37 Dolls

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He said it earlier this year. He said it recently, more than once. You don’t need 37 dolls. Two or three will do. Thirty-seven seems to be a number that he obsesses about a lot.

For future reference I don’t obey politicians. I don’t do what they tell me to do and I don’t fashion my life around them, what they believe and/or what they say. When he said it I/we got really mad. How dare he tell us how many dolls we can or cannot have. How dare he act like we should get used to poverty and living a poverty life without healthcare, disability resources, disability services or small, inexpensive luxuries. How dare he try to manipulate and gaslight others into settling for living a bad, poverty stricken life. How dare he.

The first time he said it I went out and bought 12 dolls. It was a lovely set of 12 for the movie Encanto. They are in my bedroom right now and they give me joy many times a day. It was a set that was marked down 50%. I had waited a long time to get them. They are marvelous!

The next week I went out and bought 6 Marvel dolls and they are sitting out in my bedroom as well. I got them for about 3 bucks each at the thrift store. They were all in great shape. Oh, something else, I love superheroes and always have. I was one of the first people in the theater audience to see the Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, on opening night. I had been watching the old Superman tv series in syndication since I was a toddler.

I’ve read comics since a kid. I’ve watched old black and white and colored adventure, science fiction, and fantasy shows and movies from a tiny age. I’ve gone a lot to comic books stores. I’ve gone many, many times to Star Trek conventions. I’ve read 100s of books. I love all that stuff. And dolls are a big part of each area of my fandoms. So no I won’t stop myself buying dolls and asking for dolls as presents or buying dolls with cash presents for birthday or Christmas. I have well over 200 dolls and will continue to buy more.

Working on Boundaries

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I’ve basically been working on personal boundaries all my life. It has been very difficult and I seriously don’t think that it should be this hard. However I am pretty sweet and empathetic and that tends to attract those who want to use me, myself, and my qualities.

I’ve tried really hard to be honest but that didn’t work. I’ve learned that my honesty is what I owe myself and putting myself first is what I owe myself and that a good boundary is when I don’t have to explain or speak to someone else when I don’t want to and that I don’t owe them anything. Being honest and having good boundaries has come to mean not sharing anything with anyone else. My private life is my private business.

I’ve tried really hard at telling people to “f off” and that didn’t work. When I tell someone to “f off” I have to say it three times and they still don’t “f off” so I have to get up and move away from them. Seriously if someone told me to “f off” I wouldn’t want to be around them.

I’ve tried really hard at loving myself and asserting my boundaries and that didn’t work. Yes I learned how to love myself and be good to myself, but I still am left with boundary violators who jump my fences. One of my brothers, after telling him about boundaries and for him to stop his misbehaviors, told me that I should just let him do what he does. Oh, big surprise the boundary abuser and violator thinks I am being too hard on him, expecting him to treat me with kindness and respect.

I’ve tried really hard at ignoring people and that didn’t work. I even started wearing noise cancelling headphones. They still start talking to me. They still tend to come right up to me and try to insert themselves into whatever I am doing. Seriously I still don’t get that, mostly because I don’t get up in someone else’s grill for any reason and ask personal questions, falsely assume things about the other person, judging them, demeaning them, and acting like I have a right to be in their life. I still get that from strangers in my apartment building, on the street, and at the library. Headphones still in use and practicing ignoring jerks without boundaries.

The worst is guys. For future reference, I’m not interested in you. If I was, I would have already sent about 20 obvious signals. If I wasn’t, I would have already sent you 100 obvious signals. Also when I say I am not interested in you, believe me. I get mad that I still have to speak up. Stop trolling for women everywhere.

A Little Self Care Goes a Long Way

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I’ve been working often on self care lately. I am trying hard to integrate it automatically into my daily and weekly life, but it is still a struggle, where my energy is spent on taking care of other issues, and by the time I get to taking care of self-care I am just too exhausted to do much. I think a huge part of this struggle is because I have auto-immune diseases and have spent most of my life strugging just to find the capability to do the most basic life skills. Lack of energy is a wicked wicked thing.

