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Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

~ Recovery from PTSD & depression + yoga, silliness & poetry…

Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

Tag Archives: Friends

Synchronicity of hurt

10 Thursday Jun 2010

Posted by Svasti in Learnings, Post-traumatic stress

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Depression, Everybody Hurts, Friends, Healing, PTSD, R.E.M., Writing

Brooks wrote a post about how people don’t realise the depths of another person’s pain, and Melinda’s latest post is about the process of writing her book, and how it’s taking a toll on her. She also mentioned how hard it must be for her mother (as the book’s editor!) to read the details of what she went through. No kidding!

And last week I was the recipient of an apology from one of my lovely friends  – C – in Sydney. I had no idea why she was telling me she was sorry, and what was upsetting her so much.

The cause? As it turns out, my desire to let her in on my recent triumph. I wanted to share it with her because I knew how awesome she’d think it was!

During the worst of my depression, PTSD and residing in the hell that my life had become… along with another really good friend, she was one of the best and most willing listeners among my friends and family. With the love they both offered, they gave me room to breathe. They made it okay for me to feel like a complete and utter mess and they didn’t ever make me feel like they wished the process of hurting and healing would just hurry up!

But what I didn’t realise is that when I sent C to read that post, she also read a whole bunch more! When I first started this blog, I gave some of my friends the URL (including C) but I guess most of them didn’t keep reading. Which is cool with me, but now she has read a LOT about what happened and she was horrified.

I didn’t know how bad it was for you. I didn’t get it. I should have done more!

She was pretty distressed. She thought she’d been a bad friend, but when I explained to her that actually, she was one of the few people who’d really been willing to listen, she was shocked.

It’s not easy to share exceedingly painful things. I told C that at the time I couldn’t talk about it properly with anyone, and that was one of the main reasons I started this blog. Saying it out loud was too scary, too extreme and too real. Don’t get me wrong – writing about it was hard, too. But in a much more manageable way.

So I think it goes both ways. We want people to understand us and support us through our pain. But how could I really express the terror of PTSD when I didn’t know what was happening to me? I could barely cope with thinking about the events of that night, so how could I tell someone else about the details that haunted both my dreams and waking state?

In short – if I can’t properly express what’s going on for me, how can my friends know how to respond?

If I’ve learned anything from the last five years, it’s that no one else is responsible for taking care of me. Even when I’m falling apart, even when I can barely function, even then… it’s my job to get the help I need. It’s my job to tell people if I need their support. And I’ve learned not to blame anyone for not responding in the way I think they should. Because we are all human, with our own frailties and weaknesses. And like the song says, everybody hurts sometimes.

~Svasti

-37.814251 144.963169

Joyful living

06 Thursday Aug 2009

Posted by Svasti in Fun, Life

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

bleeding from the heart, Cycling, Depression, Friends, Happiness, Jill and Kevin's wedding dance, joy, Nieces, Skiing, yoga classes, Yoga teacher

Watched this today…

Found my eyes were leaking (a bit) and I have to admit I felt a little envious of the joy being expressed.

Most of the time, we western-world folk do not express this much fun and happiness in our day-to-day lives. Or even weekly. Maybe not even monthly.

Sure, some people might. But most of us don’t due to habit, cultural acceptance, and generally because most people are bleeding from their hearts instead of singing.

Aren’t we?

We hurt, we try to keep our hurt to ourselves and we barely ever notice that everyone else around us is doing exactly the same.

This morning as I wandered around my flat getting ready for work, I realised that (for now) my interactions with depression are in recess.

I’ve got more energy than I’ve had in ages and I can actually get out of bed in the morning with relative ease. I’m starting to be much more excited about becoming a yoga teacher (OMG, I’ll be qualified at the end of the year!).

And yet, still… it’s possible to wander around and feel less than joyful for most of the day or week. Especially when doing a job I could care less about (except for getting paid).

My joy comes from my yoga classes, my nieces, cycling, and talking to my friends (most of them live far away).

