We are between Sleeps
If we had been able to go swimming or even take a epsom salt bath we would be in much better shape. We knew it and it was impossible to make happen. We were just too worn out from going to the good-bye place which we will write about later.
We need to color if we do not it will be best that we go to the hospital. We have gone to the hospital for many reasons always a different one. We have done much work there and that too is always different. One of the things we have always done there is color. Sometimes we have done art therapy which is doing what others believe for no good reasons is the way to heal. By that I mean the being given directions. It can be a way to something meaningful it usually is just a brief diversion. If we do not color today we may have another window in which we can color and have it effective. It will get harder and harder. We never set a goal of not going to the hospital. We are multiple that is easy all we have to do is choose not to try and find a way to heal.
Negative Energy— This is another coping way and is often used as blame or self blame. All you have to do is not “let” bad energy in and you will heal, that sort of rubbish. Just stay away from people with bad energy and you will somehow heal. The stay away from bad energy is a way to scapegoat other people, or can be. All that being said it does have some merit if not misused. Lots of things are like that.
Coloring is not easy. It has its own risks. Coloring allows healing and that means more hard work. Creating the situation to color and dealing with the changes is hard and if it gets messed up it gets real messed up. We think we are OK and we think part of the reason is there is not more murders of those we love that we have not brought into consciousness.
Our body is healing very fast. We are all but recovered from the exertion of the last week that was needed to get our head right. Our quad which was injured wed night is all but healed. We are a natural fast healer. Our immune system is very very strong and that may be because of the trauma starting at birth. It is a problem as our immune system kicks in when we are processing as the body thinks it is being attacked. We think that is what causes the CFS, TMJ fibro etc. Part of the issue with our immune system is we need a lot of sun to have it do all the work it needs to do. We expect this is the mechanism that causes delayed growth in those of us who have experienced extreme trauma.
We get that one thing that happens when approaching grief is we start processing other trauma. Some of it is finding something else to do that is easier. Who does not solve easy problems as a way to not address the harder ones? What happens is processing the other trauma instead of grieving get partially done. It is not the same as when it get interrupted due to circumstances beyond our control which sometimes is fate yet most often needing someone else to do what is asked and they do not.
We wrote last night we need a complete rebuild. The first step is to not get sun deprived, calorie deprived, sleep deprived or dehydrated. Interesting that is the base of our trauma. No it is a factor that was often the case. Actually some were always a factor as we were always sleep deprived as we did not know how and food was not plentiful for us. We expect that it is a different dynamic when everyone around you is going hungry and it is not just you that is not fed.
It looks like there will be sun today. We are going with our 7:00 thing and are going to be outside doing something this morning when the sun come up for us. The sun coming up for us is key as if we finish this writing and sleep past our 7:00 thing we need to regroup.
The processing the trauma has opened up many pathways in our brain and it is hard to deal with. Much about our swimming and where we swim is the time is flexible. The lake totally so when it is warm. The pool we have gone to available from 6 to 10 and we usually can find a way to be alone. The only drawback it the drive the time and the money. Lots of both. That it is in a large part driving by out therapists office is new. The way to handle that is not to assume that need is over with just as we have some knowledge.
This just in we have had the experience of driving and searching and thought it was going back to the town where the mot years were being experienced happened. This has been the case at times.
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We wrote about this to a psychologist that we correspond with and deleted it. It is about what is observed as depersonalization and derealization. We explained it more accurately as not knowing who our where we were. It is really about searching for those we loved that were murdered. As there were so many that were murdered is was many different searchings and therefore confusing. This is a natural part of grieving this hoping that someone is still alive somehow. We know that.
We once had a person come to our house on the lake in the night. His brother had drowned on that lake. He came to the house asking if we had seen his brother saying he was afraid that his brother had been injured and was on the shore somewhere needing help. We knew that the fish and game department was just waiting for the body to float. We knew a man who owned a dive shop and did body recovery and had helped him processes something. One of the first intellectually disabled boys who became a boy scout had downed by falling under the ice. I knew his father. The fish and game department wanted to wait for spring. The diver put on his gear and floated under the ice where the boy had gone in. He said he just drifted assuming he would drift like the boy and he was correct. He found the boy and carried his body to the father. The diver was dx as bipolar. A few months after speaking to me he got off his meds and was not longer bipolar. I know three people that have been this route other than me.
