~ John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong.

It was a small favor really. And then the next day I did a medium sized favor for them. And now a week later I got asked to do a giant favor for them and of course I said yes.

Well I thought we were friends. But I guess not. It hurt my heart. I wish that it didn’t. I wish that I hadn’t opened myself up to someone to think there was something there on both sides, when there wasn’t.  Something died there, if only within my heart, and I am trying to cope with that.

I do so much for others. I don’t know how I can mean so little to someone that one small thing for me is too much. This has really brought home how hard it is for me to ask for things and how much they mean when I can and do.  I realize how triggering this has been. Old family stuff.

It hurts so bad that I just wanted to pull inside and never ask for anything again. Perhaps that really is the best when it comes to this person. I have been spending this last week away by myself. Writing this is making me cry again. I don’t want to ask someone for something small again and be told no, that I just don’t matter, but that what they want from me matters and yet is unappreciated, without thanks.

I try to be as independent as I can be. But in the winter months, sometimes I need a little help. So I had to ask someone else for help and I didn’t want to ask him either. But I needed help, just a little, and he did me the favor.

It’s humiliating and saddening to need someone and to get nothing. With my family it’s humiliating and saddening to ask for help, when they do the favor, there is a ton of judgment and censor heaped on top of me, and that was not nice at all. It’s why I like to rely on myself alone.

~ August Wilson

Recently I’ve come across a couple of other organizations focusing on Dissociative Identity Disorder, with articles for partners and supporters and added them. The issue of lack of appropriate advice and information for multiples, their partners, friends, family, other survivors, and other supporters has always been acute. I’m so happy that I was able to add to the resource page and hopefully it will help some of us feel more understood, acknowledged, accepted, and supported.  

Here is the link to my page:

For Partners and Supporters of Survivors

And here is my resource page:

Survivor Resource Pages (Forty pages of resources, non-profit organizations, articles, and healing support for survivors of child sexual abuse, rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, and the aftermath of child sexual abuse.)

Good and healing thoughts to us all.

~ Tim Robbins

I do watch my blog views and check them out almost daily. It matters to me that my resources are reaching out to others. And that survivors and others are coming to my blog.

Sometimes views are mistaken drop-ins or someone looking for humor or quotes or songs or tv shows I have written about. Some obviously took a really bad wrong turn to get here.

But mostly, and this was not expected by me at all, it means that I have blog friends and they are reading what I wrote and posted and they care and they comment. It means so much. That is the best gift of all.

So many times when I have been on the bus I have had people trying to lean or rest against me, repeatedly bump into me, or plop their fat up against me and with my chronic back issues and chronic pain, it is excruciating. I am not a Barcolounger! I spend most of my bus time trying to avoid others and sit in the couple of spots on the bus where I don’t go through this. With the smaller more energy-efficient buses that is a hard thing to do.

So many times I cannot count I have had drivers in cars get in my way, get too close, cut me off, honk at me, all at times when I am legally walking or driving my bike. Often it is very scary and I feel as though they are trying to kill me, because they are so self-obsessed and so uncaring for others. Let me say I have such road rage and routinely swear out drivers. I am trying to stop doing that. The best I can say that I have stopped yelling I hate drivers, I hate you all, over and over.

I have often speeded up to get through an intersection and sprained or pulled a muscle. It has happened to easily. My health issues are such that it can happen. I still worry about it, though I don’t get injured so much now that I am gluten free. After the last injury, biking fast through an intersection while a car was trying to turn where my bike was, caused me to decide not to ever go fast again in order take better care of myself.  

I’ve been in stores when I was shopping for groceries and been told to move by staff and customers. This has really gotten to me lately. There were two incidents that were the end of my patience in this area.

One memorable incident was at a Target store by a staff teenage boy with some apples in his hands who insisted that I move so that he could put the apples down at the apple area where I was standing. Well if you have ever been in an apple area in a store you know there is usually plenty of room to get at things without making a customer move. There was. I went to find a store manager and let them know that I was not going to buy apples and why.