But this morning I also realised I could add more joy into each day.

A little like the way BlissChick schedules time to dance regularly.

Because joy shouldn’t be something we experience infrequently like clinging to a life raft within a sea of unhappiness…

Then there’s Tricia’s latest post (a meme) – 6 things that make you happy.

There’s a world of difference between depression going away and actively seeking out the things that make you smile.

While the thrall of depression has lifted, the habits I formed to cope with that existence also need to be broken down. The staying in and not socialising. The having fewer expectations of my life. The not taking care of my appearance or what I eat. The not looking to the future… these are but a few.

In Tricia’s comments, I wrote my own 6 things that make you happy list (definitely in no particular order):

  1. Thinking about becoming a yoga teacher
  2. My fan girl night (meeting my celebrity crush earlier this year) – still makes me smile!
  3. My glorious nieces
  4. My yoga school’s spiritual home in north-east Thailand
  5. Snow skiing
  6. My wonderful friends (both virtual and IRL kinds)

It’s not a bad list, but if the meme had asked for 10 things, I might’ve come up a little short.

Which is ridiculous when there’s so many things to be happy about, right?

So. Here’s to the energy behind the wedding dancers in the video.

Even if we don’t actually break into dance as we wander throughour days, we each deserve the feeling that goes with this kind of celebration.

And I’ve decided the next step to climbing out of the dark, dank abyss of depression includes adding more activities into my life that are designed to tap into that kind of joy. Yes!

I’ll let you know how I go.

~Svasti

Monday night conversations

16 Tuesday Dec 2008

Posted by Svasti in Learnings

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Blowing in the wind, Boat, Brahmin priest, Disembodied voice, Friends, Ganesha, Hindu wedding, Metaphors, Non-dual, Presents, Relationships, Storm, Union, Vedic ceremony, Yoga

I rang one of my bestest friends – S – last night… she’s my spiritual (if not blood) sister. There in the mail box was a surprise present from her with a little orange Ganesha stamp on the front and instructions not to open it just yet…

Rambling on about myself… I asked and how’s things with you?

In response she starts telling me how just the other week, she almost broke up with her man – they’ve been together for years now. Like, almost as long as I’ve known her. A while. Longer than any of my relationships have ever lasted (there I go, embarrassing myself again).

This is on top of a very shitful year for her. In which her man had knee replacement surgery (on both knees)… she went from full-time employment to living-on-a-prayer-freelancing. And then she was in Thailand with the rest of us (not earning any money), then went back home (to the other side of the world) for four months… again not earning much money – to look after her mum/mom… who currently has cancer and its all touch and go.

So, she wasn’t feeling that great. And yet she still remembered to send me a present. I love her to bits!! And not just coz of the present.

When she was telling me all this stuff, all I could think of was this half-baked metaphor that’d occurred to me a few weeks back, when, falling to pieces and on the way to see my therapist, I felt very much adrift…

I started relating this goofy little story to her:

So yeah, feeling adrift and just… blowing in the wind (but not like the song). Wait, make that a storm. A really gnarly storm. One with lightning and rain, and then… actually, it was this epic storm of the ages. So there’s all these currents pulling and pushing and… now I wasn’t just adrift but being buffeted from side to side. Every movement could unbalance me… in my little boat…

Then that voice, that might not be my voice (sure doesn’t sound like mine and it always says much wiser things than I can ever think of) and yet, it’s a voice only I can hear (I think)… clearly pronounces a few punchy, pithy words:

You’re not just the boat. You’re the ocean too. The storm as well.

How very… non-dual of you… oh, disembodied voice!

The boat’s just on the surface. But it couldn’t be on the surface if it wasn’t for the ocean being there too. Think about that for a second…

Surface conditions are only one set of circumstances. And they don’t affect the depths of the ocean, not really. You’re on the ocean… you’re part of the ocean…

And the storm is, well… not always a storm. Its air and… life.