I went out to the shore with the man whose brother had drowned. He thought he saw his brothers hat. I knew the lake and knew that it was a stump he was seeing. The man wanted to check and I borrowed/stole a boat from the shore and went out in the lake at night looking for a body. We went to the stump and the man started crying. I took him back to shore hugged him and he went off with his family. I see him from time to time and he is angry at me. The worlds scape goat I guess.
In a way our going to the pool was about searching.
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We came home from Zumbamat and wrote a little here and then tried to nap. We then knew we were going to the good-bye place. I think we may have slept some. We dawdled quite a bit. Ok a lot. i think it took three trips to the good-bye place before we put our boat in the water.
There has been lots of rain and the beaver dam had breached. As I wrote yesterday we thought the dam had breached and drove to check. We also saw the wetland in a premonition and the below is a photo. When we had the premonition we did not see it clearly and thought it was a road and could not understand why there was only one side of the road.
My immune system just peaked and we are on the downward side. Had we swam last night we would be asleep right now. Not only is that window past there is no way to get there that route right now. We are going to eat and that may stabilize the immune system a bit. What we need is to be take care of for a few hours. That is not going to happen. Self care is limited. Sometimes you need other people although you do not need them to do what they think you need as it is is what they would need or someone taught them you needed. Very hard concept to grasp when you grew up with people who really have no concept of doing something for someone else and not expecting anything in return.
So we put our kayak in the water making sure not to injure our quad. That was a challenge. We headed up stream which is what we do and came to the first beaver dam. There is another one upstream from that which we could not get to as there is one below we could not get over.
No we first took photos as a way to dawdle.
The stream from the rain and the breach was very very clear. The autumn sun steep in the sky making the view much different. We could see the fish, the water plants and the bottom. The plants waving lazily in the currents. Where we paddle is called Mud Pond. it is not a pond at all.
The sky was a blue as only a autumn sky in NE can be. The plants reluctantly turning brown. When we paddled through the weeds they rustled not unlike when you walk and kick the leaves assuming you know leaves are to be kicked and not raked up in anger.
We stopped for some reason and a great blue heron came by. We had assumed they had all headed south and were a tad angry at them as protection in case they did not show up. He flew along the shore and landed in the tallest pine right at the top. Now if you do not know of the blue heron you can not know what a sight it is to see on in the top of the tallest pine. i would not expect to see it again. We kinda knew the blue heron was not going to show us the way as they had before.
We paddled along and it felt like we were not going to get to be sadder than sad. Perhaps it was knowing we needed to get over the beaver dam and back. We knew going over was going to be fine other than a slight chance we might tip over. We were OK with getting wet and were only concerned about our quad.
We were hungry and made our oatmeal. Someday we may write the proper way to cook and serve oatmeal. Our immune system is not at least at even. What we noticed is it started to level off once our body had the understanding we were going to eat. Hence the being able to put it off.
We made and ate our oatmeal. Last step is important.
We went to Mama’s rock. That is where we started to learn how to grieve the deaths those we loved and were killed. In our dawdling we had pulled up to black eyed susans and a blue aster. We wanted to plant them in a crack in Mama’s rock. Part of our dawdling was to bring a bead we had made to place on Mama’s rock. We always have this idea of bringing something beautiful that we have made and throwing it in the water and never do. The plan was to leave the bead on the rock so those that died could come see it when we were not there. We planted the flowers and placed the bead on Mama’s rock on a ledge just under the water. We then somehow knew that was not what was to happen. We picked the bead up and put it in our pocket and headed toward the dam. We made our way to the dam which is at a tunnel that goes under the highway. The only East West highway in the state.
We did not just crash over the dam as was considered. We went up to the man and made a plan. We shot over the dam without incident and it was fun. We turned around and made a run at getting back up over the dam. Not to see if we could do it just to determine if it was at all possible. We understood that it was a possibility though not a certainty.
We checked out the place where we would take our boat out of the water if we could not get over the dam and it was doable with a little getting wet.
The amount of calories we had stored for this expedition was crazily high. This work requires it.
