"It’s Only Words" -- Sometimes they make a profound difference.

I was grateful for a positive comment left here yesterday. Thoughtful words, the knowledge that they came from someone who has spent considerable time reading about the subjects I address in my blog, and the fact that he was responding to a post I wrote almost a year ago, deeply impacted my feelings and intentions about continuing to write here. For those reasons, I would like to copy a large part of the comment and my reply to the person who took the time and care to write it.

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Difficulties (Entry Link)

Oct.8, 2008 blog entry titled, "Difficulties"

Greetings,

I write to thank you for your blogging efforts. I found your post on Oct.8th, 2008 titled, "Difficulties", contains insight I feel complements the following excerpt very well. Insights concerning social dynamics surrounding reactions towards persons seeking witness to, or explaining the basis of, their trauma. I have read a lot on trauma and related subject material. I highly value your input.

Sincerely,

Aaron Gilmore

(Mr. Gilmore followed his personal comments with an excerpt from the introduction to a book, entitled Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman, M.D.)

Here is my reply:

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Dear Mr. Gilmore,

Thank you very much for your comment, and for the excerpt you included from Judith Herman‘s book. I considered it so helpful and encouraging, that I decided to reply with a new blog post today. After months of frustration and discouragement about so few comments,  I stopped writing. It seemed like I'd been 'preaching to the choir' I suspected that even the choir was falling asleep while I carried on from my platform.  I felt my efforts were doing very little good for people.

Maybe I paid too little attention to the other several positive comments people wrote during the past two years or so.

It is traumatic for me--continuing to write about my pain, about the whole sea of pain and the millions of people trying to survive in it. Writing about it is as traumatic as it is necessary and conducive to healing. That dichotomy is uncomfortable… unwieldy. Besides, when I re-read my posts, I often cringe at my authorial tone and style. I dislike the feeling of writing in a vacuum, of hearing its ugly, metallic echo so often. I have a healthy belief in my writing ability; I don’t need validation of my skill. What I want is a sense that it makes a difference whether I write this blog or quit writing. I guess I lack awareness of my readers. Since I can’t see or hear signs of people sitting at computers reading my words, reacting, thinking about them, benefiting from them, I shrug my shoulders and avoid writing in general. Reading your comment, Mr Gilmore, made me reconsider.  It seems important to ‘keep on keeping on‘.

Thanks. Your comments made the difference and prompted me to decide. I will continue this blog.

Gratefully,
Edge of Raisin

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A poem that speaks truth to me…

In A Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or a winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Theodore Roethke

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I still have physiological symptoms that arise, not from negative or conscious thoughts, but from links and triggers. For example, immediately when I saw notification of Mr. Gilmore’s comment in my email, I began to feel apprehensive that perhaps someone had left a message challenging or minimising my accounts or the legitimacy of my statements.

This anxiety arose, despite the fact that I have had nothing but positive comments to my blog articles. It arose despite the fact that I have received overwhelmingly positive and affirming messages in my life from many people I have encountered in my 57 years. It arose despite the fact that I have been a highly functional, successful, well-rounded, socially competent individual for most of my life. It arose despite my and testable lack of any paranoid tendencies, despite the fact that I was not feeling depressed or vulnerable when I read my email, despite the fact that I am currently happy about relationships and interactions with significant people over the past few months. It arose despite the fact that those who know me well would describe me as a balanced, even-tempered person, socially and emotionally mature, self-aware and clear-thinking. It arose despite several years of counselling therapy and despite my careful reading and application of at least a dozen books and methods of dealing with traumatic response which have been recommended to me by professionals.

A painfully familiar, loud buzzing began as I read the blog comments page. I guess this must have happened just because I was thinking about this disturbing subject of domestic abuse and trauma. My tinnitus reaction arose because of persistent programming of my fight or flight responses. reactions through continual disturbing interactions and daily trauma at the hands of my abusive husband during a period from 2002-2006; and because of the callous and ignorant manner in which I was received and treated by dozens of people when I attempted to extricate myself from that situation and recover my life and my peace of mind.

Here we are, some 3-4 years later, and I still, frustratingly, struggle with these reactive patterns and links. They occur at least a few times every day. Some days they are so disruptive that I cannot do much more than sleep and eat. I notice, I breathe, I rest, and I try to just accept them while moving on in my thoughts from the natural sense of anger and annoyance that my reactive symptoms bring up.

I find that my G.P., social workers who talk with me, and mental health professionals to whom I have been referred, have no viable method to deal with these symptoms or underlying problems that cause them. Responsible ones among them validate me--those who are educated to understand trauma. They acknowledge the seriousness of my experiences and my struggle. But they admit that there is little more than they can give me. Health care systems don’t provided much in these situations. The social care system has no solutions and no accurate category into which to place me.

The government benefits system, which assesses incapacity and suitability for receipt of financial assistance, does not recognise my particular problems as ‘disabilities‘. Scepticism, incomprehension, and frustration are typical responses of bureaucratic systems and agencies when they encounter people who suffer ongoing traumatic effects of domestic violence. Even those workers who have been educated about the issues and properly trained to interview people, have few options, powerless to offer any long-term help and relief.

So, various individuals and organisations pass the buck and the blame for persistent traumatic response problems. They fail to accept any moral obligation to find workable solutions and assistance programs. Victims of 9/11, the London bombings, or PTSD following combat experiences, for example, are considered suitable candidates for de-programming and therapy to deal with their bodies' and psyches' scrambled functions. But sufferers like me are told to 'get over it,' instructed to replace negative thoughts with positive ones, and offered other useless ‘therapeutic’ bandages.

Validation and acknowledgement are critical elements that allow healing to begin and to continue. Moreover, as important as the need for validation of the person’s accounts and experiences of trauma, is the need for validation and acknowledgement of special, persistent difficulties and disruptions to his or her life and future.

As I began to read Mr.  Gilmore’s comments, my anxiety was quietened. I am, after all, a rational, self-respecting, confident individual. However, within minutes, I experienced a familiar loud buzzing and ringing in my ears that I trace to the beginning of abusive cycles in my marriage. Tinnitus plagued me for the next several hours and still continues as I write this reply and blog post.

Is the sudden onset of tinnitus caused by 'negative thoughts' or an insistence on focusing on my past? Is it a result of a stubborn insistence on viewing myself as a 'victim'? Is it happening because I hold grudges and ill will toward my former abuser--a refusal to forgive and forget? Is it because I have failed to 'move on' and be optimistic about present and future opportunities or possibilities?

Absolutely not!

I can get no validation or assistance to deal with my tinnitus, or with spontaneously triggered severe acid reflux, sudden exhaustion or mental blanking, and a variety of other annoying, debilitating remnants of my historic traumatic experience. Often, I have absolutely no clue what triggered the response; sometimes, with a careful, focused back-tracking and detective work, I can identify a specific trigger event, reminder of an incident, a smell, a visual link, a tone of voice or other sound, a slight nuance in someone’s body language. However, I am unable to disconnect those triggers from the physiological responses. They are still operating because of the conditioning that happens when a person becomes hyper attentive to any small indicator that abuse is about to happen again. Wouldn’t anyone dealing with that, learn to habitually look for signs that they are in danger again, and again, and again?

