a swim and some insight
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Written by keller 9. Jul 2008 11:39 AM
Well I went about taking the boys for a swim and myself yesterday. Once I got motivated enough to be there and changed it all seemed to be OK.
I have been practicing my mindfulness skills whilst doing laps. This has proved very difficult and today was almost impossible! However, I am pleased I managed to go and get in some laps. I now have the super ear plugs so hopefully there will not be a reoccurrence of my infection.
For me I am still struggling as I look for the answer or pathway but I do hope soon I can accept and move on. It has been a long exhausting fight.
On sharing some of these thoughts with my clinical psychologist, she wrote:
“Acceptance is not the same as resignation or giving in or giving up. It is not about fighting what we dislike in the hope that it will go away. Some things will not go away no matter how much we hate them. But accepting them can sometimes make us hate them less then they become more palatable and we experience some relief. You can learn to do this but I sense that a part of you does still not want to accept. You’re getting closer though.”
This was interesting, she thinks I am making progress, at times so do I but the constant torment is relentless, and I am at war with myself all the time. I cannot just choose to accept, I have to move there mentally, baby steps I guess.
The psychologist also wrote about grief. Having studied grief as part of my subject load at uni (what seems like 100 years ago), I am reminded on the various stages of grief and how they are not progressive or time measured.
Denial is often an early stage and yes, I believe I have had that. When I refused to use the cane, when I refused to tell work, it was impossible to use the computer, when I would trip and fall all the time…these were my denial stages. I honestly think I am through that now, I do not deny the existence of my limitations, and likewise I certainly do not embrace them.
Anger is next on the list but we can wax and wane as we in and out of all the stages. Sometime around late last year I lost my anger, I do not know how or why it up and left me, hurried away. I have always been angry, initially I called this passion or energetic but it was disguised it was indeed anger, and I have had it since I was about 12 or 13. Anger at my upbringing, of neglectful parents of my mothers’ alcoholism and my fathers’ fritt4ering away of monies and stealing that led him to repeated jail terms. Angry with foster families, angry at how hard life was and had been. I turned this anger into positively and worked hard through senior high school got a scholarship to uni and my career was a fast-paced one. My husband came along and loved my passion and drive (underneath it all though I was angry and scared). When my eyesight failed and later my hearing my anger was both internal (to the psychologist and the Dr) and internal (suicide attempts and hospital). I was in so much pain and my defense mechanisms were high. Now this anger is gone I feel I do not have much to replace it with, hence I feel mostly empty.
Sadness has come and gone as well and I feel the last few months I have been consumed by it. I have had bits and pieces of it over the last four years but now it is part of who I am. I am just sad.
Will I make it to acceptance and rebuilding? In a way I have had to do a little of both along the way, but true acceptance is far from me still. Even though every day when I wake and open my eyes I am confronted by reality. And, not a day goes by when I am not saddened by what I miss – what I have lost.
I think the last few days have given me some insight, I still feel incredibly saddened and surrounded by my own fears but there is some clarity to the journey I am on. And whilst I know there is no one destination I do know at the moment I am journeying. I am hopeful that for this moment at least I can trudge on.
Be kind to yourselves,
Liz