Past mirrored rocks there is a bridge over the water before the dam. We have often thrown things off this bridge into the water. When we planted the flowers we knew we would find something this time.
We found a place to land and got our of our boat without damage to our quad. Just want to mention there are 5 quad muscles.
We walked to the bridge and were nervous bordering on fear that we would not be sadder than sad coupled with the fear that we would. Grieving is like that.
We looked around and muttered that the birds had deserted us. We knew it was not true we just needed to mutter.
We saw a golden rod. There are seven different types although we did not think of it at the time. We picked one and walked to the bridge. We sang a bit of Michael row the boat ashore and threw the golden rod in the water knowing it would float to the falls. It went in and out of the sun as it floated. It was as gold as gold can be and very very beautiful. It looked like it was floating above the water rather than on or in it.
We walked along the top of the dam so we could be at the falls. We were sobbing at this time and it was not really a safe walk on top of the dam. We did not notice at the time. The flower came to the dam. No that is not what happened we took the bead from out pocket and threw it in the water on top of the dam hoping it would stay on the dam. It did not and we screamed NOOO. How we did not follow I can not know although I am told the blue heron had something to do with it.
There are two sides of the dam you can walk to. I do not remember nor do I need to remember what happened other than we walked on the other side of the dam. I do remember we were sobbing and trying to sing Molly and jake help to trim the sail.
We looked up through the lens of our tears and saw the golden rod heading towards going over the falls gaining speed until over the falls and disappearing into the rapids. We so wanted to hold Jake one more time and held our arms to do so. He was not there. He was in our heart.
We have times when we can not speak. It did not used to bother us at all. We had learned how to deal with it by staying away from people and making signs. Good to be in a country where you do not speak language as you do not have to.
We then knew that Jake as babies do cried and the superintendent had me cut his vocal cords. I botched it and Jake after he healed tried to make sounds. It was hard for us to deal with. It seemed to hurt him and we said that the operation should be done again. Reality is we were only thinking of ourselves. NO that is not what happened we thought it was best for Jake. We were only 10 and not in a good situation.
We told Jake it was OK he could not speak that we knew how to speak without words as out twin and I used to do it. And we held him.
We wrote before that Molly did not love jake. That was wrong we were mad at Molly because she and jake died.
We walked back from the dam still sobbing and then understood we had to paddle back. We got in our kayak and figured that if we started paddling we would figure out what was needed to be done. We paddled away and looked back a few times. We were not drawn back as we have been in the past as we have started to grieve our loss of all those we loved that have died.
We paddled along and a duck happened by making all sorts of racket. That brought us to and we knew we had to go over the dam or portage.
We got to the dam and tried to get over. We could get to the top yet not over. We tried different places and there was only one we could head over and not get turned sideways. The being turned sideways could mean a dunking. We were exhausted in ways at this time. It is pretty funny our calculations were much about not getting in a situation where we needed help. There was no danger of us drowning or anything and if we lost the boat we could just walk or crawl up to the highway. We kept trying to get over the dam. Where we were trying to go was pretty much a small waterfall.
We have a history of where this dam was built. We came there once and saw a circle make out of saplings. It was a weird effect did not seem natural to us. We have a photo of it. We were going to ram it and destroy it and did not. We knew that we were to go to the dam on the left of this circle and to the right on the way back and did so.
Another time we went and the circle was gone. There were still branches there and we did pull on them until they floated down stream presumably to float over the dam although we did not watch them as it about 1/4 mile away.
We kept making attempts to get over the dam knowing we had to save out strenght to portage if that was what we had to do. Unfortunately we forgot that once we got on the other side of the highway we had to paddle home about 2 miles. As we did not consider that we also did not consider that the wind would be in our face.
Through trial, error and design we found a way to get over the dam. It took 12 times of experimentation to find out how to do it. Quite a bit of finesse was needed. That a a bit of adrenaline and we made it over. Key was if the momentum stopped we were pushed backwards. We knew if we got sideways we were going for a swim.
We did not look back and the when we came through what we call the secret passage way we looked and saw that we had a long long way to go and we were tired.
i forgot. We have a thing about blue asters. One is they come out in the fall before now sun. This is interesting we are typing with our feet off the floor. blue asters grown in weird places. We see them in stumps and such all the time. We saw one single on growing out of one of the mirrored rocks. We took a photo.
