And now the good stuff...

So, my life isn't all sadness and drama and shooting nightmares...  I'm working through a lot right now that I probably should have dealt with right after the shooting, and seem a little strange coming up 7 years later.   It is basically as if I had a broken bone that didn't get set right... if you want to get the whole limb working right again, you might have to re-brake the bone and set it right.  I'll be the last one to pretend that this isn't a painful process, but then again, I know there is no other way to let things heal correctly.   So, sorry if my last entry was a little morose and depressing.  To balance that out, I wanted to give an update on everything else going on in my life, as well as put in some real-life pictures instead of my usual stick-figures.

I had a birthday recently and have been able to take advantage of gifts to push me to find fun things to do with my time rather than just sitting around sulking.  As my psychologist likes to say, negative thoughts attract even more negative thoughts, so it is time to work on breaking that negativity chain by finding fun ways to keep myself busy!

Me, taking advantage of my free birthday hamburger and desert at Red Robin!

Firstly, I got a food dehydrator from my hubby, and I have been truly enjoying using it to make delicious treats.  Well, actually I've mainly been using it to dehydrate tomatoes to munch on and of course, to make beef jerky.  I even chopped up some strawberries and drained them of all of their watery life-force, then re-hydrated them in my stomach.  Mmmmm...

Beef Jerky in the process of drying, and some tomatoes from yesterday's work!

I'm using money to save for a fun mini-vacation this summer, and was planning to use the rest for a glass blowing class.  Unfortunately, the class filled up, so the next one isn't until June.  In the mean time, I've gotten back into learning German since Rosetta Stone now has a nifty app for my tablet.

Nick and I also decided that since we now have a yard, we have no excuse for not having some sort of small  garden.  Last week, when the sun was out, we got some little veggies and planted them.  Believe it or not, I had a ton of fun fussing with getting all the weeds out of the dirt :).  So, now we have some sweet snap-peas, edamame, sweet onions, romaine, and a tomato plant.  The cherry/pear/apple trees in the backyard are all blooming, though the rain and wind does it's best to dump blossoms all over the ground and garden.

The scraggly ones in the middle are onions--hope they perk up!!

We also got an indoor herb garden in a spot that gets tons of light though our kitchen windows!

Rosemary/Catnip/Sage/Greek Oregano/Purple Basil

Tea Time--beautiful new tea cup and some balsamic and olive oil to have with bread  :)  If I'm good, I'll eat a banana too...

None of this is to discount the feelings in my last post.  That is the dark side of my life, and very personal, but I choose to share it here in hopes that it might help others.  But, there is a light side as well, even if it is sometimes under the shadow of a cloud :).

Choosing to Live

Whew... life has a way of keeping you busy and distracted.

I've been in a bad place, really bad, for the last months.  The struggles I've mentioned in previous posts have come to a head like a giant zit on your nose the day of senior photos, or prom, or whatever your worst nightmare might be.

Stupid Zits, ruining everything!!!

I've had a pretty serious case of the "can'ts", that I have now come to recognize as full blown Post Traumatic Stress.  It just feels like anything I do, or say, or decide could lead to some sort of terrible thing.  The world is a scary place where bad things happen, and I seem to have a hard time seeing it in any other way.  I want to be in total control, so bad things won't happen, and that often leads to my not doing anything because I know I can't have that control and it terrifies me.

This is part of what PTSD does to you--your mind gets stuck in that bad place it was in at the time of the trauma, and trying to unstick it is about as hard as stealing honey from a grizzly bear...  Sometimes it is possible to live in denial and keep pushing through,(as I did very successfully for several years after the shooting) but generally trying to ignore bad emotions results in not being able to see or feel the good things in life either.

That Bear is gonna guard the honey with his vicious teeth!!

Unfortunately, if life seems bad (or at best grey), for long enough it makes it pretty tough to motivate yourself to do much of anything at all.  Inspiration is gone, and the "can'ts" come to get ya.  It is easy to get discouraged, then I end up feeling terrible about myself, which in turn leads to more self pity, doubt, indecisiveness, hopelessness and fear.  This, of course, makes the "can'ts" even worse, and a vicious cycle begins.

As the anxiety-driven 'excuses' mount, so does the self-criticism

I find myself looking for any way to avoid discomfort or difficulty  because I feel like my every day is painful, difficult and without reward.  I want a vacation from these feelings, but I can't get away from my own body or mind.  So, I get behind on almost everything and fail my friends and family in increasingly dramatic and annoying ways.  Unfortunately, despite knowing that this doesn't do anything to help decrease discomfort or difficulty, I still want that escape; the freedom from being me.  I want freedom from knowing that my decisions may have undesirable (and deadly) side-effects.  I want freedom from the physical and emotional scars left by the shooting.  I want to be able to trust again, and believe that the world can be a good place.

But, why the misery?  How did things get to this place?  Well, part of it is that I still haven't quite figured out what my 'new' identity is (a re-occurring theme in the blog, which is why I looked at values in a previous post).  Who am I, and what is important to me. Am I a cripple?  A shooting victim?  A lazy bum who takes advantage of the system because I feel sorry for myself?  All I know is that I still feel in my heart that I am just a normal person like everyone else.  But, physically and emotionally, I'm a changed person, and I have yet to accept the new hand of cards life dealt me.   Until then I may keep breathing, but I'm not really living.  I'm choosing to avoid life as much as possible because I have yet to relearn how to really live.

That said, things are on the up.  My new psychologist is amazing, and I've been learning more about self compassion from a book given to me by a friend.  I'm learning to be gentle with myself, to break the cycle of guilt, anxiety and the need to control.  I am choosing to live again, to feel joy as well as sadness.  And, I know I am not alone.  Choosing to live means taking the burdensome (but necessary) parts in stride and forgiving myself for my mistakes, while never forgetting that sometimes I do things well, and that some tasks can be fun.  Oh and I can't forget the need to play and relax on occasion :).

It is a difficult battle, and will take time, but I have confidence that I can win as I choose to live