Because I was abused over and over in countless subtle and overt ways, by mental, emotional, spiritual, financial, sexual and physical means, there are hundreds or thousands of triggers!

I repeat: There are hundreds or thousands of triggers! Because the trauma of abuse was pervasive and infiltrated nearly every aspect of my life during a period of several years, no clear-cut, easy remedy is available to undo the damage.

Because society perceives that my problem arose from a 'relationship difficulty,' society does not recognise the long-term, enduring traumatic effects in the same way it legitimises other kinds of physical and psychological results of trauma. The treatment lack I am offered by medical and mental health establishments, and the absence of understanding and appropriate treatment, cloud and blur all the abuse issues with other unrelated and often socially judgemental conclusions about me and about my character, my personality, my very legitimacy as a patient/client needing treatment and remedial care. I understand the financial impracticalities they face when dealing with this problem which affects as many as one in four women and an undetermined number of men. I am aware of that the general public still gets waylaid by too much misinformation, too much outdated theorising about abuse and trauma in the context of relationships. I even understand that the vast majority of physical and mental health professionals lack adequate information, funding, and empathic skills to address the issues I face.

I am growing accustomed to getting bounced back and forth between oppositely-focused counsellors. I have combined a number of typical experiences to create the following fictional examples of how that works:

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Conversation with mental health professional A:

I, the client, talk about my feelings, my distress, my pain, my sense of futility, my losses, in a personal and detailed manner. I focus on my specific difficulties and what they mean to me, as an individual. I include the negative and the positive, the things I things I treasure that keep me going day to day. In a story-telling, background-giving manner, I talk about what happened that brought me here. I express how it felt at the time and how it devastated my life. I talk about the journey I’ve made and the process of honestly accepting what I cannot change, letting go of the years and opportunities that were lost because of it, putting things behind me. I give specific, detailed examples that I believe she will comprehend. These examples are painful to recount, and I openly show my emotions as I share them.

In response, the counsellor tells me I focus too much on myself and my personal difficulties and complaints. She is confident that what I need to do is to go out and get involved in social things, meet people, be busy, look at the bigger picture. From her extremely limited of my specific past and present situations, without much consideration of my dire financial situation or the limitations of my physical illness) she lists ways I could do this.

If she were not so careful to couch her responses and reactions to me and my story in professional, clinically acceptable phrases, she might sum it all up with this way: 

"Why on earth are you still whining about this? Get over yourself! stop being so self-absorbed. Get a life! You are sitting here appearing to be intelligent, suitably groomed and observant of social conventions. You have no real problem in my opinion. Because you insist on being negatively focused and on emotionally reacting to the facts that cannot be changed, about things that are in the past, you continue to be depressed. I will prescribe a tablet for that. Get some exercise, stop insisting that you are a victim, and move on!"

I, the client, read something of that nature between the lines of clinical phrases the counsellor speaks, the ones I recognise as a combination of her training and her own personal view of the world. Her message is clear to me, but not at all useful. I leave deflated and disappointed. I try to shrug off my personal hurt at what has just transpired. I resolve to be more circumspect and lett demonstrative in future clinical interviews.

Conversation with mental health professional B:

The counsellor begins by explaining to me that we have only a limited number of sessions in which to address my issues.  She says that as my history is obviously long and complex, we need to focus less on details and more on practical ways to deal with the ‘presenting problems’ that bring me here to this session. Then she asks routine background questions in a clinical style I recognise.

I, the client, cooperatively offer the facts of my history and my current situation as she asks for them. I briefly outline my medical and emotional condition, the course of events that led to it, the opinion I have formed about what happened to me and my current needs. I present these in the larger context of what I have learned about traumatic responses. I tell her that I am all too aware of the hundreds of thousands of people who are suffering from domestic violence and all its ramifications, its stigma, its  long-lasting effects. I say that although my situation is nothing compared to many who suffer, I want to find ways to work out the tricky parts of my psychology and particularly the chain of triggers and reactions that underlie my everyday functions.  I tell her that I want to do this for a number of reasons. I list the reasons.

I talk about what I believe happens when people are traumatised and faced with massive losses in their lives. I talk about what they need and what they experience as they try to recover from trauma. I talk about how significant it is for them when they encounter a rare individual who validates and acknowledges them. I talk about how wonderful it is to find love and understanding, and about how healing that is for people like me.

The counsellor stops me and instructs me to restate everything I just told her, but to say it in a 'personal way'. She wants me to 'own' my feelings and to assert my personal rights. She wants me to learn to be comfortable claiming my feelings and expressing them. She says that I am obviously distancing from the trauma and from my feelings. I am generalising and discussing the issues in a de-personalised way. This is unhealthy. This shows I lack self-esteem and self-respect. I obviously feel that I am unworthy of personal attention and recognition from others. She wants me to value myself more than that. She believes the solution to my problem is to speak my truth directly. I need to stop minimising and ignoring my pain and my personal truth. I should learn how to tell my story without apologies or social generalisations. She makes me say everything I just told her, using the words 'I' and 'me' instead of talking about 'victims of trauma' or 'survivors of domestic violence.'

I, the client, cooperatively do as she asks. It is not difficult. I tell her so. I explain that the reason I stated things as I did before, that I am concerned about change that will positively affect all victims, including myself.

The counsellor nods.

I, the client, think, “She doesn’t believe what I just said. She thinks I am dismissing her theory about my lack of self-worth. The counsellor returns to comfortable territory by outlining for me once again, the basics of cognitive behavioural therapy theories. 

The counsellor insists on discussing negative thought patterns according to the CBT method.

I, the client, tell her I have done this already in other counselling courses and independent work. I tell her that the problem lies not in my conscious thoughts and attitudes, but in unconscious trauma-induced patterns that are triggered by sensory events and phenomena in my everyday world.

The counsellor’s eyes glaze over. She tells me that our time is up. She schedules another appointment with me for next week.

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I am now beyond the point of frustration with the medical and mental health systems. If you, or anyone reading this can direct me to some truly compassionate and intelligent treatment for people who suffer from PTSD type conditions due to periods of daily, comprehensive abuse in their environment or relationship, rather than to specific incidents of war or disasters, please contact me. It would be nice to know that someone, somewhere, is getting suitable treatment.

However, the reality is that whatever insightful and comprehensive programs exist for specific difficulties which victims of ongoing traumatic stress disorders experience, only a small minority of people like me have access to those programs. They seems funded privately or by small segments of medical academia. They are often restricted to small test groups in a single city. Otherwise, they are available only to those with social status and financial means. They cost thousands of pounds or dollars and require travel or relocation in order to participate in the programs.

This is an outrage! It is a disgrace and a societal shame! It is a waste of human resources! Most of all, it is an abuse of abuse victims and survivors of trauma! It is about time that people suffering as I do and those enduring far worse reactions and syndromes should be treated with care and attentive, intelligent methods to untangle the web that entraps them in their own bodies and their present nightmares of the past.

To Aaron Gilmore, and others like him and me who seek understanding and who address the issues that affect abuse victims, who pursue justice on our behalf, I want to say,

"Thank you very much for a precious commodity--validation of my writing and of my right to speak and to write these truths. I deeply appreciate it."

