Exhaustion

I've not had this level of exhaustion since my schooldays, where I dealt with insomnia every night and was then woken up after roughly three hours of sleep in order to get to school.

What would happen was me forcing myself to open my eyes, despite how heavy they were feeling, forcing myself to get up and switch the light on, then forcing myself to get dressed, all despite my utter exhaustion because I knew I had to go to school and I had no choice about it and if I stayed in bed any longer I would be late.

That all sounds fairly normal, until five minutes later when I realised I was actually still lying in bed and had either dreamt or hallucinated the whole thing. Then I would start the whole process all over.

Repeat until the mother came in to shout at me. Then I felt incredibly guilty and doubled my efforts. To no avail. Plus I'm feeling even more exhausted at this point because as far as I'm concerned I've already forced myself to get up and do things, going through each meticulous detail, about twenty times. And felt the exhaustion of each one.

Eventually this would end with the mother actually physically dragging me out of bed, forcing clothes on me and dragging me to the car. Usually after throwing heavy things at me (she never hit me with her actual hands). At that point I would be actually properly awake so my attempts at explaining to her what had happened got laughed at.

I'd then get in trouble at school for being late, then fall asleep later and get in trouble for that, usually to shouts from teachers of 'oh I'm sorry, am I boring you?!'

Anyhow, to cut a long story short, Rambo came home today to find me still in bed, was quite surprised (and annoyed) at this and when he woke me up to ask me what I was still doing in bed I just looked at him through bleary eyes then burst into tears and fell all over myself apologising.

I tried to explain, but I'm not sure he understood. I mean, it certainly sounds crazy and not-entirely-plausible. Oh well. I'm awake now at least.

Unintelligible Screaming

I've not really gone into much detail about The Mother on this blog as, well, thinking about it all invariably makes me cry. All I'm going to say is that she was verbally, emotionally, neglectively (is that even a word?) and even occasionally physically abusive. And neither me nor Sister have spoken to her in a good few years. No more details. Just yet, anyhow.

Aaaaanyway. In trying to find out things about our EDS, my sister decided to email her asking for our medical records and asking about our childhood milestones. Being polite, but formal, and in no way friendly or inviting her to suddenly start bombarding us with attempts at communication. She copied me in on the email, of course, and The Mother just hits reply to all. She always has done.

She sends us quite a few emails of inane, confusing, trying to get us to play into psychological games, mess with our heads kind of nonsense. Amongst all of that crap there was a very long email consisting of chilhood milestones and anecdotes. She touched on a few points that might be interesting so Sister replied and asked her some more about them. Her response, for some reason, broke down my defences of avoiding her games and made me cry. I should have just deleted the damn thing as soon as it appeared in my inbox, as Rambo told me to.

"You seem overly concerned about normal behaviour in childhood. Well statistics show that normal children have unhealthy diets and sedentary lifestyles. They are obese and don't like to run because their slack muscles aren't used to it. Your childhood was normal, if there had been a serious genetic problem someone would have noticed, you passed all your development checks. You have been an adult for a long time now. It's time that you faced up to certain facts and took responsibility for the choices you have made.

Perhaps you need some form of professional help to uncover the source of all this negative energy which is poisoning your life. There are plenty of self help books and support groups you could join.

You can't change your past. Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda little girl. You have to play the hand life dealt you. No take backs ok? All you can do is change how you feel about things. That may take some time, quiet reflection and support. When you are ready to learn the right teacher will appear."

And this was followed up with various links and nonsense about 'Moon Meditation' and 'the Power of Emotions'.

I just...I mean...we've both been displaying symptoms of this since birth, that should have been picked up on. I mean, they really, really should have. I would be horrified at a mother seeing the kind of things in her children that she did and not thinking anything of it. But then, I'm horrified at a lot of the things she did.

But anyway, the thing that made me cry (I think. I dunno, I cry at a lot of things) was that I just have an honest-to-God Phobia about people thinking I'm a fraud, now. Because of all of that nonsense. It sets me off on panic attacks that...well, to be honest, seem to be quite like autistic meltdowns in nature. I lose my ability to communicate, I burst into tears, my cognitive functions go slightly screwy in that odd way I have of layers of sound becoming overwhelming and I close my eyes and cover my ears to cut off as much sensory input as possible. If I'm alone or otherwise think I can get away with it - I scream my fucking head off.

I'm just...I'm mad at her. For not even understanding what she's doing to me. What she's done to me. She still sees herself as the angelic victim in all of this and can't understand how the things that she did were wrong.

I'm not going to tell you what things, but believe me, they were wrong. If any kind of social worker knew about them, we'd've been out of there in a heartbeat. God I wish I'd known about social workers when I was younger, or that this kind of shit was NOT normal.

I just needed to vent. Sorry guys.