[hamstergirl]

My physical pain is being treated with morphine. It's like the difference between night and day.

The depression remains, disturbingly.

The danger is that now that the physical pain is gone, I will withdraw from people and go back into hiding. I have followed that pattern regularly.

The physical pain forced me to reach out and now that it's gone, I feel the urge to isolate myself...strongly...from everyone and everything...even online links forged here. I felt it today when I tried to go to Church services today. I panicked and found a lonlier spot.

It is easy to isolate myself in that Church. Though I am going as Doug asked, I am still cutting myself offraying alone, singing hymns in the bathroom, attending services by sitting at the very back.

Ancient patterns. Being with people frightens me. It's unnatural. It's scary. I'm defective and I know I don't belong in a free society. Besides, those people could hurt me at any time.

My parents had me locked up in a psychiatric institute when I was seven. As far as I'm concerned, they should never have let me leave. I'm a freak of nature. My wiring's screwed up. I should be locked up for my own good.

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.

[LadyDragus]

no no no.. you can not lock your self up..

keep posting .. keep writing on here to us..
Please let us be here for you when you need us..

I am here and you know this.. so are others..
We aer here reach out.. I will keep ahold of your hand.
I promise.. I will not let go..
do you need more than just a hand.. do you need a shoulder, a arm around you, do you need a phone to ring to tell you that I care ??
I can do all of this if need be..

please do not leave us.
Please keep posting..

<font color=purple>
The light is around me now
I see it so clearly now
I feel him in my heart
Lord God has set me free.
Let me rejoice in you
Let me be free
I love the lord God.
I have been Saved by your Grace and love today...04/11/04

[alm15]

I'm sorry you're having such a rough time. I'm also sorry you're being so hard on yourself. I was irritated that some "professionls" told you you can't be helped. Just because they didn't know how, doesn't mean it can't be done. It says more about their inabilities than you. Try not to let quacks take away your hope. If I had been told there wasn't any hope for me I don't know how I would have moved forward. It's pretty difficult to get out of depression when some moron tells you there isn't any hope. There's always hope. I'm actually impressed you get to church at all. If you keep plugging along a solution will appear. As far as cutting yourself off from people. I've been pretty much doing that for years, off and on, except for a few people I e-mail. I gave myself permission to do that. I needed to step back and feel safe. I keep in touch here and sometimes with a few people I trust. I'm getting to a place of being able to reach out again, but I needed a break, time to heal. The point is if I get on myself it only makes things worse. Try to be gentle with yourself. I'm sure you'll get through this. You're obviously working very hard and you're doing a lot of things right. Good luck to you! Annie

[dexter]

Hello hamstergirl.

I admire your strength in dealing with this and posting your thoughts and feelings here with regard to this.

Please remember that your desire to isolate is a classic symptom of depression. It is a destructive and harmful symptom. Try to hang on to what you discovered before, that there are a few people willing to help, people that you trust. Try to force yourself to keep the lines of communication open with them. I know how difficult that will be but if you can break through that wall that seems to thicken around us it will get easier over time. It may be the best way to a path out of this cycle that is so harmful to your well-being.

Remember that you can always communicate with us here. I hope we are somewhat of a link through the desire to isolate.

Good luck.

------------------------------------
--http://www.idexter.com

[Rapunzel]

You do not deserve to be locked up by any means. You have as much right as anyone else to be part of society and to be free. I'm sorry that your life has been so full of pain. Depression takes longer to get better than physical pain does, and I hope that it will get better too. Relief from the physical pain is likely to help that.

Please hang on. You have so much talent, and I would hate for you to withdraw from us.

<font color=orange>"If we are going to insist that people pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, we must ensure that they have boots."</font color=orange>

[hamstergirl]

If the desire to isolate is a classic symptom of depression, then I've had this monster since childhood.

Not surprising, there was plenty in my life to make me depressed before all those nasty operations (which I am not done documenting YET).

My friend Doug had the brilliant idea of asking me to write him every day. After all, I'm a writer and he wants me to write. (He dared me to write a novel once)

The idea was to keep the lines of communications open. But as I write, it is bringing some ugly, repressed ideas to the surface.

REAL UGLY.

TRIGGER WARNING

I was writing to him about going to Outpatient Psychiatry and all of a sudden, I wondered if dealing with Outpatient Psychiatry was punishment for something I had done wrong. (I had done something to be punished for, the River. The Church had nothing to do with this idea. The idea that I should be punished, and punished severely, came from my own head.)

Then I wrote that one went to counsellors when someone had done something bad and deserved to be punished. I went to counselling as a child and returned home to yelling by my father.

It gets even worse.

