Wild Mountain Thyme

I'm still swollen and my muscles are stiff. I played Judy Collin's Wild Mountain Thyme last night and tried to sing with it. It was one of the first songs I learnt to play and sing from a record, though I learnt it from Joan Baez's "Farewell Angelina" Hadn't heard Judy Collin's version before, found it very different and would normally find it harder to sing than Joan Baez's version. My voice doesn't sound that much like Joan Baez but I can harmonize in. Last night though with Judy Collins I couldn't sing in tune because of the condition of my muscles,nor could I change the depth of the notes as I was singing. It sounded rigid and rather stuck.

Hearing the song again was quite emotional as I hadn't heard any version of it for years. The rigidity of my voice plus going back through time through hearing the song again must have set something off in my mind. I'd had to realise a little while ago that not all my emotional walls are down by a long way.I'm much better than I was but I'd reached another stage where I'd realised that my past was affecting my emotions and how far I can let my barriers down.

It's to do with my family. The other things can be hidden in my mind, I have almost complete control over recall, no flashbacks at all and see them from a third person view. An eye witness even though I know that I was part of it and in what way,I still look back as an observer. Though, in contrast, when I see similar things happening though the news I can understand and feel what has happened from my own experiences. Put myself in their place because I've been in something so similar.Obviously they are their own person but I've been in situations much the same. There is a lot of knowledge that I wouldn't have if I hadn't.

But the family is different. It's where I should've been able to feel safe but my birth family was extremely disfunctional and it was a place of sadness and fear. The therapy I went into for some of my worldly experiences actually went into family issues because I found them more traumatic and couldn't file and hide them in the same way I could the others. Infact I would go into therapy as a matter of course and after a couple of sessions it would become entrenched in my family issues but it was never really sorted out because I wouldn't go far enough into it all to touch the complete reality. The therapists used to say they didn't know how I'd coped. They didn't know the whole story. I realise that neither did I. It's having coped with that which has protected me in the rest of my life.Coping stratagies have been built as I've gone along.

In the last year I've been through a lot of it by myself, thinking about it and finding out a few things that I didn't know before and I have enough to really start to understand what was going on. What I've done though is to keep my knowledge in separate little bits so that I don't have to confront what had really been going on. I think I wanted to hang on to a couple of illusions. To bring another wall down I have to be realistic and accept the truth rather than lie to myself about it.I have to accept the situation as it was as a whole rather than divide it up into separate pieces.

I have to accept the truth as much as I know of it.

I'd wondered if I should go to a therapist first to see if it was a safe thing to do because of the way I deal with things. I don't want to start a stream of consciousness that would destroy my defences. Thinking about it, I know that I'm going to be ok. If I don't do this then I'm going to keep this wall I've put up. I can do it safely by myself.

There's someone else on the net who comes from a similar background, though without the following life experience. When I was thinking about it last night I realised that I was phrasing the things that were going through my mind in the same way as she often does. I was questioning what had happened and how it was still affecting me. After a while I realised I was thinking the way she expresses herself sometimes. Raising the same questions.

My situation was very complex, involving someone who treated everyone as if they were in a completely different reality, but abusing while incidentally being abused themselves. I have no idea if trauma had brought this on, but I have the feeling through things that were said from time to time that it was down to what would be termed a personality disorder and a lack of care and loving empathy. This person expected someone else in the family to recover from the death of their loved 16 year old daughter in a road accident in about four weeks.

Let's just say that there was a lot of this kind of thing going on in the extended family. I've not been able to bring myself to look at the situation as a whole because I guess I didn't want to have to face up to what it meant.

I have to stop lying to myself. Because as long as I do that wall is going to be up there.I need to face up to the reality of my birth family completely.