Flashback to 2009 – Hospital Days.

I was searching through my hard drive and came across some old writing – not journal entries so much as little random bits here and there. Times that I must have gotten on the computer and just let the thoughts flow.

This essay was written in 2009. I’d just been discharged from yet another hospital stay, and ended up in the same old spiral as I’d been falling into for years. The desperation and feeling of hopelessness in this saddens me now. During those years, I knew no way out. All I had to look forward to was more of the same, until my body gave up.

There was a better ending than I anticipated – I’m pretty sure that it was after this admission that I started begging the hospital team to help me gain more weight than I usually did – to the weight that I am at today. I had a couple more admissions to achieve that – but I did, and I have maintained – whether that is a fluke or not, it’s given me another chance at life that I really don’t think I deserved. But that I’m determined to make the most of.

Please be aware that this is a highly triggering piece of writing. It talks about hospital treatment, weight loss, food, eating disorder habits, death and hopelessness.

Monday, 13 July 2009

I was discharged from my 125^th hospital admission on Friday afternoon, 10^th July.

It was a nightmare in many ways and lifesaving in many others. For the first time I made a significant breakthrough in that for the first time in about a decade I was able to keep everything down (and eat everything too). I struggled most with the crap going on around me (petty molehills become mountains that lead to major arguments and tantrums in the stuffy HDU microcosm) and the crap going on in my head – either totally overwhelming, spending too much time sucked back into the things I never want to remember – or totally vacant.

When you’re too Ill to be sedated and so are restrained in bed in order to protect your PICC line and the TPN; when you’re too immune-compromised to be transferred to Wattlebrae as they now have swine flu there, but as soon as you fight off one infection you pick up yet another; when you’re traumatised already and undergoing way too many more invasive procedures; (the worst I think was one of seven PICC insertion attempts – in the ICU, without anaesthetic. They couldn’t get it past my shoulder and were yanking it out of the socket and kept cutting the site, then stitched it into place – I felt like a fish that’s been hooked. All that, and the x-ray showed it wasn’t viable anyway, didn’t reach my heart) – you lose yourself and become a body that seems to be everyone else’s piece of meat. Indeed, I often wondered if any of the Treatment Team ever considered what they do to my spirit? It’s shattered even more each time I’m there, ‘til I wonder if it wouldn’t be a kindness to actually let my body die. What point dragging this broken mess back to life again and again if there’s no quality of life and you’ve killed the person inside the body? My whole life has been spent being punished by others, punishing myself… and then I go to hospital where they punish me again for all of that.

I concede inferiority – all my life it seems I’ve been trying to convince people I’m not as bad as they think. But if I’m the only one who believes that (and I don’t, anyway) – then they’re right. There’s something very terribly wrong with me and always has been.

All my life I’ve been running from something. From danger. From violence. From myself. This time, I ran from Death. Or was it the fear of death? Whatever it was, it got me stuffing myself with my entire meal plan in a shock turn-around, and keeping every bit of it down. Of course, it was agony, in my mind and body. This body hasn’t had any solid food really stay in it for nearly a decade and it struggled, strained, raced, sweated. My mind thumped me in every way, every moment of the day. We’re trapped now. We have no choice. But I’ll get you, I’ll make you pay, when you are free from here. The eating cut the expected couple of months on TPN to just a couple of weeks. And I was home by the end of the week it was ceased.

No preparation. No maintenance. Just straight from two months in a bare hospital room to the chaotic big wide world.

I hoped I’d be able to keep things going. I want to LIVE. I know that if I can’t nail it now, I will die. I’m desperate to survive.

It’s been a mess. It’s been like ‘imploding’ – fragile, newly-bolstered hope caving in unsupported by any confidence within. Social phobia returning as strong as ever – now I know why it’s so hard to remember what the world’s like when I am hospitalised. I don’t look people in the face anymore, I go about anything I do with my head down in shame and fear. Withdrawn. Even at home, I don’t take in my surroundings much anymore. It’s chaotic and too busy on my eyes. They like to be closed, and words don’t come easily anymore either. I try so hard to be there for my beloved Shalimar yet it seems I am so vacant in my mind, she can sense it. And it frightens her as much as it does me.

I like that word – ‘imploding’ – for describing this parasitic eating disorder. It is like one is collapsing in on oneself as the disorder eats away more and more of your inner core. You pull away from others, curl into a protective shell as small and invisible as possible. In trying to feel ‘safe’, you find yourself increasingly alone with what’s trying to kill you, more endangered. ‘Exploding’ happens, too. I would describe that as the ‘fighting’ stages of this – when you’re resisting it’s pull as much as you can and it’s fighting you back. You fight to get the food in, it explodes it back out. You fight to save your body in every way you can, and it finds more and more violent ways to undo any good you’ve achieved.

Where to from here? I’m a mess. No matter how much or what I buy from the supermarket, when I try and put it together in my head, it doesn’t make any sort of sense. That’s if I am successful at the supermarket. I can write a concise list of what and how much I need, but being faced with aisles of cans and boxes and bottles, so many colours, so many numbers and letters and names and varieties and sizes and so on – I just freak out. Brain goes off. Autopilot takes over, I come out with a basket of stuff I haven’t a clue why I bought it and what to do with it. And none of it’s anything I even feel like eating. (Four packets of plain pasta… a bunch of different seasonings reduced to clear… one of every different variety of non-dairy milk in the UHT milk aisle… three tubs of margarine which I don’t eat and haven’t anything to put it on.. What can I do with that? )

The fruit and vegie shop’s still chaotic for me, too. If I can haul myself out there early enough in the morning, there might be a fair variety of stuff on the ‘reduced’ rack and that takes away the problem of actually choosing stuff. If it can be cooked and it’s colourful and tastes ok, then I’ll grab it. I end up with a lot of capsicums, apples, eggplants, tomatoes and sweet chilli, but that’s ok. I like them. The staples that I’ve always been addicted to – pumpkin, cabbage, carrots – are in season and plentiful. The hardest part is craving sweeter, water-rich fruits – they aren’t very easy to find at the moment. Lettuce used to be wonderfully refreshing when I could eat it raw, but even if I can (and I did try) at the moment my mouth is sore after just a bit of chewing and full of too many ulcers. Not to mention it’s fricken cold!

