PART 6 – WRITING MY LOGOTHERAPY PAPER ~ At last!

~ Tuesday, 11th July 2017 ~ Continued from last post…
 
While I'm waiting for my computer to come back... hopefully in the next few days, I'm busy working on a paper on Logotherapy Dream Interpretations of the daydream worlds of child abuse survivors. It's the most incredible thing!  I have only found a few brave adult survivors of child abuse who were prepared to share their daydream worlds with me so far, but amazing meaning centered interpretations have come from each, especially my own. It's been life-changing for us all. I can't wait for my paper to be done.  It’s been something I’ve wanted to do for so long, and doing it now, is helping me to get through the anxiety of all the waiting and worrying.
 
During this “waiting time”, I've registered two new students via cellphone and sent them their study packs already... I’m so proud of myself for continuing to move forward, even without my computer, but I'm going to have a truckload of work to catch up on by the time my computer comes back... scary, but I can't wait to get back to my work! This has been torture without it!
 
My hard drive is cooked so my 1st son is taking it to people with the equipment needed to extract and save what they can from it.  My mentor has kindly organized a deposit for what will be needed to get that done.  My son did all he could, but didn't have all the right equipment to do more. He really tried and I'm so grateful to him for that 💖
 
Later… OH NOOO!!!  Now... My house phone has died and my ADSL has crashed also as a result… now I’m cut-off of all contact, unless I use data to send and receive on my phone! Even if I got my computer back now I couldn't connect on it... This is just too much!  I have reported it and already unhappy at the thought of strangers coming into my house again to fix it!  My phone is in my bedroom!  Anxiety back in full force!  Aaaargh!
 
Thursday, 13th July
Things just keep getting worse... so I'm somewhat of shutting down emotionally now... I almost feel as though someone has cursed me.  I desperately want to take sleeping pills to sleep till it's all over...
 
Working on my paper is literally all that's keeping me going right now... and hoping my computer will be back soon... but beginning to lose hope... holding on for so long is too hard now!
 
Telkom arrived early yesterday... two strange men in my bedroom... one looking all over at everything in my room... which scared me to see!
 
My neighbor said she'd stay aware while they were here so knowing that helped... they came five times and once this morning also but got everything sorted out eventually thankfully and at least my house phone and WiFi are working again.  Their visits weren’t as bad as I was anticipating!
 
Then my 1st son phoned to give me the quote for extracting info from my hard drive... R3705 and that wouldn't even include a new hard drive for the computer.... I nearly fainted!!!!  Anxiety instantly shot through the roof again to the point that I once again felt as though I was drowning… I could hardly breathe!  In desperation, I told him to tell them to do it!  I just don't care anymore... I want my computer back so I can get back to my work!  I'd rather starve than live without it another day!  But he refused.... said they were crooks... He took it back from them this morning, and as my daughter in law was in the area on business, she collected the hard drive from my son to bring back for us to take to a computer shop near our home.  My sister said that they had done a good job on hers in the past at only R1500.
 
More waiting… more suspense… more anxiety overload!  I don’t know how much more I can take!
 
Backup eaten away!
Then later in the day yesterday, I put my external hard drive into the very old computer to look for some quotes for my paper... the computer we usually only watch movies on... and almost everything was missing. I could see my backup folders on the external hard drive, but nothing in most of them and only bits in some others!  Instant panic set in... I couldn't even breathe properly once again... heart palpitations... Pounding head and all!
 
After some thought, I comforted myself in the hope that because the operating system on the old computer is so old, it might not be able to read my modern backup on the external hard drive. I sincerely hoped I was right!
 
Then, just when I thought I seriously couldn't take any more, an unexpected desperate client popped up on my WhatsApp... Helping her, helped me... all my anxiety melted away and I felt like I could breathe again.
 
A friend on FB wrote, when she read about my troubles… “Oh my goodness!  I should be having all of this as I am wicked.  Just hang in there my precious, good, wonderful loving, kind friend.”
 
