Saturday, April 26, 2008
Catching Up
I've decided to "fill in" the week I was not blogging. I took the break because I so badly needed it on many levels, I also wanted to put the wheels of a better life in motion.
Very obviously, I haven't changed radically in the space of one week but I've made huge strides in fact, I think we all have as a family. Things have got very pleasant indeed just through a few simple changes and I'm feeling better - although getting to even this point hasn't been easy.
Firstly, we made a new house rule - that the television and the computer are only allowed on at set times a day and then only for a set amount of time. I thought the kids would be up in arms about this one but, in fact, I've been pleasantly surprised they have taken to it so well that they now complain about the noise if one of them goes on! The computer, for example, goes on early in the morning for half an hour so that I can check/answer emails, blog if I want to or "browse" and then it goes off. After lunch, it goes on for another half an hour, this time mainly so that Rosie can have a play on Club Penguin or Active Worlds, do some online learning (maths mainly) or just look stuff up. Then, generally, the computer doesn't go on again to the evening. Today has been a little different because I've been catching up on the blog (I've got a thousand blog posts buzzing around my brain!) but, on the whole, this is how things are now.
The result of this shutting off of technology is that we've been "getting real" (as I call it). We've been drawing and painting (you can see some of my efforts on my relaxation page) with some lovely new art materials we got, cooking lots, playing with Moon Sand (weird stuff), putting on mini-plays, playing in the garden, doing loads of notebooking (our much more relaxed, unstructured home ed method), studying nature, doing yoga (even April!) and reading. We have also been enjoying a kind of peace in our home that we've never experienced before - it's amazingly wonderful.
On a personal level, all this peace has given me time to think - sometimes painful thinking - and I've experienced the whole range of emotions in a short period of time. I've had several days in a row where I was utterly at peace and going over "things" in my mind and putting them to rest and then, suddenly, the floodgates opened and all this terrible pain came out and I'd find myself sobbing and yelling. Of course, the recipient of all this was Tim ... thank god for him being solid and unflappable! He's put up with me clinging to him and crying one minute and shoving him away and telling him to get lost (although not so politely) the next and he just remains calm ........ I guess he realises, in a way, that I have to go through this in order to lay the ghosts to rest.
Now, in a relatively short period of time, I genuinelly feel that I'm getting somewhere. A couple of things have happened over the last few days that would, not all that long ago, have thrown me into misery and disarray. Now, although I wobbled, I didn't fall over (remember the Weebles? *smiles*) Oooooh! I've got a long way to go ... a long, long way but changes have been made.
Before, every time something bad happened I would completely overreact, take everything personally and get very down because every time something bad happened, horrible memories from the past would come back to haunt me (hence my reaction). I felt I was stuck with it and this was how life was going to be forever ... I was being fatalistic in other words but this is the wrong way to handle former abuse. Then someone told me that the best way to deal with it was, basically, to not think about it and not let it rule your life. I think this is the wrong way to handle it too because it's almost like going into denial. Sure, everything is fine now but one day it will all come back and bite you on the butt - probably at the worse time.
So, like I've had to recently, you do have to face the demons of your past and you can't go on excusing crappy behaviour away for the rest of your life because of them and also you can't just "ignore them".
I chose to simplify and quiet my life so that I could almost hear what was going on in my brain. I chose to relax with yoga and painting and drawing. In doing this I kind of opened myself up to some kind of healing but it hasn't been easy or always pleasant and I've got miles to go but at least I'm doing it. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
One day, hopefully in the not too distant future, I will be able to leave the past where it really belongs ... in the past.
[ Previous post | Home | Archive index | Next post ]