Expect life to be uneven (as a wise someone I know will say), and you’ll never be taken by surprise if the boat upends for a while.

This wind and storm are the same as that filling the boat’s sails and propelling it forward. Without the wind, the storms… the boat would lie there stagnantly.

Ha! Now, I just gotta figure out how to integrate this pretty little story into the day to day…

And my friend? Well, we talked about a bunch of other stuff too. Of course. There was a little conversation about the steps they’re taking, couples counselling etc… Then, remembering the gorgeous words used in a Hindu/Vedic wedding ceremony we attended a couple of years back.

On a very quick trip to Sydney, I’d suddenly found myself invited to our mutual friend’s wedding along with S. Held at the glorious abode of our favourite Brahmin priest in way out western Sydney.

There’s a whole bunch of stuff that’s fairly standard to a Vedic wedding – invoking Ganesha, the garlanding of bride and groom, the bride wearing red, seven steps taken together as a newly married couple… but I’m yet to find the words he used anywhere else online.

There was all this glorious stuff about… revering the god/goddess within each other, promising adoration, fealty and many other beautiful things for ‘a thousand summers’…

We both left that ceremony in a gooey state of bliss. So I gently reminded her of that time and… listened to her voice perk up.

It’s a practice after all… to remember each day the things we love about our significant other… just as important as yogasana. Well, its yoga too isn’t it? Given the word yoga actually means ‘union’?

~Svasti

Once upon a time…

17 Tuesday Jun 2008

Posted by Svasti in The Incident

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Car sale, Drums, Friends, Friendship, Meeting, Money, Relationship, Sex

Once upon a timeThis is also not “that” post… (but this one is!) 😉

We met at a nightclub.

I was out with K (my heroine) and her friend. You could say it was a fairly wild evening. Full of costumes, dress ups and people expressing their sexuality as they saw fit. The theme for the night was ‘fur’.

He was there playing bongos as part of the entertainment. I was drawn ofcourse, to the percussion as I always am. The heartbeat of a dancer, it pulls at my hips and my pulse. He was wild, muscular and tattooed. The drums could only just be heard above the rest of the music being played. He moved his drums and asked me to follow – up on the balcony where it was easier to hear the rhythms and there was more room to dance with abandon.

We connected that night, Andre and I.

Oh god – how much to tell? I am trying to be honest, but I’m also trying to stick to the point… so let’s just say there’s more to describe but not here. Not now.

After 12 years living in Sydney, I hadn’t been back home in Melbourne for very long. Not quite eight months in fact. I was starved of friendship and good company. Especially the company of people with a spiritual nature. I worked with plenty of people who… are either married or in long term relationships with established circles of friends. But none that I felt a great deal of resonance with. Great people, just not my people.

I’m also not the sort of person who makes friends quickly. Unless ofcourse, I do. There are some people I can make instant friends with, but otherwise it takes me a long time. The ‘instant’ friends are few in number but when it happens, its friggin’ awesome.

So we hit it off, and were seeing each other almost from the start. The sex was amazing. I’ve always been spoiled in that respect – having incredible sex in my various relationships/flings. In fact, its one of my biggest downfalls – I stay involved with someone longer than I should because the sex is great! Eventually I wake up, and get out… but not as quickly as I could do.

Andre would come over and play me music and I’d cook. He is Afro-American and a brilliant jazz and blues musician. He plays a gazillion instruments, writes poetry, paints and does kung fu. We’d go out dancing, or hang at a local pub and chat about life, the universe, everything! Also, he wasn’t freaked out by pictures of gurus and Indian gods and goddesses in my home. So in many ways, he was my sort of person.

Despite all the great things about him, I started to notice that when he left my place, I felt drained. It seemed to take a lot out of me to have him over. Also, he was really mysterious and didn’t share a lot of details about himself. He spoke in riddles a lot and whilst the more creative part of my nature didn’t have a problem with this… I’d gathered enough information to know that he and I weren’t going to be long term.

