Sometimes I'm sensible...
Actually, most of the time I'm sensible, very very sensible - I just have a very small group of things in life that I am *not* sensible about. Sensible is an odd word when you have just typed it four times...
I'm in the middle of a panic attack at the moment, and for once it only took about an hour and a half - I'm guessing, panic attacks are not linear, and I wasn't really paying attention to the time - for me to get out of bed, walk into the living room, pick up the valium and take two. Well done me. I'm infamous for reverting to childhood training and *not* getting the help I need when I most desperately need it. Which, among other things, is the cause of the fucking, bloody, buggery, sodding, hellspawn panic attacks in the first place.
What the hell do you *do* when you've *done* everything you possibly can do to change a situation and nothing works? I'm the daughter of a mechanic and a control freak, I learned well. Fix it, fix it, fix it. And if it isn't being fixed, well, you're not *trying hard enough*.
The nightmares are real. The panic attacks are real. It's all real. It all happened. And it was bad. It was very bad. And I don't want it to be. I want to be exaggerating. I want to be a drama queen. I want to be making it all up. I want it to go away. I want to not be haunted anymore. It's so fucking banal. Do you know what it's like to be bored and terrified at the same time? I do. I spent my entire childhood, most of my life up until now feeling like that. And I want to just cast it all off, throw it away, and live a life without this dogging my heels. I've tried, but it doesn't work that way. I don't have the energy to figure out what else to do.
Click my heels, once, twice, three times. There's no place like home. Stress the words, syllables, differently and there is a whole new meaning to the sentence. There's no place like home - I have nowhere that feels like home. And, bang, my spasticity kicks in there, I nearly knocked the keyboard right off the desk. And what is worse, I have never had anywhere that feels like home.
This is boring, this is tedious. There is so much more that I could be doing with my life. Fuck it. I manage to stay a few steps ahead until, boom! It catches up with me and I collapse.
They used to forget to pick me up from places - context here, I have never been able to ride a bike, and I can't walk long distances without falling a lot. I didn't use a mobility scooter until a couple of years after I left home, and a quad cane only in the last few years. They forgot to pick me up after a night rehearsal of a school musical once. I was left standing in the dark (large country town - not too many street lights, and no public bus service) outside the school for a couple of hours. I was 13, 14, and painfully shy, well trained in never asking for help (you have to be independent, don't be lazy, you're just taking advantage of your disability - this last unspoken, but still clear). Everyone else had left and the school was locked up, nowhere to phone from. This was in the 80's, no mobile phones. A mile and a half from the house, far too far for me to walk. So I waited outside the school, directly across from the Domain - large town park, I knew of at least one girl who had been attacked and raped there. They had forgotten to pick me up. I wasn't surprised. They forgot about me a lot, in different ways. They forgot that I need help getting up and down steps and stairs, they forgot that I couldn't walk as fast as them, they forgot that I had no control over whether I fell over or not. They forgot that it wasn't my fault I had cerebral palsy, and that I couldn't just `overcome' it. I think that they forgot I was even human.
They remembered to pick me up eventually. But they did it again, and again, as the years went by they kept forgetting to pick me up from places. My parents were well known in the community for being responsible, reliable. No one knew that they were selective in this. At the same time they said, but we love you, you're our daughter, stop being so negative, you're exaggerating, you're so difficult. (And I've just realised this situation is where a particularly terrifying reccurring nightmare comes from - I have several reccurring nightmares, but this one is one of the ones that I wake up screaming bloody murder from every time - I'm outside, it's night, pitch dark, and I *know* that I'm completely alone and that no one will ever come for me)
Now, as adult, it frightens me to death when people don't forget about me, when they notice that I exist, when they notice when I'm not there. Don't they know they aren't supposed to do that? Don't they know that I don't matter? And for years after I left `home', I was terrified to death that someone from my past would turn up and tell them the truth, that I'm not real, that I'm invisible, broken, defective, worthless and that I shouldn't be noticed, acknowledged, accepted.
I'm not a weak person. Weakness is a luxury that I cannot afford - you can only be weak if there is someone to pick up the slack for you. I'm a strong person. But these things still haunt me. And I'm still convinced that I will only ever be ignored or attacked, or both at the same time. I work hard at fighting against these things - I want my life to be more than this. I do not want these weak, stupid, ignorant, negligent, abusive people to win. I am so damn tired. I keep working, fighting, and end up running in the same place. I'm *better* than these people, I'm smarter, I'm stronger, but none of it seems to be enough.
