been having one of those days.

at this point it could be any number of things gone awry in these here stormy neurological seas. you see, whilst migraines are primarily mediated by the serotonin levels in the brain — those ‘happy’ chemicals strike again — they really aren’t all that consistent in the ways they can present… even in those whose baseline neuro functioning is far more stable than mine ever has been.

first, we have nausea which is unusual enough for me. and to add to the strange it improves when i eat. … huh? that’s a new one on me. it’s possible i’m not eating as much as i think i am over time because my memory is pretty stuffed right now, so maybe that’s hunger? but it still seems odd. if this is caused by something viral it might make some sense, perhaps but then i should have a fever, which i don’t seem to.

then the pounding headache and fatigue which seem to be bouncing off the “huge spasms” in my neck, to quote my masseuse (bless her heart since i am a pain as a client. have to leave my undershirt, and a pair of pants on… she has even taken to mentioning she’s leaving the door open a little, which is really sweet since i haven’t even said anything).

anyway, all that jazz is fine and par for the course except that it responds better to reading than to medication. yeah.
odd treatment, that. isn’t it? if i concentrate on a book, the pain/nausea etc. goes away.

am writing this week off as a lost cause. it’s going in the cold case files because i just don’t get it. now, it’s possible it’s what they call a ’stress response’. helpfully ambiguous, as ever, oh mighty morphing medical establishment.

somewhere between Monday and Tuesday things did feel a little off… like someone was playing a vigorous match of footy with my brains for balls. so it’s plausible, perhaps even likely that this isn’t ‘just’ a migraine.

what on earth that means it actually is, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. and one to which i’d really prefer not to pay that much attention so much as have it magically fix itself in the way that i am hoping it will if i leave off stress-inducing activities for a sufficient period of time.

beyond self-imposed isolation i’m really not sure what to do. i have me a stack of books i’ve been meaning to read, and i’m working through those… also a packet of oreos.

and if all else fails i’ll turn off the lights and watch DVDs I won’t remember about things I’m not all that interested in until the world goes away or something, anything, shifts.

some ‘worst slogan ever’ contenders in this lot:

*shudder* and is it just me or does this look an awful lot like Demi Moore Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver?

Srsly?!

OK, so that last one’s a ringer but the rest are all the real McCoy, unfortunate as that may be…

and today’s lesson is, yes, we needed feminism. egads.

once the trauma’s over, we tend to look back and wonder. and part of that looks like “why didn’t i just… [fill in the blank]” or “i should have, could have, would have….” there are lots of stories you can put in there. i have boatloads on file, whatever the occasion.

and yes, other people think that way too. if you’re the partner/loved one of someone who has been severely traumatised then most likely you’ve thought about it, at some point. maybe it read more like, “but you’re an expert judo artist,” or plain old shock, “how did this happen?” but it’s probably there nonetheless.

it’s pretty normal. far as i can tell it takes years of training not to think that way and even then, some of it usually sneaks back in.

we think like that for a reason, though, and it’s because you, me, the postman all want to feel like we have some effect on the world around us.* that we’re not helpless even when we are.

so we have to bring ourselves back slowly by changing the way we measure success when it comes to the kinds of extreme trauma that can cause PTSD. success just isn’t what it used to be –

normally, we all have quite a few tools available that help us deal with life, as we know it but that’s the point: trauma isn’t life as we know it.

when the adrenaline kicks in, you don’t necessarily have access to those tools. your options can be very limited. you’re in ‘fight, flight or freeze’ mode and that’s all you can remember of the world. it’s a deliberate survival tactic on the part of the mind. clever, no?

it isn’t about skill or empathy or strength in that kind of situation. it’s a roll of the die and you and your whole human physiology are very much aware of that, and only that.

one of the ‘nice’ examples i have, the funny one i tell people is how i am sitting in the lounge room of my new apartment when two young lads, high as kites, jump over my fence.

they can’t see me. i glimpse them. enough to know, in the cold of my bones, that they weren’t planning on asking for a spare cup of sugar.

there is no thought, then. no time for it. only act or not, lock it down if you can. protect. so as they’re prying open the window i scare them with a booming impression of my father at his good old Aussie worst but i was lucky. one word, Oi!

you take your chances based on the information you have at the time and there’s no such thing as ’should’.

this isn’t a game. the importance of your life will always trump the fact that you’re a professional or a kick-boxer or had a phone that you might have had time to dial, if only you weren’t quite so busy dealing with the nightmare that has suddenly emerged from its container and which stubbornly refuses to issue you with a map and compass.

if you get out in even vaguely one piece, you did it right.

if you managed to get out and you still had the strength to get up the next day, you did it right.

if you’re here, today, you did it right.

it isn’t even a question. you did it right.

now repeat that a few million times because it’s the only way it’s ever going to sink in…

then repeat it some more because it’s the only kind of truth that’ll give you the courage to heal. and if you’re looking to be there for a survivor then you probably want to remind them of these things, from time to time.