Towards the end of our time together, he’d convinced me to sell my old car to his ex-girlfriend (and mother of his kids) where he was acting as the go-between for us both. However, there was some drama around the deal, in which I had to assert my need to be paid in full at the time of the sale. Andre did some shouting at this point, but it wasn’t anything terribly odd.

Later on ofcourse, I found out the significance of that situation.

Anyway, his ex and I spoke on the phone, and worked things out. There was also a further misunderstanding around whether the car was being sold registered or not. I had said unregistered, but this didn’t translate via the middleman somehow. So she agreed to pay me another $200 or so, and I agreed this amount could wait another couple of weeks.

I should state that it was around the time of the ‘car drama’ that my intimate relationship with Andre was over. In part, this was due to the situation, but also, I think it was clear that other things weren’t in synch for us. We didn’t speak for a couple of weeks.

Andre’s ex was meant to meet me to hand over the last of the money she owed me. With her kids and work, she was finding it tough to make a time with me. So she asked me if it was okay for Andre to bring it over to my place.

I said yes.

Next part of the story...

~Svasti

-37.814251 144.963169

Those eyes – or – don’t step in the glass

07 Saturday Jun 2008

Posted by Svasti in The Incident

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Assault, Friends, Pain, Shaking, Terror, Violence

Kitty, don’t step in the glass, be careful. Don’t cut your paws. I’m so sorry for all the loud noises. You must be scared.
Oh fuck, its freezing. I have to fix the door, its letting all the cold air in.
Oh god, my face is BURNING…

He was gone by then, I think. But I’m not 100% sure because my hearing was off. Between the shuddering and shaking of my body, the flood of tears streaming down my face, the deathly silence in my flat, my haggard breathing and the pain in my body – I wasn’t really hearing properly any more.

There were only two things I could be sure of right then. I needed to board up the broken glass in my front door to stop the cold getting in and vacuum up the shards of glass in the hall.

Every inch of my body was shaking violently. My face was a mess of fiery swelling that seemed to scream at me, creating a buzzing in my ears. I was alone with a cat who was very worried about me. I was terrified.

First, I grabbed the dustpan and swept up the big shards of glass. Then I think I grabbed the vacuum. All the while, an icy blast was pouring through the jagged gash in the door. How was I going to fix that?? My brain had trouble coming up with anything… and then I remembered some thick artist’s cardboard I had. Got the scissors and packing tape and the chill winds were stopped.

I can ring the police! I rang the police. Something I didn’t think to do until after he’d gone. I don’t know why that is?!

Hi [sob, sob], I need to report [shake, shake, sob] an assault [shake, heave]

Okay can you tell me what happened?

Yes, [sob, sob] my friend was over for dinner [sob, sob] and he went crazy and he hit me [sob, sob] and threatened me [sob, sob]. Can you please come? [sob, shake, shake, shake]

Is he still there ma’am?

I’m not sure, [sob, sob] I think he’s outside [hyperventilate]. He was still there just before yelling and making threats. He broke the glass in my front door. I’m really scared. Can you come over?

Have you got the door locked?

Yyess… yes I have.

Do you have a security door?

Yes…

Okay, lock that too

O-o-okay [sob, shake, shiver]

Right, did anyone else see what happened?

No… it was just the two of us here [sob, sob]

If he’s gone there’s probably not that much we can do for you tonight. We can’t really arrest him for assault because it’s his word against yours.

Are you serious? You should see my face! And my door! [shaking]

I’m really sorry. You should go to the magistrate’s court tomorrow and take out an AVO. Do you know what that is ma’am?

Yes…

Good. And can you call a friend to come over tonight?

I… I guess so…

That’s good. If he comes back, call us again and we’ll come straight over.

Oh, okay. Bye…

I found my house keys and listened at the door for a while. Was he still lurking around? It was silent outside but that could mean anything. I took a deep breath and opened the door so I could lock the security door. Okay, good. My heart beat a little faster, but it didn’t compare to the ruckus going on in my face.