That was my personal, self-focused reply.
Here is the socially conscious, mature, unselfish reply:

“Thank you, on behalf of all who suffer. My situation is mild compared to the torments many endure, and minute compared to the larger sea of suffering.”

Both replies are valid. Thanks for understanding that.

Goodness, Truth, and Beauty endure.
May we look to them for guidance in everything.

 A short addendum to this post:

I just returned from a visit to my G.P., in which I requested a different drug for the pain of my fibromyalgia. She asked me whether I would consider acupuncture treatment. I said that acupuncture and massage therapy were very helpful to me 7 years ago when the condition was first diagnosed; but that I had been told repeatedly that acupuncture and massage are not available through the NHS. She said that there is now an acupuncturist working for the NHS in this area, and that she has referred several patients with Fibromyalgia to her. She will refer me right away.

I have not received such good news in a very long time. Hope is rekindled that I may overcome this illness and be able to live a more normal life again.

I am smiling, and I am still in pain. I am dreaming of a time when I will not be in pain.

So.... long time, no post

Chronic pain, no matter how one looks at it or philosophises about it or resolves to deal with it, is a huge drain on a person. I was given a new anti-depressant by a psychiatrist to whom I was referred. This was not what I requested-- I requested a drug that would help control and alleviate my chronic pain, tiredness, and mental fog. But I was willing to give it a try. It seems that the medical doctors want to blame this on my mental health and the mental health professionals who get to know me through therapy want to blame it on my physical problems. I agree with the latter. However,  I certainly have thought through the whole thing and understand that my depression resulting from all that has happened to me, is one factor which influences my physical health dramatically. Also, the PTSD reactions (If only anyone in a 'helping profession' could or would address them in a way that doesn't just tell me to stop or replace my negative thoughts--I routinely do that, already!) also continually disrupt both my mental and physical health, making both aspects erratic and completely unpredictable. It is an array of organic and sensory links which usually trigger the distressing signals and traumatic reactions; NOT my thoughts or focus on negative events past and present. This unpredictability of my whole physical being creates permanent limitations, because I cannot plan or make commitments and know that I will be able to do what I plan and intend to carry out.

The newer anti-depressant, Cymbalta, seemed to work better than the previous one, for the first few weeks. But who can determine whether that is just a coincidental thing or actually due to the drug's effects? My health and mental state vary all the time, and the reactive conditions and physical problems cycle around for days, weeks, even months at a time. Anyway, after a few more weeks on Cymbalta, I was having the same reactive patterns as before, the same feelings of pain and tiredness, mental fog... the whole package.

One thing made life intolerable for me: Like the first anti-depressant I was ever given a few years ago, Cymbalta stifled most of my normal emotions and physical responses to everything good, bad, or just natural. It was like living under a pillow that dampened the sensation of pleasure, anger, sadness, desire, sexuality, amusement and hilarity. I couldn't even experience boredom! Without being able to experience sexual satisfaction or desire, a good belly laugh at my favourite television comedies or the antics of my budgie, etc., I had to ask myself what was the point of being on this medication. I carefully reduced the dosage to once every other day... the same dosage that the psychiatrist had prescribed to gradually begin its use. 

After a few weeks at that lower level I still failed to recover my stifled sensory experiences, so I stopped the medication completely. Very soon, my natural emotions returned to normal. I could cry and experience relief--including shedding tears. I could once again feel sexual desire and experience orgasm, (Note: this is an important part of my identity as a woman, although I have had no sexual partner since being with my abusive husband over six years ago.) I could sit and laugh until I cried at things on television or at my bird's latest antics. The pain of my fibromyalgia condition remains about the same, but I am 'human' once again.

I have to try to get someone to prescribe still another medication that might help the chronic pain. I am going to request Lyrica and see if that is an option for me.

In the meantime, I am truly happier. I can see wonderful things around me and inside me that tell me life is getting better and better. I don't know what the future holds, for sure, but I now know that I want to be there in it, fully, freely, and with all my senses engaged. I also want to share it with people I love, who can and will love me as everyone deserves to be loved. I have resolved to cut off relationships that are not reciprocally loving and respectful. I can't deal with the havoc they cause to my limited physical and mental resources, anymore. I WILL choose whom I call my friends and family. About that, I have stopped apologising; I've stopped trying to explain or reason with people who feel that is an unkind and improper decision to make.

I'm still in Second Life, and I have met wonderful people there. I have relationships that are real and complete in every way except physical proximity.

I am writing this, after so very long away from my blog, because of a dear, brilliant, deep-thinking, lovely, person whom I met in Second Life only briefly. She is a woman whose emotional pain is extreme and enduring, through no fault or choice of her own. She has a very hard road to walk. I was touched so deeply by what she wrote in her profile, and what she shared with me, that i decided to write this post today. Below, I want to quote a small part of what she shared. I have her permission to use it.



"I don't always know what to think of a society that cannot..or will not...protect its weakest citizens.  Children, women, the homeless..people who are marginalized..or different. Yet gives more to the most priveliged every day, and caters to the whims of fanatics and religious groups. If anyone is aware of a site that can explain that...please give me the link."

Tonight, Art Garfunkel was a guest on a British talk programme. As part of the preparation for his visit, the programme staff recorded lots of people they met on city streets, asking them to sing bits of the Simon and Garfunkel hit from the 1970's, Bridge Over Troubled Water. 

 
When you're weary, feeling small,
When tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all;
I'm on your side, when times get rough
And friends just can't be found,
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down.

When you're down and out,
When you're on the street,
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you.
I'll take your part.
When darkness comes
And pain is all around,
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down.

Sail on silver girl,
Sail on by.
Your time has come to shine.
All your dreams are on their way.
See how they shine.
If you need a friend,
I'm sailing right behind.
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind.
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind.


- lyrics by Paul Simon


It is a song that most people remember and love. Many people can even quote lines from the song. Having just written my post titled "Difficulties" earlier in the day, I listened to those people singing the words and wondered, "What has happened to those ideals, to those gestures of kindness and caring we grew up with and vowed to incorporate in our lives as adults, as citizens, as parents and shapers of the future?" Somehow, we have managed to create categories of people and situations in which we feel it is right and good to be a 'bridge over troubled water' and quite a lot of other categories in which we have decided to step aside and point an accusing finger at the victim.


The religious or humanitarian heroes we have been taught to use as models for our lives, whether Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, or Jewish, or otherwise associated, did not treat people this way! Rather, their compassion towards their fellow human beings was and is consistent with the words of that beautiful song. In the stories I remember, they didn't qualify or restrict their compassionate responses toward people in need through any kind of blame or judgement of the victim.

Please, re-read those lyrics or listen to that song again, and take it to heart, my friends, my brothers and sisters! I am asking you to fight the trend of blaming and shaming the weak, the suffering, the downtrodden, the dispossessed and the abandoned. Shun the trend of looking out only for yourself and a small circle of people you have selected as your friends and companions. This is not what our heroes chose to do with their lives. They said, "I will lay me down, like a bridge over troubled water," to all they encountered who were suffering. Be a Bridge Over Troubled Water in whatever way you can.



