​Life is essentially beautiful ~ it’s just how we choose to look at it I guess.

28 July: My youngest son arrived home from work around 20h30 and at around 21h30, he went to close the neighbours gate, because it had been left open for hours already!  Their house lights were off, which means that they had just decided to leave the gate open (or forgotten to shut it), which totally exposes our car to would be thieves passing by, as we share the carport… each of our gates closing together at the center.  Our car may as well have been parked out on the street!  The neighbour has destroyed their gate motor, so now they just pull the gate open and closed and don’t lock it, so we have little protection, even when they have closed it!  We could lock the two gates together giving the neighbours a copy of the key, but with their son coming home all hours of the night (possibly intoxicated), we can’t take that chance.  So, I am still feeling very uncomfortable and unsafe in my own home due to this problem.  The noisy and offending “gate-crasher” has been reported to our complex body corporate though, by three neighbours, so hopefully at least the gate will be fixed soon so my son and I can be safe again.
 
29th July: I went to church in the morning and absolutely loved the talks, although they were mostly emotional today, they were beautiful and truly from the heart.  I love when people feel safe in a crowd to share freely from their hearts in a genuine, unforced and unexpected way.  It’s not something we see often these days.  I found myself crying with them, but only because of the love, faith and hope that I could feel from them and felt with them, and not because of their sadness and pain.
 
After church, I went to my daughter and son in law’s house for lunch.  While I was there, they washed my car and my son in law fixed the idling on my car… unbelievably, that’s what the problem has been all this time… it had nothing to do with the timing or air flow meter.  I am so grateful we were spared that expense.  He is such a fantastic young man who learned many skills and a great work ethic from his own father… he’s always building or fixing things and is such an inspiration to me.  I’m so grateful that my daughter was blessed with a truly good husband.
 
1st August:  After less than 5 hours sleep last night, it's been another kind of day, but somehow, I did get work done... watered my thirsty garden (long overdue) and wrote letters to all our provisional students to encourage them to finish their registrations by making their payment so I can send them their study packs.
 
Bit my inner cheeks bad in my sleep last night... owee!  Thank goodness that doesn't happen often!  Usually only when there’s a certain kind of stress trigger getting to me… not sure what this time around!  Maybe still connected to the “sirens” panic attack thing that happened on the 27th July…?
 
2nd August:  Less than 5 hours sleep last night… felt terrible all day!  I was invited out in the evening by the most fun bunch of girl-friends, but couldn’t accept… I was just too tired to function anymore.
 
3rd August: I slept well last night due to pure exhaustion but still had quite a difficult “drifting day” again… dissociating quite a bit.  I went to post a student’s study pack and popped into the pharmacy while I was there.  After chatting with a very helpful pharmacist, I bought myself some magnesium tablets to help myself to sleep.  I also bought the magnesium, because it helps with abdominal cramps, as well as for digestion and regularity which I need help with.  My strict diet has created some havoc with my tummy-works!
 
I also bought some vitamin D3 to help with bone health… I was told a while back after having a bone density test that I needed to be on something but could not afford to stick to that medicine-regime.  My little sister in America has just been told to go onto vitamin D, so I decided to join her on that as we both suffer from aching joints… her arthritis is a whole lot worse than mine though, so I’d imagine it would be advisable for me to follow her Dr’s recommendations, in the hopes that I prevent my own aches and pains from worsening as I age further.  The Vit D I will only take every few days though to make them last longer… I think it’s better to have some every now and then at least, than none at all. 
 
4th August:  Nighbour revving loudly outside my yard during the morning.  Well… I didn’t go out to look, so I can’t guarantee it was him… but it sure sounded the same.  I worried that other neighbours would think it’s us, because the revving was happening outside our yard… Which reminds me of the time the neighbour washed one of the cars he brought home to mend… put the cars carpets out on our lawn to dry when they have a perfectly good lawn of their own on their side of the carport drive… weird… but I let that one go.  Some things just aren’t worth getting all discombobulated about!  (I’m sure that’s not the right word, but it sure sounded just right to me!)
 
Work has been quiet which is has proved to be a problem for me… I still struggle with disconnection when it’s too quiet… tend to dissociate more… but, thankfully I have managed to get a lot of work related checking and updating done anyway… just by persisting through the dissociative episodes and refusing to give into them!
 