I really have to pull away from relying pretty much on just fruit and vegies though. They aren’t going to keep me alive – especially if I can’t keep them down anymore again. I’ve spent about $150 this weekend alone just on Up&Go drinks, Sustagens, etc – Nutrition Australia can’t get any supplements to me till tomorrow – though I rang them this morning and they might be able to get a few Resource+ drinks out to me today. But I can’t stomach them very well and they’re about a third of what’s in a Resource+. (360 calories and all your nutritional needs in one little popper) My taste buds must be screwed, too – it’s not helping that everything tastes like mud.

Whoa. All I do is complain! It’s a blessing to be alive, to be free again, to be back with my Sweet Shalimar. To sleep in my own bed again, wear my own clothes, keep my own times, be warm, have privacy, watch TV with teletext. Have nobody telling me that a few mills more of boiling water to soften my weetbix will blow my 1.2L fluid allowance for the entire day (since supplements and liquids in meals are counted, thirstiness is something I feel all the time in hospital) and nobody measuring my urine output, having to wipe my bum, wash me, even worse forgetting to wipe my bum – you end up smelly and damp from drip-drying into your undies. All dignity goes out the window in hospital. Not that I had any left.

I want to make the most of everything wonderful in my life. I want to stop taking it all for granted. It’s a miracle that I’m still alive, and I’m blessed with the most wonderful friends and some family. I have Shalimar, a place to live, clothes to wear, shoes for my feet, food to eat (theoretically, anyway) and all my basic needs. The biggest blessings are the people I love so much, and what’s left of this beautiful Earth. Je’aime la Nature.

I’m scared, God. I know I don’t talk to you very much anymore. Like everyone else, you’ve been shut out. It’s so hard to break down the barriers I keep rebuilding every time I manage to smash them down, and I’m tired, very tired. But please, my God, please hear my cry. Please have mercy – I don’t want to die, not this way. Please, I had hope that I could get around the mess in my head, that I had turned it around, but I find I am as trapped as ever. Will I ever be free, will I ever overcome this? I’m a survivor yet this battle is proving to be the most arduous I’ve fought. Terrifying how one’s own mind can be a stronger, deadlier foe than the physical dangers I’ve battled.

I can’t stop hearing [consultant] saying “You WILL die”, if the TPN was unsuccessful. I can’t help remembering how much of a struggle it was to insert a PICC line anywhere – my veins in both arms have been ruined now. I’m lucky to have even been alive to see another hospital admission – nobody thought I’d pull through last time and they all warned me that my body wouldn’t survive even one more physical relapse. What terrifies me is how sick I still really am in my mind. My body was bumped up about 10kgs really fast – but now I’ve lost nearly half of that in a weekend. Nothing was done for my thinking or my mind or learning how to care for myself. I’m trying so hard but as trapped and scared as ever, so powerless. Still fighting – ever fighting – but the feeling of hopeless futility is stronger than ever. I’m going down again already – and it doesn’t look like there are any options left now that will help me live. A long time ago, if I’d helped myself, I’d be far better off today. Now I’m beyond the point of having any control over this or even knowing how to fend off the blows in my head, the battering it gives me every breathing moment (even in my dreams/nightmares). Now there’s nothing left to even physically save me if I’m ever admitted to hospital again.

Please help me God. Help me help myself.

I didn’t survive all I have, to die of a piddly pathetic eating disorder.

 

 (image source: 1, 2)

Discouraged

The post-festive period is often a time of steep come-down for many people.

For me, lately, it’s been peaks and valleys.

If my life has been a journey, it’s been a rough one.

But that’s made me all the more determined to continue on, to make it through to the end – wherever the end may be.

For all the times I’ve struggled to climb a steep, rocky slope, I’ve slipped down an equally treacherous abyss.

For all the times I’ve realised just how worth living life is, how wonderful and amazing this world is and how much I love those people I am blessed to know, I have been equally as hopelessly lost in a black well of depression. Unable to see but a star in the sky – but I hang on to that star, because it reminds me that there is a way out. And it reminds me to dream. Because dream I do, and dreaming is how I convinced myself I had a reason to live when I was in my rock bottom places.

 

My dreams used to be high as the sky – there were no limits. I was going to be a dancer, a writer, a veterinarian, a biochemist, an artist.. there truly were no barriers. If I wished to achieve something deeply enough, I worked my guts out at it and I got there. My childhood and adolescent years were heady with the heights of my own successes. I rarely knew failure. I was labelled ‘gifted and talented’.

The hell of home paled when I threw myself into that world.

But there comes a time when the good can no longer block out the effects of the bad, and the nightmare overcame the pleasantness. I no longer was able to become lost in the dreams I worked towards, no longer was able to concentrate, I was only partly there any more. I was dissociated.

Part of me ran away. Flew away. (Still wants to, all the time, today.)

Here I am now. I have incredible difficulty living in the present.

It’s scary to be me. I’m 35. I have nothing to show for it. No hopes. No dreams. They all were lost. Ravaged by what happened. By illness and trauma.

I have never had a job. Never will have a career. My brain is incapable of study. Cannot remember even the basics of stuff I need to know when I need it. Cannot read and enjoy books. Cannot concentrate to paint. Cannot hold a conversaton sometimes.

I will never have a partner or husband, never have children of my own. Never have grandchildren or nephews or nieces. Never play Santa or the Easter Bunny, bake birthday cakes, pick out pretty dresses or play in the garden with my kids. Never take them to school and coach them through their homework. Never be frazzled by tantrums and tears.

I cannot enjoy ballet, cannot enjoy volunteer work, because I spend days flooded with anxiety about just leaving home, getting there, being there, and coming home again. I’m wracked with fear about just doing every day things. I still do them. But enjoy them?

My brain is mush, my heart shattered, my self broken, my body wracked with pain. What is there to live for?

I have no future.

The best I can hope for is to survive. I will never heal completely from the traumas, because there are no options to help me with it here in Australia beyond what I’ve accessed already, and try as I have to help myself, I’ve gotten nowhere.

As a child, I was prisoner of my family.

As an adult, I’m prisoner of my mind. Of my past.

Is it any wonder that all I want is to fly far, far away?

(But I won’t give up. I never have. I never will.)

Image sources 1, 2, 3, 4

Reflecting on Shalimar – My Angel

I realised last night that in early January it will be a year since Shalimar and  I moved into the apartment I live in now. We have had absolutely no regrets, either. It is a peaceful and safe place to live for both of us and I’ve never seen Shalimar as happy as she is these days, not in her entire nine years. Whoops – nearly ten years!

