Oct 14 2013

Bloody hell my ears are giving me the irrits!

Nevertheless, today I soldiered on (without Codral) and did some baking. I also had a shower, got dressed and let the house (under slight protest.. it wasn't in my plans for the day). But when I made my plans I didn't realise I didn't have enough eggs for my proposed baking.

I actually feel relatively good, which is nice, however I am aware of a fairly high level of dissociation.

My son, the one who allegedly committed a very serious crime, has been uncontactable for a bit. I have had two phone calls from his case manager. It would appear that he left the youth shelter he was at and is sleeping rough. It is difficult on many levels. On one level I want to 'save' him, but I know he has to want to be saved. Up until recently he was following along with his major obligations regarding his bail, but in the last week he would appear to have thrown it all out the window. On another level I know I have to step back, he is legally an adult and as far as he is concerned I have no say in his life.

It hurts to be a parent, for a lot of people. The strain and upset that familial issues cause is often a trigger for me, leading me into depressive episodes, anxiety attacks and sometimes full blown meltdowns. So far in the last couple of weeks I have avoided these things, even whilst being ill (which reduces your resistance normally) and I know that it is because I am dissociating from it in order to protect myself.

I don't like dissociating, it took me a long time to break the habit when it first became apparent. At that time I had basically been dissociated almost permanently for more than 10 years. It contributed to my marriage breaking down, and before that to an inability to form good relationships. 9 years ago I first started seeing my current therapist and he was the one who pulled me back, or helped me pull myself back. Learning to manage my emotions was a hard road after not dealing with them for so long. I would make comments like 'how do you people deal with all this emotion, its so hard'. I was virtually robotic for so long it was like learning to be human again.

Learning to deal with emotions again allowed my man and I to rebuild our relationship (there were other issues as well). Not many people get a second chance, but we did.

So for a few years I was almost 'normal', to the point I stopped having therapy and things were going quite well. And then my best friend died. She had been by my side through a lot of my abuse, and was also abused by Griff as well. She was like a sister to me and the pain of her death tore me apart. Then one of my son's friends committed suicide, a former doctor committed suicide too (he was a staunch supporter of mental health issues, yet didn't deal with his own), another friend got murdered and a long time family friend died suddenly. All this happened in the space of about 6 months, as well as some other fairly unpleasant stuff.

I wasn't mentally equipped to deal with such a massive onslaught of trauma and it led to where I am now. The trauma of my childhood became tied to all this new trauma, especially because of my best friend. We had banded together to bring Griff to justice, and after she died I wanted to get justice for her as well as myself. When Griff was 'spared' I was devastated. The trauma he put us through was one of the reasons behind her death. She never learnt to deal with it and she began escaping via drugs and alcohol. At first it was just dope and a bit of ecstasy, but eventually she became addicted to heroin.

She used to joke that I was her only 'straight' friend, and nothing I could say, nor nothing she experienced with friends overdosing was ever quite enough for her to quit completely. She tried lots of times, she was even on the methodone program for a while. But in the end the demons were stronger than she was. I'm not sure she intended to kill herself, but I know at the time of her death she had just suffered a betrayal, and it may well have been the final straw.

I still haven't really come to terms with her being gone, and it has been 3 years. I see her face on my facebook page sometimes, I don't have the heart to remove her. I can think of her and smile now, but I still cry inside.

The fact that drugs took her life makes what my son is doing even harder to endure. He swears he will never touch harder drugs than dope, but I have heard that before. I truly hope he is stronger than his demons. I already have one scar on my heart that will never heal, I do not want another.