So tired (triggering)

I'm not here because I was raped or mugged, or shot at.

I'm here because I was operated on again and again and again.

I was born with cerebral palsy. At 7, my parents sent me to a funny farm for "non-compliance" After 1 and a half years, I was sent home for "refusing help." My father screamed a lot. My mother sang sarcastic songs. I hit my sister. My teachers dealt with problems by locking me in storage rooms.

Then it really gets bad. At 12, I underwent a tendon release. Something went drastically wrong and I woke up screaming. I have permanent nerve damage from the knees down. Then my back went. They operated. Within a year, it caved in and I went in again...twice. 2nd of the two operations, a lung collapsed and I woke up in ICU with a tube down my throat. While on the road to recovery, I broke my leg in the hospital after my leg got tangled in a blanket.
Normally you wear a plastic backbrace for 6 months to a year following the surgery. I wore mine into university after the third back operation.

I went out of my way to avoid other people in high school and at some point, I retreated to my room and I stayed there. And it just went downhill from there.

I learned to keep my mouth shut where medical problems are involved, the only time the surgeons have intervened are when my parents have noticed something wrong or I've ended up with pain severe enough to wind up in the ER.

I've roamed downtown Ottawa for years with a dislocated hip knowing what would happen if I saw a doctor, surgery and I would wake up screaming or worse, not at all.

I feel angry, guilty and scared. I cried once in my shrink's office, a rare act for some one who doesn't want to feel anything at all. He said I wasn't crying over the future,but the past.

The past is my future and the future is the past. They will have to be coming for my remaining hip and they will have to put me in traction. Too close to 1983 for comfort.

And I expect my life to be nasty, brutish and short.

Ok. You already know how I understand what you are going through, and care about how you are doing....

let me say, please, try to change your thinking.... try. Try to change even what you post... try. Even if you stop yourself one time only a day, that's a start.

The past is passed. It isn't today. And the past isn't tomorrow.

Yes, we both have stuff that seems to continue... from the past to the present, and expected to be in our future....

but while we are experiencing ongoing problems, that isn't to say that all those things that happened in the past are happening today. It just ain't so. The same people aren't in our lives causing us misery, the same operations aren't happening today, etc got my drift?

I don't mean for you to think I am minimizing what you are going through. NO WAY! I am trying to help you REFRAME your thinking... you did say you wanted to do that, right?

<font color=blue>Like, right now, I am not having to argue on the telephone with my attorney. Right now, I am not having to go through the pain of physical therapy. Right now, I do not have to even brush my hair!

Right now, I am in bed, typing a post to someone who is hurting. Right now my pain medication is helping me cope with my pain. ...

I will not project what has happened in the past to tomorrow. I do not know what will happen tomorrow, and until I can draw the good things from the universe, I will not put the bad things there myself. (Well... I try not to do this stuff, see? heheheheh)

<font color=green>What we are going through is part of the journey. We have more to contend with, because we are stronger people and would not grow with lesser tasks such as others have. It isn't what we go through, it is HOW we go through it... it is the journey.

(I am so depressed, I write this by rote, mantras my pain & stress management psychologist helps me learn... and draw on... I hope you can profit from some of it too.) I personally have to contend daily with NOT LIKING MY JOURNEY! One of the bones I pick with God.

<font color=blue> meditation is a true way to connect to the Source </font color=blue>

Your psychiatrist is right, you are crying about the past, I think that is what it is anyways. I think alot of us have, I have that is for sure , but you cannot live in the past anymore, no one can, live in the now, don't live in shame and guilt, live with only regret, regret you can live with and move on. Yes you did go through some hard times, and i'm sorry you are in alot of pain, keep posting when you need too, take care of yourself, and try and think postive even though at times it is so hard to do.

<font color=red>~Sundance~</font color=red>

<font color=blue>"Never react emotionally to criticism. Analyze yourself to determine whether it is justified. If it is, correct yourself. Otherwise, go on about your business."</font color=blue>

<font color=black>Norman Vincent Peale</font color=black>