Yes, Shalimar will be ten years old on the 13th of December! Her ‘birthday’ was decided by counting back two months from her official Adoption Birthday – which was 13th February, 2003. I still remember that day like it was yesterday – picking her out from a cage chock-a-block with kittens at the shelter – and knowing on sight that she was the kitty I’d come for. Somehow we had bonded before I’d even left the shelter. I still remember waking up the next morning – Valentine’s day – having hardly slept from a night of having this little kitten crawl all over me. My first thoughts were “She loves me.”

For someone with a life history of rejection and abuse, that is an incredibly wonderful, precious thought and memory. I can’t imagine living without her. I don’t know how I survived before I adopted her.

I have come to believe there are angels on earth. And I’ve come to believe that animals can absolutely be angels on earth.

Shalimar has saved my life many a time, in many ways. She’s given me a reason to live at all. She’s given me so much love over the years, unconditionally. She’s been my constant companion, especially during the loneliest years of my life.

Before I adopted Shalimar, it was common for me to have periods of unconsciousness that lasted scarily long times – for example, having a nap on Sunday afternoon might lead to me waking up on Wednesday night, completely unaware that more than a few hours had passed. But Shalimar wouldn’t let that happen. She woke me many times by crouching over me and patting my face with her paw, not stopping until I’d dragged myself out of the black hole I’d been slipping into. Many times I woke with a face like mince meat – she never used her claws deliberately, but even with claws retracted, cat’s paws can be quite sharp.

Shalimar gave me a reason to fight to get out of hospital – thinking of her in a pet motel, despite knowing they knew her and treated her with the best care and a lot of cuddles broke my heart, and I missed her terribly.

I’ve heard of therapy dogs (or care dogs?) trained for soldiers with PTSD. Apparently, these dogs know when their soldier is having a nightmare, and are trained to gently awaken them, switch on lights, and provide companionship and comfort.

Shalimar definitely would make a good care cat for PTSD. In a way, she is one already. I realised this on Friday when she woke me up from a pretty terrible nightmare with her gentle patting. She then cuddled up to me, gently butting my face with hers and stroking it with her paw. (I think she tries to copy my stroking action, which used to hurt given cats have claws, but she’s learnt to keep her claws retracted. Smart cat!) She’s done this many times before.

These days, it gives me a lot of joy to see how happy Shalimar is. Moving here was her version of coming home to paradise. It’s like night and day compared to living in the gritty city area where, to a constant soundtrack of traffic and sirens, she witnessed probably thousands of drug deals, and thousands of weddings in the Church across the road from her little balcony.

Shalimar loves to stalk lizards, and to pretend she’s going to catch those annoying birds that sit in the tree next door and taunt her (they even swoop her!). She  loves to just sit in the sun, watching the kids next door scream and endlessly jump on the trampoline (more proof to her that these human beings are all nuts). Grass isn’t some heavenly treat that I bring a bunch of home when I find it. It grows all around, and she can walk on it let alone nibble it. She has developed rather discerning tastes, though – so far she’s eaten my climbing beans, my corn plants, all of my chives and basil, and now she’s started on my tomato plants.

I’ve gone from being too depressed to sit and just ‘be’, to being able to sit on my porch and watch Shalimar just ‘being’. To watch her being happy and contented does wonders for myself and our time outside has become the most calming and cherished time of my days.

I wonder what the next year will bring for both of us? I think the sky is the limit. We’ve both come a heck of a long way.

Tiger in the grass! Watch out, lizards!

Meeting Our Own Expectations – How Our Past Can Affect Our Destiny.

Please be aware that this post is based on my own interpretation of Schema-focussed CBT theory as someone who has only recently been introduced to it – I am not educated in psychology, and I am definitely very capable of making mistakes and getting things mixed up. If this interests you, please ask someone who is trained in Psychology for more information!  In the meantime, here is a very succinct overview. 

I loved your responses to my last post about what would be in your Christmas survival kits!  I especially loved the humour you all used, and found it interesting how many of us in some way worked at making Christmas a good experience for those around us.  It gave me a lot to think about.

Most of us seem to feel pressured by the expectations of others in some way at Christmas time.

It’s a running theme for many of us throughout our  lives.  Since I became a blogger, I have met quite a few people with eating disorders who do NOT struggle with being people pleasers, with putting everyone else before them and with living up to expectations both real and imagined.  But the majority of people I have met with eating disorders seem to struggle with this to some degree. I know I do, I always have.

Maybe it is something to do with certain personality types being more susceptible to eating disorders?

Meeting expectations is one of the reasons I’ve been feeling so stressed lately – and have felt stressed for most of my life actually. I tend to agonise about things for days, weeks even, before they are meant to happen. I catastrophise things in my mind, wondering if the worst possible things could happen, if I will ‘fail’, if people will have reason to be disappointed in me, angry, disgusted.  The more I worry, the more likely I am to have a bad time of it when the actual event takes place – because my anxiety levels have gotten so out of control, and I’ve convinced myself that it’s going to be awful.

How many of us do this? How many of us don’t even give ourselves a chance by believing we will be failures – and then somehow ensuring that this is true? If anything illustrates the power our beliefs have over our lives, it’s seeing how being convinced that we will fail can actually make our belief come true.

Working with my therapist has helped me a fair bit with this sort of thing already. I’ve just learnt about Schemas, as we are going to undertake Schema-focussed Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. 

An early maladaptive schema (EMS) has been defined by Jeffrey Young as ‘a broad pervasive theme or pattern regarding oneself and one’s relationship with others, developed during childhood and elaborated throughout one’s lifetime, and dysfunctional to a significant degree’.  Schemas are extremely stable and enduring patterns, comprising of memories, bodily sensations, emotions, cognitions and once activated intense emotions are felt.  When a person has an EMS like abandonment, they have all the memories of early abandonment, the emotions of anxiety or depression, which are attached to abandonment, bodily sensations and thoughts that people are going to leave them.  An Early Maladaptive Schema, therefore, is the deepest level of cognition that contains memories and intense emotions when activated. (source)

My understanding of  Schema is that they are our core beliefs about ourselves and about the world.  Formed in our formative years, they reflect how our experiences have affected us and shaped us. If  ”seeing the world through rose coloured glasses” is a phrase used to describe experiencing life as though it’s filtered through an extra optimistic viewpoint, I imagine that our schemas describe how we experience all of our lives through the filters created by our experiences.

