Rice Pudding and Nightmares

Thankfully, I've not had any nightmares for years. Well, at least I hadn't - until last night. The first woke me at 4.45am, so I did what I used to do when I got them more frequently - got up, put some lights on, and had something to eat; which on this occasion was a tin of rice pudding...

Yes, I know, eating rice pudding at 4.45am probably isn't very good for me, but you know what? The reality is that almost everybody resorts to unhealthy habits under times of stress - and sometimes it's best to just do whatever it is you need to do in order to get through these times; don't give yourself a hard time - and don't let anybody else do it, either.

I was more concerned about being awake at 4.45am actually - but I soon returned to sleep, albeit sleep with recurring variations of the same nightmare, of which about all I can remember was some homeless girl who seemed to know me, trying to steal money form me and otherwise get me into trouble.

Thanks to the public sector strikes, I'm not working in my usual base today; and instead attending a 'development day' at what is for me a more accessible venue. So I have a few minutes longer at home. Every cloud has a silver lining of sorts, eh?

At work...

The operative word in the title is 'at' by the way. Not 'in'. I've been here since 0850, it's now 10.30 and so far I've answered the phone once, and addressed and stamped one letter, which I'll post on my way home.

Oh - and struggled with the computers. We have one of those daft remote server systems, such that you can't access anything unless you're signed in - which is all well and good, if the technology works. Over the past couple of weeks, alas, the laptop on my desk has got slower and slower such that today, it took from 0850 to 1013 to get properly powered up, and signed into the remote server. Or so I thought...

Having decided there was an error on the said remote server (I should think it probably just got fed up waiting and timed out), it then told me it couldn't connect me, and that I should phone for assistance, which I did. They'll get back to me within 2 hours apparently - though I'm not holding my breath just yet...

And we now have the rather wonderful game of it taking forever to sign me out of the remote server - in order that I can use this desktop to sign back in! Hence, I have nothing to do - and right now, that's not good, as I really don't feel good in myself, and I'm desperately in need of something to take my mind off it.

But, these are the present-day realities of work in the social care sector. I think I might just have to go and put the kettle on now!

I'm really struggling just now...

It's the hardest thing in the world to admit, you know. There are loads of services, helplines, and places to say it; loads of (mostly) supportive people who are willing to hear or read it; and maybe even loads of ways to say, or write it...

You don't want to be a drama queen, you don't want people to over-react, you don't want to make it any bigger than it is already - and you certainly don't want to do yourself any major dis-service by watering it down too much.

So, when you're having thoughts and urges to take yourself off somewhere dark and lonely, and then take various substances that'll probably knock you out for a while and yes, maybe even kill you if it goes wrong; just what on earth should your opening line be?

It can't be "I feel like killing myself," because I don't! It can't be "I feel like I want to hurt myself," because that's not true either. It can't even be, "I feel I need to blot it all out," because I don't feel that way...

I certainly feel like blotting it all out for a while at times - quite often of late, in fact; and you might say I'm being tempted if that's how your belief systems work. Sometimes I feel like burning it, or even drowning it. Invariably, I end up stifling it by eating until I feel so sick, that I almost stop feeling anything else.

I probably need asylum. But I don't need institution - and all too often, that's the only type of asylum that's on offer. It's certainly the only type that things like doctors, sick notes and employers generally recognise. Amd in truth, if I can't get any other sort sometime soon, I might end up needing asylum so much that the institution part won't really matter any more. Which would be a shame really, wouldn't it?

Diazepam 'R' Us

Well, diazepam, chocolate, ice-cream, sausage rolls and quite a few other things actually. Emotional chaos 'R' Us: need I say more?

And, as the painkillers begin to do their jobs....

I forgot to add tags to my last post, which is pretty apt when you think about it. I might add them to this one if I remember - which I expect will really confuse some people, but hey, I'm sure you get the idea!

I've always believed that everything happens in the way and in the sequence it does, for a reason. I mean, these blogs - I don't really plan what I'm going to write - it's just thinking aloud really. Or whatever the word is that describes the writing equivalent of 'thinking aloud', to be more precise. And so, here I am - having just referred to Ecclesiates 4:9, which says, two are better than one because they have a good return for their work, and then, quite unwittingly, I reveal I've taken some painkillers for my headache, and that they're now beginning to do their work. And how many painkillers did I take? Two...

Sometimes it's very hard to imagine what possible reason there might be, for life's events. I mean the kinds of events for which the painkillers don't work...

