Life Is A Good Enough Reason

I need to eat something, and so the fight within my mind begins. The first argument is usually that I'm not hungry. I'm so accustomed to living with the symptoms, that I don't recognize the most obvious body signals. Still, my mind tells me that I need to have a reason or an excuse to eat. Everyday I talk myself into it. I have to. I want to live, so I eat, but the fighting is madness, and it is tiring. The opening and closing of cupboards and refrigerator doors, sitting at the kitchen table with my head in my hands, the mindless eating over the sink, it is all so old, so familiar, so boring. My inability to just disappear at times pisses me off. "Don't see me," I want to shout! My belief that I was strong enough to starve myself made me feel untouchable. You can't take what you don't see...

The struggle is what tells me I'm alive. The passionate anger I feel toward this eating disorder is what makes me believe that I will win. Hell, I AM winning!

Play Me

Play Me

The dissonant chords spill down my spine

the ominous sound of winter wind

as the metronome ticks back and forth

You are all at once darkness and light

the sin of silence

as your hands pound against my keys

Did I feel you touch me?

I can smell the salt of your skin

on my fingertips to remind me

Fasten my dress

and drive me through winding roads

tell me your dreams

as I trace your palm

the lines that intersect with mine...

Angela Minard 2011©

Happy Holidays

This is a photograph of the Kansas City Plaza lights.

Merry Christmas! I'm the first one awake as usual. Even when the boys were little, I would have to turn on the Christmas music and stomp around the house to wake them all up. The anticipation of the day gets me every time, even now that the boys are older. Last night I cooked a big turkey dinner, which they all devoured. I can't believe we barely have any turkey left! Today we will go over to the in-laws for brunch and exchange gifts.

I'm really enjoying my time off work. I've done lots of yoga, and knitting. Shopping for Christmas isn't too big of a deal. We only buy for the kids in the family, so it is pretty easy.

I miss baking with my mom, and seeing my side of the family. I hate that they are so far away, especially during the holidays.

I will keep this short because hopefully my boys will be up soon, but I wanted to wish you all a wonderful holiday! Sending all my love:)

Red Fades To Black

I look down at my hands, unrecognizable as my own, gazing around surroundings all at once familiar and strange, searching my mind for my last conscious memory. In a flash of rememberance, the room begins to spin, and I shut my eyes tightly, until the red fades to black and I can once again breathe.

New memories take me by surprise. It is a smell, a look, a touch, or something they said to me and I'm gone. I want to stay, but somehow my mind goes on automatic pilot, protecting the child that I was. I think that I'm doing so much better until I have another episode, and then I feel like I'm back at square one. Why can't these memories stay buried like so many others? It seems unfair to have to be brought back to the past time and again. Do I do this to myself, and why? It is a constant battle to stay in the present, and I work so hard. As I sit here, I realize that I'm blaming myself for the memories, as if I want to torture myself, and that is not true. I have therapy today, and I need answers or explainations...a way not to blame myself.

Marching Forward

"Marching is not forgetting what is behind you and walking away. Marching is KNOWING what is behind you and purposefully, and methodically moving in the other direction."

This is a quote from my dear friend Eve, and I thought it was brilliant and wanted to share. It took a long time to know and acknowledge the past and what happened to me. I tried to forget, but eventually the truth caught up with me. I think sometimes people who haven't been through any kind of trauma expect you to forget about it and move on. I've had comments from people on this blog that felt that way. Knowing what happened to you and choosing to move forward is essential to healing. I will never forget, but the pain does lessen with time. There is peace in the truth of knowing.

Words

I have all of these words and feelings that bubble and rise to the surface. I feel like a volcanoe on the verge of erupting, and yet I don't even know what that means, or what it would look like. I've always had trouble naming the feelings, although I feel them all so intensly. It is major work to keep them bottled inside, and yet that is what I've always done. I try to ignore them and push them away. Everyday I go through a myriad of emotions that pass through me like electric currents without an outlet, and today I feel worn out by them. My sleep is frenzied, as if I'm running with no place to go, a longing to find what is missing. Today I read a blog post by a young girl who was brutally raped and my heart aches for her. I want to reach out, but what words of comfort can I give? The rapist was caught and pleaded guilty. She made the choice to face him in court, and I realize that I have so much unleashed anger, with no one to direct it at, although I don't know that I would be brave enough to do what she is doing.

My mind is skipping, and I want to tell you how grey this week has been. I'm both frustrated and challenged at work as I try to figure out four kids with autism that I'm just getting to know, and trying to train paras who have never worked with children with autism. There are moments of inadequecy and triumph depending on what strategies work or don't work. Any progress made will most likely regress with winter break, and when they come back we will have to begin again. I need this break, a pajama day, and a cookie baking day with Christmas music blaring. Two more days, and it will be mine! I know this post sounds a bit down, and really I'm not, but I needed so much to write these words. I suppose I should talk to actual people more! You know on the outside I'm always doing "fine." Most of the time I'm better than fine, and that feels fabulous! I'm ending this on a positive note, but of course, as always I will return with more words.

Dancing Alone

Dancing Alone

...so I daydream into this night

fighting sleep like a child

though my eyes grow heavy

The thoughts are fluid

moving in slow motion

as your face fades in and out

the memories bittersweet

and though I try to hang onto them

they slip from my grasp

You play like a broken record through my mind

and I'm lost in the music

Dancing alone...