Things happen to us in life that we have no control over whatsoever – this we know for sure. But how much of what happens to us, even as adults with the power to decide what we do and who we associate with – do we actually influence through our own core beliefs? I think we could be surprised by how much of our own destiny we shape, unconsciously.

For example, one of my early maladaptive schemas was identified as being Defectiveness/Shame.  The handout my therapist gave me described it as “The feeling that one is defective, bad, unwanted, inferior, or invalid in important respects or that one would be unlovable to significant others if exposed. May involve hypersensitivity to criticism, rejection and blame; self-consciousness, comparisons, and insecurity around others; or a sense of shame regarding one’s perceived flaws. These flaws may be private (eg selfishness, angry impulses, unacceptable sexual desires) or public (eg undesirable physical appearance, social awkwardness).” (source)

That could have been written about me!

We also have individual coping styles, which explains why two children who experience the same abusive home, might grow up to be totally different. It certainly explains why I have become the person I have, while my siblings have if anything, destructive and violent, and yet quite successful in their public lives.

Generally, there are three overall coping styles - Overcompensation (Support), Avoidance, and Surrender – and a list of coping responses for each of those styles. All of the maladaptive coping responses listed under Schema Avoidance jump at me straight off .

Applying them to my sense of shame and defectiveness, I absolutely tend to withdraw and strive to be as autonomous as I can be. I’m scared that people will reject me if they realise I’m as awful as I am. I have learnt that the only person in my life I can ever depend on is myself – and I tend to push people away first before they can abandon me.

I’ve long sought distraction through becoming engrossed in reading, to the point that teachers used to confiscate my books to stop me reading TOO MUCH.  Through dancing, and through excessive exercising, and when all is too much, through dissociation.

I’ve addictively self-soothed through restricting my food, through bingeing and purging, through exercising, through self-harming.

And psychological withdrawl pretty much sums ME up. As young as I can remember, I’ve been withdrawn into my own bubble through dissociation, through my books, through whatever way I can.

I also exhibit Schema Surrender – I give in to others, am passive, a people pleaser, surrender to the wishes of others, and definitely do all I can to avoid conflict.  I am compliant, and despite my efforts to push others away, am also pretty dependant.

All of these coping responses have had the effects of isolating me from other people. They have kept me safe, sure, but they have been a thick wall that traps me, too. I have struggled to learn to trust others, to have actual relationships with other people, to even talk to other people (I spent several of my teenage years uttering a total of two, maybe three words a day.)

I can see now, how my absolute certain belief that I was inferior, disgusting, wrong, that people would be disgusted and want nothing to do with me if they knew what I was ‘really like’ – shaped my reality into just that. My coping responses to these beliefs pushed people away from me and ensured that I was always the odd one out.

I can also see, with great hope, that over the more recent years, with my growing ability to believe in the inherent goodness and sincerity of people, and that they can like and accept me – based on their actual treatment of me – how I have started to move away from being so isolated and stuck in those patterns. It does give me hope, because it shows that even before I started learning all about this, and despite those beliefs still being extremely ingrained, I was able to change my behaviours and therefore, actually start to change my destiny.

The Fiona you know, through this blog, the Fiona who has good, close friends, who despite her fears, can actually interact socially and take part in things more and more – is a girl who dared to trust blindly, based on a bit of positive evidence that was tiny compared to a lifetime of rejection and hurt.  I have a heck of a long way to go, because I still tend to hide, most of my social interaction is through technology, and the people I see on a daily basis are mostly my workers/helpers. But in a way that only people who have themselves experienced these issues would ever understand, just that I can talk to people, enjoy their company, feel like a human being when with them – it’s a huge improvement over how I’ve been for much of my life.

I dared. And I keep daring – and every time I do, I prove to myself yet again, that my fears don’t have to be real – and that I do have some control over my destiny by what I do right now.

Can you see ways in which your beliefs have shaped your destiny?

When reading about Schema-focussed CBT on the pages I’ve linked through in this post, do any of the schemas, coping styles, and coping responses sound especially true for you? 

(Image sources: 1, 2, 3)

Spooky Stories

Happy Halloween everyone!

I don’t usually celebrate it – Halloween has never been much of a ‘thing’ here in Australia. In fact many people seemed to boycott it because it was an ‘American’ thing, and if there is one lament I hear constantly, it’s about how Americanised Australia is becoming over the years.

This year, however, its seemed like everyone’s gone nuts for it. Or should that be pumpkins?

In the lead up to today, I’ve been reading quite a number of spooky ghost stories from my local area. It’s amazing how many ghosts we have – and it’s not even that old a city, compared with say, Melbourne.

I’ve read about our most haunted building, the Petrie Terrace Arts Theatre – haunted by founder Jean Trundle. It’s fascinating because her husband was a member of the family my mother always claimed were our relatives on her side, descended by our city’s first lord mayor, so it feels a bit personal as well as fascinating for the history.

I’ve been shocked to realise that the medical street that I visit weekly was the scene of a massacre back in 1955 by a disgruntled patient, and that it’s now allegedly haunted by ghosts in several of the buildings.

Wickham House, together with Ballow Chambers, was the scene of a tragic occurrence in December 1955. On Thursday, 1 December 1955, Karl Kast, carrying a home-made bomb shot dead two doctors, Dr AV Meehan and Dr AR Murray and wounded Dr MJ Gallagher and George Boland. A fourth doctor, Dr JRS Lahz was severely traumatised due to the incident. Dr Michael J Gallahger, Kast’s first victim, was shot in his offices in Wickham House. Kast then ignited three bombs in the foyer of Wickham House. George Boland, a patient of one of the doctor’s in the building, attempted to stub out the bomb only to have it explode and maim his hand. Kast then went to Ballow Chambers, around hundred metres down Wickham Terrace, where he shot Dr Andrew R Murray and attempted to apprehend Dr John RS Latz, who escaped. Following his rampage, Kast locked himself in the office of Dr Lahz, within Ballow Chambers, where he shot himself and ignited another bomb. He later died in hospital. The tragedy was reported in the Courier-Mail on Friday, 2 December, as ‘…a horrible crime …[that]…sent a shock of horror through the city and all Queensland’.  (source, plus creepy tower of terror in Sydney story)

The hospital that I’ve spent so much time at has it’s ghosts too. One of the most fascinating things for me was to see how this place looked back in it’s early years – compared with how it looks now, and read the stories about it.

