The Tree

The Start

Bare branches
Stark, bold against the sky
A bud
Just peaking through
A tiny little spot of green
A new leaf
Perhaps
Or a new blossom
A new start
After shivering in the winter

The continuum

Branches with blossoms galore
Pink blossoms
Covering bare branches
Bees seeking nectar
Birds doing the same
A hive of activity
Within a tree come to life
Winters nearly over
Spring is around the corner















Kaz

Chronic Pain

Wow, I’ve felt a real turn about in my thinking where the presentation is concerned today. I’m getting further into my essay, 1000 words so far and it is really firing up my enthusiasm for the subject. Being a subject that is close to home is really helping too. I am a chronic pain sufferer and my essay is on counselling the person with chronic pain so some of my own stuff has to come in there and add to the presentation.

Not a day goes by when I don’t have pain. It affects everything in my life. I can’t do what I used to do and I can’t do what other people take for granted. I have learnt that I have to think about things before I do them. If I go shopping I have to think, okay, I can do a certain amount but I’ll have to concentrate on say, getting the groceries and that’s all. I can’t do any other shopping combined with that otherwise the pain level will be too high.

My whole role in life had to be rethought out. People who might not understand that I can’t do as much as I used to suddenly became different in my life. Their role in my life was redefined. People who understand that I need to pace myself are like gold. I don’t have to push myself because I don’t think they’ll understand why I have to sit down. I don’t have to try and push past the pain and keep going when it becomes so hard to do so. And I’m getting more in the mindset that if someone doesn’t understand that I’m not putting it on, that I will have pain if I do too much, really doesn’t have a role in my life anymore.

Work is another area where things had to be rethought. Where I was once defined by my work, now I didn’t have a ‘role’ like everyone else. I was a nurse, which was how I was defined. For a long time, before I started Uni and probably before that I struggled to find a place in the world again. For a couple of years I felt like I was nobody. Then came the volunteer work of teaching computer and at least I could answer that this was my role for the moment. Then I became a student and now I can feel that I am something that my role in life is as a student. And that I am striving for something.

We can be very judgemental about anyone who is different in life or who doesn’t conform to the norm. If someone has a broken leg, it is obvious and you can assume they are in some pain. Someone with pain that can’t be seen outwardly is sometimes viewed with suspicion. Are they putting it on? Are they just malingering? How bad is their pain really? And perhaps that is all in the mind of the person who has the pain but it is very real. And it adds to the anxiety of the person who has the pain. It can’t be seen therefore is it really happening? I live by myself so there are things that I have to do, regardless of the pain. I find myself getting very paranoid about what others are thinking. I find myself thinking that I can read their mind. “Look at her, bending down and doing things normally – I wonder how bad her pain really is”. Maybe until I can really think to myself, I don’t give a stuff about what anyone else is thinking, I know what I’m feeling, there will be that little bit of paranoid thinking there.

I know I do avoid doing things as well because I know they will cause pain. Mopping the floor is one thing that kills my back. I will avoid it until the cows come home!! But eventually it needs doing and I have to do it. But it puts me out of action for a while. And the problem is I normally need to sweep before I mop, which already begins my back aching. It all comes down to trying to do as much as I can and resting when I need to. What they call pacing myself. But it’s hard because it becomes a bit of a cycle – it’s going to hurt, I want to avoid it but I have to do it, it gets to the point where it needs doing – NOW, it’s more painful because if I did it regularly it wouldn’t be so hard and then it causes more pain.

So, I am getting excited about presenting something, which for me I’d really love to educate more people about. Everyone has had pain in their life at sometime and everyone has an opinion on what pain is. But not everyone has suffered chronic pain and not everyone understands how different it is to acute pain. If you hit your thumb with a hammer it will hurt but the pain will eventually go away. Imagine hitting your thumb constantly with a hammer so that it never stops. That’s chronic pain – it never goes away.



Kaz

Back to Uni

Well, it is back to uni tomorrow. It has been a long break but all of a sudden it doesn’t seem long enough!! I always get a bit nervous when I’m going back to something after a break. It’s taken a lot for me to go to Uni and each break it is hard to put myself back in there, even though I know people now and have a group of friends.

It will be a big semester this time, with me having to give a one-hour presentation. I never ever thought I would be up in front of a group of people giving a presentation. If you had asked me 5 or 6 years ago if I’d be standing up doing that I would have laughed. Now it’s a bit of an hysterical laugh because that’s exactly what I’m going to do!! I can’t believe sometimes that I’ve reached this point.

How did a person with absolutely no confidence, who hates being in groups or should say hated being in groups come to be standing in front of a group of people like this? I’ve changed so much in the last 5 years it is really unbelievable. When I was nursing I really didn’t have any confidence in myself what so ever. I stayed in one job, which eventually wrecked my back because it was safer then moving on. I didn’t like being in groups of people and would try and fade into the background.

I remember a presentation I did during my training. My legs were shaking so much I could feel my knees knocking together!! My voice shook and I’m sure everyone could see how nervous I was. It wasn’t even a long presentation. It was just a report I had to give to the ward I was working on at the time. I think the reason I’ve been nervous of presenting is because of that experience. I was only about 19 though and a very shy, timid 19 too.