Just a couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of making contact with a young relative whom I knew suffered from a life-shortening illness. His immediate family (with whom I'd also had relatively little contact up to that point) were getting kind of desperate, as he was already choosing to not use the drugs that could prolong his life by a few years; and what I thought I saw was a situation whereby he didn't really feel he had anything sufficiently desirable to try to live on for.

For you see, this is where western society really can't see the wood for the trees. They want to solve problems and cure illnesses, and, while nobody could ever fault the worthiness of their intentions - quite often, life's just not like that. As I shared the other day, I'm a male survivor of childhood sexual abuse: and all the counselling and therapies under the sun aren't going to change that. What's done is done - some of my wounds might heal up a bit in time, but they're not going to be erased from history: I am damaged, and that's that. And my relative is going to die as a young man. It's horrendously tragic, and so sad that his loved ones can hardly bear to think about it - but it's fact: it's going to happen, whether we like it, or not.

So as a society, would we not be better diverting some of our energies into supporting people to live with the lives that they have? Ever since I made personal contact with him, I've tried to respect my relative's choices. It's mighty hard, but it's the right thing to do. Concentrate on the here and now, worry about the future when the future comes - and for pity's sake, let go of the past. Inevitably the past will have shaped what you have to work with in the present anyway; and you can't re-live the past - you can only live in the present. So, let's help people to live with what they have, eh?

Minor tribulations, major headaches

I seem to have lost one of my 'S' badges. You know - the lapel patches that appear on the tunic of a Salvation Army uniform? Well, I've only got one - and I've not had any shoulder trimmings for quite a while - as apparently, the corps has run out of them. So I am now lopsided. Is that a sign that I'm only half-salvationist...?

If I thought I could get away with keeping it that way, I probably would - because I'm quite rebellious about that sort of thing; and actually, I think half-salvationist is probably a label that fits me very well! Although I'll qualify that: it depends where the particular bit of the Salvation Army is, that I'm engaging with at the time.

For the last year or so, I've openly said to quite a ot of people that the only thing that keeps me engaging with Gorgie Corps is the fact I'm a songster. Now, I'm going to qualify that too, because I also have lots of nice friends whom I enjoy being with who also go there; I have one or two opportunities a month to share some ministry with elderly people - whom I've always got on with very well; I usually get to carry the flag in front of the band on the rare occasions it leaves the comfort of it's hall; and actually - it's just where the corps is right now that I don't really care for - it's been different before and has the potential to be again!

Yesterday, our songster brigade was in Govan. For some reason we'd been chosen to sing for an hour, following the local songsters and the West Scotland Youth Chorus, whom I have to say were excellent; and after that we were treated to an evening event by Regent Hall Songsters, which is just so stuffed with professional singers and students of all of London's best music learning centres that I end up thinking it's just as well I live where I do, as I'd have no chance of belonging to anything like that!!

If you've read my previous post - the most recent one, it'll probably come as no surprised to you that my emotions are all over the place right now. I've somewhat unwillingly and unhappily woken up with a headache, which I've already started battering with painkillers; and as soon as I remembered about my missing 'S' I did consider not going to church this morning. But no! That'd be the start of a slippery slope - half a salvationist is surely better than no salvationist; and if anybody can't cope with that, then that's their problem, isn't it? And with luck, there might be somebody around who can sell me some replacement badges!

(And in the meantime I'll probably share the half-salvationist joke - which doesn't have to be a joke at all if you think about it; and could certainly form the basis of my next prayer meeting - perhaps accompanied by Ecclesiates 4:9, where it says that, two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work. I mean, think about it - single people, of which I'm also a member...

People - especially traditionalist church people who think they know and have seen or done it all, need to be made to think about these things...!!!

Surviving historic abuse

Have I ever written about my past abuse here? I think its about time I did, or maybe did some more: I am a male survivor of various forms of abuse, including sexual abuse. There - I've said it. I've just come out...

This might sound daft, but I first became aware of this during the mid 1990s. It was during a routine appointment I had with my community psychiatric nurse at that time, when we'd been discussing problems I was having in the relationship at the time - namely that I couldn't cope with my partner's sexual expectations. When my CPN asked if I'd had similar problems before in any previous relationships, I had to say yes - and that led onto the question of whether anybody had ever done anything untoward during my childhood.

My initial answer was an emphatic no - but I went away and thought about the wisdom of this afterwards, as for as long as I could remember I'd had three separate flashbacks, as I now understand them to be.

But I didn't know they were flashbacks then - I'd never heard of the word up until I returned for my next appointment. I didn't know what they were - they kept recurring on a completely involuntary basis, and on one level they were like movie stills - except that they had accompanying thoughts and feelings attached to them. I'd puzzled over them for years actually, dismissing them variously as fantasies, dreams, and hallucinations. I felt guilty about having them at all - even though nobody else had any way of knowing even of their existence.