Bewildered:  Sr. Cecilia’s letter missing… found in Trash.
That was weird… on the 16th July, sister Cecilia wrote to me and sent me a photo she had of our mother, my brother, sister and me.  It was a photo I’d never seen before and one that was taken while our mother was still married to our abusive stepfather, or just after her divorce from him.  Sr. Cecilia remembers me as Patricia Jooste… the name I was called by when our mother was married to the child molester… I absolutely HATED that name for so many years, as mentioned in recent blog posts.  Jooste was the stepfather’s surname.  I had no identity of my own back then… probably 14 years when the photo was taken, because Sr Cecilia said in her letter that she left Rhodesia 1971, so the photo was probably taken in 1970.  I am going to keep that photo to publish in my book rather than share it now, because it tells quite a story of its own.  As sister Cecilia wrote about me in the photo when she sent it: “You are at the back and looking very grown up.” Yes… in the picture, my sister, brother and mother are sitting in front of me… my mother looks so young… I don’t remember her ever looking so young… I’m standing behind them with my arms around reaching them… I’m sporting a dreadfully puffy-poodle hairstyle… must have been the rage back then, but when I look at it now, it’s far too old for a 14-year-old!  I had become “the little mommy” from when I was very young… so often already taking care of my own siblings and mother.  A part of me was indeed already very grown up… I had lost my childhood before I’d even experienced it… and a part of me was still very young, younger than a 14 year old, but that part was already broken and trapped somewhere deep inside of me.
 
What baffled me today though, was to realise that since the 16th July when Sr. Cecilia sent me that photo, I had not responded to her yet.  It seemed so weird to me, because I didn’t feel that the photograph had upset me… why had I kept forgetting she had written… kept forgetting to write back to her… what was that all about… so I decided to go look for the letter, so I could write back… but I could not find it.  I was totally baffled.  I searched my computer, but it was nowhere to be found.  Hours later, I decided to look in my Outlook Trash folder… and lo and behold, there it was… had I deleted it after sending the picture to my sister days before… WHY?  I look at Patricia’s smile in the photograph… I don’t believe it was real… did Patricia delete the photo… and then I forgot yet again to respond to Sr. Cecilia… (it’s the 6th August now, as I am compiling this blog post… tomorrow I must write to Sr. Cecilia… I must not forget or subconsciously stop myself from doing so again!)
 
Back to my book at last!
 
Early am – Wrote on Facebook:
I’m hoping to work on my book today, but lacked sleep once more and feeling deep-draining tiredness again... could be mental avoidance happening (“dissociative chronic fatigue syndrome” as I now call my deep-tiredness thing)... but once I start on the book again, I know I will be fine... it's just getting there that's the problem... I would rather be totally chilling on the top of a mountain or on a beach somewhere... So, switching off FB and everything else so that there's no excuses or distractions and opening the book onto my desktop now... I'll update you on it later... let's hope I can get it right!
 
Late pm – Updated on Facebook:
I managed six hours of book-work today... not bad for the first day back with it. I will take a break now.  I only managed to start on the book at 11am... procrastinated until then, but once I started it was full steam ahead and I'm hooked again!  I reached a particularly difficult part now which I don't want to tackle before bed time.
 
I stopped on page 26 of 201... (175 pages still to go) ... but the book might still grow a bit, because I have some more important memories to add which I remembered and added last year before the computer crash... they can't be left out.  Hopefully, I will be able to shorten areas also... I've got to work on that too!
 
5th August
Please Father in Heaven… please restore what was lost…
This morning I went to church and I’m so glad I did, even though I had a tough start to the day.  My family (second son, daughter in law and three grandchildren) arrived later than usual, and so I sat alone in the pew for longer than usual, so that could have initiated a change in my emotional strength for the day.  While I’m alone in the pew, I become anxious that someone else will come sit there which will leave no place for my family to sit with me… I also worry about my family until they arrive.  (I guess I’m not too good with suspense).  My family also like to sit near the front of the church, which is okay for me when they are with me, but I do feel uncomfortable whilst I’m sitting alone there… I somehow feel exposed and don’t feel 100% in a comfort zone of my choice.  If I had someone to sit with me until my family arrived, I’d do a lot better.  But having said that… the very fact that I go to wait for my family there in the first place is something I already recognize as growth… even courage… so, I’m not doing too bad.  And it’s always the best feeling when my family do eventually arrive… I especially love my grandchildren’s hugs as they pass me to take their seats.  I still sit at the end of the pew… I cannot be trapped between people as that could set me up for the possibility of a tearful panic attack!
 
As Sacrament was being served, I really thought about it all this time around.  What my therapists religious pushing did to me during the transference and counter-transference breakdown phase of our therapy which still hurts me so much… almost unbearably at times.  At the same time, the neglect, condemnation and finger pointing judgements of many of our church family at that time… that further damaged, broke and took away from my children and I.  I lost so much of “the way I used to believe” during that time… I still don’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, or if I’m richer or poorer for it, but I have since then, greatly missed all that was lost. 
 