Recently, I have read more about Fibromyalgia online. While doing that, I found a video that is free to link to and pass on. It explains what these kinds of illnesses are like for those of us who suffer from them. Please watch it and try to put yourself in a compassionate frame of mind toward others who struggle with these difficult "invisible illnesses". Click on the link at the end of this post to start the video.     

When you encounter someone's complaints or explanations, try not to discount or invalidate what they tell you. Don't tell them that when they say something, they actually mean something different. Saying those things and insisting on reinterpreting their intentions and words will shut down all communication and make them believe that you feel superior to them. It can ruin a beautiful friendship for you. For them, it can result in greater depression and isolation. An invisible illness is a social and circumstantial nightmare for the person struggling to cope with it. Maybe the video will help explain that. Offer your companionship, some practical help of whatever kind you can give, and your determination to try to understand--not to judge or re-interpret--what they tell you. Don’t make your friend choose between listening to your judgement and condescending words or losing your friendship during a time of need and loneliness.

Goodness, Truth and Beauty will increase

when we open our hearts to each other.

Click this link to watch a video dealing with fibromyalgia, ME, CFS, and similar illnesses:

http://www.sleepydust.net/me-cfs-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-video.html

I recently seem to have lost a friend because the friend was unable to recognise and accept the circumstances of my current life challenges and difficulties. Whatever I said was picked apart, and I found my friend telling me that when I made certain statements, "what you really meant was _______ and it couldn't possibly have been interpreted any other way." My patient, polite corrections were rebuffed time after time, and my friend might as well have been calling me a liar. This was both puzzling and deeply upsetting to me, because my friend was a person whose intellect, sharing of ideas and perspective, respect and generosity toward me in the past had been a great blessing; these mutualities had brought us both a lot of happiness over many years, enabling us to discuss and accept great cultural variations and differing personal belief systems. We had been able to learn from each other, support each other (at a distance) through hard times, and broaden each other's knowledge base, among other things. I had trusted my friend and held my friend's opinions, comments and character in high regard, and I was comfortable that we could 'agree to disagree' about a few things, while still being very fond of each other and lifelong friends. It never became personally blaming or offensive when we didn't see things eye to eye... until these last few months. After that happened, I finally had to accept the fact that sometimes, "There is none so blind as he who will not see, and none so deaf as he who will not hear." Things had reached a stage where I could only stop trying to set them straight and let go of the friendship. It is a huge loss in my life.

When anyone discounts or persistently reinterprets what you say to them in an honest effort to explain and clarify your intentions and your meaning, they are showing disrespect for you. Although my friend is NOT a bully or an abuser, this thing my friend is doing IS part of what abusers and bullies do. So, doing that to someone who has been abused and bullied in the past compounds their sense of pain and isolation. For me and many other people trying to recover from trauma, it also sets off the PTSD symptoms. Ironically, sometimes the people who chide us for not being assertive to defend ourselves against bad treatment are the very same ones on whom we eventually have to hang a 'toxic' label. There is no long-term solution except to avoid them, for the sake of our own health!

Quite a large part of the communication and acceptance difficulties with my friend arose over explanations and frustrations about my fibromyalgia condition. Believe me; I don't want to have fibromyalgia. I would like to, and often do, minimise the symptoms and the problems associated with it. I often say "I'm fine" instead of telling people who know me how very depressed I feel or how much pain I am in, or how confused and incompetent I often become because of my illness and my problems. I often just try not to think about the fibromyalgia, as though the problem will go away like a horrible cold or flu. But it doesn't go away. It sometimes seems quite a lot better; and when it does, I become active, hopeful, industrious, and cheerful. Then all the familiar symptoms return. Then, finding myself physically and mentally weakening more and more, I finally talk to other people and tell them the full extent of my problems. I hope and pray that they will believe me, be concerned, and offer some kind of emotional support if they can.

I find myself not only dealing with the pain and exhaustion, but also with the financial, situational and household problems that occur when my ability to cope and to think clearly, to move around and do normal daily tasks, are compromised. In addition to physical challenges, I find myself spinning back into the intrusive memories of abuse --abuse which began shortly after I was first diagnosed with fibromyalgia. My now ex-husband told me flat out one day a few months after we were married, "You're only half a person. I don't want a wife who is only half a person." He said this in a blaming tone with anger written all over his face and body language. He repeated it many times later on. When I said, "You are really hurting me and blaming me when you say that. It seems like you are punishing and abusing me for having an illness I can't stop having," he replied, "So, now you are telling me I don't even have a right to say the truth!" It did no good to ask him to please express his feelings and his 'truth' in a less-hurtful way. It was clear that he was very angry with me and I was going to hear and see and feel the brunt of his anger as long as I was ill. I desperately wanted to get well, even more for the sake of stopping his abuse and his anger!

But when I was treated by a Chinese doctor whose acupuncture and Thai massage therapy, although painful, made a slow steady improvement in my condition, my abusive husband accused me of having sexual feelings and intentions toward the doctor, and vice versa. Even though my husband drove me to those appointments and sat in the treatment room the whole time, he started hassling me so much about these imaginary 'sexual feelings and intentions' that I was constantly upset and constantly asking him what he wanted me to do. It seemed that one minute he was telling me I could no longer go to the Chinese doctor, and the next minute he was demanding that I go so I would get well and start being 'a proper wife' instead of the 'half a person' he didn't want to be married to. When pressed for a decision, he would promise to shut up about it and let me get the treatment I needed so desperately. Then when we'd get in the car to drive there, he'd shout at me and accuse and interrogate me for the entire trip and for days afterward.

On two occasions, as the Chinese doctor stood alongside my husband and me to say goodbye in the waiting area of his shop, he smiled and told us that I was doing a lot better, and he put one arm around my shoulder in a friendly way for a few moments. My husband said nothing until we got outside, away from there. Then he flew into a rage. He demanded that I tell the doctor he had touched me inappropriately and that he should never touch me like that again! I refused to do so, knowing that this would damage the platonic friendship the doctor believed he had with both my husband and me, and hurt his feelings. Besides, my husband was demanding that I speak to the doctor as though I personally believed that he had sexual intentions toward me, and I couldn’t do that honestly. There were plenty of other outrageous accusations and demands of a similar nature that had nothing to do with the Chinese doctor. I knew this whole thing was a ridiculous product of my husband’s insane jealousy that neither I nor anyone else had done anything to provoke. I told my husband that. I said that if he didn’t believe me and wanted to give the doctor a ‘telling off’ he would have to do it himself. He didn’t choose to speak to the doctor, however, but always behaved politely toward him, only tormenting me about it when we were alone.

The problems continued and worsened, eventually leading to a major violent incident at home after one of my Chinese medicine treatments. When I told him I needed to rest and asked him to let me have a nap, he refused to leave the room and continued shouting at me. I said that since he wouldn't let me have a rest from his shouting, I would leave the house for a couple of hours to get a bit of peace and quiet and be alone. Then he began pushing and shoving me. He physically blocked the door and threatened to kill me. Only when I screamed, alerting other people, did he stop the physical abuse and threats. I called the police when he left the house after that, saying he was going to commit suicide; and as a result of my screaming and my call to the police, I, not my husband was blamed. We were told we could no longer stay in the flat of the house where we had been given a place to live until he could find work.