I responded… “My dear friend, I never want you to say that you're wicked on my page again please. There's only one thing worse and more destroying than others judging you and that's judging yourself as bad!  Only our Father in Heaven can decide on the degree of wickedness in each of us.  Stay strong dear friend.  None of us are perfect, though we must just keep doing our best in striving for perfection... Let Heavenly Father take care of the details... I don't have wicked friend... only lovely friends like you, doing your best with the strength you have left to survive the odds in an often very hard and cruel world.  Love you.”
 
Friday, 14th July
So far the news is good from the computer shop in my town.  Looks like they will be able to recover my data for R875.  A much better quote than the last place.  And another R1000 for a new hard drive if we need that.
 
By the time I got it to the computer shop yesterday to hand over my precious hard drive, I felt so sick that I nearly fainted while waiting for the man to finish with the other customer.  I must have looked ridiculous fanning my face wildly to feel better… and I just wanted to cry!  By the time I got back to my car, I was in tears and so detached, that I had to sit there for a while until I could surface again and felt I could drive safely.
 
There's no place like home, but I won't be able to rest or feel safe again until I have my computer back with everything on it.
 
Two nights of very little sleep!  Wide awake after 2am!!!  Gout threat again in both feet during the night last night.  My right one is still a little sore and I've been using a crutch, but I'm taking the meds and drinking a lot of fluids, so it's getting better as the day goes on.
 
My daughter came with lunch today so I have something to look forward to.  When she came, she took me to get my hard drive back for R875.  They said that they were able to save most of the data, but there will always be some losses.  So, until my computer is all back together again, I won't know for sure if my work, book, therapy stories, poetry and presentations are still there.  The waiting and suspense continues pounding at my reserves of strength relentlessly.  Praying hard 💕 I'm hoping to get it to my 1st son in the morning so he can get it back into the computer and get it ready for me to bring home.  I feel so grateful that the man at the computer shop was able to rescue my data.  As I left them, I told them that I would bring them something nice to eat as soon as I had time again… to show my grattitude.  I felt so relieved.
 
Monday, 17th July
Up till late last night, I was still without a computer to work on, and my son and I worked tirelessly through the weekend, to fix up a computer belonging to my daughter in law, to at least be able to carry on with e-mails and for keeping records in the meantime.  I arrived home at around midnight and today is my first day back at work because of my daughter in law’s kindness.  This morning, I took my own computer back to the computer store, because the recovery they had already done turned out to only be from My Documents which caused me so much disappointment and stress over the weekend, that I nearly lost it completely once again… it was so bad, that when my son tried to talk to me about it, I asked him not to, because I just couldn’t handle hearing about it anymore… it was almost as if someone was cutting me with a hot knife every time they mentioned my computer after that.
 
All of my important documents were on my Desktop and not in the My Documents folder, where I only kept old and miscellaneous items.
 
We are now hoping and praying that they will be able to recover more, because all my important personal works and the students records and my work-related stuff is still lost.  I did have a backup external hard drive, but as mentioned before, even that had a glitch that I never knew about until I needed my backup.  Only bits and pieces remained on that, otherwise much of my work was lost.  The folder names were there, but nothing, or only some of the folders left inside, as if some kind of hungry virus had gone alone eating files out of each folder.  Nobody could explain to me how that could have happened!  I was devastated when I realized that my backup was also broken… stolen! 
 
On my daughter in law’s computer, once my son had set it up for me, I was able to download, over 300 e-mails and I’m doing my best to catch up on at least answering those for now, and will from now on, print out records, so that this never happens again.  If I had printed out records  before, I would have been able to e-mail the students to let them know what was happening a long time ago using my son’s computer.  My son is also going to set me up for automatic updating on the Cloud, etc., so that this won’t happen again, and he’s has already added a good malware program and there’s a virus detector on my daughter in law’s computer also (as there was on my own computer!).
 