Our immune system has peaked again.
We paddled along and a blue heron was waiting for us. The heron flew over by Mama’s rock. We were not tired anymore and paddled the 1/2 mile to Mama’s rock. It was a slight detour. We knew something was there for us. We paddled along and got to the rock. Nothing. We looked at the blue heron who had turned to watch us an knew. We said good-bye and the heron flew down the stream and behind the trees headed to toward where the dam is. It was not a sad good-bye it was just a till we meet again things.
Then we we were tired and sore. We were about a mile and a half out. it was a slog against the wind.
Oh I forgot. With the dam breaking and the rain fishing tackle had come loose and we found three fishing bobbers some with lures in the water. We always take them and put them on shore and someone always comes and gets them. One time we were swimming and swam out and got a guys lure. We saw him yesterday and he mentioned it. We decided this time to take the tackle to where we swim with our friends. That is weird.
So we were very tired and had to protect our quad and get our boat on top of our truck. We would have accepted help at that point as long as it was the right person.
That was not spontaneous writing. It was all in one sitting and flowed. We are too tired to add the images right now. We are going to sleep.
We still need to color.
Glad I read that we totally forgot. It is has been a day.
We are going for a walk. That is totally totally knew. We are just going for a walk. We are going to the track. We figured out that we like it there as there is less stimulation. Our brain does not get going as much. As it is new we will have to watch it and make sure we do not mess up.
Back from mile walk.
The walking at the track is a good thing for us. We only walk a mile. It is a good way to regulate and know where we are at. Tonight we walked in the grass a mile and it pretty much showed how beat up we are. It is more than reasonable that we are.
Although it sucks that we were so close last night to being able to swim and have it be a really good thing and that window is closed. It is nice that this morning we knew just what to do to start crawling back and were able to do it. We went for a walk at the track in the sun and came home and slept most of the day.
Yesterday after we went to the good-by place it was like it never happened. We slept last night and then wrote this morning. It is not as abrupt as it used to be as in you could say we saw me on that body of water and I would not know this body was there or maybe every had been.
It feels right now like a weight of the past has been lifted replaced with the ones in the now and they are much easier and handleable if we were not so beat up.
We were going to write a separate post but are not going to. We wanted to apologize for this writing. it is not written to be read in that we really do not think about the reader. Sometimes we know we are being and jerk or worse and we just keep on going. We are much more fun in person.
We are tired and as far as we know all set for this evening. tomorrow is going to be a rainy day. We may be done swimming as we have missed two days. It is a loss yet we know why. We are also not as pushed as we know about the sun energy.
As far as I know we are caught up with the work of therapy. Hopefully tomorrow we will be able to get our head right to color. We did sleep all day which shows we could not have colored.
Hopefully the walk and posting this will end this day. With the rain tomorrow after the work in the recent past we need to be vigilant.
We now understand on a different level what we have accomplished with this grieving. We have more of a sense what it took to make it possible. Before there were alway more deaths to deal with and we did not really understand what it takes as we were so beat up from grieving and bringing the memories into our consciousness.
We also know how hard our whole life was and that sometimes is crushing. It is a good thing that we were not boring our whole life or it might crush us.
Just for fun we used educators thinking and this would be a 13 page paper. Easy to write when you know what you are writing about.
We know how before we would get sun deprived. On some level we know we just could not identify it. We knew what we needed and if people had done as we asked we could have found a way to get sun. We always did when no one was abusing us.
It is hard to call it abuse. When we were mis dx as bipolar we were abused by my former wife through her attorneys and by mental health professionals. The reason it was possible was we had to do what was asked to see our children.
i was once in a grocery store and saw one of my children’s friends. I told her I was divorced and she just like everyone else was shocked. I told her I was fighting to see my children and she started crying and said “I wish my father had fought to see me.” I gave her a hug and that moment carried me many times. I also had a letter written by a 18 year old about how her father was treated and how glad she was that her father kept trying. To be clear I did as well if not better than most fathers with the courts. i am good at such thing. i did make some change and did have one lawyer that can not practice anymore. i got a clerk of the court fired. I actually stuck one attorney with 10.000 using the lawyers rules better than they could I actually got two lawyers so they could not practice.