In addition, I had lots of pretty raw memories of serious ill-treatment by nurses who were supposed to be looking after me, in a certain Scottish psychiatric hospital, where I spent a good deal of my adolescence. One of the flashbacks involved a particular nurse there, in fact.

So, the following week I asked my CPN, if anything had occurred, would I remember it. "Not necessarily," she informed me, adding that the brain sometimes shields us from memories of events it feels would be too traumatic for us to deal with. "But you would probably have flashbacks," and, as she went onto explain what these are, I instinctively knew that I had indeed been abused, both as a small child and as a vulnerable and naive young adult patient, within a psychiatric hospital.

Well you know, that would have bad enough, but the trouble with discovering such abuse is that, when you start to explore what exactly abuse is, you often discover there's a lot more stuff in your past that can be classified that way, too. In my case, a lot of it was stuff I remembered very well - and which I knew at the time was a bit odd, and which I hated; but for which I'd made excuse after excuse in favour of the perpetrator, to whom I'd felt I owed a great favour, and so allowed to have his extremely wicked ways with me, over a period extending to almost three years. I'd been in complete denial about it, but this had been an abusive relationship - and out of all that's happened to me, it remains by far the most damaging, in terms of what I perceive to be my abilities to cope with sex and relationships. In consequence I've led a lonely and rather unfulfilled life.

Oh, I've had years of specialist counselling - twice over; and I've done lots of therapies of various types to try to accept and come to terms with it all. The first four years was with a wonderful counsellor who employed Gestalt techniques: working very much in the present and relating it to the past by identifying why I think and do things the ways I think and do them - and then introducing the possibility of doing them differently in future. Gestalt is often treated with a good deal of suspicion in this country - especially by psychiatrists and other professionals trained within the medical model; but in my view it is far more life-changing than anything else they've ever offered me.

Then for the past three years I've had a person-centred counsellor. He's been very good in many ways, supporting me to completely change the way I relate and respond to my mother, whose behaviour might also have been termed abusive for much of my life; and also the ways I relate to my employers and others. He's also tried to get me to view my bouts of depression not as something that will inevitably happen to me every now and then; but I'm afraid he's been less successful with that!

And throughout all that time, I've completely dismissed and possibility of reporting anything to the police, as I was advised early on in my process that the possibility of being cross-examined in court would re-expose me to the abuse as if it were happening all over again, and I may not be able to survive it a second time.

Well, a lot of water's passed under my bridges, and at length I've managed to accept and file away for good, two of the flashback incidents. I've had less success with the third one however, and although I've not seen him for 25 years, the man who so constantly abused me within the context of my first significant relationship continues to appear in my mind, every now and then - most probably because I still feel seriously handicapped as a result of his abuse towards me.

So I had my first meeting with the police today. It appears they can't take a statement in relation to the flashback nurse, because even after all this time I still have no memory of what actually happened; and there are some questions over issues relating to my consent in the abusive relationship. However, on two occasions he involved a third party without my prior knowledge; and because he always blindfolded me as part of his ritual, I have no idea of who they were or what they looked like. While it will be extremely difficult to prove anything, the police have agreed to prepare statements about these incidents, as he did break the law in setting them up without my consent.

Once the statements have been recorded, they'll be sent to Essex Police for investigation, because that's where most of the abusive incidents took place. As yet, it is unclear as to what kind of outcome might be expected, as the English police forces are known for sending cases to court without much evidence, relying instead on judges and juries to decide on the probability of allegations; whereas that would be much less likely in Scotland, unless there was lots of corroboration available. In any case though, his name will be flagged on police databases and will show up in any future disclosure applications; and in the event of any existing or future allegations being made by others, it is possible my statements will be used as evidence.

I feel a wee bit better than I did before this meeting: during the last week and a half I've eaten about ten boxes of chocolates, amongst lots of other junk - as well as hit the prescribed diazepam, as the anxiety's been pretty intense. And now I'm heading out with a friend, for a well-earned Chinese...

First new posting for over 2 years...

Oh, my goodness! You know it's been a long time since you posted when you can't even remember the name of your blog, let alone any of the login details...

I've been feeling I should probably try to resume the blogging habit for some time, and have been encouraged to do so today by a friend, who has just created a new blog of his own. So, here I am, password reset and that jazz; and to those whom I have just discovered have been kind enough to comment on my previous posts, I heartily thank you, and apologise if I've not acknowledged you before now!

I need to find my way around again, so I'll not write anything interesting just yet. But, I will be back....!!