Pain

I know this is a repost but I have been feeling that it was something I needed to do, so here it is.

I have scars. They are faint and unless you were looking you wouldn’t know they were there. These scars I’m talking about were self inflicted. Self harm has almost become a trendy topic, in some circles to the point were it’s talked about and played with as something to do. The truth is the reasons behind it can be much darker and deeper. Self harm isn’t something you should do to fit in and a lot of people that do it don’t talk about it. If you ever see their cuts or scars they may dismiss them, make light of them. But with or without the bravado it’s a cry for help.

For me it wasn’t something I was proud of or something I wanted others to know. My one friend who saw the cuts did so because I rolled up my sleeves one day without thinking. Was she nice and sensitive about it? Hell no. She ripped into me demanding answers and when I wouldn’t give them to her she kept pushing. She then insisted if I ever felt like doing that again I had to call her. I don’t think I ever cut myself again.

I’ve known girls who self harm to shrug it off, saying it’s unimportant. They display all this bravado but honestly if there wasn’t something wrong they wouldn’t be doing it.

As far as this topic goes, for me a blade wasn’t my big thing. If you’d asked I would have said I did it because I was curious but let’s face it what normal kind of person is curious about being cut by a knife. They just aren’t. My more common method of self harm was my hands, to be precise I use to hit things, big solid surfaces. It didn’t tend to leave obvious marks, sometimes grazes and bruises but nothing as noticeable as scabbed up cuts.

It’s important to note that self harm isn’t always about cutting yourself nor is it always connected to attempted suicide. I never thought about ending my life. Which then leads to the obvious question – what was it about then? The one word answer is pain. That probably doesn’t tell you much though. A better way of putting it is pain management. I had a lot of baggage, a lot of stuff I didn’t know how to deal with properly, years of insecurities that culminated for me in my twenties. I was never popular, I was teased a lot and had self image problems, all hidden behind walls I’d built around my emotions. In early high school guys weren’t particularly mean, they just ignored me for the most part but the girls were really nasty. Later on though there were a few guys who seemed to like nothing better than attacking me verbally in any way they thought was funny. I always had things to say back to them and never let them see the damage they caused, but just because they didn’t see the pain didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Later on I used my physical assets to get attention, but attention and good healthy relationships are two vastly different things. The attention made me feel better momentarily but didn’t do anything for me deep down. Deep inside I felt alone, as though no-one cared to know the real me. That’s the danger when you live to get approval from people in general. When your happiness is reliant on the external and you live to get surface gratification, you find it only lasts for a brief moment. We all really want someone to care for us deep down, not just like us for our breasts or because we will put out.

I had plenty of people hitting on me but that didn’t stop me feeling depressed and alone. I’d walk home after a night out with my girlfriends and I’d punch the rough rock walls because I felt so miserable on the inside and for a brief while, the pain caused by the rocks overshadowed the pain I felt on the inside. I think this is at the heart of self harm. It is a way to cover up inner pain. If we are going to deal with something like this we have to learn to deal with the underlying problems. We need to look at what is causing the pain and how each person deals with it.

There are healthy ways to deal with the pain life throws at us. Of course not all of us have parents or friends we can go to or even someone we feel we can trust with out innermost, dirtiest, scariest secrets. So instead we build internal walls and hide our emotions away. We don’t deal with our problems in an effective way and as a result at the very least cause ourselves no small amount of hurt. Sure you could say we don’t do it to ourselves it’s others that have done it to us but the truth is the only one who can decide how to play the hand we’ve been dealt is ourselves.

I suppose the next thing you might be curious about is how I overcame it. Well my friend was a good start. Like I said I don’t think I cut myself again but it’s worth considering that cutting was something I’d escalated up to so it’s possible that if my friend hadn’t stepped in when and how she did I could have kept going. That one conversation with her didn’t stop all my self harm and it didn’t stop the depression and loneliness but it was a step in the right direction.