* for those who like a little psychobabble with their tea — this is clinically referred to as one’s perceived ‘locus of control’. it’s part of that pesky human need to discriminate one thing from the next. trauma can, unfortunately, skew your bell curve… just a touch.

words wander, in tight-knit circles, nearer bound and boundless dread.

each moment cast with an iron sinker but all the same, round about — an approximate language i’m certain we once spoke. it is the language the moon dreamt, when time was no man’s and we waited for no day but today.

there are exceptional moments and those in-between. it seems i have known too much, in-between. i was an angel until he sent me back in time.

did you find grace? look still and dance with her two left feet, forget there ever was a beat as arm in arm we all fall down.

who picks and packs? who saw the puzzle, pieced?

there are stories to craft but first, a voice to muster. they stuffed the riddles in my ear. never mastered a clue, Sir, ever the black and blue, Sir, buttons weighing down my back.

there is no string to tie-up all that’s come undone. how cast aside, the breath i cannot take, the choices ready made. have i drawn a better suitor for this second winter’s gift?

striking with destiny’s left hook, i wrote the idiot’s guide to silence, swept the well-paved road we know.

we do not come lightly into this world
but squalling, wailing, dying we enter
and Begin.

my first breath is my last, conjoined by opposition, drawn in and up and over by unseen hands and uncompromising Nature.

Heaven is a place I’ve stood, a barrier, an edge –

the base prophecy of my nature, when all but the split atom has been stripped away.

there is a poverty undreamt by my flesh, that takes place in the mind.

a river ceased, removed slowly, by degree. the level of the waters thicker than the pace the rhythm keeps.

you tread no sunlight, bear no wind nor echo falling rain. the spell of twilight, the long, long day that happens only, by the way. volitional retreat and this, it’s all in passing…

so i ask you: drag me to unity, though i kick and scream. draw me into you until i burst my bonds. most merciful Delilah, cut my hair? these featherweights are murder, don’t you know?

how about a prayer for my salvation offered by a blind man with no wish to be king, no desire except desire, no wanting left to ring the bell of time’s precocious heart?

let no soft path cushion this blow but prop me on my own two feet and force the ground into my soul.

there is no other journey but the coming back to life. un-ghost me, just Delight. unhook the terror of an all too quiet night, which ripped my dress while i was crawling across your splintered floor.

clasped in the jaws of great indignity, i laugh because i cannot find anything else worthy of a verb. the pause, unstoppered now. the clause surrendered to the sentence and the form of form exhausted.
i relent.

what’s with the Cartesian emotional states thing?

seriously.

yesterday was spent switching between numb and *rage*.

managed to get through it and accomplish necessary if painful tasks involving one relation who shall remain nameless for fear of setting off the Fury again. and i did not take it out on myself too much either. yay me.

how you doin’, Lil Miss Fury? i’ll be over here, yeah. in case you need me. but don’t need me, ‘k?

the not doing something stupid meant i had to find other things to do. so i spent 1.5 hours dancing, 1 hour on the swings and 1.5 hours at meditation group. and i worked. and i drugged myself to the eyeballs with xanax. and somewhere in all that i managed to let go of enough energy that the rage didn’t swallow me whole.

you really are a ticking bomb at that stage. and it doesn’t defuse easily. this wasn’t even a big thing, in the scheme of things. not actually earth shattering but apparently enough for me to blow my stack over. partly ‘cos i had to apologise to said relative, which makes me feel about as good as giving the local park drunkard a BJ would.

really, though. there’s this large part of me that just doesn’t get it. why, after all this time, there’s still so much unrefined anger there that i can’t seem to channel into useful daily life energy. it just waits for the next nuclear meltdown, much like Bruce Willis in every movie he has ever been in.

where do my words go? i have them. i know this. so why do they go *poof* when faced with this stuff…?

i want a life. i want to be spending it with the people i love, not battling demons. i’m not Buffy, for gawd’s sake. and i’m not just a girl interrupted either.

A three-day-old baby boy, weighing 8.7-kilograms (19.2-pounds) right, lays next to a standard size newborn baby at a hospital in Kisaran, North Sumatra, Indonesia.

One word: Ouch!

I say: this is, for me, a happy day! Iambic pentameter? Really? I worry about myself sometimes. It’s National Punctuation Day, in the USA.

Who knew, right?

Meanwhile, back in the land of normal sentence structure; There’s a baking contest, which is lovely, in a Leave it to Beaver fashion.

Entries close September 30, so get your oven mitts on, folks. Even if you don’t know your ellipses from your colon this is serious business we’re talking. Baked goods are at stake!

Also I find the thought of posting pictures of hyphenated, parenthetic food stuffs strangely exciting. Something about it tickles my fancy, if not my taste buds.

“Unless someone is willing to post me a breaded hash mark or two?” she asked, hopefully. Of course, I could try the baking thing myself but in my present condition I’d very likely burn down the house.