I continued to hold on to my Chinese medicine treatment, which was costly, but which I had arranged to help pay for by bartering some tutoring of the doctor's 5-year-old daughter. Instead of being grateful and cooperative in my plan to save some of the costs of my treatment, my husband abused me for taking time to tutor her, and constantly interfered with the arrangements. He would say, "Why do you want to pay attention to her? She's nothing to us!"

Over time, the fibromyalgia symptoms decreased almost completely, although other stress-related illnesses either worsened or cropped up out of the blue. He berated me almost daily for hours, adding to my difficulties with pain and insomnia and depression by shouting at me and telling me I was lazy, selfish, and a bad wife. He kept me awake late into the night and awakened me first thing in the morning many times to continue the tirade with loud complaints and demands that I "act like a proper wife". He humiliated me in public if I had to stop, sit down and rest, if I couldn't keep up a fast pace, or just felt too sleepy to wake up and dress and go out after tossing and turning all night, being kept awake by him, or being in excruciating pain for hours with migraines, muscle aches and stomach problems.

Many times I caved in to his demands and his constant criticism. I tried every way I could think of to ease the situation and to get well. Together with my own sadness at finding myself in this horrible situation, a resolve to do my best and get well and get along with him in whatever way I could made me determined to work hard, ignore the pain, "Just do it until you drop!" as I often ordered myself to do. But because he is an abuser and a bully, even during those days and weeks when I arose at 5 or 6 am and worked hard, non-stop until after midnight, he would tell me, "You never do anything. You are lazy. You are selfish. You want to be waited on hand and foot. You never do anything for me. You only do what you want to do. You aren't acting like a proper wife".

I had medical tests that showed I had an ulcer, and the medication I was given for it made me incredibly tired and achey. He began to harrass me because I was even more tired and mentally exhausted than usual. Tinnitus was adding to the problems and my difficulty concentrating or completing tasks. I just couldn't keep up with all I had been doing. (I was working for him, because he had already blocked every attempt to continue my own career). It reached a point that I was physically unable to continue. I said I would have to cancel a session that was planned with a group of people I was to lead. I knew that the medication and my illness were making it impossible and that I needed to rest and get well. He would not accept this explanation, so I went back to the GP to see what could be done. My GP told me It was a strong antibiotic, and the only medication that can truly cure ulcers. She said that if I stopped taking it, the ulcers would get worse and plague me for the rest of my life. She also said I needed to rest more for about 6-8 weeks, and that I should avoid stress. If I hadn't felt so doomed sitting there in her office hearing these words, I would have laughed at that remark and said "Not bloody likely!” right out loud! She already knew from previous consultations with me that he was abusing me continually.  

He was waiting in the sitting area of the surgery. When I came out, he stood up and confronted me, demanding, "Well, what did she say?" with a whole roomful of people around us waiting for their appointments and the office staff besides. I whispered quietly that she said I had to continue on the medication or the ulcer would not go away. I said that she had told me there was no alternative treatment for my condition, and that I must avoid stress and rest more; instead of continuing to work. I explained to him as gently as I could, that she had said the medication would make me feel very weak and tired for about 6-8 weeks, and that I should only go back to my normal routine gradually. He turned all red in the face and blew a fuse, shouting at me before we even walked out of the hearing of those other people, and continued the tirade for hours afterward in a reckless drive home, escalating to a full uproar when I crawled into bed and bolted the bedroom door. I phoned someone to call off that evening's work ‘obligation’ I couldn't manage. She was sympathetic when I explained, and promised to call everyone else involved. While I talked to her on the phone, he was banging on the bedroom door and shouting at me that I'd better carry on with my duties and stop taking that medication, or else! She could hear him. I felt ashamed, humiliated and hopeless. 

After I came out of the refuge system and finally had a permanent place to live, I began to feel a lot healthier, in general. I could feel my stress-related illnesses were improving and even my mental health problems stemming from the abuse were fading a little every few months. Still, my efforts to get some financial and material justice with regard to my personal possessions and other practical matters my ex-husband had manipulated to his advantage were either mostly unsupported or flatly dismissed by people in authority who could have helped. I had to recover from those encounters and blows to my dignity and my sense of hope for the future, just as you would have to recover from each further episode of abuse. They brought on the familiar patterns of pain, depression, trauma, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder episodes. But the fibromyalgia pain and exhaustion still seemed to have gone away for good, even then.

Then, a little over a year ago, in a period of dissociation, depression and mental confusion, I tripped over my vacuum sweeper and fell in my bathroom, breaking my arm. I was recovering pretty quickly from this injury, according to the specialist who treated me, but I began to notice the fibromyalgia symptoms coming back during that period. I mentioned this to the physiotherapist at the hospital, and she nodded, saying that often a new injury will trigger the recurrence of fibromyalgia symptoms that had gone away. Since then, a specialist has re-diagnosed me as having fibromyalgia--the condition that seemed to be the stated cause of all my now-ex-husband's abuse in the very beginning. 

I told myself that it would go away once the arm was healed. Now, my arm is completely back to normal strength and mobility, but the fibromyalgia symptoms seem to remain the same or even worse, sometimes. This last weekend, I had an awful accident of judgement, due to the 'fibro-fog' as it is called (that fuzzy, exhausted confusion that comes with lack of sleep and chronic levels of pain and muscle aches). The accident caused damage to my flat and my neighbour's flat. I was horrified and felt tremendous guilt as well as hopelessness about my ability to cope and function on my own. A few days later, it seems that there won't be as big a problem as I'd first imagined, and my neighbour is understanding. However, I may be charged for part of the cost of repairs, and I have no money to pay.

That incident has prompted me to renew my efforts to seek support from others and from the NHS. I made an appointment to see the GP again, and I am going to be more insistent this time instead of walking out of there thinking, "Well, there's not much to be done. I just have to stumble along and take whatever comes."

In an attempt to find some kind of cosmic explanation for the abuse, the injustices I’ve encountered, the repeated failures by officials to appropriately handle and judge the situation, my continuing PTSD, and the fibromyalgia; some ‘friends’ and other people I’ve come across have made various conclusive statements that are extremely unhelpful. Perhaps their explanations eased their own discomfort and moral dilemma, but they certainly did nothing for my sense of loss, isolation, humiliation, and hopelessness. Here are a few examples:

Bad Karma - These things you are suffering from are a result of the bad karma you created in your previous lives.  Maybe in your past, this person who is now abusing you or treating you unjustly was someone you intentionally harmed or killed. Now you are getting the natural consequences of your past bad actions.

God’s Judgement – God has a reason for bringing all of these things into your life. God is punishing you, teaching you a lesson, or calling you back to obedience – Don’t worry, this is all happening for your own good. You have gone astray, and this is necessary to get you back in line.  You need to trust and submit to his greater wisdom. He knows what is best. He will not give you any more than you can bear.

Lack of Faith, Negative Belief/Unhealthy Attitudes and Thought Patterns – These things happened to you because you didn’t have enough faith, didn’t pray hard enough, didn’t trust enough, had too little self- confidence or self-belief, or somehow were 'not walking in accordance with God’s will’….   (There are a lot of variations on this theme.)

