awkward silence
i've been spiraling in a flashback series for a goodly while now. weeks? months? the awkward silence. . . such as the awkward silence of a predator ready to pounce. . . the bubbly delusions of grandeur nobody wanted to pop. . . the honey doing hubby who is just wanting to get laid sometime soon. . . the friend i only wish i had and soon wished i had backed off from before they were forced to say no the harsh way. . . the plans that didn't work out. . . the social cue i failed to catch. . . etcetera. . . etcetera. . . should i count the extra years of awkward silence gifted by my delayed speech development? probably. an awkward silence was the only answer i could give to the people who tried to bully me into talking like a normal 12 year old. can i escape now?
the current flashback series has been spiraling for long enough to manifest physical symptoms. my gut hurts like a gut-felt memory of gang rape. the bowel incontenance has begun. time to up the therapy maintenance. this step is where i attempt to put ^it^ into words. i am testing my theory that flashbacks are not designed to be punishment. my theory is that they are designed to be lesson review which can be directly plied to a current day circumstance.
testing, 1, 2, 3. . .
small steps, big faith and lots of prayer.
let god lead the dance. i shall go where thou leadest.
Replies
I’m sorry you’re experiencing such upheaval with these flashbacks.
I hope you can be a good self doctor and think about ‘what works’ to sooth those hurts. Treat yourself special too and try to be your own best friend, the kind you’ve always wanted to have. You’ve helped so many here Arfie. Be good to yourself too. Hug.
thank you, marcus questionarius. i'm not too confident in my theory that flashbacks are teaching tools, but it does seem to help in the upheaval that comes from treating them like punishment or torments sent by the demon hoards. to be fought off at all costs..
by whatever theory, i'm reminding myself to be gentle with myself and patient with the process.
recently had severe flashbacks, with somatic memory, (physical pain) I dont think these are teaching tools. I expect, it is my body and my mind still screaming no. I dont know what the triggers were, i know there were some, i hope i can figure out what the triggers were but when i go through it? I use ice packs for the pain, or sometimes advil or other pain meds, and i try to relax as best i can and just let it pass over me. gentle hugs, know you are loved and in my prayers.
(((((Arfie))))))
Aqui contigo, you’re not alone. Oh yea I totally get it with the gut symptoms too, lately the only thing I’ve been able to get down is chicken bone broth & soaking crackers in them.
I was just thinking about you the other night when I was lighting a candle, I’ll keep doing it & saying prayers. I hope it’s gets a little better soon
Sending support, hope, a comfy blanket & gentle hugs <3 <3 <3
thank you, draino. prayers both needed and appreciated. i agree that the somatic symptoms are not teaching tools any more than recovering from a catastrophic accident is a teaching tool. still, there is much to learn from the experience. or so i tell myself. . . healing hopes. hope it happens here.
thank you, missy. baby food is my own go-to for the gut wrenches, but i hold it as mostly good news that it has been so long since i needed it that my entire stash is seriously beyond the expiration dates. the for sure bad news in that is that i am seriously craving a bowl of multigrain cereal mixed with pureed peaches. you are always in my prayers, too, my sib-in-healing.
does the tech watch count as an awkward silence? by "tech watch," i mean that wait for information being gleaned from a tech device. both ends of this early tech age ritual feel equally awkward to me. i remain phone resistant, so i am most often on the waiting end with a sense that i have learned more about tops of heads than i ever wanted to know. when i am the one retrieving the information, i remain sensitive to the people who are admiring the top of my head, though i donae believe that particular wait means the same to them as ^it^ does to me.
there was a change in the elementary school bus route this morning. of course they have an app for that. hubs is properly appinated and i have been enjoying the luxury of letting him be the family app manager. my wife sense believes it is an appropriate channel for the corporate work-aholic energies he retired from nearly two (?) years ago. his final gig was internet security. should i be embarrassed that i neither know, nor care, what his official job title was? job titles change quicker than the apps for that. the bus app had the needed info for the route change, buttttttaaa. . . like so much of life, the apps for that carry a stiffer learning curve than we imagine when we buy the product.
the girls were nearly frantic by the time big bro's bus came and went. there wasnae a hint of awkward silence in their childish drive to know what was going on. i had to get quite firm with them to let our app manager work. by the time hubby growled that we needed to drive them to school. as hubby stalked off without mention of which member of "we" would be driving, the girls followed with frantic demands to know who they should go with. i answered with the name they call my husband and lingered at the bus stop to try imagine the best course of action. i decided to open and close the gate for them. hubs turned around to meet me at the gate and bark orders for me to wait at the bus stop, just in case. he thrust his phone into my hand and told me to watch the route. the bus never came and i didn't have my reading glasses to read the screen with.
sigh. . .
again the theme song from the classic sitcom, "happy days" runs through my twisted brain. just drop the "h" and the theme carries a 21st century spirit. especially the last line of the refrain.
