A good friend of mine commented in one of his responses that my blogs helped him maintain a firm grip on life and although my blogs help me because they are based on my own thoughts and experiences and that helps bring about closure, it is slightly different for me.
I have learned how to see the puzzle, I can even help others complete the puzzle, in the shape of my blogs, but I can’t always complete it myself, because of my neurological impairments, I have no control of joining up the dots.
I simply couldn't remove them. I was plagued with both for years. The only way I could get rid of them was keeping myself busy, but on a practical level that wasn’t possible. I tried desperately to think about other things but that never worked. Joining the dots wasn't something I could do.
There was a little girl in school who was terminally ill and seeing her struggle, made me hold on to the emotional side of what she was struggling with. I became tired, always having to compete with my worries, and that little voice talking back at me, saying unkind things about her.
Putting myself first and staying away from stress, negativity and negative situations, my mind is becoming a little more at ease. Staying away may not meet with other people’s approval, but I need to look after myself, my sanity and my health.
Being pleasing to others meant they always came first. Now I need to put myself first, because I deal with anxiety. That in itself is distressing.
Yes, connecting the dots isn't always very easy when you don't fully understand your condition.
The impression we always got, mostly from my father, was that having any issues like our mother's would make us crazy and stupid when none of us were.
I spent the majority of my childhood feeling guilty and ashamed that I didn't end up having a lot of her issues, which is why I didn't want to get any help.
Obviously this didn't end very well, so I suffered for such a very long time for really no good reason, other than trying to prove that I wasn't anything like them. In the end I turned out to be the same and so much worse when my issues took over my mind.
Now I have to do what you were talking about, as in staying away from any negativity and stress in order to protect my own health and sanity, which does mean putting myself first.
This is going to be very difficult to do when I'm facing situations like having to rescue my daughter from where she is living, since her mother and her mother's husband have taken advantage of her, in the worst possible ways.
I'm sure that she's thinking that I really don't want to help her out, but I need to distance myself from dealing with them, seeing as more than likely I would end up in jail, which I'm trying to avoid.
She may end up hating me for what I will have to do to get her out of there, but she can't connect the dots herself since she hasn't ever had to deal with them.
My main concern is for her health and safety, whether she realizes it or not.
Thanks Randy. Yes, we can still put ourselves first and put ourselves out only when it's necessary, particularly when it comes to our children. We will automatically want to and must look out for them.
When you have no ability to join up the dots because you deal with a neurological impairment and this is what I have found; it's made all the more harder because others fail to understand. Where parents fail to join up the dots, it's left to the children to do it.
I believe you can Randy. You were well aware every step of the way of your parents' shortcoming. You know what their shortcomings were, although you were not always in a position to change your parents. You were just a child.
When our parents are no longer in our lives, we get to call the shots and join up the dots. But what's important is, we stay away from stress and negativity and that includes those we have around us.
Sadly, the majority of our stress comes from the people we live with and yet we do nothing about those relationships, primarily because we don't think we can, or we're scared to rock the boat.
It must be incredibly difficult to help people everyday but not be able to do the same for yourself. That takes a very special person to give selflessly in that way.
That's so nice. Thank you for the lovely compliment. I find it easier to cope with my neurological impairments on a day to day basis because I am able to help others and do what I do.
And that helps me concentrate on my positivity. But I do have another side that struggles with anxiety because of my neurological impairments that no one gets to see, because I make everything look easy.
There's nothing easy about anxiety.