The depression and loneliness followed me back to Australia (I spent a couple of years in my early twenties in the UK) and I kept living a lifestyle that sought approval and gratification from the people around me. I still lived a very superficial life. I wasn’t happy and I knew it. One day I accepted this and decided I was the only one who could change it. I didn’t do it alone but I needed to make the decision and I needed to take responsibility.

For me faith in God was something I grew up with so when I decided to sort out my life I knew it was my spiritual life I needed to deal with first. I went to a camp and used the time and environment (away from the city, work and all the influences that cluttered my days, drawing me into a superficial life) to deal with my issues. How did I do that? I cried out to God. I swore off men and took my loneliness, hurts and frustrations to the cross. This was a turning point in my life. Many things changed that weekend, not least of which being that I met the man I would be engaged to six weeks later. But that’s another story for another time.

All this was ten years ago and just so you know not all my problems vanished in an instant. I made the decision to change and took steps to do so. I also realised I needed a better way of dealing with things. It took time but I found my better way through faith and doing the things I love – for me performing is a great way to get rid of built up stress. Of course meeting my future husband meant the man thing wasn’t much of an issue anymore. The depression became much less of a thing as well. I still suffer bouts of it but it no longer drags me down for days on end and causes me to stop functioning effectively. Now I know there is a way out. I still feel lonely sometimes but now I know not all of us can surround ourselves with friends and be happy all the time. And of course my life still has many frustrations but they help me move forward, even if I do occasionally feel like punching a wall when I am at my most frustrated.

Bottom line is even though things don’t always go my way, or the way I think they should, I know now how to deal with my problems better and if I feel unattractive, useless or hurt I have someone I can pour my emotions out on. Even if my husband doesn’t understand or know what to say, God does. He knows the intimate parts of me including the darkest parts of my heart and he loves me still.

Not everyone’s path is the same but none of us need to deal with things alone. There is light at the end of the tunnel but we have to choose to walk to it and continue in it.

Being Real

It’s kind of funny, I just found out that someone thinks I was full of bullshit and playing mental games when I first met them. I have only seen them that once. Thing is I apologised when they first arrived, saying I was exhausted, I’d had to go to work that day and hadn’t been home long, I certainly wasn’t up to playing games. In fact, I don’t bother so much with games anymore, life is too short. I’m old enough to know better and quite frankly my life is full with wonderful friends, not loads but enough for someone who often found it difficult to allow people close.

So anyway, finding out this persons opinion of me got me to thinking, yeah I do that occasionally, about all the things we do to impress the people in our lives. Thing is it isn’t always the same tactic for different people. Around a person from a faith-based circle, we may try to tone ourselves down, change our language and deny certain things we think don’t fit, putting on instead things we do. Then with another group of people conversation can be more colourful, clothes perhaps more risqué and topics change.

Let me make this more personal for a moment. When I’m around church people I tend not to talk about sex. It’s not like I always put it into conversations but I try to keep innuendoes out or ignore them, when I wouldn’t in other groups, I perhaps police my thoughts more tightly. At the theatre, having an off colour sense of humour works.

Sometimes I wonder about myself because for all that I love God and have a heart that cries out for women in crisis, I feel far more comfortable sitting in a theatre bar talking about relationships, than I do in the auditorium talking to church ‘family’ after the service. I’ve gone into this sort of thing deeper in other posts, so for now I’ll just say that it’s perhaps because I feel there are expectations in the auditorium and there aren’t any in the theatre – as long as I learn my lines and hit my marks.

At a recent rehearsal I was asked why I wasn’t drinking, I said I was fasting because I felt it was what the big man upstairs wanted me to do, my director went ‘okay’ and that was the end of that. I felt accepted just being me and we all need that.

So back to this person that started this train of thought. I’m disappointed they felt the way they did because I had hoped we’d at least get along, the men in our lives are friends. I hadn’t gone into the situation with some underhanded agenda, I’m just not into that (I think it’s too much hard work). Granted certain circumstances are a little messy, but in this day and age so much of life is (soon divorces are going to include clauses about the custody of friends and how sad is that). Thing is I now feel she probably came into my house with some sort of plan or agenda and I didn’t meet up with her expectations. How sad to feel the need to live like that. To assume the people you come across all have an agenda. I’m not interested in living like that, I’ve got too much going on and the only way I can live the life I want is by being true to me.

