A Hard Few Days

Some More Hard Days Coming Up
2/14 Valentine’s Day: more info at  https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/valentines-day/
2/28 Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras
3/1 Ash Wednesday, beginning of Lent
3/20 Spring Equinox: more info at  https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/the-spring-equinox/

Spring is hard for me, simply because Easter is a moveable holiday. The difficult spring days are 3/25, 3/28, 4/1, 4/6, 4/9, 4/13, 4/17, 4/21, and 4/25. Each of those Easters brings an anniversary reaction and they come so close they all blend into each other. And if you add in Good Friday and Holy Saturday, there are hardly any breaks.

(If you want to look up the dates from your childhood, go to http://www.maa.mhn.de/StarDate/publ_holidays.html  It was translated from the German, so 4/20 will be listed as 20.04. The range is 1901 to 2078.)

Last week I had an intense few days and I am so glad they are over and I can breathe again! Nothing to do with Easter, though.

My father was born on January 31. On February 1, I had a doctor’s appointment which had caused me two months of anxiety. (More about that later.) On February 2, along came Candlemas. And then came February 4, which is my father’s deathday. Pretty intense!

I believe that my father was meant to be born on Candlemas but was two days early. And I think, consciously or unconsciously, he tried to die on Candlemas and was two days late. He was first delirious and then in a coma those last few days, so he didn’t have as much control as he needed. I have no idea what Candlemas meant in the family, but it certainly seems to me that it was significant.

I was a total mess when my father died because I believe now that I was supposed to take over for him. At the time, I had no idea what had happened to me, not even the sexual abuse, let alone ritual abuse. I just knew that I was afraid the world would end for me: there was a big black nothing following his death. Fear, an abyss of fear. But I didn’t return to the cult, I didn’t die, and slowly the fear lifted. For at least ten years now I have sailed through his birth, Candlemas, and his death. This year, no.

It was sort of a variant on a flashback. Instead of having the feelings of the past intrude on the present, my present anxiety spread over past hard days from January 31 to February 4, so that the whole period was really difficult for me.

About the medical stuff – I have a Pacemaker and it was generating and recording random signals. They had determined that the noise was coming from one of the leads from the Pacemaker to my heart. My Googling told me that the insulation around that lead was breaking down and that it would have to be replaced. This would be more complicated than putting in the Pacemaker and might take as long as six hours. So naturally I was anxious!

But my Pacemaker has two wires inside the lead, so if one breaks down there is a back-up. I was so lucky to get this particulate model! The doctor wants to monitor the situation and handle it with changes to the programming of the Pacemaker if needed. He changed the settings to filter out the noise and to allow a clear picture of what is actually happening. He was great with me, explained things, answered my questions, was smart and respectful. Wish all my docs were like him. He will be my go-to guy for Pacemaker stuff.

I invite all of you to be happy with me!

I think it is really useful to note when rotten days cluster. Then we can prepare for them and keep reminding ourselves why we are such a mess. And, most important of all, we can know that it will be over sooner or later and we will be able to breathe again.