Angela Minard 2011©

A Beautiful Journey

"The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself." ~Anna Quindlen

When you are trying so hard to be the person that you think everyone wants you to be, it is difficult to separate that from who you really are. It is a lot of work to become yourself, and the discovery can be both exciting, and rather frightening. I spent so much of my life wearing a smiling mask, being the good girl, the quiet and complacent girl who would never make waves. That is still part of who I am at times, but I can use my voice. I'm no longer drowning in the fear. I'm not as afraid to ask for what I want, and can acknowledge that I have needs. I don't beat up on myself near as much as I used to, and I find myself challenging the negative self talk more often than not. The beliefs about ourselves that we form when we are young are so often what we carry with us into adulthood, and it is difficult to let go of those beliefs. I internalized everything, blaming myself for things that I never had any control over in the first place. The thoughts of a child are so simple, and I wanted everyone around me to be happy, and I thought if I could be good and perfect, I could make that happen. I'm realizing that I'm not responsible for the happiness of others. I'm only responsible for my own. My job is to be the best me that I can be. We all have gifts and strengths, but those often get buried in self doubt, and we focus on our weaknesses. I'm trying to embrace my soul and the truth of who I am, accepting my flaws, changing and learning everyday. Life is a beautiful journey if we choose to look at it that way.

The Comfort Zone

I saw my nutritionist last night for the first time in three weeks. I really don't feel the need to see her as often, but there are still issues that I have. Right now I eat on the run a lot. I still can't make myself eat lunch in the teachers lounge, so I eat in my car. It's always protein bars or yogurt, which feel safe. I rarely sit down for dinner with my family because I go to yoga every night. I can't eat before I go, because yoga on a full stomach is not wise, so I have to wait until I get home, and by then my family has already had dinner. I'm not really eating with people much, but I'm eating! We talked about how I seem to need to be doing something to distract myself while I eat so that I'm not as focused on the fact that I'm actually eating. Dinner is often standing up in the kitchen while I pace around. I'm not restricting, so whatever works is good for me at the moment. I will try to work on some of this during my Christmas break. I will try to sit down more often and be present. I'm in a comfort zone right now with how I'm eating, and thinking of changing anything makes me a bit nervous, but I will try!

Now Is All There Is

The final pose during a yoga practice is called "savasana" which in Sanskrit translates to "corpse pose." Sounds easy, right? Really all that you have to do is lie on your back, but the difficult part for me is that you are also supposed to empty your mind and clear out all thoughts and worries. It is a part of my practice that I'm struggling with, and I know that if I could master a calm mind, even for ten minutes of my practice, it would help so much, especially when my thoughts tend to run wild and I need to slow them down. I'm sure that it takes practice, like everything else, but I have no idea how to get there. It seems the more that I try to stop the thoughts the more out of control they become. My mind is like a runaway train, going nowhere. It's not like I'm trying to solve the problems of the world or anything! I envy some of the others in the class who can lie still and peaceful, while I resist every urge to fidget, and can't wait for savasana to be over. Damn the woman snoring next to me! How does she do it?

I work so hard to stay in the present, but always my mind drifts backward and forward in time. I do have the most wonderful daydreams sometimes though. I do wish you all peaceful dreams, and the mindfulness to stay in the now, for now is all there is...

Learning To Let Go

I loved drifting in and out of sleep to the sound of the rain this morning. Sometimes we forget the simple joys of life, but I'm choosing to acknowledge them as much every day as I can.

There were moments of hurt this week, glimpses of the pain that can feel overwhelming at times. I'm often accused of taking everything too much to heart. I do, but I guess I never thought that was a bad thing. It is only a bad thing when the person that accuses you of this has hurt your feelings. Again, I can choose to let it go, or dwell in the hurt, and I chose to let it go. I can't always make sense of how others see things, I can't always make them see my point of view, but I can state my case now without fear that the person will stop loving me or think badly of me. I tend to take things personally, and can sometimes twist the words to mean something that the other person did not even mean in the first place. In this case, I'm referring to my post about Stockholm Syndrome, and the boy "liking" the abuse. When they said that, I took it to mean that they also thought I enjoyed being raped, when in fact they admitted that what they said was thoughtless, and didn't think that I would take it that way. I'm sensitive to the subject matter, and passionate about how sexual abuse can be misunderstood by so many people. I want to educate, and that is what we try to do at the blog that was started by myself and three other friends who have also suffered from trauma. It is a place for all survivors of trauma to speak out about their experiences. If you would like to participate, go to Cycle Of Healing.

Stockholm Syndrome

I'm writing this post because so many people do not understand the effects of long term abuse, and how and why sexual abuse can occur for long periods of time without the victim coming forward.

Someone said to me today about a boy in the newspaper who was sexually abused by a coach from the time he was ten until his late teens that the boy must have "liked it" for the abuse to have happened for such a long period of time without the boy coming forward. The abuser had threatened to kill the boys family if he told. I was outraged by the comment, and it is why I'm here writing this post.

Emotionally bonding with an abuser is actually a strategy for survival for victims of abuse and intimidation. This is often called "Stockholm Syndrome."

The Stockholm Syndrome comes into play when a victim cannot escape and is isolated and threatened with death, but is shown token acts of kindness by the abuser. It typically takes about three or four days for the psychological shift to take hold.

A strategy of trying to keep your abuser happy in order to stay alive becomes an obsessive identification with the likes and dislikes of the abuser which has the result of warping your own psyche in such a way that you come to sympathize with your tormenter!

The syndrome explains what happens in hostage-taking situations, but can also be used to understand the behavior of battered spouses, members of religious cults, Holocaust victims, and long term sexual abuse survivors.

In order for Stockholm syndrome to occur in any given situation, at least three traits must be present:

•A severely uneven power relationship in which the abuser dictates what the victim can and cannot do

•The threat of death or physical injury to the victim or their families at the hands of the abuser

•A self-preservation instinct on the part of the victim

­­Included in these traits are the victims belief (correct or incorrect, it doesn't matter) that he or she cannot escape, which means that survival must occur within the rules set by the all-powerful abuser.