I wrote that able-bodied people were dangerous, because they could hit you and lock you up in rooms (and worse). That you went to surgeons to get hurt. (Massively hurt)
I didn't deserve to be loved and cherished. I deserved to be hit. I deserved to be locked up in small rooms and I deserved to be massively hurt by the surgeons.

Why? Because I'm flawed, my parents tried to help me and I refused to be helped. (They threw me out of the psychiatric institute.) They tried to help me surgically and I resisted them. I hated them when things went wrong (it was my fault). Whatever behavior that caused me to be confined in the first place went on and on, I just fooled a lot of people into thinking I was good and sweet and only my parents knew the truth. They tried to help me and I thanked them by walking out on them.

It was not OK for me to yell at and hit people. But I was a special case, because I was "a difficult child". My parents were (and are justified) in anything they did. And I have no right to any joy in my life when I've put them through hell.

I deserve to be yelled at. I deserve to be hit. I deserve to be locked up in small rooms. I expect these things because I'm a rotten person. In fact, I told Doug that he and Father Lindsay would get farther with me, not with gentleness and love, but if they hit me, or yelled at me for a couple of hours.

I deserve that for the River at least and haven't gotten it yet. I should.
I want to be held. I want to be loved so badly. I want to be hugged. But I can't have these things. I did something terrible when I was seven years old. Terrible enough to get locked away for almost two years and so ashamed and scared by it, I can't (or won't) remember it.

I believe all this, by the way. It's the Truth and no matter how much I want to deny it, it will remain that way.

I don't deserve to be loved...by anyone...ever. I may be starving for it, but let me suffer and let me starve.

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.

[Abby]

Hamstergirl - do you know what i wish for you more than anything else right now? I wish and hope that one day you will be able to sing to your hearts content in the middle of your Church not just in the bathroom. I really hope that one day you will allow yourself this one achievement, this one happy moment when all your fears, insecurities, pain will be washed away, when (for a few moments at least) you won't have to worry about the past or the future but only take heart in the present and your joy of singing.
That is what i wish for. I hope one day my wish for you comes true.
All my love Abby

[dalila]

You sound like I did before I had therapy -- I truely believed I was at fault for the abuse done to me. I am slowly coming to believe that no child deserves to be hurt and that includes me. I know how hard it is to get beyond that belief that the abuse and pain and fear has so deeply ingrained in us. We do not deserve to be hurt or punished. We are all flawed. You deserve to be treasured. I hope the place where you were sent is able to help you to see that.

Dalila

[hamstergirl]

TRIGGER TRIGGER TRIGGER

TRIGGER TRIGGER TRIGGER TRIGGER


The desire to isolate may not have even started out as depression at all, but developed into that. Because I remember having it for a long, long time.

I'll give you three guesses who I wanted to get away from.

My father and to a lesser extext (my mother)

The yelling and the verbal abuse got so bad that I would relish any opportunity that got me away from them, even I hated the reason for leaving. Summer camp, dsy camp, girl guides. Even hospital trips...There were times when I loved it at the hospital, I'm sorry to say, because I was away from the yelling. Felt real guilty because of the undeserved kindness I was shown there.

My parents would act almost human. I would be undergoing something dreadful and who do you want there? Mom and Dad. I'd get nice and homesick and then I'd get home and the yelling would start the second I got back.

I relished anything that got me away from them and that meant being alone. University? It was brutal...I hated what I was taking, but it was my first real taste of freedom, my first real taste of money and I was squandering both. $900 a month seemed like a lot of money then. My father wanted me to save it. I didn't understand. The fighting just got worse. I was so isolated from people, I went to university not knowing what a condom was.

Had no able-bodied friends at school. The disabled ones were few, far, between and dying off, didn't fit in with them either, eventually. I failed every attempt to help me. I was a flawed cripple. (I hate the c-word. I use it because my parents used it. It hurts!)

I'm better off isolating myself forever because I have to protect myself, from being yelled at, being hit, being locked in rooms and worse. That's what will come of letting people come too close.

I don't know whether to thank Doug or curse him, because being with people is stirring all sorts of feelings up that I don't want to feel.

Loneliness, the need for friends, the need to be loved.

I thought the government gave me what I needed.(barely) Food, water, medicines, a wheelchair, a roof.

Could there be more? Could I need more? Is there more to life than mere survival?

The answer disturbs me deeply.

A war is being waged over my soul. So far I am trying to fight on their side, the side of what they say is good and loving, but for how long?

These new feelings stirring within me. have to be obliterated if I am to protect myself from danger. Because what I say is good and loving is to lock me up in a room for the rest of my life, because I'm going to be punished otherwise. (I should be punished).

SIT DOWN, SHUT UP AND TAKE YOUR PUNISHMENT!

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.