It feels strange to be posting giveaway after giveaway, yet nothing about myself; especially as my life has been changing so much.
Trying to migrate my blog to Wordpress created so much stress, and on top of these giveaways I'd put so much work into planning, threatened to overwhelm me. The weather stayed miserable throughout February and March, and at times, I again thought of how much easier other people's lives would be without me.
When I first started working with Dr. Goodheart, I felt hopeful. He diagnosed me with post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) as if there was nothing to it, nodded and sympathized with my tales of horror, and shared things I'd never known before. As I read the first of several books he'd suggested, I learned lesson after lesson, my epiphanies tumbling over one another just as my words did.
And then I was stuck.
The first step in my re-parenting was the very first step I'd missed out on--learning that my caregiver would love and be there for me without needing constant reassurance of that fact.
I am often clingy and needy, hating myself for doing so even as I ask, "Do you love me?" And when someone goes away, I truly believe that their love goes with them. I panic at leave-takings; cry when I learn a friend can't see me that weekend after all.
And so we devise a plan. I have one friend that truly understands me; one that I lived with once as a roommate; one that I can live with as a roommate again (despite her husband and 4-year-old-son). Because I demand nothing; because she'd cook a meal only for her son and herself; because I love her little boy like my own; because my companionship makes her life better, and especially because a car and driver is one of the best things that can happen in her life.
The first week was difficult. We both had trouble emerging from our own coping methods. I slept; she kept busy cooking, baking, cleaning. And just as each one of us was feeling that this couldn't work; that something was horribly wrong, we talked. And things were okay again.
And now it's my second week here; a week in which I feel like I'm a different person. I'm not better of course; not foolish enough to believe that something so simple could make me that way.
But when I leave Mary's for my appointment with Dr. Goodheart tomorrow; then drive the hour from his place back to Sarnia, I'll know that I have just 7 days to survive before I move back here again.
I'm wanted here, even needed. And after reading about bonding in one of the books I loaned her. Mary knows what I need and how to help me. Knowledge is power. True friends are hard to find, and I'm incredibly grateful for mine.