"the weekend comes
"ya wanna have fun
"there's an app for that."
Sending you much love and hugs as you work through this process.
a new batch of coyotes has appeared and are attacking the 2 flocks of chickens in the front coops. i am shuddering in anticipation of yet another dominican brow beating over free range chicken keeping and allowing those untrainable beasts to shit on a civilized woman's porch. so far, that civilized woman has reacted to predator attacks as an opportunity to get that nasty shit off her porch by dumping that free range foolishness and running my coops like the more traditional meat and egg factories. missus tyson doesn't have chicken shit on her porch. i doubt she lives on one of their chicken farms, either. them's is not civil places to live.
at the start of therapy in 1972, awkward silences routinely triggered hysterical flight responses. i was quite proud of the fact that i could be long gone before the awkward silence morphed into rejection. i was told to get lost so often that i developed a taste for being lost. i've made some of my greatest discoveries when i was lost. those hysterical flights ended on other continents before psychotherapy made a dent in the psychosis behind it. i especially enjoyed being lost in places where i didn't speak the local languages and carried a built in excuse for being misunderstood.
over the course of psychotheraputing my psychotic discomfort with awkward silences, my therapists guided me to the study of the awkward silence as a social skill and how to develop and make use of that social skill. those works are still in progress. . . i still have the social skill of a beaten crazy bitch wolf, but progress over perfection.
i debated mightily over where to put this entry. since my current use of the awkward silence is imposed over a conversation i have been having in spanish, there are several psycho snot knots i could have filed it under, but the awkward silence translates seamlessly into every language i've ever flirted with. the awkward silence is with our farm assistant concerning chicken care. she favors the methods used in the meat and egg factories of her home country. i haven't been to her caribbean island and my saltwater allergy makes it unlikely i ever will, but their meat and egg factories don't sound too different from the meat and egg factories i've studied in my country, bolivia, peru, ecuador and mexico. many of the u.s. meat and egg corporations are moving to those very countries for the almost non-existent environmental laws. "seguro amigo. pongase estos contaminamtes in el cuenca del amazon. no es mas que naturaleza. dame el dinero."
fa is i valued member of our team. she was the only helping hand to step out of the covidic madness to help us through the non-covidic chaos of loss and grief. her temporary residence in the old farm house has dragged on for three years now. it feels more like her domestic territory than work space. i'm itching to finish the farm restoration and that old house is the last of the four buildings in need of restoration. i don't believe it is fit for habitation, but it's luxurious compared to what is typical in her country. keeping to my own standards, i need the house to be empty before i begin and i don't want to lose fa's contribution to the farm and family development. the lingering after effects of covidic inflation and employee shortage has blocked the construction of a new place for her and her teenaged son to live, not even for chickens or poor folk.
herstorically, the predator attacks have been her greatest inspiration for getting me to drop my free range theories and get with the proper factory practices. the last round resulted in my imposing an awkward silence. it is the same style of awkward silence i began using during my work with the bio-remediation crew in new orleans when the crew was harshly rejecting efforts from shell oil company to help with the katrina cleanup. we believe what we believe. quit soap boxing and let's just get the job done. the angst of anticipation has me worried that this new round of predator attacks will motivate her to break the awkward silence and launch another campaign of getting those shitty birds off her porch. by the original design of the old farmhouse as a work center, guarding the coops would be both natural and easy. not so much from a busy and civilized woman's living room.
methinks --yet again-- that i need to get those birds out of the civilized woman's yard by closing the two front coops. the longer she lives there, the creepier i feel working in her yard. perhaps one day i will be able to finish the restoration project and have a work zone free of domestic priorities, but for now, if ya can't beat 'em, change the subject/