You allowed this to happen to you because you didn’t really do what you should have done -- In the case of injustice and abuse, this is the result of your own choice to let other people treat you this way. In the case of the illness, it is the result of your poor mental and physical habits, or the lack of some particular type of supplement or therapy you should have taken.

You chose this journey before you were born – We are immortal beings constantly evolving and growing toward perfection. We cycle through many phases of existence and we are responsible for developing a plan before each incarnation, whereby we will live a preselected life and encounter exactly the right combination of experiences we need to grow and develop. You had a choice before you were born, and you put this plan together for this particular life, even choosing who your parents would be, where and when you would become human, and what sort of difficulties you would put yourself through in the world and with other people.

MY RESPONSE TO THESE PRONOUNCEMENTS AND EXPLANATIONS:

I can’t change your personal belief system about Karma or God’s almighty, infinite wisdom. However, if you are going to talk about a God who is simultaneously and eternally Kind, Wise, All-Powerful, All-Knowing, and Just, then this combination of beliefs simply doesn’t make any sense. I know I am less intelligent and wise than your God is supposed to be, but if he made me, he knows this, doesn’t he? Why would he deliberately place me in circumstances I am unable to comprehend or change or master, even through prayer and obedience to him? In what way is this going to help me be close to him or teach me a lesson if I can't even know what he is supposed to be doing or what he wants me to do in my specific situation? Ah, yes, your proposed solution is that I should accept your version of God's plan for me, because that is how you think a certain book or your personal revelation says I should do things--even though you disagree with dozens of other interpretations and with what my own better judgement and conscience tell me I should do!

Sometimes it is even the same people who tell you to trust and submit to God’s infinite and inscrutable wisdom and will, who later tell you that you should have seen your circumstances as a sign of God's warning to defend yourself and ‘stop allowing yourself to be treated so badly’. If you protest that you have neither disobeyed or ignored God’s sovereignty over you, nor failed to heed any warnings, nor failed to protect and stand up for yourself, they look at you as though you have just stated the obvious contradiction. They nod their heads and tell you that of course you have just revealed the problem. You can’t be defending yourself from what is happening to you and be submissive to God's almighty plan at the same time, if you believe that whatever comes to you is God’s Holy Will! Only someone who has encountered this mental manipulation or wrestled with such beliefs will understand the mental anguish that results from twisted logic and double-binds like these.

The theory that we create our own problems because of our habits, our negative attitudes, etc. has a small element of legitimacy in the case of some problems. Sure, people who smoke often get lung diseases; people who drink often kill themselves or others in road accidents or develop liver disease. People who gamble ruin their families’ finances and destroy trust. People who carry themselves in a defeatist attitude, fail to present themselves well, etc. are sometimes bullied or passed over for employment, etc.

However, applying those kinds of rational cause and effect logic to all distresses and problems that people encounter only causes them more pain. I have never smoked nor drunk more than an infrequent, very small amount of alcohol. I've never taken drugs, I don't go outside without sunblock, I wear sensible shoes, I get exercise and eat healthfully, I buy chemical-free cleaners and household products.... the list goes on and on. As far as any intelligent person can, I have always tried to be a responsible person when it comes to caring for myself and everything and eveyone else. I do my best! Everyone who has known me well would testify to my self-confidence, social skills, optimism, kindness toward others, fairness, and firmness in dealing with people who try to bully and mistreat me. None of these supposed causes can possibly have brought about my illness, my partner’s abuse, or the societal neglect and injustices I have faced as I struggled with these problems.

Furthermore, if you apply those explanations to other situations people face with workplace bullying, bullying in schools, child-abuse even of infants, death, disease, and social stigma that is impossible to conquer by most people who are born disabled, financially disadvantaged, or ‘defective’ in some other way, you will surely see how unfair it is to say their own behaviours and habits or negligence caused what is happening to them and their 'failure to thrive' in the midst of it or afterward. Sure, there are exceptions and people who break out of the mould, but look at the statistics!

As for the last explanation, that we have ‘chosen’ whatever difficulties and challenges we face, before our birth, in order to learn and evolve as immortal souls; this is the most insidious argument and the most difficult to counter. Let me re-phrase the theory as I hear it in my heart: “You really have no right to complain about anything at all, because your own soul freely chose this particular life and everything that happens in it. You chose your parents, perhaps even knowing that they would abuse you as an infant. You chose your particular path and set of circumstances, including every hurt and injury that would happen to you. If you were raped, you chose to be raped. If you were beaten, you chose to be beaten. If you are in unspeakable pain, you chose to be in unspeakable pain and to have no remedy for it. If you have been betrayed and abandoned by others, or falsely accused of crimes or denied the necessities of life, you chose all of that, too. If you are suffering because of anything at all, it is because you chose suffering instead of peace, happiness, health, joy, love, and self-fulfillment. Although you can’t remember choosing it and it seems totally out of your control, you actually have set all this up—put it in motion—even the parts that other supposedly intelligent, volitional beings have played in your life. You knew it all and were able to see it all in advance. You drew up the contract and signed the agreement and took the plunge, somewhere long ago. So, just bear up. After you die, you will realise what you have accomplished and then it will all be okay. All distress will seem to you very far away and painless, then. Everything will be completely okay when you are able to view the overall plan that you yourself created.”

I say to this, whether God supposedly has chosen this ‘path’ or whether some essence of me has pre-determined and selected it, believing that is true creates nothing but a sense of futility and desperation and guilt:  If we or God are independent, free-choosing individuals, then how can we or God control what other people are doing to harm us—even make them harm us or put us in their path? Doesn't that violate their freedom to choose to do good? Or did they choose to behave like bastards, thieves and immoral brutes? If their supposed ‘higher, wise being’ was doing the same for them, to teach them a soul lesson, then why would that ‘higher self’ of theirs (or God, who is supposed to be Good) choose to do that teaching through wrong actions and harm, abuse, and destruction? If God or my higher self is supposedly all good and all wise, why wouldn’t I or God be able to do the ‘teaching’ in a benign and helpful, constructive way?

I've heard other extensions of this same belief system which explain that all of life is one big plan, containing things which appear to us as bad/evil and things which appear as good/right. They are all wonderful, however, because they are all part of a magnificent inter-connected web of life which works beautifully and perfectly!  My response to that? "Tell me how beautiful and perfect it is when your child gets kidnapped or raped, or your life is made a constant hell by someone who has targeted you to terrorise. If it is all such a great, wonderful, homogenous plan, we should stop policing our streets against criminals, stop locking our doors, stop seeing doctors and all that... just cooperate and groove together in this lovely, wonderful web of evil and good parading as opposites in our limited understanding. We should hang loose, lean back and enjoy the ride! Tell me if you can do that when you are starving or homeless or imprisoned because of a false accusation or a corrupt legal system. Then, maybe I'll listen... then, maybe we'll just cruise off to loony town together!

This post is admittedly much more cynical and sarcastic and brash than my previous posts have been. I feel angry and outraged. These kinds of assumptions and conclusions people spread around make me more and more angry and belligerent. They ought to make you feel that way, too, if you think about all help and healing they stand in the way of! They need to be confronted, or at least challenged as the nonsense they are, so people can be given the respect and dignity they deserve when they are in need.
 

