Part 1 ~ DROWNING ~ Still struggling since the hard drive crash

~ Posted, 7 September 2017 ~
 
The last week or so has been kind of hard.  The struggle to catch up on piecing together the Institute since the hard drive crash (25 June) has been overwhelming and seemed quite insurmountable to me.  I have felt very alone in the quest to regain work-order again… to re-establish my comfort zone in my workplace.  The more I have stressed over trying to get it right again, the harder the task has been… I feel like nothing will ever be the same again.  Like I’m losing the battle… or already lost it with the crash!
 
The worst of the struggle is in the fact that I cannot find time to get to my own lost works, to get those back in order… find all the poems I can still find… to see how much I still have… to redo the editing on my book… to gain some sense of okayness again. 
 
Everything feels so fragmented… I feel fragmented! 
 
I’ve tried not to think about my losses, but over the last few days I realised I need help, because I’ve been trying to block out my own hurts over all that is lost… I have important work to do… I have a reputation to uphold… I’m not allowed to and don't have time to have a breakdown… but it feels so close sometimes.  So many emotions have flowed back and forth through my mind since the crash… frustration, anger, deep sadness, fear, emptiness, and so on.  I feel as though I’m in a space of perpetual mourning over the losses…  
 
Trying to keep “the mask” of “coping” on, but, it’s not working… trying to force the mask into position all the time just doesn’t work… it’s EXHAUSTING!
 
This week, I’ve decided to reach out to an online Logotheapist whose helped me through tough times before.  Because she lives far away, I feel that she’s my safest bet to reach out to, rather than to bring my problems and struggles too close to home/work.  It’s good to know she is there when I need a wise friend to chat to.  She helps me to find perspective and make sense of my own feelings… put things in order in my own mind, so that I can function better. 
 
I think what triggered this downward emotional spiral of the last week, was a result of our financial struggles of late.  Long story, but it’s been getting really bad since we stopped my youngest son’s disability grant due to the insult forced on him every time we needed to go and renew it… and I am also now paying for my own medical aid.  My second son is giving me R500 towards it, but in my desperate attempt to save money for home improvements, I have been saving his R500 in a separate account to go towards a ceiling in my garage.  With a roll-up garage door on both ends of the garage, and no ceiling, there’s so much dust collecting in the room all the time, that I can't use it.  It is wasted space.  We have a carport attached to the garage on the outside of it with a lockup gate, so the garage itself is a room that I could use for storage, sewing and painting… something I’ve longed to have ever since we moved here in 2012.  Our house is tiny and more space would be wonderful.  I’ve dreamed of having a door made through the wall of the lounge into the garage, but every time I save for that, some or other emergency crops up and what was saved then has to be used on the emergency… so this time I’ve promised myself that for now, the ceiling needs to be done and I have now saved enough for that.  Once that’s done, I will need to save again to have one of the roll-up garage doors removed and a wall and door put up instead to close in the space… that will also stop dust getting in with the wind blowing between the two roll-up doors as it is now.  Then once that’s done, I will save again for my dream door between the lounge and garage… What a difference that would make for us… I long for that day.  (As we get things done, I will take photos and share my joy with you all)
 
A most willing gardener and friend has recently come to help with our garden drainage, so that’s been a wonderful home improvement and he hasn’t charged us much.  The good man even brought old bricks and sand to help us out and we never even expected those from him.  He painstakingly sat and knocked the old cement off of each old brick before setting them in our garden to stop the flooding when it rains… he did the most amazing job of it all and I am so grateful to him.
 
I really must upgrade my blog as soon as I can.  I would have loved to have shared the two voice messages on a recent post and a video I took of our garden flooding would have fitted really well here for you to see.
 
I didn’t use my house renovation money for the garden brickwork to stop the flooding, so last month, between that and my sick son and dog and all the added expenses, we struggled a lot and I can’t say that we ate well at all.  Certainly not tasty luxuries or variety.  For instance, I have learned how to make 12 small frozen meals out of one chicken a cabbage and other vegetables… but after days of the same thing every night for supper, a person does start to crave something else and it’s hard when you cannot please those cravings. 
 
But what got me sad the last two weeks or so, is the realisation that we needed to ask for help again.  Our church teaches us to always ask family first before approaching them (the church) for assistance… and asking for help has always been a hard thing for me to do.  I know that my children will always be there for me, but with my second son already giving R500 a month, and my daughter donating R1000 a month so that my youngest son can also go onto a medical aid now, I can’t bring myself to ask them for more… although they both insist that they are there for us.  I don’t worry my oldest son with our financial struggles, because he lives a lot further away and often has medical bills, etc. to pay with my daughter in law struggling with her health.
 
Anyway… besides my own children who I know are always there for me who phone regularly and visit as often as they can, asking family or anyone for financial assistance can prove to be a very difficult and painful task… In so doing, one finds out who is always there for you, and who never will be… and the realisation of… those who never will be are probably your judges…
 
Sometimes, it’s not the financial help a person needs, but rather the reassurance of LOVE.  I can live on my suppers of defrosted packets of chicken and vegetable soup indefinitely, so long as I know I am TRULY LOVED and cared about.  I need love far more than anything else anyone has to offer in this world. 
 
My sweet sister in law has offered ongoing assistance by allowing us to have the reject goods from her store… for that I am truly grateful… as these things will add variety and flavour to at least my son’s meals and help us to get through each month.  With me being on the Banting lifestyle to control the gout and diabetes (without medication at all), my diet is more specific.  I eat fried egg whites with a tomato for breakfast… a salad with herbs from our little garden for lunch and my chicken veg soup for supper.  There’s not much else I can eat because I can put on weight very easily!  I don’t eat any sugars or carbohydrates at all, other than what might come through my salads… no underground veggies either.  Today, I live as though I don’t have diabetes at all due to my lifestyle food changes… I don’t even need to test my blood sugar anymore and lost over 50kg’s since 2012… stopped all chronic meds and am healthier than ever today in my 60’s.  Now all I need is to get in more exercise!
 
The kind leader of my church has insisted that he is there for us whenever we need him, so I might need to ask for help this month, as this month has already started off badly with an unexpected R426 car licence bill and our gardener-friend still needs to return to finish off the drainage job he was doing and we’ve already bought more concrete and a new more expensive trowel, because the cheaper one broke when he was bashing bricks last week.
 
Anyway, the good news is, that I have found someone to come do the ceiling in my garage, so hopefully that will be done soon… one step further towards our home improvements for which I am so grateful.  I’m hoping to have enough money left over for him to fix our dripping kitchen taps… also.  The tap ends fall off and cannot be screwed on again… the holes were the screws used to go in had been broken by the previous owners.  They have been like that ever since we moved here and keep falling off, so it would be really great to get those fixed also. 
 
Yesterday I received the quote for the bathroom makeover renovation and will share that in another post tomorrow if I can find time… for that and a new computer, I will be asking for donations.
 
I think that this post has gotten long enough… I wanted to share some “other hand” work I did yesterday to help myself make sense of and process what is worrying me so much at this time… maybe I will share it in a separate (Part 2) blog post tomorrow instead as it will take a bit of explaining…  It's an incredible technique which has proved very helpful to myself and many of my clients.

I am so tired right now.  I have been working all day... counselled a client... finished shortening my logotherapy paper and sent that off to the International Forum of Logotherapy in the hopes that it will be accepted for publication in the journal... if it is accepted, that will be another wonderful dream come true for me.
 
Thank you for sharing with me today.
 
~ Panayiota