The Self-Healing Power of The Ready Mind (Part 2)

Early October, I found out that my brother had sold his business… it was the first I had heard of it and I felt very shocked and hurt by that.  My immediate thoughts were, that my youngest son’s job (and therefore salary) was threatened.  Would the new owners be able to understand him, and would they keep him?  What was his future now that he was no longer going to be working under the care and protection of family? (he has Asperger's syndrome)  I became so worried that my sense of security was shattered overnight, because without my son’s salary added to mine, we’d lose our home and a whole lot more.
 
And my dear old dad would no longer have his place of work to go to anymore, so, besides my overwhelming fears for my son and our future, I could not imagine my dad surviving a life without his work responsibilities and most importantly, his people-connections which I know he loved and thrived on. 
 
Daddy would be up early every morning before anyone else in the house, and was always waiting at the gate, be it summer or in the freezing cold of winter, for his lift to get him to work on time… If the lift arrived late, he’d complain.  I felt extremely sad for him… I think that deep down, I was triggered subconsciously (through him having to go through this enormous change in his daily routine and what I believed made him happy at work, etc.,)
 
I started to live out, vividly in my mind, my own extreme fears of becoming old and having to rely on someone else for my happiness and whatever else old people long for and need on a deeply personal level……..
 
But there we go again… how could anyone who has not been there ever understand what an old person really needs, fears, desires, longs for, etc. So, for me, the idea of old age literally feels like how I’d imagine purgatory to be. Having worked in an old age home and seen how many sad and grumpy old people there are… sad and grumpy, because they are alone and longing and hurting for all that has been lost, and all that could still be, but is not. 
 
I was left, fearing more than ever, my own ominously encroaching old age. 
 
Seeing my dad come to an end of a certain era in his old age… to face change and come what may… totally out of his control… a life led by others, to be lived by the rules of others, and in the way of others… and to rely on any portion of time and love that others decide to spare for him.
 
It is extremely frightening to me to realise that I will be there in that place too someday… I am not sure I want to go there… I am quite sure I don’t!
 
And so it is, that I became completely consumed with intrusive thoughts and the horror of it all as I perceived and interpreted the entire situation on the level of my own terrifying fears.
 
On the 30th October, I was the one who transported my dad and my youngest son to my dad’s last day at work. 
 
Generally, I would drop them off at work and go home again, but if I remember right, my dad’s bakkie was not working that day and I also needed to take my son to the Doctor because he had been ill with a bad cough again that had been keeping us both awake for a good few nights already.  As he has only one third of his right lung left after a lobectomy in 2010, it is always a huge worry for me when he is ill.  During October, I was also frantically preparing for the student workshops and under a huge amount of stress as it was… even the stress of anticipation of the responsibilities required of me during the workshops… would I cope… fear of failure… fear of change to my general routine, wanting to do it all right for our students and trainers, etc.
 
I didn’t need more to worry about… I was already overwhelmed, without all the added stress and shock of the last minute news that my brother had sold his shop.
 
So, on the 30th October, instead of driving home after dropping my dad and my son off at work, I went into the shop, to wait for the Dr’s rooms to open so that I could take my son there.  While my son was opening the shop doors, switching on lights and beginning the day at the shop, my dad was feeding the little black, wild cat that had become tame enough to trust a few people… she would not let them pick her up, but would come close enough for those she trusted, to rub her little head on their legs and let them stroke her briefly.  My dad took this little cat under his care and would take food for her daily… I wondered what would happen to her now… who would feed her once my dad was gone… I felt so sad for the little cat.  My son did comfort me though, by telling me that there were two women who came every day to drop food off for the wild cats who lived around the shop.  I wondered who these beautiful women were… how kind they were… but still I felt sad that the little black cat would no longer have my dad’s loving care, personally seeing to its’ needs.  The people at the shop had named the cat “Beef Stew”… a strange and funny name! 
 
Very soon after I’d gone into the shop, the other workers started to arrive one after the other.  I already knew that it was my dad’s last day at work, but they did not.  I noticed how each worker came over to him to warmly greet him with their broad smiles, and most hugged him… many calling him Papou (Greek for grandfather), and others called him Oupa (Afrikaans).  Early morning customers started to arrive also, all greeting my dad like a dear friend of theirs… it was so beautiful to see, but the more I witnessed the love that my dad was receiving from all these people, the sadder and sadder I became, knowing that this was his last day at work surrounded by all that love… and that they did not know.  The terrible sadness that lived in my past… the already TOO MANY tragic goodbyes… those deep emotions still lost inside of me… never properly dealt with… they all started to bubble over, my inner screams surfaced as tears rolling down cheeks… an deep internal sobbing that I had no control over… the deepest sadness that I could not possibly describe in words.
 
I didn’t want to make my dad sadder than he already was, so tried to avoid eye contact with him, but when he turned to me, with his own tears streaming down his face, I just knew I had to leave there immediately, because I was about to lose it completely.  The depth of my sadness was equivalent to “a death”… as if I were mourning my father’s death already... 
 
