Don’t want any of this

The last ten days have been busy and tough. We said goodbye to K’s house on Monday 2nd September and to be honest I’ve not even had chance to process it or write about it. K said we weren’t making a hullabaloo because we are not ending, just saying goodbye to the room (though of course some parts internally were definitely having a hullabaloo!). We both know it’s bigger than that though. She is so far away now. Without a car there is no way of getting to hers that doesn’t take 4 or 5 hours each way and involve bikes on trains or long bus rides and taxis. When I put each of our postcodes into google maps and select the public transport option it says ‘Can’t find a way to get there’. This basically sums it all up. So it will be a 70 mile round trip by car for therapy each week and part of me can’t help but think this is nuts and it is time to stop.

The past week in particular has been too busy and my traumatised brain has not coped well at all. Lack of sleep, lack of focus on work, feelings of overwhelm and over-stimulation. I’ve learnt some lessons which I must be sure to integrate, but overall I am left with a feeling of sadness and frustration that I have PTSD and a dissociative disorder and can do so much less of the things I enjoy than I would like to be able to do. I have to leave so much time between things, not spend too much time socialising, not do things after work if I want to sleep, spend hours soothing my brain and body-mind. It’s just unfair. I know everyone has their limits, I know self-care is important, but it turns out my window of tolerance (now I can actually see it because I’m not out of my zone of tolerance nearly all the time) is so much smaller than I ever could have imagined.

I’ve had to cancel going to see my half sister in London this weekend. I know London would finish me this week, especially the 5 and a half hour train/tube/bus journey either way (what was I thinking, seriously?) and that there is too much to do at home and I am already overwhelmed. I’ve not seen her since November last year and we’ve only spoken once on the phone in that time, which was July when we arranged the visit for this weekend (me being over-accommodating again, I know I can’t go away in term-time and particularly not to London!). It was a weird phone call – we didn’t talk about our Mum and brother at all but it was nice to talk to her. When I told K it was ‘fine’ and we didn’t mention Mum and that I had chest pains that evening she laughed, kindly, and pointed out how messed up it is that we both avoid something so huge and I think this is normal and okay! I just want to have my sister still, and it is such a relief that she doesn’t hate me for what I’ve done to our mum and brother, but of course there is so much that continues to be unspoken between us and seeing her this weekend would inevitably bring up a lot.

She is being really understanding about us not going. And it makes me so sad. I would love to have a close and nurturing relationship with my sister, but it is just not like that at all. She would never come and help me out when things got too much, and she doesn’t call on me when times are hard really. It would take a huge emotional toll on me to see her – K and I are meeting today in part because I needed support to prepare for this weekend – and that makes me so sad. My family is so dysfunctional. My sister is the only person I still see on my Mum’s side. There is no one else. Without her I would feel completely cast adrift and yet what we have is so inauthentic and the only bond we really have is that we each have had a very complex, and extremely different, experience of being ‘mothered’ by the same person.

Today I am exhausted and on edge. I need to work before I leave at 12.30 to see K. I am so not up for a 50 minute drive and then being somewhere new and all the stupid stuff we will have to work through about feeling unsettled in the new space. I don’t want to have to waste my next few sessions acclimatising to K’s new home and work space, I want to focus on me and my life. I want her support with what has come up for me since we last met. And I just want to be ‘normal’ whatever that means – I want to be able to see friends and do things I enjoy in the evenings after work and still be able to sleep, I want to be able to meet new people and be in social situations with people I don’t know and not get triggered, I want to be able to spend time with people and not need so much time alone to decompress, I want other people’s energies to stop impacting me so much (I did my Reiki 1 attunment last weekend with this in mind – will blog about it another time when I am in a better headspace). I want a family and friends I can turn to for support and to be able to ask for help when I need it without feeling like a drain on people. I am so frustrated by my brain and the fact that I am left with the imprints of other people’s mistakes and inadequacies for the rest of my life.