He’d only hit me on the left side of my face, and thrown me against the wall. My cheekbone throbbed and vibrated. The back of my head ached where it smacked into the wall. I couldn’t feel the rest of my body – just my face. The heat, the pain, was spreading up to my hairline, into my scalp and down my neck. And I couldn’t stop shaking or crying. I could barely catch my breath as the shock set in.

I don’t really recall the moments in between. Only fragments of that time, when I was trying to figure out what to do.

The policeman had said to call someone. I didn’t think to call my sister – she lived a very long way away. There was no question of calling my parents. I knew from experience they aren’t emotionally equipped to deal with a crisis.

But I’d only recently moved back to Melbourne and I didn’t have a lot of friends here yet. But I started calling anyway. Who was in my phone? Who did I know here? Did I know any men I could call? I desperately wanted to feel safe, to be around a male who wasn’t going to attack me. Who else?

I called M, an ex lover who is a very sweet person. I got voicemail – Help me, can you please call? I really need to talk to you. I called K – we’d met through a mutual friend in Sydney. Voicemail again. Please call me back if you get this message. I really need to talk to someone.

I can’t remember who else I called. There were a couple of people I think. But not many, because by that time already, Embarrassment and Shame were starting to rear their ugly heads.

Suddenly K rings me back.

What happened? What’s going on?

Through the unrest of my trembling and teary voice, I try to explain…

You remember Andre? That guy we met? He was over here tonight and he went nuts. It was like he was suddenly a different person. He made all these threats and then he hit me. I’m so freaked out, I’m so scared.

I’m coming over. I’ll be there as soon as I can.

Thank god.

K comes over, prepared to stay for the night. She’s tiny in stature compared to me, but her hug was the most comforting experience I could have asked for. She takes charge, making endless cups of hot sugary tea.

M rings back too. He and his girlfriend are nearby, just on their way home from something or other. Although he offers to come over, the fact that his girlfriend is with him makes me say no. I can’t have a complete stranger come to my place and see me in this state. I’m already so ashamed that this thing has happened to me. M thinks I should leave, go and stay at K’s place for the night.

He and K talk whilst I sit and shake. M thinks it would be good to get out of the place where it all happened. K is just worried. M hangs up and I talk to K about it. But I don’t want to go anywhere. I just want the world to open up and swallow me. So K says no, let’s stay. Let’s not flee the scene.

We talk for hours I think, until K needs to sleep. By this time she announces that I’ve warmed up a shade or two, and don’t look so pale and grey any more. I guess that’s a good thing? So we both get in my bed – so reassuring – and turn off the lights. But as soon as I shut my eyes, all I can see are his.

Not so much the colour or the shape. But the look in his eyes, right there at the back. It’s like he was saying, What are you going to do now? I’m the one with the power here. Don’t defy me, girl. Don’t even try.

His eyes didn’t look like my friend’s eyes. Gone was the gentle musician with the heart of a poet. Gone was the warmth and caring. It was a cold, soulless look. It was alien and deadly.

And now those eyes haunted me and stole any notion of sleep or tiredness. I got up, letting K sleep.

I sent my sister a text – Call me in the morning as soon as you get this. I need you to come over.

I sent Andre’s ex-girlfriend a text – Please call me when you get this message. You need to know what Andre has done tonight.

I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was numb throughout my body, except for the constant reminder of my face. Throbbing, aching, keening. I had no idea of how to spend the time until morning. Closing my eyes was not an option, although I tried – but every time, his eyes were there, waiting for me. Scaring me silly.

Every now and then, waves of tears would erupt, and each time I would shake non-stop. The sort of shaking you have when you’re really cold, chilled to the bone. Only, I was warm. The heater was working hard and I was wearing many layers of clothing.

Eventually I found some solace watching episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (of all things!). It carried me through the night in a state that felt oddly dissociative. Heck, who cares – Buffy and her friends kept me from losing the plot too badly.

(To be continued…)

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