Religious trauma syndrome is a “real thing”… a terrible thing… and I still have a sense of how cruelly it was forced and inflicted on me… just as child abuse is forced and inflicted on the innocence of a child… so too, I believe it was, what happened to me in therapy, because it took away so much of what used to come very naturally to me… what used to feel so “right”… another hole in the soul took its place…
 
In our church, there are rules about taking Sacrament… one must be worthy… etc.  I wonder what would be said of me, if “they” were given the opportunity to judge me on where I am today… for starters, I don’t pay my tithing, because my diet needs have become so important to sustaining my health, and with all the unexpected expenses for a good few months now, our finances have been extremely strained… They could not guarantee any help to me for covering our needs… so this is where I am with that today and indeed, it doesn’t feel good, because I believe that where you put yourself, you must also be prepared to follow the rules and status quo there… it would be expected… but my health needs are also very important to me and I cannot let that go or mess with it… I never again want to be as obese or as unhealthy as I used to be.  I also do not attend church religiously… so… am I un-righteously taking the sacrament when I do attend? 
 
I had all these thoughts turning in my head… If only they knew why I am taking it still… how important it is that I don’t give up on at least the ritual of taking it… my desperate work to reconnect with what was taken away from me… if only they knew… if only… then what…
 
This is one journey I must take alone in this world… it’s between me and my Maker… in Him I trust completely… His Love I do not doubt at all… I feel His warm embrace so often… I know He is with me always, no matter where I am at any one time of my life… He has never forsaken me.
 
I am not alone in this world and never have been.
 
As I listened carefully to the words of the sacrament prayers, I prayed so hard… literally begging and pleading with my God… “Please Heavenly Father, please give me back what was lost.  Please restore to me what used to sit so easily in my heart and so comfortably.” 
 
And after the sacrament, when the first few people stood up to bear their testimonies and I heard how “they still had it”… how precious it must be… “to still have it”… I found myself crying bitterly from some place deep inside of me… stifling my tears so as not to make a spectacle of myself… stemming the flow with a bundle of tissue… suffocating on the agony inside of me… SUFFOCATING on my sadness!!!
 
But it was then that I began to feel the genuine warmth of “Heaven’s Hug”… as sure as if the Arms of my God wrapped around me and embraced me tightly… reassuring me… totally accepting me exactly as I am, right there, in a congregation that might otherwise choose to judge and reject me… or so I fear, going by all that had happened before in the other church where I used to believe I belonged, before my children and I experienced so much hurt there. 
 
Things always seem to fall to pieces, so I’ve come to expect it… it happened when I was a child… it happened in my marriages… it happened in that other church… it happened in therapy… it happened to some of my most cherished friendships… I have felt the threat of it recently in another important group that I considered family… it’s has even happened in family, in some vitally important (to me) areas where I have always wanted with all my heart to experience unconditional love and complete belonging… but there has been growing doubt… a feeling of how since my childhood, it has all been an illusion… my dream world of what love is meant to be has been just that… a dream world… and this I find very painful to my heart
 
That sense of being completely “Embraced by Heaven” overwhelmed me to sense of immense gratitude, and from that moment on I was able to hold my head up high again… there was a smile in my heart and once again, I truly felt very blessed and completely LOVED ♥
 
I left church after the sacrament service, and for the rest of the day, I did struggle with a lot of anxiety (typical after a deep emotional surge in public like I had earlier at church) … the chemical change kind of anxiety, where I feel a horrid vibrating throughout my body… almost as if I’ve been poisoned… everything starts to ache… even my skin… my heartbeat does not feel healthy… I feel like I’m going to faint and just want to go lie down somewhere… and I start to ache all over, even my skin burns… I developed an almost instant feeling of gout threat in my right foot as I walked (if I stepped wrong) … I felt positively awful… and on high alert, as though I am in danger… afraid to die!  I did improve as the day progressed though.
 
6th August
I’m happy to say that there’s another little cape sparrow who loves to chirp his little head off in the early hours of the morning’s.  He’s not nearly as loud as the last and doesn’t chirp right outside our home every morning… he doesn’t chirp as long as the other one did either, but, oh, how my heart rejoices when I hear him, and he reminds me to thank my Father in Heaven for another new day… another chance to do all that I still dream to do.  I’m so happy he chirped near our home this morning.
 
Today Shem came again to help us in our garden.  He is such a wonderful, hardworking man… a man who works with pure integrity.  He is a humble man, so willing to please.  It still worries me terribly that he is the kind of man who would be so easily used and abused by those who do not have a heart for another human being and all that they have to offer in this world.  I feel so blessed by Shem’s hard-work ethic and cheerful willingness to do all he can to serve others.  He is a man deserving of respect and goodness in return for what he gives so freely and willingly to others.  Today, Shem helped by cleaning up our yard, pulling out old plants, tilling our soil and beginning the preparation of our garden for spring planting, and because of the recent generous donations we received, we are even going to finish off the brick work in our back yard vegetable garden, to divide the beds which will help with preventing water run-off and flood damage during heavy rains and also give us something to walk on, so that we don’t have to step into the soft soil and beds to do the weeding, etc.  Shem will probably come to do the brick work tomorrow.  What a gracious-gift from Life he has been to us. 
 
Thanks so much for sharing with me today.  I wish you all well and pray my blog shares are helping in some way.
 
~ Panayiota.