Getting the right diagnoses, the right doctors, and the right treatment/medications and the right amounts of medication has gone a long way in helping/assisting me in helping me to be more healed, more everything. I suppose that in the last 15 years my energy level has gone up by 20 times of what it was before. Since it was previously very little, it is still appallingly very little, but I am continuing to work on everything about my life and self-care. Perhaps my energy level is now 5% of what I would consider normal. Still it is so great to have an energy level above 1%. I haven’t been at 5% for over 20 years or more. Auto-immune diseases suck. As always I am up for the challenge.

Good and healing thoughts to you all.

Mercury in Retrograde

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Mercury has been in retrograde for almost three weeks and will be over on Saturday. It cannot happen fast enough. I have so many communication issues during these times of the year. I don’t know if I believe in it so much as I know I will have a very crappy time when it comes around and that each time I try to prepare for it and make up a bunch of rules for speaking softly, only lovingly, and being kind, kind, kind.

However, others don’t.

More that five years ago I made up the rule that I make no major life decisions when Mercury is in retrograde. Since I can be so very stubborn, that is a good thing, I’m a Taurus and even though I’m not sure if I believe in astrology is very accurate, as we casually use it here in our culture, but yeah stubborn… so very easy for me to fit into all the Taurus traits.

Two days before Mercury went retrograde I got my Covid shot. It wiped me out. It might have no matter when I had it done, but never again near retrograde. It took me two weeks to feel recovered. Blah.

I have done five weeks of walking and am very proud of that. I wish I could do more, walk faster, walk farther, but it is where I am right now. I started doing 500 extra steps a day, and this week I am doing 600 extra steps. Small progress, small steps, but very important.

Last night I had a major cleaning session in my apartment, sweeping and mopping. I hate sweeping, but it is sort of necessary in order to mop cause I get tons of little fuzz balls.

Then the holiday with the fam of origin. Pray for me! Some turkey, some mashed potatoes with butter, some cornbread, some pumpkin pie.

Here is a link to my healing resource page for Holiday Coping

Just trying to relax, chill, and do some intense low-effort self care this weekend. I think I will do a great job of it.

Good and healing thoughts and love to all.

Healing from Abuse

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Healing from child sexual abuse is a lifetime project, at least it has been for me. It is my hope and prayer and wish for all of us survivors to be loved and cared for by trustworthy healers, family, new family, and friends.

I don’t feel daunted and I hope that all of us can feel undaunted as well, at least some of the time, and over time to feel more confident, more of the time. I wish you all the best and all the love that you deserve. My love goes out to you and to all the blog and message board friends I have had over the years. You have touched my heart, my life and helped make me a better, more healed person.

I will be posting in the near future, it is just that I had a blank mind today, actually all month, but still wanted to post something. Good and healing thoughts to you all. And lots of love.

Kate

Some Musings on Personal Connections

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Friendships have always been so hard for me. So often I would have a friend for a year or two and then they would just fade out of my life, exactly like they were going on a trip and left me behind. I accept that now. I realize that the depth of the connection that I made was not reciprocated or accepted. I am okay with that now. Some loved me, some didn’t.

I started classifying others as work friends, college friends, Reiki friends, volunteer friends (people I met through my volunteering) to signify where I met them, because I needed to remind myself that they might not be around in my life beyond a job move, a college class, a Reiki class or a volunteer project. I needed to remind myself, because it was so often true and really hurt my heart when it happened. I don’t think that it has ever stopped hurting.

Being online was difficult for me for so many years, while trying to connect to others. I realize now that many of the people I interacted with were not trying to connect to others or give to others. Being on message boards and email groups I found it very difficult to find friends. It was fine if I was content to just give and give, but if I needed something I found it hard to connect to one who would want to be there for me, even to answering one of my posts or giving me support. I really had to learn boundaries online, still working on that online and in person.

I still enjoy giving to others, but also I want to make healing connections with others online and in person. I could have interactions with a hundred people on average before I found a friend, online and off. So many of those have just disappeared. Am I the ghost or are they? Do I sometimes disappear from others lives as well? Yeah I guess I do when they have wounded me beyond words or explanations. I try not to do that to others who are non-abusive, but sometimes my own stuff is overwhelming, so I get it why others disappear.