Finally, all of these so-called explanations for suffering do the same things:

1. They stigmatise or at least blame and re-victimise the victim.
2. They allow the suffering to continue and even to be passed off as something good and useful for the victim’s character.
3. They allow society and individuals who encounter the person in need to maintain detachment from their fellow human beings, and evade responsibility to right wrongs.
4. They keep the victim struggling, feeling shame, self-blame and confusion about what has happened, what continues to happen, and why.
5. They shut down and shut out our cries for help. They lay upon us additional blame for asking others to help us and relieve our suffering. This makes us appear weak, whining, or even disobedient to God or our 'higher self'. They silence us at the deepest level, and they freeze our hearts toward each other—those who need help and those who could help them.
6. They often make it easy and convenient to dismiss and excuse perpetrators, thieves, con-artists, and every other kind of malicious individual, sending them on their way to propagate whatever kind of menace they wish to engage in.
7. They make it impossible for the intended ‘respondents’ to our distress to appropriately confront their own vulnerability and the danger that could just as easily befall themselves, until it is too late and they someday find themselves in similar positions of need and social isolation.

If you are purveying these kinds of belief systems and responses to other people, in your writing, teaching, preaching, or conversation: 
I am asking you to stop for a period--long enough to really put yourself mentally and emotionally in their place. Would hearing these statements of belief, explanation, or supposed 'truth' help you feel better or do better in that situation? Would it make you feel loved, cared for, and hopeful? Would it draw you closer to other people? Apply it to every single situation of human suffering you can think of.  Imagine yourself in that place—take away every life-line or support system you have been ‘blessed’ with in your own life. Imagine yourself without help, only being told these things by someone else to whom you have turned in desperation. Then decide:  Is this really what I want to say to someone who feels like that? Does it demonstrate love to me when I hear someone tell me these things? Does it make anything in this world better for any of us?

If you have been ‘helped’ a little or a lot by people who are giving you these kinds of explanations for your suffering, I would like to suggest this to you: 

Be quiet for a period of time and listen to what your heart is saying it really wants and needs to hear. Tell that comforting, loving, thing you most want and need to hear, to yourself, if no-one else will speak those words to you. Don’t mistake blame, shame, and excuses when people turn you away, for genuine, compassionate help.

Get more information about the specific problems you face. Don't excuse yourself if you know you have done wrong or could lessen your own suffering by making different choices, but don't blame and shame yourself if you have done your best. Continue to do your best.

Find specialists in that field that pertains to your problems by looking online, reading good books, or by referral from someone who treats you with respect… be sure to check them out, make sure the specialists are known and respected by genuine, reputable organisations. But if you still don't feel good when you read their writings or speak to them, continue your search for someone/something better for you.

Find support groups of other people who share your problems and difficulties and have banded together to amass information, resources, and efforts to bring about change in the way you and your problems are treated.

LOVE YOURSELF – even if it is only a little bit every day. Think of ways you can be a good parent to yourself—one who holds and comforts and genuinely protects the hurting child that is in all of us. It may be difficult to do this if you didn’t have a loving parent or other person in your life. But you can find examples of real loving parents in literature, in television and films, and in your imagination. You might see them around you if you look and observe. Trust those examples. You will know when you have the right image because it will make you feel safe and whole and good inside. Just follow that, if you have nothing else, and it will eventually lead you to more help, I hope.

Hold on to all that is Good, True, and Beautiful, and stand firm against things and people that do harm, denigrate or destroy others. Everyone has a right to dignity and freedom. I hope you and I together will do whatever we can to stop abuse in our world. It will cost us dearly at times. Right things are not cheap or free in this world, they only OUGHT to be.

My budgie, Ollie is busy in exploring mode this noon-time. An account of some of his escapades follows.

He’s made a mess of the lettuces I was growing on the kitchen windowsill, taking bites out of every leaf in the bunch and smashing several by sitting on them. I decided to let them be his lettuces! However, I’ll have to ration his time there, because too much lettuce gives a bird ‘the runs’. (Bad news for me, the one who has to clean up the mess all over the room.)

As I type this, he is experimentally engaged in pulling on the cloth netting I’ve wrapped around the oscillating fan. That netting is to protect him from sticking his tail and feet through the metal grating and getting cut. How could I have imagined the material itself would be so fascinating to a bird? I am almost as engrossed as he is, watching him and trying to work out exactly what he finds so interesting about it. Now he has me laughing out loud, because he’s slowly slid down the rounded side of the fan, attached to the netting by his feet, and eventually had to let go and fly away to keep from plummeting to the floor.

Lately we've had a few sessions of basic interactive play with a little plastic cat ball on the carpet. There are a some other ball games he has invented, as well, which I'm pondering for their training potential and tricks he can learn to astound human audiences in the future!

But today's most interesting episode was when he noticed his reflection in the television screen. It’s turned off, and shinier than usual, with the sun pouring in the window next to it. He was en route from the floor to the top of the TV cabinet, where his training T-stand and that captivating cranberry glass vase are situated. He couldn’t hover in place opposite the fluttering bird image, so he just kept going up and down like a determined, malfunctioning helicopter or a little dog repeatedly jumping off the floor to see out the half-window in a door. I heard bursts of flapping and fluttering from my chair in front of the computer, and stopped to watch. After five minutes or so, he seemed to wear himself out and give up. Sometime later, he tried to perch on the narrow bit of shelf that sticks out below the TV. From there, he could just touch the reflection of his head if he stretched as tall as possible. This eventually proved too tiring, as well.

Similarly, I pursue reflections now beyond my reach.

At the same time Ollie was trying in vain to stay within sight of his birdy reflection, I was trying to do something to enhance my everyday environment. (I won’t say what it was, just now, because it’s an area I’d rather not discuss here just yet.) I couldn’t help seeing the analogy between what Ollie was doing, pursuing his reflection in vain, and what I was struggling with. You see, as I tried to compile some things on my computer, more than half of them were triggering painful memories and associations related to my former life, both pre-abuse and associated with the abuse I’ve suffered. They are so deeply a part of me, that I am powerfully drawn to them, desperately wanting and needing to reconnect with these lost and stolen parts of myself. And I am also cut off from them, as a direct result of the abuse, my painful reactions, and my struggle for recovery in isolation from those things that used to be the primary focuses of my life. I find myself failing to re-connect and remain in touch with these things that draw me and call to me so powerfully, just as Ollie can’t stay in mid air to explore his reflection in the TV. There are physical, social and emotional limitations now that stand in my way, plus a tiring array of physical and mental reactions that waylay me when the triggers are activated. I am really angry and frustrated about this! I have no one to help me negotiate the minefield that stretches between me and the territory of ‘reflections’ where I would like to live once more. I had to stop seeing my counsellor because of the prohibitive cost of transport and other rising costs of living.

What Ollie and I both need is a ladder leading to a solid platform on which to find our balance there in that place to which we are drawn. For me, there would also need to be some reassuring, healing, supportive people to help me handle the pain that inevitably would result from trying to live and to be more like I used to be in the ways I used to be, in a world that now seems out of my reach and unwelcoming.

