Hi lovely human!
So yesterday R started listening to Christmas music, which snowballed (pun...ha!) into us lighting Christmas candles last night, and now today R is going to bring in the Christmas decor so I can start decorating.
I'm super excited! We have so much cute and vintage things. Honestly, I can't really remember what I have due to ECT memory loss, so it's kind of going to be a bit of a treasure hunt seeing what we have!
I really want sparkly things. And I think I have a lot of that kind of stuff. I also want to keep it a little simple, but we'll see how I feel once I see everything! I love the mini tinsel trees and these bottle brush trees (both bought in the dollar section at Target). Oh, and we are getting a flocked tree this year (we alternate each year between flocked and non-flocked). I'm thinking white twinkle lights will look amazing.
I had really rough Christmases as a child. Now Christmas is so special and R and I have loads of fun traditions. It really is healing having Christmas in a new happy way. One thing I really struggle with is the expectations I have on how I should feel during the Christmas season. I have had a few Christmases with R where I really felt in the spirit (god, that sounds so religious, but you know what I mean...) and just was so happy. I only had a few of those, and yet I expect that experience every year. Usually I am pretty depressed during Christmas because I'm pretty depressed most of the time and it's been that way much of my life. So this year I am going to try to experience whatever I experience and just accept whatever feelings I have and try to stay in the present moment instead of missing past experiences.
I really think this new plan will help. Staying in the present moment is very hard for me. I dissociate most of the time because I still deal with a lot of comping mechanisms of the past. Also, dealing with all the trauma of my childhood and the assault I had really makes me burrow into old patterns such as dissociating, and CPTSD symptoms like hyper vigilance.
I can't tell you how scary it is to take a shower. I keep my eyes open thinking R will come in and spook me, or when I'm alone that a killer will come in. It's to the point that even if I have soap in my eyes I will keep them open out of fear. R knows I deal with hyper vigilance, so anytime he comes into the bathroom while I'm in the shower, he says "I'm coming in" before he comes in which makes things easier. But I still am terrified. It's really not fun. Not only is it scary for me to shower, depression also saps all my energy to care and be loving toward myself.
To top it all off, I had an allergic reaction to the tape I was using to keep the gauze down on my recent self harm. It has been two days since I stopped using it and yet the welts/hives remain. I'm using cortisone cream and taking Benadryl with no luck.
Ok, this was supposed to be about Christmas, and it still is, but I just added a splash of real life. 😂
I love you, I hope you are doing well.
xo, C