Finally when I started blogging I really started to meet people who I felt I was connecting to. Each time a blog friend shuts down their blog it hurts me so bad. They were just gone. I know it is not about me. But it feels so sad to me. The loss seems so huge. Some moved on with big issues still to work on, some moved on to get away from everyone and everything, some moved on because they had healed some and wanted a life, and some had healed a lot. I get that. Each time someone is very busy or dealing with their own stuff, I am saddened by another loss, a wish that there was hope of a friendship, more interactions, a stronger connection . I realize everyone has their own life, their own work, their own struggles, their own unhealed stuff, and their own need for their own healings, but I wish for more from others. For the time being I am content taking care of myself and doing all the things that I am able to do and that I love.

I wish that I didn’t need others. I wish that I wasn’t an extrovert. I wish that I didn’t love others. I wish that I was better at all this than I am. I wish that this was all so much easier for me than it is, working on that. I used to be lonely all the time when I was alone. In the past three years I am not lonely. That is a much nicer way to be.

I know that doesn’t solve anything, but sometimes I wish I wasn’t me so that it could be easier. This was the fondest wish and the major desire in my life, to be someone else, for the first twenty years of my life.  For the past ten years or so I can say that I love myself a lot. I get why I am loveable and I like that. It took a lot of work and I am proud of all my healing work.

Sometimes my own stuff, my health issue, etc etc  etc gets in the way of reaching out to support others and getting more support. My health almost always gets in the way of everything. I really really hate that, but I accept that is what I am dealing with. I am working on taking the best care of myself as possible. I won’t leave me, not even for a bit, and that is the most important thing, I’m always up for the challenge.

Blog Upkeep

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Hi All,

I’ll be updated all my resource pages in the coming days. I’m sure that some of my links are to sites that are no longer up and running. So I will be editing and adding to my resource pages as well as creating a few new ones, on an on-going basis for a few months.

I’ll also be re-starting my healing quotes posts. Thinking of you all with love. Good and healing thoughts to you all.

About Writing Books

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For years I was upset that I couldn’t write great novels, due to my on-going poor health, pain levels, and auto-immune system diagnoses I was dealing with. Brain fog had been a real issue from health issues and from medications for a long time. I shared about this with two of my brothers, they had both said well maybe the world needs and wants other kinds of books too. It took me a long time to figure out what kinds of books the world needs and wants that aren’t great novels and that I would need and want to write and could write. The kind of books that I have always loved are illustrated children’s books. I still read them, I still buy them, I still collect them, I still get them from the library.

Let me just add that I have long considered myself a writer, in fact I recall declaring myself a writer before I knew the alphabet, let alone how to read. So… a long time. In junior high we got an assignment to write our own obituary. I considered that morbid beyond belief. I wrote that I was an author of nine novels in my obituary. Now I consider that a very low goal, considering how many ideas I have for books.

I have started writing books, children’s books. I came up with an idea many years ago for a children’s book. I sort of finished it in my head, but then the pandemic came along and I didn’t write it out, though I did come up with another book that stayed in my mind only. I have intended to write children’s books for a long time. I started again this year on this goal. I have six books that I am working on right now, others are only an idea. Five are almost finished, in my head. Soon I will be putting them down on paper. I don’t know how long that will take for me to consider the writing finished. I have been experiencing a lot of procrastination about writing them down. It is good that some of my family know and my therapist knows and that you all know. Hopefully that will help keep me on track. I’ll let you all know as time goes by.

Hi from Kate

By Posted in abuse survivor, Dissociative Identity Disorder Tagged , , , 2 Comments

Hello out there in the universe. It’s Kate and I am back typing, writing, and trying to post. The pandemic and staying inside really made me void of anything to share, staying inside doing nothing, it sucked, sorry that I haven’t been around and trying to say something, anything. A lot of my blogging friends left blogging and I had a lot of trouble dealing with that sadness, on top of everything else we were going through as a world.

So I am back. I will try to be checking out old friends’ blogs and leaving comments. Again, sorry for all of that. Depression can be crushing. I did try and will be trying harder to be involved more online. I miss everyone and hope you are all doing well. Good and healing thoughts to you all.

P.S. I have been seeing a new therapist for a couple of years. She is fantastic. So glad to have a healing partner on this healing path. Take care all.