Today (well, technically yesterday) was the 3rd year anniversary since the passing of our dear and beloved Penny.  She was a Papillon/Chihuahua/Mix of some sort.  We had planned on working on a slide show to put up here, but that will have to come in the near future.  We did however discuss her and our other pets of the past, our family, etc. in therapy.  We miss our Penny very, very, very much.

We had therapy today.  It’s a blur right now to me– seems that is what is happening to most things these days.  Though in retrospect, therapy often is a blur or blank anyway, so I guess it isn’t all that new.  I just know though we have some things to do some reflection on though, but now it is really a blank at the moment.  Hopefully it will come back to us when we are not so tired and have more energy to dwell into the memory banks to try and find the keys to some information.

I went to my mother’s afterwards.  Normally we do NOT go to the mother’s house after therapy, but there was something she wanted me to help her with that was time sensitive and I had planned on being near her house at a store nearby (which I never got to) to get a gift there, and so we stopped there first.  The mother was asleep and so we found what she needed help with and read about it and was all ready to just leave, but the Schwann’s food man rang the doorbell which ultimately within 5 minutes after it rang, she woke up.  So we discussed what she needed help with, problem solved it, and it took some time.  Just as I was about to leave, her roommate had come over to my mother’s side of the house and I spoke with her for a few minutes.

Basically she was having a serious mental health crisis and I took her to the emergency room and I just got home from that.  After finding out some more stuff, it’s one of those very interesting coincidental events that’s a bit too coincidental, that I happened to be at my mother’s house and still be there when our paths crossed tonight.  There’s a number of reasons why I ordinarily wouldn’t have shown up or even have still been there.  Had the food man not rang the doorbell, which thus caused my mother to wake up, there is no way I would have been there by the time her roommate and I crossed paths tonight with one another.  And we really avoid the mother’s house or most anywhere really after therapy, except to head home afterwards.  So it’s just interesting how everything transpired tonight.

I think I helped in some ways, but in other ways, I felt so helpless and clueless as to what to say or do.  Sometimes it came to me, but other times I just felt so stupid and unsure and then saying things that probably weren’t the best time to say them, but not saying anything seemed like I was agreeing with some negative beliefs that she had that I doubted were wholly true about herself or someone she knew in life as it related to her.

Mostly I’m just glad that the timing of things happened the way that they did because she seriously needed help and I didn’t realize just how much until the night continued onward and I learned new information.  And I discovered just how damn hard it is to have someone hospitalized who a) hasn’t seriously tried to commit suicide even though damn close to it and b) who doesn’t have a therapist or case manager making a referral to the hospital and setting it up themselves.  And the social worker that we had at the hospital was very aloof and lacked any kind of external warmth or empathy.

So that was my day and night.  We’re exhausted and hoping to be able to go to sleep soon, but I’m not sure if that will happen.

Julie/s

We haven’t written in awhile and I’m not entirely sure why.  Mostly I think it is just that we’ve been having long days of things to do in combination of needing to ‘regroup’ afterwards before the next thing.  And then of course the usual struggles, emotional exhaustion, etc.

I think we’re doing a bit better than we were around the intense ‘holiday’ time frame.  I/we had a good therapy session with Cec yesterday, but I also think there are repercussions or flack from others inside because they didn’t get some time yesterday.  L.J. only showed up at the very end to say goodbye and the rest of the time it was for us, Julies, to talk about things.  So I’ve/we’ve been dealing with intense emotional pain that physically hurt last night and it is just grinding away inside.  At the moment it is at a distance, but it is still gnawing at me.  In reality, it is the usual struggle and usual constant emotional pain.  I guess with last night’s intensity, it was just largely more noticeable and significantly distressful.  I’m sitting here writing and thinking in a way that it “feels new” in the respect that the intensity and feeling aspect seems to have a ‘newness’ feeling to it and so that adds to the distress and this huge sense of urgency and immense need for help.

Again, I’m not really feeling it right now and I’m fine.  I guess I’m trying to analyze the feelings and our reactions and describe it.  I always feel like I’m saying something wrong or not saying it “right enough” or that what I perceive and describe is wrong.  Wrong in the sense that I don’t know enough or others inside hold other pieces and insiders have a more accurate sense about our system and things like that.  At which point, it will be found out by outsiders that I’m wrong and said the wrong thing and a liar and stupid and yadda yadda.  The list goes on with that.  There’s always this anxiety whenever I’m trying to explain something from my perspective about our system or what’s going on internally.  It’s sort of like if I just don’t say anything, then outsiders won’t find out that what I’m thinking or feeling is wrong, and thus it is safer.  And somehow I know this links back to safety or protection or something I can’t quite put my finger on in regards to the others inside.

Anyway, I really do need to go for now.  We want to write about therapy yesterday.  We’ve also been considering writing down parts of the body’s life story.  And there are huge issues we brought up in therapy yesterday that have been mulling around here for quite some time.  It would be good to process those as well.  And there are two pictures that we found from when the body was very young with the father in them (with ‘me’) and we’ve been thinking about posting them with some comments to them.  We’re also considering on not obscuring the father’s photo, because some of us feel like why protect some perpetrator’s privacy and he looks quite different now anyway.

Okay then, the reminder has been set here and hopefully some good writing will come here in the future.

Julies