This was the women’s hospital, specialising in maternity. Over ten years ago, it was demolished and made way for the buildings that stand there today.

Being in hospital at the time and allowed to join a nurse and a group of patients for after-dinner walks, we walked past the old woman’s hospital demolition site every evening as it was getting dark. The building exterior stood for a long time after it was gutted inside. It was cut off from the various catwalks that had joined it to newer, larger buildings, leaving paths ending in mid-air. Through the windows you could see the electrical cords hanging with the rest of the guts of the building, swaying in the breeze.

Obviously one of the first things they did was cut off the power to the building – they might be right at the hospital, but risking electric shock would still have been silly! But every evening I would spot a few ceiling fans lazily spinning, even though there was no breeze, and odd fluorescent lights here and there, that should not have been able to light up.. it was pretty spooky!

I loved to peer into the buildings best that I could as we walked past – old buildings have always fascinated me. In fact there are several old buildings remaining on the hospital grounds to this day, out the back of the mental health centre:

My imagination goes off on an awesome tangent when I see old buildings. “What happened here? Are the people who originally lived and worked here still around? What are their stories? What is it like inside?”

I’ve been lucky enough to be inside the building in the lower picture, the old Nurses Quarters, when it was still used as accommodation for nurses over ten years ago. It still had a fair bit of it’s own furniture and there is an onsite nursing museum there today.

I was shocked to read in one of the museum’s old nursing handbooks, that as late as in the 1960′s, patients with eating disorders at this hospital (not that they were called that!) were given Insulin Shock Therapy to force their blood sugar levels to crash to try and force them to eat, the same treatment that many people with Schizophrenia were given – forcing them into insulin comas. How scary is that? I know that even when I’ve suffered dangerously low blood sugar levels – as I have many times – I’ve not been able to just eat to get them better. I would have been in an insulin coma and perhaps died, had I been having treatment in those days.

Do you believe in ghosts? I do. My grandfather died in this hospital, when I was in year 5 at school. I remember that the day he had died, a Friday, our mother had taken us out of school to visit him. He’d had a lot of strokes over the previous couple of years, each making him sicker. At the hospital, he was confused and disorientated, barely recognised us.

We left him to go into the nearby Valley suburb, for some early dinner, meaning to come back and help him eat his. I vaguely remember our trip there, and I strongly remember standing outside in a courtyard of a take away store while the rest of my family went inside to order dinner.

At some point, I looked up and saw my grandpa standing at the back of the courtyard. He was wearing a hat, dusty coloured pants, shoes, and a checked shirt. I was so confused! I’d seen him not an hour ago, in a hospital bed in his pyjamas! And he looked at me and smiled. I will always remember that smile.

(This is not the courtyard, nor is it my Grandpa)

My family came out of the takeaway, causing me to look away, and when I looked back, grandpa was nowhere to be seen. I tried to tell my mother that I’d seen him, earning me a slap on the face for being so horrible!

We caught a bus back to the hospital, I remember hanging on for dear life on an old rickety bus filled with peak hour commuters. Back at the hospital, the curtains were pulled around Grandpa’s bed, so we just waited. And waited.

Finally my older sister peeked through the curtains. “He’s all wrapped up like a mummy!” she said. He had died while we were out. He wasn’t wrapped up like a mummy (kids and their imaginations!) but the sheets had been pulled up to cover him.

I still believe my grandpa said goodbye to me that day. That he wanted me to know he was okay. I held onto that smile through the hardest and most painful times in my life, knowing that there was someone who cared – even if he wasn’t exactly here any more. I believed he was ‘out there’ somewhere looking out for me.

My grandpa believed that all time is happening right now – the past, the future and right now simultaneously – and that ghosts happened when somehow the past and right now cross over.

I believe that it’s our emotions that somehow ‘stain’ the fabric of time when events that are fraught and painful happen, leaving ghosts of what happened and the people involved behind. 

I often feel like even though I’m still alive, I actually haunt many places from my past. Not that I’m a ghost, so much as what happened was so painful and traumatic that part of me split off and stayed there forever, in that time and place of great horror and distress. Indeed, the past haunts me, every day of my life.

That is a story for another day, though.

Do you believe in ghosts? Have you ever seen one? Does your area have any ghost stories? 

(Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

Ghosts Of History

The other day on Facebook I stumbled across an amazing page. The “Ghosts of History” photo series made by Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse, (page is in Dutch, use Google Translate) shows pictures of the past combined with pictures of the present.

The scenes are absolutely haunting. Looking through these photos has brought home to me more than ever before, just how much soldiers during the war sacrificed for their country – and many still fight on our behalf today. It is one thing to read about it and ‘know’ about it, but it can be hard for the past to feel real.

I know I will no longer take my freedom and my standard of living for granted – I will be saying thank you every single day.

The artist’s Uncle Dirk.

It’s well documented that many returning soldiers battle Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – PTSD – many for the rest of their lives.

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma. This event may involve the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one’s own or someone else’s physical, sexual, or psychological integrity, overwhelming the individual’s ability to cope. As an effect of psychological trauma, PTSD is less frequent and more enduring than the more commonly seen post traumatic stress (also known asacute stress response). Diagnostic symptoms for PTSD include re-experiencing the original trauma(s) through flashbacks or nightmares, avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, and increased arousal—such as difficulty falling or staying asleep,anger, and hypervigilance. Formal diagnostic criteria (both DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10) require that the symptoms last more than one month and cause significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. (Source)

But it’s not just soldiers who suffer from this. Anyone who is experienced to a traumatic event can develop PTSD.

I have Complex Post Traumatic Disorder – C- PTSD.

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) is a psychological injury that results from protracted exposure to prolonged social and/or interpersonal trauma in the context of either captivity or entrapment (i.e. the lack of a viable escape route for the victim) that results in the lack or loss of control, helplessness, and deformations of identity and sense of self. (Source)

When I stumbled on these photos, of course I was fascinated (I love history among other things), saddened, and grateful – but also excited. For a long time I have tried to explain to my treatment team what it’s like to be in my mind on an every day basis. I have flashbacks every single day, throughout the day. Most of them are what I would call ‘mild’ – and would probably be better using something other than ‘flash’ to describe how I’m plunged back into my past against my will, because it’s more like a slow, lingering dalliance.