Another was when I was downtown at the Target store, with a store cart, near the milk section trying to find the 2% milk so I could grab a gallon of it and put it into my cart. In that store they have pillars in the way and only one cart can go by at a time. This man, who acted like he did not know English very well, gestured for me to move. I thought he wanted to get through and since I have moved for everyone all my life, out of courtesy, even though I was trying not to move for others anymore, I moved. He didn’t want to get by me, he wanted milk, stopped where I had been, looked over the milk and picked out his choice, while I had to wait, fuming. I said to myself never again.

Since then, I refused to move. I am in a space, I am taking up that space, I refuse to be more kind to someone else than I am going to be kind to myself. I wait many times at the grocery store for others, they can wait for me as well, or go somewhere else, or shop another aisle or walk all the way around. I know that I have done all the above many times.

One incident was at a used store and a guy trying to get by the used cds where I was looking, a space of about six feet long. He wanted me to move my cart, so he could look at the cds as well. I moved it a bit, but he soon wanted me to move again. I told him no. He grabbed my cart and tried to move it out of the way. I held onto it and said no. He said surely you don’t need it there. I said yes I am disabled and I need to lean onto it. I told him he could go or wait.

Then there was this grocery store incident here.

That is when I started to notice that I was often at the grocery store between six and seven pm and deciding not to go there at that time anymore. I believe that people are angry, tired, and hungry and that comes out with some of the rudest behavior I have seen in the last two years.

I was  at Target again recently and a staff person was walking towards me very fast. I was standing still in an aisle looking at things. She got behind me and I hate that. She leaned over and pressed her body against my back. Being touched by people is a big trigger, especially when they come up behind me, touch my back or butt, and especially when they are staff.

I got really mad and told her I had a back disability and did not want to be touched. She did not say she was sorry, she did not act like she cared. I swore twice at her and was very very upset. It is not okay for staff to act like this. I was so mad and really I am still mad. I am going to call and complain.   

I shouldn’t have to say that I have a back disability to get people to back off. It is none of their business and I don’t want to share anything with people with no boundaries. They should know to have better behavior in public.

So I don’t move quickly or jump out of the way for others.But that seems to be provoking even worse behavior from them. I want to figure out what to do about this. Because I know that others do not treat everyone like this. What this has all taught me is that so many people have no personal boundaries and have no respect for others. Sad, they are so sad.

Having a back disability makes it hard for me to look strong and empowered. I want this to get better. I want others to give me my body space. I would walk pulling the cart behind me, but with my back injury I need to push the cart and rest some of my weight on the cart handle. I need to review what Cesare Millan, the Dog Whisperer, says about personal space and try to implement that more in my life.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara.

~ Merle Shain

 C is for Creativity. A big part of being able to survive is our ability to think beyond the moment we are going through, to imagine a different place and time and world for ourselves and to dream, to use our heart and soul in creative action. As much as creativity is a part of a victim’s life, it is even more so a part of an adult survivor’s life, endurance, and healing.

C is for Change. Change is said to be the one constant in life, in the universe, and indeed in a survivor’s healing life and healing path. If change wasn’t a constant in our lives, we wouldn’t be moving forward, we wouldn’t be able to alter our lives, improve our lives, healing inside and change our life for the better. Change is earth-shattering. But change also brings healing.

Change is one of the biggest fears I ever had in my life. I think it is for plenty of survivors. It takes a long time and a lot of healing for a survivor to get to a point of being unmoved by fear when the concept or topic of change comes up inside a person or outside by others or circumstances.

C is for Clarity. Clarity is something survivors have had obscured from their lives. Clarity is something you grasp rarely, only to see it slip from your fingers. Clarity is what you are reaching for when you are learning to stand up for yourself, to learn boundaries, reading books about survivors and healing, to find your voice, to establish a life of your own, away from abuse.

Clarity is clear seeing; in  your life, in your soul, in your mind. It’s the opposite of what abusers do, intend, want, or work towards. Clarity is the beginning of change, the beginning of empowerment, the piece of the puzzle. Clarity is seeing yourself accurately, with the eyes of love, perhaps for the first time in your life.

Clarity is healing and brings healing. Clarity is sweet.