Something different for today - a post about abuse. I've spent the past couple of months with a foam sling on my L arm when I'm at work, because I work at the House of Bun (a hardware store) and I have 1kg lifting restrictions on my arm, so I can't use it, but unless it's tied up, I tend to use it and it gets sore and I get really really grumpy.
By the way - Panadol Osteo is my best friend. Slow release paracetemol is the best for pain like I've got (joint pain) and I highly recommend that you talk to your GP about it if you have an ongoing issue. It reduces the overall amount of drugs that I'm taking and makes me less foul tempered and mouthed.
So anyway - the number of times people cracked jokes to me about my partner beating me and that's why I was in a sling. Why do people think that joking about domestic violence is amusing? There are lots of forms of overt abuse as well as a few that are "silent" - an article I came across recently about this really opened my eyes to the fact that a lot of what I went through as a child and teenager was this kind of abuse. It worries me a lot that I might fall into that cycle because I don't know how to deal otherwise with people. I'm very conscious of it now, especially in my close personal relationships, as I am worried about repeating the mistakes of the past, especially as I consider procreating.
On that line and in the vein of this is my blog and I can cry if I want to, I got contacted by my mother yesterday with her usual passive aggressive crap of "I have something for you let's meet up"... and this time, she also said that she had some things that she wanted to say to me and so maybe she'd email me. Now the quick among you will have noticed that she didn't say that she wanted to talk to me, or discuss things with me, or anything like that - she has some things to say to me. Unless they are very specific apologies for past wrongs, and a change in how she deals with a specific family member, then I am not the least bit interested in hearing what she has to say. Not the least bit interested in stirring up past hurts and incidents. Not the least bit interested in picking off scabs from wounds THAT HAVE HEALED in whatever fashion I have had to. And not the least bit interested in hearing her side of the story because I don't care whether there is a side to it other than my own. I just don't.
Skeletons and closets - that's a match made in heaven.
We are, generally speaking, a product of our past. We integrate things that have happened. We learn, and we move on. The moving on bit is REALLY important for our sanity, and for shaping who we are. Not who we were, or who we want to be in the future - but who we are right this freaking second. And given that I've been to two funerals in the past week and have had a crap day with my shoulder and physio, and am still not back at work, and am broke because of this, and am distressed enough without having to deal with 28 years of "things what made me Me", I politely messaged my mother with "thankyou but I don't need anything from you and don't think I want to hear what you have to say, so please don't email me".
And spent the next five minute crying. Just because I've made peace with not having my mother in my life doesn't mean that the pain of it goes away. It's taken me a LONG time to get to this point even, where I don't feel obliged to have anything to do with her - but I still feel that societal and probably primal requirement to have something to do with my dam. And knowing that she is not going to change, and that having her back in my life is just going to hurt and suck even more, makes me strong enough to send messages that make me want to throw up.
But being brave is not being terrified - it's about being terrified and still doing them. So I guess that makes me brave.
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