Imagine you are walking through your local park, surrounded by trees, grass underfoot, birds flying around you. But you don’t just see your park. You aren’t ‘all there’ – part of you is walking through your back yard 20, 25, 30 years ago. And faintly, in the same place as your park, you can see your house, your swing set, the longer grass and weeds of your yard, the dog trotting round…

When these happen – as they do all the time and in so many places – more of ‘me’ seems to be in that past than stays in the present. It’s lead to several people over time describing me as ‘not being all there’ and I guess they are right. I’m trapped in something that really wasn’t fair to have lived through the first time, let alone again and again for the rest of my life.

Seeing these photos of the past superimposed into the present are so much like what my own reality is – living past and present simultaneously.

Please note – this is not something that I have chosen to experience or revisit. My therapist is going to help me learn to emotionally detach from the flashbacks, but it’s not something I can just decide to not have any more and that be it. The thoughts are intrusive and unwanted, and constant.

I’m so relieved to know that there is help for this, I do accept that there isn’t any ‘cure’ and there isn’t any undoing of the past – but to know that I can learn to keep myself safe, detach emotions from the flashbacks I experience, and hopefully have some peace from them – gives me hope.

I am really interested in hearing about your experiences, how you are affected, what has helped, how you cope. 

(All images taken from the Ghosts of History Facebook page.)

Spring Memories, Spring Distractions.

I’m really loving the arrival of spring lately. Clear blue skies, sunshine, and flowers blooming. Even my neglected garden has sprung back into life, prompting me to start watering it again.  Because they had died, I’d replanted, then they died again, it’s been fun trying to work out what the heck some of the plants are!

Some are more obvious:

I’m pretty sure this is a type of lettuce, maybe Rocket or Coral.

I can’t wait for the tomatoes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some, not so much

When you plant, then replant with a random scattering of seeds, and they all decide to grow at once… good luck working out what is what!

I know there are some snow peas in there, some parsley, and possibly some kinds of basil. The rest are a mystery to me and all I can do is wait for them to grow a bit more obvious! There are flower plants in there too, so tasting the mystery plants might be a bit risky.

I did actually manage to grow flowers – but who can kill nasturtiums? These flowers are full of memories for me, they were everywhere at our place growing up.

classic Shalimar – didn’t waste any time checking it out to see if it was edible.

Although I love nasturtiums (and they ARE edible – did you know? You can eat the leaves and the flowers!) I really had to think hard about planting them, as they do tend to trigger a lot of memories for me, many of which are just not good.

Lately I’ve really been struggling with PTSD issues. More than I usually do, because it’s an ongoing problem for me. Part of this is because I’ve always been very connected to the outdoors, to nature etc – as a child more often than not I would escape to my own world that involved trees, grass, mud, watching willy wagtails and other birds, gazing at the sky, etc. So my adult life is a minefield of triggers, especially in the spring time when the natural world comes alive. This in turn is exacerbated by the fact that it’s just ‘that time of year’ when there are some pretty hard to bear anniversaries, plus the memories of things happening around those events.

Recently, a young family with kids moved into the house which has a backyard right opposite my back door. Also, a lot of backyards converge near my back door – lots of them having young kids. Every day, especially in the afternoon and early evening, the air is full of squealing and laughter, the sounds of little kids playing.  This is a truly wonderful sound that never fails to make me smile.

These days it’s more usual for kids to NOT play in the back yard, so it’s really nice to see and hear. But, for me, it’s a huge, huge trigger. Every afternoon I’ve been getting lost in flashbacks, no matter how much I try to stay in the present, remind myself I’m safe now, etc. Even good memories are all mixed up with bad. I end up losing a lot of time, or just crying my eyes out.

So I’m really glad I’m finally seeing a trauma therapist and look forward to learning how to take a lot of the pain out of this.

In the meantime, what’s worked best is trying to keep my focus on MY ‘kid’ being out there playing too. Late afternoon/early evening is the time I usually let Shalimar go out to play, while I keep an eye on her usually from inside while I do other things. I do sit out there with her sometimes, but I find it hard to just sit there for long!

She really likes it. A lot of the time she just sits. She also likes to ‘stalk’ the birds who often fly and perch just above her in the trees, and tease her!

And then I call her in for her tea, when it gets a bit close to too dark.

We’ve also been cuddling – this afternoon:

 

 

 

 

This is what’s under my covers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also have been making myself laugh – and today I thought I’d share some of the funnies with you. Today, a friend of mine was looking for halloween costumes for her little boy for playgroup. It didn’t take long for things to get hilariously cute! I think some parents must either be very hungry, or it’s just that babies can be so cute you want to eat them right up!

would you like fries with that?

Some amazing comparisons – who did it better? Let me know!

 

 

 

I think the people who made these costumes maybe should have had something to eat first! And I don’t mean the babies (or fur babies!)

See more awesome food baby costumes here!

As you can probably guess, it wasn’t long before I was looking for cat costumes, instead of baby ones. And Shalimar was NOT impressed. Especially when I thought I’d get her this one:

neither is Shalimar…

I haven’t worn a costume for years and years. Halloween has been a non-event here for most of my life, although I’ve worn some pretty amazing dance costumes.

I think I’ll be going as myself this halloween.. that could be pretty scary!

See what I’ve done here? I’ve taken the focus right off things like bad memories and flashbacks – and made myself laugh! I hope I brightened your day or night too.

Last of all, since I’m putting up a heap of pictures today, I’ll leave you with some of me – my hair is finally able to be put up in a (pathetically teeny) pony tail!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed finding the pictures for it!  Now I’m off to cuddle up with my kitty in bed again

How are you finding your spring, or your autumn, depending on where you are? What’s the best thing about it, and the worst?

Do you have a garden?

What is the best costume you have ever worn?

Have you ever celebrated Halloween – gone trick or treating, or to a costume party for example?

Image sources: 5, 7, 8, 9, 10

 

 

Psychoeducation – And I Don’t Mean Education About Psychos.

Lately I’ve been shaking my head a lot, wondering why I waited so long to insist that I needed more help than I was getting.

Maybe part of the reason was that I’ve had SO MUCH support. So many people involved. And I certainly didn’t feel like I deserved to ask for more..