Agonies and fears from my past and even in my present… totally exaggerated and totally out of my emotional control in that moment in time.  In the twisted way that I believe the mind works for some adult survivors of child abuse, I’d somehow transferred my own fears and emotions into my father and son’s situation as if, what I imagined could have been their sufferings, was actually my own… I was unable to separate the pain I was experiencing… to leave it where it belonged… with whom it belonged… FLASHBACK EMOTIONS had taken over completely… I had once again, become lost in the horrors of my past… back in that forest that I spoke about in my last post (Part 1)… there had been a build up to it since all the events in May… a prelude to this twisted and tortured state of mind that had now taken over completely.
 
I got into my car and sent a message to my daughter in law, asking is she was home… she lives near the shop where my dad and son work.  With tears still running down my cheeks, I told her when I arrived that I was feeling sad and needed somewhere safe, just to cry… she warmly welcomed me in, and when I sat down, I cried and cried.  My 2nd son was here too, and both were so kind.  They did not make me feel stupid for arriving and crying so bitterly, they were just there… accompanying me through the moment in time where I was so grateful not to be alone. 
 
The very next day while I was desperately trying to escape my fears, and my heartache, and the suffocating dissociative state that was trying to drag me to the depths of my own ending, this poem popped up on Facebook and I identified with it so sorely, because it was as if my mind had already experienced news of my father’s passing.  The grief I was feeling was completely unbearable and I was completely alone with it all, because who could possibly understand the destructive power of THIS damaged mind… I myself struggle to understand it sometimes, and that’s why I am doing this healing work, to try and fathom my own mind in the hopes of helping others to unravel the workings of their own minds also, for the sake of their healing.

On some level, logic tells me that my dad is still with us, but the part of met hat has already faced his death, cannot be confused by reality right now… I am still too detached from that reality and it if feels too painful to even go there right now! 
 
In all the overwhelming stress of the time and the turmoil that was going on in my mind… the longings for comforting arms to hold me and to understand… my mind turned to my beloved Greek family… I wondered why they had not told me what was going to happen, in order to help me to prepare for it.  Surely, they did not share this important news with me, because they did not love me enough.  I remembered all the other times in the past where I had imagined their rejection… and not because they were in fact rejecting me, but because, just like the story I have now shared… that’s how I sometimes perceive things to be… something would trigger the feelings of being rejected by them and my heart would ache and I’d begin to withdraw from them increasingly more over time as a result. 
 
After nights of lack of sleep and all the stress and anxiety of the upcoming workshops… wondering how I’d get my son to and from work now that he’d no longer have transport with my dad… his work is quite a distance from our home and in a scary place… I’d have to drive there early in the mornings and collect him when it was dark at night… how could I do that and all the traveling and whatever else would be required of me over the time of the workshops?  How would we afford now to pay for the extra petrol required each month. 
 
To be quite honest… I was scared half to death!  Leaving my home is bad enough under normal circumstances as I have always struggled with some level of agoraphobia, but to leave my home on my own at night in the dark to pick him up at that scary place… that was more than I could handle at the time.  It was also going to mess with my “safe” routine and comfort zone. 
 
By the 4th November, I was in such a bad state… desperately needing the comfort of my loved ones, but believing that they would not understand… and that they did not love me, I lost it completely and wrote a hurting letter to my Greek family to tell them exactly how I felt… that I no longer believed that they loved me and told them that I just wanted to be left alone…
 
It was safer to push them right out of my life, than to bear the pain of having them in it anymore. 
 
Of course, they were very hurt by what I’d done… but I was left numb… numb to any emotions about it… a complete cut out of my life, to protect myself from more pain. 
 
And still a logical part of me wonders how it could possibly have happened, but another part of me feels safe that it has happened… no more responsibility of trying to hold onto what felt as though it was already gone… as if it never was…
 
Can anybody understand?
 
What a lonely journey this is!
 
Since my childhood, my Greek family have been the heroes of my LIFE… the very reason I have been able to hang on through all the horrors of my past, so I would never have imagined a day where my psyche would cause me to stop believing in their love for me… I never imagined a time where I would push them so far away, so as not to allow any more pain… this is as strange and unfathomable to me as I am sure it must be to them… bewildering… painful and dreadful, and I don’t know how to make it right again, because I would first have to find a way to learn to trust in their love again for it to work.  I don’t know if they would ever be able to supply for my psyche, what I feel has been lost from the fantasy of their true and unconditional love that I lived in ever since my childhood. 
 
I don’t know what is real anymore or what is fantasy… I just don’t know. 
 
Occasionally, one will post something on family and forgiveness on our family WhatsApp group as if trying to send a message… I do not respond, because they just con’t understand… it’s not about anger, or hate, or anything like that at all… it’s all about LOVE… it’s always been about LOVE… suggesting forgiveness is ludicrous… there is nothing to forgive… just a big empty space in my soul where they used to belong… and when they were there… I BELONGED…
 
Thank you for sharing with me today
 
~ Panayiota.
 
(To be continued in – Part 3)