Why did they leave? I know it's pointless to ask, I know it's the child in me, I know it can't be answered, but why did they leave me? What did I do wrong? And why the hell are they *never* held accountable for what they did?
I'm in the middle of a panic attack at the moment, and for once it only took about an hour and a half - I'm guessing, panic attacks are not linear, and I wasn't really paying attention to the time - for me to get out of bed, walk into the living room, pick up the valium and take two. Well done me. I'm infamous for reverting to childhood training and *not* getting the help I need when I most desperately need it. Which, among other things, is the cause of the fucking, bloody, buggery, sodding, hellspawn panic attacks in the first place.
What the hell do you *do* when you've *done* everything you possibly can do to change a situation and nothing works? I'm the daughter of a mechanic and a control freak, I learned well. Fix it, fix it, fix it. And if it isn't being fixed, well, you're not *trying hard enough*.
The nightmares are real. The panic attacks are real. It's all real. It all happened. And it was bad. It was very bad. And I don't want it to be. I want to be exaggerating. I want to be a drama queen. I want to be making it all up. I want it to go away. I want to not be haunted anymore. It's so fucking banal. Do you know what it's like to be bored and terrified at the same time? I do. I spent my entire childhood, most of my life up until now feeling like that. And I want to just cast it all off, throw it away, and live a life without this dogging my heels. I've tried, but it doesn't work that way. I don't have the energy to figure out what else to do.
Click my heels, once, twice, three times. There's no place like home. Stress the words, syllables, differently and there is a whole new meaning to the sentence. There's no place like home - I have nowhere that feels like home. And, bang, my spasticity kicks in there, I nearly knocked the keyboard right off the desk. And what is worse, I have never had anywhere that feels like home.
This is boring, this is tedious. There is so much more that I could be doing with my life. Fuck it. I manage to stay a few steps ahead until, boom! It catches up with me and I collapse.
They used to forget to pick me up from places - context here, I have never been able to ride a bike, and I can't walk long distances without falling a lot. I didn't use a mobility scooter until a couple of years after I left home, and a quad cane only in the last few years. They forgot to pick me up after a night rehearsal of a school musical once. I was left standing in the dark (large country town - not too many street lights, and no public bus service) outside the school for a couple of hours. I was 13, 14, and painfully shy, well trained in never asking for help (you have to be independent, don't be lazy, you're just taking advantage of your disability - this last unspoken, but still clear). Everyone else had left and the school was locked up, nowhere to phone from. This was in the 80's, no mobile phones. A mile and a half from the house, far too far for me to walk. So I waited outside the school, directly across from the Domain - large town park, I knew of at least one girl who had been attacked and raped there. They had forgotten to pick me up. I wasn't surprised. They forgot about me a lot, in different ways. They forgot that I need help getting up and down steps and stairs, they forgot that I couldn't walk as fast as them, they forgot that I had no control over whether I fell over or not. They forgot that it wasn't my fault I had cerebral palsy, and that I couldn't just `overcome' it. I think that they forgot I was even human.
They remembered to pick me up eventually. But they did it again, and again, as the years went by they kept forgetting to pick me up from places. My parents were well known in the community for being responsible, reliable. No one knew that they were selective in this. At the same time they said, but we love you, you're our daughter, stop being so negative, you're exaggerating, you're so difficult. (And I've just realised this situation is where a particularly terrifying reccurring nightmare comes from - I have several reccurring nightmares, but this one is one of the ones that I wake up screaming bloody murder from every time - I'm outside, it's night, pitch dark, and I *know* that I'm completely alone and that no one will ever come for me)
Now, as adult, it frightens me to death when people don't forget about me, when they notice that I exist, when they notice when I'm not there. Don't they know they aren't supposed to do that? Don't they know that I don't matter? And for years after I left `home', I was terrified to death that someone from my past would turn up and tell them the truth, that I'm not real, that I'm invisible, broken, defective, worthless and that I shouldn't be noticed, acknowledged, accepted.
I'm not a weak person. Weakness is a luxury that I cannot afford - you can only be weak if there is someone to pick up the slack for you. I'm a strong person. But these things still haunt me. And I'm still convinced that I will only ever be ignored or attacked, or both at the same time. I work hard at fighting against these things - I want my life to be more than this. I do not want these weak, stupid, ignorant, negligent, abusive people to win. I am so damn tired. I keep working, fighting, and end up running in the same place. I'm *better* than these people, I'm smarter, I'm stronger, but none of it seems to be enough.
Why did they leave? I know it's pointless to ask, I know it's the child in me, I know it can't be answered, but why did they leave me? What did I do wrong? And why the hell are they *never* held accountable for what they did?