I know I’m not alone in finding it very hard to ask for what I need – let alone for what I feel is more than I need. Hands up any of you who are reading this who find it hard and avoid asking for help, or have found it hard and now are practising asking despite feeling undeserving?

In a way, I’m actually very fortunate that I became so sick, and that I had no family support whatsoever. I have often asked my treatment team members why I got so much support – when I had friends just as sick who seemed to get none. The answer was usually that they had family and I didn’t.

I know, too well, that just because one has family around, doesn’t mean that they are actually supportive. Or that they are prepared, or equipped to be your support person through such a serious illness.

So yes – I’m very lucky. It meant that the public health system – from which getting adequate treatment and support services is like extracting blood from a stone – decided I needed more and I ended up with an extensive treatment team – consultant psychiatrist, up to two mental health case managers, GP, physiotherapist, endocrinologist (changing to bone specialist now), private psychiatrist, dietician when needed, and also the help of Non Government Organisations (NGO’s) for help with everyday living. On top of all that, over 100 admissions to hospital.  Very, very lucky.

Before I go on with my post, I just wanted to give a call out to Fed Up NSW Health. A friend of mine has been searching high and low for treatment for months now – and she’s critically ill with her ED. Is there help to be had? NO. Not just that, but she’s constantly told she’s ‘not sick enough’. Finally, fed up with the health system, she started rallying.

I would really appreciate as many people as possible supporting Ella’s cause. You can sign a petition, and read a recent article about Ella and her cause here.

If you are living with an eating disorder, you know just how hard it is to ask for help. The battle doesn’t end there for us – accepting and using any help we get is also a struggle.  How many times I simply turned away from help because I couldn’t let anyone help me – because I believed I was worthless and that the world would be a better place without me.  ED screamed at me abuse for daring to ask for something I didn’t deserve and wasn’t ‘sick’ enough for.

These patients not only have to fight for what is a right – basic care – but fight their ED to allow them to fight for their own lives, too.

Valuable time is lost, and people with an eating disorder can deteriorate so quickly. Ella has been in emergency, her life in danger – but she still isn’t deemed ‘sick enough’ for a bed. One of only two beds for people with eating disorders in the entire state of New South Wales.

The situation is similar in my own state – where there are only four beds for a state that covers nearly 2 million square kilometres, and has a population of 4,580,700 people. (Source) That is simply crazy, and dangerous. We don’t have other services to back up this deficit either – no day patient or outpatient programs, for example. If you are a public health patient – and many are – that’s IT for you if you have an eating disorder, and if you are ‘sick enough’ to be in one of those four beds, (even if you ARE, there is a wait list longer than Santa’s) this ED unit is really just basic care – refeeding. Not therapy. It’s the ED unit I myself have spent years at. And as you can see – I’m far from better.

Back to asking for help – far deeper than the ED runs the complex PTSD, past traumas torment me day in, day out. For years, I’ve just borne this. I’ve seen it as my lot to live with – and had no hope at all of ever living any kind of peace and safety in my own mind. I feel like I’m constantly surrounded by ghosts – of my past, of myself. I’m haunted.

I’ve seen so many psychiatrists and had a few psychologist and counsellor sessions – never have I really done more than told them how my week has been, or how I’m going with the ED symptoms. A few of them in more recent years talked about my past with me – but then it was just talking. I am very much able to separate myself emotionally from my story and just tell it.

But talking about it is NOT processing it.

Trauma therapy does not only consist of telling your story or focusing on traumatic memories, though of course that is a crucial part of the work. Bringing trauma memories to mind, talking about them in a trusting relationship, and developing the capacities for managing them while staying present in the moment are all crucial parts of the healing process. A premature emphasis on traumatic material can in fact do more harm than good. Many trauma survivors may first need to learn and practice a variety of self-care skills that you can then employ during the memory work phase of therapy.

In the past, trauma survivors were encouraged to speak about their abuse in the belief that this catharsis would be healing. Sometimes this instead led to re-traumatization rather than mastery of the material or healing. In fact, some trauma survivors are able to tell their stories easily, but in a dissociated manner. Because of the risks involved, this healing work is best done with the help of an experienced trauma specialist who can help you learn techniques to cope with memories effectively. One goal of trauma therapy is to help you connect to the past while staying in the present. – Dr Kathleen Young (Emphasis mine)

Yesterday I had my second session with the psychologist who specialises in trauma. And this is the main reason I’m shaking my head about waiting so long to insist on seeing someone like her. Only two sessions in, I know without a doubt that this woman can help me in ways that nobody before has even touched on.

I have hope, because for once it really does feel like I am not going to spend the rest of my life haunted.

We have started with some psychoeducation. My psych wants me to understand why the trauma affects me the way it does – a better understanding of an illness leads to being able to better manage it.

Objectives of psychoeducation for PTSD:

• Develop vocabulary to describe PTSD feelings
• Identify cues and symptoms that he is experiencing PTSD (and similar symptoms of anxiety)
• Link those feelings to specific triggers and areas of vulnerability
• Develop a short-term action plan for dealing with PTSD
• Accept that his PTSD is causing him problems
• Link cues and symptoms of PTSD with triggers and with harmful coping behaviors (Source)

She also stressed that there has been exciting research in recent times about how creating new neural pathways in the brain helps people who have been through trauma - you can learn how a trigger makes you feel, then learn a new way to respond to that trigger. By practising the new response, you are creating a new pathway, and the more you do it, the stronger that pathway becomes and the old one dies off. (This is a very simplified explanation from my understanding) It means that you don’t have to spend the rest of your life feeling fear, danger, panic, anxiety, etc when something triggers you. You can teach yourself not to.

At the end of the session, I admitted to her that I wasn’t sure that cognitively I was doing very well, because I’m still struggling with my eating – and that was an issue for my case manager about me seeing her, along with the worry that digging up the past was causing me to relapse. She said that being cognitively impaired will not at all stop me from getting a lot out of therapy – and was shocked when I told her how all these years the most constant refrain I have had from everyone who has ever been a treating professional in some way has been “You cannot work in therapy until you are weight-restored and cognitively well.” It has been a catch-22 for me – the traumas fuel the eating disorder, but I can’t work on the traumas because the eating disorder makes me too cognitively off-the-planet.