So I wonder…how much of our lives is living true and how much is a façade? Me I’m all for being real. Others may not like it but how much pressure do you think we will take off ourselves if we do?

My Daughter's hand

There’s this thing about kids and I’m sure it’s not just me. Sometimes they are the best but sometimes they can be ever so trying and frustrating. I get home from work and just want to sit down and relax and it’s; ‘Mum can we…’, ‘Mum let’s go to…’, “Mum let’s play…’, and by the time that’s all over with I’m cooking dinner. When they finally get into bed there’s a big sigh and I collapse onto the couch.

Just lately though our two year old has decided that bedtime is just another game. So we now have to sit outside her room to make sure she doesn’t come out. It’s that or keep putting her back to bed every two minutes for an hour.

Then I tried a different approach. I gave her a hug and said it was time for bed and that meant it was time for sleep, lay next to her for a bit. This works okay (some nights, other nights the staying with her takes ages) until she wakes up in the night scared or with night terrors, then she just won’t let us go. She just reaches out her little hand to rest it on my face if I start to manoeuvre myself off the bed.

It’s moments like that, that even though I’m so tired or frustrated and seemingly unable to help, where I realise anew that no matter what, I would do anything in my power to make things just a little easier for my girls.

I'm Back

It's been a while since I last posted but it's been school holidays so I've been busy with programs for work and costumes and stuff. And then the girls. Somehow I'm still not that good at balancing everything. I'm writing on paper but not managing to get it onto my computer. So let's hope with school back I may get back to posting a couple of times a week.

Ethical Living

I found myself watching compass the last two Sunday nights when Geraldine had round the table dinner discussions with people from various walks of life around the concept of ‘what should you do?’ How do we live ethically and morally? My only problem was I wanted to see what was edited out, the discussions just didn’t last long enough for me. They dealt with topics such as fair trade coffee, carbon footprints, ethical investing, money from dodgy sources and cheating in relationships.

There is so much that they touched on ever so lightly that deserves thought, but I figure I may as well throw my two cents out there for the moment. I haven’t tried fair trade coffee but like one of the panellists it’s flavour for me with coffee so if it tastes bad I won’t buy it. As for plane travel versus a driving holiday, well the plane would be flying anyway (I can’t afford a private jet yet) so I figure pay the carbon tariff and fly.

If I had money to invest I’d do some research and get one of those ethical investment funds. There was a Buddhist nun who had great business sense and they asked how it was possible to have her faith and a portfolio. I say why shouldn’t she. Her use of the money is bound to be more ethical than many others, and if good people didn’t have access to money then many necessary things would not get done.

Taking money from things like drug sources, gambling of other seedy roots, well it’s not the money that’s evil, money just is. The power in money is in what you do with it. So yes I’d take the money because then maybe I can see to it that someone can eat this Christmas or pay their rent.

As for cheating in a relationship, what a mine filled topic. I was used as a cover by someone once and hated it, but it was made worse when her husband then hit on me. Like I said a minefield. Some people are of the opinion don’t get involved, other’s that the partner has an absolute right to know (even if the first thing they do is kill the messenger). Me I vote for honesty in a relationship. Sometimes it hurts like hell but it’s the only way to ensure the foundation stays strong. It also keeps others from having to make nasty decisions. And let’s face it finding out that other people know you are being cheated on is embarrassing – or maybe that’s just me. Ethically would I get involved? Well I guess that depends on the people.

One of the guests said he was fortunate to be in a position that he could ride an hour to a co-op market to buy food because he didn’t have children and other things that limited his choices or gave him certain time restrictions. It’s about doing what you can and understanding other people may have different limitations and certainly different priorities.

Wouldn’t it be nice if answers were more black and white than so many shades of grey? But then maybe life wouldn’t be so interesting.

What am I going to watch tonight now the discussions are over?