Tuesday, 18th July…
Just being back in communication with the students and already today I am feeling so much better.  My work with the Logotherapy students gives my life so much meaning and the will I need to go on. 
 
Yesterday I had a very slow start because I was still totally worn out from the weekend stresses and late night coming home on my own in the dark with my daughter in law’s computer.  What a blessing my children and daughter in laws have been… their support and love has helped me through these three weeks of otherwise abject nightmare… ♥ 
 
I am waiting desperately once again, to hear from the computer shop… it’s been the worst trial I think I’ve ever had to face in a very long time, because there is so much on that hard drive that is so very important to me… my souls works… over 1000 poems (A Poetic Journal of my Life)… since the first once I wrote when I was only 12 years old and my book, recently worked on and loads of changes made and items moved during my final self-editing before I would have sent it in for publishing… and no backup of all that work… I had only 30 pages left to edit and now all that work is gone.  My 23 therapy stories I wrote during my own therapy journey… longing to illustrate them all and have them published… where they all gone also… ???
 
Three weeks of not knowing if any of it had survived the crash… It has all been so soul destroying waiting in suspense with all the ups and downs in-between.  Only this last weekend did we finally find some old backups… enough to help me get back on track at work at lease, but so much recent works missing… praying the computer shop will be able to recover what I need… all the most recent updates…
 
As fast as I’m trying to answer the e-mails, more are coming in… I still have over 300 to do at the end of the day… not catching up at all, but at least I have my will to meaning back and can feel the dark cloud lifting at last.  I’m far too busy to think of my troubles.
 
I’m still so excited about my Logotherapy paper, because it’s something new and exciting… I want to e-mail it to the International Form of Logotherapy before I share it with anyone, because I do believe it’s a first and my mentor and I are so excited about it.  I hope the Forum will accept it.  I wrote it during these three weeks… going over and over and over it so many times… my anxiety levels were so high, that somehow the work on my paper which I had been meaning to do for so long, helped me to keep it together. 
 
There were times, as I imagined having lost everything that I didn’t think I could go on… it has been such a traumatic time for me… I honestly feel like I’ve been thrown in and out of hell more than once over these last three weeks!  I’m struggling with dissociation and just generally feeling very detached from everything… NUMB!
 
All that’s keeping me going is being able to get back to work since yesterday and just chatting again with so many students and having a sense of meaning and responsibility towards them all and my work… I am truly blessed and feeling the love.
 
Later…. A chunk of one of my teeth fell out this morning whilst eating a sweet! And that's all I'm saying about that! You must know how much I just LOOOVE the dentist!!! GRRRR!
 
I FELT THAT WAS THE LAST STRAW... I'd had enough and so I just up and left my house and my work and went shopping for an hour or two… after that, I was feeling a lot better and came home and got on with my work.
 
Friday, 21st July
My 2nd son visited last night and bought me two celery for my salads. I thought... how kind of him. I was feeling the LOVE.
 
It was unusual for him to visit out of the blue that time of the night and not close to his home.  While he was here, he hinted that they might not have saved my hard drive stuff and I must just be strong.  I responded, that I had not given up hope and believe I'll still be receiving good news.  After he'd left and my youngest son had come home from work, I went to bed at 9pm. 
 
There, it suddenly occurred to me that my 2nd son surely must have gone to the computer shop and they let him know they can't help. I have a feeling I will know for sure today... feeling devastated!
 
Been wide awake since 01:30 after only 4 1/2 hours sleep!
 
I WILL survive THIS! I'm not ready to die!  Though living seriously feels like hell right now!!!!  I am feeling angry with LIFE... at the same time I know there's a purpose for all this... there must be, or WHAT'S THE FLIPPING USE!!!
 
I'm gradually resigning now to the possibility of LOSS and just getting on with things with whatever energy I can muster in each moment of each day I am still blessed with.
 
Still reaching for the stars… only there are so many clouds in the way right now…
 
Thank you for sharing with me…
 
~ Panayiota