Here I am, shaking my head yet again. All those years, I bought into that myth that it was pointless for me to engage in therapy while I was cognitively impaired. That I would have to simply live with being haunted by my past and all that it caused me to go through until such time as I’d been sufficiently able to fight my eating disorder to gain and maintain adequate weight. I truly thought that I was a lost cause because what I needed to gain weight to have therapy for, has always been one of the biggest causes of my eating disorder in the first place.

So round and round I went. No more!

I’m going to get the most I can out of this opportunity.

And I’m not wasting any more time. My psychiatrist – Headshrinker –  is fired. I don’t have the rest of my life to tell him how my week was while he fidgets, watches the clock and surreptitiously picks his nose. (I wish I was joking about the nose picking.)

I always have so much fun finding the pics for these posts! I am in love with a lolcat-filled Internet

Anyway – never let anyone tell you that you can’t do therapy until you have gained weight. Never give up asking for help when you need it. If you think you need help, you need help. Remember that being able to access the help you need means you are less of a ‘burden’ to society than if you don’t get that help and end up much sicker for much longer.

I hate even writing that ‘burden’ bit – that’s the sort of thing a few ignorant and nasty people have loved to say/write about me. Many of us believe it. But it’s not true. ALL of us are worthy of the help, care and support we need. Every single one of us. Nobody should have to fight to get just basic care, and nobody should be made to feel guilty for being sick and needing help – something none of us chose to be in the first place.

We didn’t choose to be sick, but we can choose to fight to get better. And so, it’s even more important that we be able to get help when needed – and low of those who guilt us for being ‘burdens’ for attempting to take away our choice to fight, too.

Keep fighting, everyone. Because there is always hope! There’s a whole world out there to discover! 

Have you struggled to ask for help? Have you struggled to access help? How has this affected you? 

Have you ever had therapy, and do you think it’s helped you? 

What improvements would you make to the public mental health system in your country? 

Image Sources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Tears In The Night.

(Trigger warning, abuse/rape/self-harm)

I wake crying in the early hours of the morning.  This is when my heart is breaking, when I can no longer ignore it. I lay there this morning and thought “These are the feelings that I used the eating disorder to numb. And I can see why, they are just unbearable. It feels as though I could die from this pain.”

In the dark, I travelled to other dark times. Ones that I’ve revisited far too many times.

When I was still living in the place I grew up with the family, I used to escape outside every night that I could. It would be after 10pm, when all the shouting and screaming and bashing and hair pulling had mostly died down, and the others were getting ready to sleep in their soft safe beds, having their nice warm baths.

I used to sit there in the back yard and stare up at the sky. More nights than not, our mutt Whiskas would come and just sit next to me, leaning on me, and we’d peer upwards in comradely silence. He got it.

The stars were brilliant out there. It was pitch black at night, not close at all to any city or even town that could dull the amazing galaxy up there. And I used to dream. Plan and dream – but mostly dream.

These escapes kept me sane.

“One day I’m going to be free from here. I’m going to be safe. I’m never going to be hurt so much again. I’m not going to go without anything. I’ll be happy. I’ll be successful. I’ll be free.”

Years into the future, Wanker forced me to drive with him out to a secluded national park on the outskirts of the city. This is the same night that he drove to the big bridge in our city, leaned past me and threw open my door. “Jump!” he taunted me. “If you want to kill yourself, just go ahead and jump already.” And I sat there, frozen. He’d torn my pants off after a fight to keep them on that evening, and seen my self harm efforts on the tops of my thighs.

(This was the very beginning of my years of self harming – and I had been terrified at the urge to do it, never having known that people actually did that sort of thing. I never read about people doing it in books or all over the internet like you can, today. My self harm went hidden for years, known only to myself and to Wanker, because I was so terrified of what they would do if they saw what I did to myself, surely they would call out the men in the white jackets..)

At the national park, it was darker than even back at home. Terrified and alone. Nothing but trees as far as the eye could see. And the stars, brilliant above, the first time I’d seen them so brightly since back home.

And as I gazed at them over Wanker’s shoulder, through a film of tears – the smell of the grass strong in the crisp cold air – I remembered those nights of dreaming. And something in me shattered.

“…so this, this is freedom.”

(Image Source)

She’s Gone

This morning was awesome. I met a very close friend – more like a sister to me – for coffee. She has been sick for as long as I’ve known her. Most – 99% –  of the time, I do not see her weight, I see my friend. That was true, today, but today, her weight affected me more than usual, probably because she was less well. My friend is emaciated and weighs less than half my weight, is close to my height. I’m underweight – BMI 15 – so she is very very thin indeed.

It infuriates me that while worrying for my friend’s life, fearing that I will lose her – she’s so fragile and she has been emaciated without a break or weight gain for the past 19 years – while knowing the hell she lives – I could be looking at my own weight, feeling like an elephant and wanting to have my ‘old body back’. My old body was nearly dead! Was not at all nice to live in. I hate the phenomenon that is wannarexia and yet, today, I was just as bad. I hate that.

Today was also voting day for our state election – voting in Australia is compulsory. I made my way to my local polling booth and needed to explain to them that I was voting in my old electorate because I had not yet completed and submitted my silent elector form and it was too risky for me to change my enrolled address before submitting that. Being a silent elector means that your address is not published on the rolls, for needed privacy and/or security, it’s not easy to get, you need good reason, and I do have.

It was straightforward, no problems, but it brought up strong feelings – specifically about what I was running away from – the past, and people from my past.

The final nail in the coffin for today, was that the booth was held in a local scout den. A loud, wooden, outdoorsy building filled with scouting paraphernalia. I was a brownie guide as a child and memories of childhood, of SO MANY THINGS just swamped me. It was a tidal wave. A tsunami.

Attempting to walk a longer way home to calm myself, I lost myself.

Haunted girlie tramping over grass and paths, one foot each in two worlds. Parallel worlds – one here, the other, a tumble down an abyss into yesterdays never left behind. Haunted girlie, running for her life, but running IN her nightmare, cannot leave it behind.

Torment. Will there never be peace? All around the edges of the past, whispers and sneers. As Lollirot’s  blog name implies – the message was, “Kill the inside.”

I found myself, four hours later, with no idea of where I was – suburb, street, landmarks, all were unfamiliar – and no idea where I had been or how I got there.  I kept walking until finally, I did come across a familiar place and from there, found my way home.

Home to 2012.

I’m here now. I’m safe. But how long will it be, before I land in the other world again?

And will I ever leave that world behind in the past where it belongs – for good?

(main image credit)