Ollie doesn’t really have these worries, and with him, I can usually let go of mine. He doesn’t seem too fazed by his limitations. He moves on from the TV to something else and seems contented enough. But then, of course, HE CAN FLY! In my mind, that makes up for a lot of frustrations. As it did when he started slipping off the fan, his trusty, unclipped wings provide him with an easy escape: He never falls! My wings were clipped and I can no longer 'fly' in the ways I once could, figuratively speaking.

He is unknowingly therapeutic, my little budgie... He’s a bit of a bother, too, what with ruined lettuces, the serrated edges that now adorn some leaves on my fiddle-leaf fig tree, the often inconvenient and unattractive bird-proofing devices I have to invent and live with, and the constant vigilance and cleaning services he requires of me. But he is well worth all of these.

May Goodness, Truth, and Beauty bless you all, wherever you are.

My budgie, Ollie, has a toy I gave him that he finds really exciting. It's a plastic box thing that hangs from a chain in his cage. At the top is a small mirror (Budgies are irresistibly drawn to mirrors--he can spend the better part of an hour 'kissing' his reflection in any shiny object, whether it be the stand mirror I use for grooming, a cranberry glass vase on top of my television cabinet, my water-glass sitting on the desk, or even the chrome latch fittings mounted on his main cage door.) Anyway, this little box toy also has four push buttons at the bottom. Each one of them plays a phrase in the actual voice of a parrot—presumably recorded by the company who made the toy. There’s “Calling all birds!” and “Hello!” and a madcap sort of birdy laughter, and “I love you.” For whatever reason, probably proximity and convenience when standing on the perch under the toy, “I love you” is the one he plays most often.

Now, I doubt very seriously if Ollie has any idea what “I love you” means. I say it to him, and perhaps he has recognised my words as the same ones the bird voice in the box says when he pushes the button. However, like the bird in the mirror, that bird in the box is not perceived accurately as being a recording, I don’t think. I don’t know whether he thinks it’s a real bird saying those things, or whether he can put any of these concepts together in even the very simplest way. I’m not going to discuss any of those questions; there are other people doing research on them. However, I know that Ollie is growing to trust and ‘love’ me more and more every day because I meet his needs for food, shelter, respect of his wishes (within reasonable limits as I must do to keep him safe and healthy) interaction, and companionship. I do, in fact, love him very much. As he hears me say those words, and associates those words with me and my displays of affection and care toward him, maybe he will understand, to the best of his small brain’s capacity, what “I love you” means. When he plays with the toy, pushing the button to make it  say those words, maybe he will get some kind of a connection there, too. And, one day, I hope, he will say “I love you” in his own voice, as a response to the toy--or better yet, to me. There is a bond being formed, developed and strengthened here. The associations are vital ones.

In my home, growing up, there was almost no show of affection between us. I was not hugged, kissed, or told “I love you,” as a child, except by my divorced, paternal grandmother, who was needy and somewhat smothering in her requests for hugs and kisses from her grandchildren. My mother and maternal grandmother expressed mild disgust about her overtures, and that is what I felt, too, even when I’d reluctantly go over and give her the kiss or the hug she wanted. Displays of affection and expressions of love weren’t just unusual in my family, they were not at all a part of our repertoire of interactions. I never saw audible or physical signs of love being exchanged between my parents and grandparents, either. But I could see them in other families, and I could see them portrayed in the pretty television families I watched during the 50’s and 60’s. And I could read about them in books. So, I came to understand that expressions of “I love you” in words and physical affection were actually part of normal human interactions, despite the way my family behaved. I remember being totally in awe and charmed by my best girlfriend's parents one day when she and I, pre-teens, were watching a pop music television show. Her father, who worked at home as an artist, happened to come into the room where we were watching and dancing along with the latest hits. He called her mother in from the kitchen. The two of them danced together right there in front of us, laughing and enjoying the music. Then he sat down in the big armchair across from the television and pulled his wife onto his knee and put his arms around her! This was amazing to me! How I wanted to be in that family!

When I reached my teens, I sought affection and responded to affection from my teenage friends of both sexes, and I began to learn how to do these things I had not been taught to do by my own family. It felt wonderful! It freed me, and opened up my heart! When I had romantic relationships, and then children of my own, I became comfortable speaking the words “I love you” every day, and showing those I love that I love them, in many ways. I even managed to say “I love you” to my parents and my siblings a few times—this was awkward and felt unnatural to do with them, but I did it, and I think it was a good idea, even though it was not really reciprocated.

Now, all these years and events later, living with Ollie, a creature I can’t cuddle or snuggle up to or sleep in spoons position with, or exchange thoughts and feelings with in any even quasi-mammalian way, is a challenge! But he’s all I’ve got in my daily environment. My best friend and I say “I love you” to each other sometimes at the end of a phone conversation or when we meet up for a visit. (Visits are rare, because of the distance between our homes and transport costs.) My children and I, separated for years, now, by thousands of miles and insufficient money for travel, also say “I love you” in emails and in our web-cam video calls. I’m so grateful for Skype! One of my children has made a few visits to me/my avatar in Second Life. That was interesting. There, we exchanged a ‘virtual hug’ via our avatars. It felt good, after so long, to hug him, even though it was only my avatar self hugging his avatar!

Exchanging the words, “I love you” and other expressions of affection feels nice and affirming every time! And I have managed, by some miracle during the last couple of years, to disconnect those words from their former association with my abuser and the myriad ways he used them to abuse me. But affection is distinctly lacking in my everyday world, now. I often wonder whether it will be this way for the rest of my life.

I often think about the millions of people in the world who are still living with horrendous abuse and crippling denials of their human dignity. I know that many of them have never had any demonstration of that phrase or that concept or that feeling of “I love you”. I know what it means to love and to be loved, although at times and during some long periods of my life I honestly felt, to quote the Bob Dylan song, that “Love is Just a Four-Letter Word!”

I’ve been noticing, and intend to continue exploring, the implications and reactions and responses that come to me when my little green and yellow feathered friend/charge/‘family member’ sits on his perch and presses that “I love you” button, often 30 or more times in succession, so that those words fill the flat where we live and invade my mental space and my isolation and my discouraged state of mind. And yes, I know he is mainly just intrigued with the sound and wanting to hear it over and over. He cocks his head in typical parrot fashion and listens intently. But, it is far more than a sound to me, and I’m going to write more about this. Stay tuned.

What do you think? Has this discussion made you laugh, or cry, or brought up any memories or questions or dilemmas for you?  Please click on the “Leave a comment” link below and tell me about it. I WILL BE SO GRATEFUL FOR YOUR INVOLVEMENT IN THE DISCUSSION, as my little Ollie has an extremely limited capacity to interact in any way I can understand at the moment— I AM doing my level best at learning to observe and interpret his behaviour so I can understand what he’s trying to convey. : ))

Wishing you all, whoever and wherever you are, many expressions of that beautiful phrase, “I LOVE YOU”. May you speak it with comprehension, and may you be blessed to hear it spoken to you, in whatever language or way it happens to be expressed. May it guide you and surround you, and flow outward from you like sound waves, like circular ripples in the stream of life.

And, by the way, I LOVE YOU, too.