So it really is going to be an interesting semester. I’m hoping by the time my turn comes to present, which is somewhere in September that I’ll be comfortable with the group by then. I think it will be harder for the person going first, although we already know each other. I’m sure everyone in the group will be supportive of each other as well. It’s actually a mixture of emotions I feel. I’m excited, scared and anxious all in one. On the day I don’t know how I’ll feel and I know it might be a shaky start but hopefully once I get into it I’ll be right.

Kaz

Passing Time

Sitting,
Feeling slightly lost
Very lost
Sometimes I wonder
Where I am in life
Where I’m going
Why I’m doing what I am
If I’ll get there
What my passion is
Teaching
I know that
I love teaching
Not children
Adults
Is that what counselling is?
Teaching a new way
That life can be good
A new way of thinking
A new way of handling life’s stresses
Is that what it’s all about
Am I only lost for now?
With no real routine
A similarity of days
A need to be doing
So that days don’t disappear suddenly?
Am I really lost?
Or just waiting out time
Until the routine begins again.






Kaz

Why

I’m going through a stage of “is there any good in the world”. I know there is but it makes me wonder sometimes at what people can do to each other. I was listening to someone today saying about eating at a restaurant. She was describing a man as looking like a big green frog with rolls of fat who was eating at the same restaurant. He was wearing a green shirt, which was how the comparison with the frog came about. Now, didn’t that man have every right to eat at the restaurant without being laughed at? Even if it wasn’t obvious laughing in front of him, why does this person have to be mentioned in conversation as an object of ridicule? I’m overweight so when I go out to eat, am I going to be the object of someone’s conversation?

I just don’t think people think before they say things. They don’t look at the people around them and wonder if it will offend anyone. Why does there have to be people in the world who will belittle others and make their life as hard as they can? Why does there have to be people who won’t accept others for how they are? They have to try and squash that person down because for some reason they just can’t let other people be. I know there are always going to be bullies in the world but I fail to understand them.

I was looking at a picture of a poor little dog that was in an advertisement for an animal welfare organization. It just tugged at my heartstrings that anyone could pick on something so defenceless. The dog in this ad just looks as if it is thinking, what have I done wrong? It struck me that the world is sometimes a really shitty place. People are so judgemental of others instead of just letting people get on with their lives. They don’t stop to think of the person behind the judgement.

I know there are good people out there. I know there are. It’s just been a shit of a week and I’m left shaking my head at what some people can do to others. For no reason that makes sense.

Kaz

Change

Change is inevitable and things happen,
Relationships change, growing or ending
Forever in a state of flux, never stagnant
What may be in one day, changes in another
Like moods, that take you by surprise
One day happy, next day maybe sad
Change is like that, inevitable over time
Constant and necessary, turning over in a spin
Dizzying perhaps, conflicting emotions
Draining in tiredness, ready to just sit quietly
And contemplate……………….

Kaz

Trust

I’ve had this subject going around in my mind for a couple of weeks. Trust. How do you trust when trust hasn’t been a part of your experience of life? I haven’t even had self-trust, let alone trusting other people. How do you trust when the people who you would think you could trust in your childhood have let you down, not lightly, but to a point where if you can’t trust them, who can you trust?

Trust is something that is a very basic instinct in most of us. Some definitions of trust are:

Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.

To have or place confidence in; depend on.

To be confident; hope.

To expect with assurance; assume: I trust that you will be on time.

To believe: I trust what you say.

To have or place reliance; depend.

So as a child you place your trust in your caregivers, that they will protect you and that you can rely on them. What if that trust is abused? It becomes a lifelong battle to regain a sense of trust in other people. And in yourself. I try so hard to trust other people but somewhere inside this little voice, maybe the inner child, is saying to me “The only person you can depend on is yourself”, “You must be in control” and “Don’t trust because they will only let you down”.

There are people I have gained a trust in more than others but even then it is a battle. I am gaining a bit more trust in myself though. I came from a background where I wasn’t allowed to make a decision. Every decision had to go through my Dad and it would take me days to get up the confidence to ask him if I could do something. So when I reached adulthood I questioned every decision I made. I had no self-trust whatsoever. It didn’t make for a very good working life because I worried myself sick about decisions I made and even worried most times about actually going to work. As a nurse I restricted myself when I could have worked in a lot better environment than the one I chose.

So how does something that, from a small child has been missing, be regained? Do I trust anybody? There are people I trust more than others. I honestly don’t know how to regain that basic instinct to trust people that comes from a secure childhood or that hasn’t been abused. I know it is probably repetitiveness, learning to trust someone who has never let me down. And I try hard not to let that little voice inside take over but it is really an ongoing process. It is so deep within and has been such a part of me. I think right from the moment I was born I didn’t trust, so maybe it is saying, okay, I will never be a trusting person but if I learn to trust myself and my intuition, maybe that will be enough. It’s okay to just be me and accept that part of me that will never be able to totally trust people.

Kaz