A Year of Encouragement

Now that I've recovered from my vacation, I need to get back to blogging. Yes, my body hates to travel, but thankfully it chooses only to inform me of this after I get home. Not that it took me the whole week to recover, but there was the fact that life goes on, things have to be done around the house, job applications need to be continually put out there, and my sister and I had a yard sale this weekend. All in all, two days of feeling like crap (one of which I actually took it easy for) was enough to screw up my blogging schedule royally!  So without further ado, here we go......again.

Panic Attacks

I thought I was done with them. I thought it was safe.  I thought I had this all under control. Sometimes, we have to be reminded that life just isn't that easy.  This past week I was on vacation. A very dear friend of mine bought cruise tickets for himself, my sister, another great friend, and myself. We all had a great time. It felt wonderful relaxing in the sun and have the opportunity to explore places I truly have never been before (as far as we know anyway *wink-wink*.)

Still, being on a ship with 3000+ other people proved to be even harder than I would have thought. The very first day we were all called to our muster station for emergency protocol briefing before we left port. That was my first lesson in how difficult the rest of the week truly would be for me.

Bad Impressions

It has been brought to my attention by someone that I love that I have made a bad impression on some people by posting blog posts that are more personal than necessary. This person is my brother, and he is absolutely right.

I would love to say that I have posted what I've posted because it all pertains to my recovery, but that wouldn't be the truth. That's not to say that it doesn't pertain to my recovery. Learning to deal with the repercussions of my past is an important part of what I've had to do, often before I even knew what that past was. However, more often than not, when I wrote posts about my ex-husband and my past with him, I wrote those posts out of anger, not out of a need to explore how I deal with those memories.

Pray

Just when my problems seem to be too big to handle, something happens to someone else to remind me how small my problems really are.  Here I am with a loving family and wonderful, supportive group of friends surrounding and supporting me. I have a roof over my head, food on my plate, and love surrounding me. I read about people who have lost everything, their jobs, their homes, their families, and I think "I wish I could help." Then I start to wonder, how can I truly help?

The Truth is Out There

If someone was professionally diagnosed with ADD, would you believe them? How much respect do you think you would lose if you publicly denounced that person? How about someone diagnosed with depression or anxiety?  There are no physical tests to prove that people have any of these ailments, yet people believe when others say they have them.

It's My Birthday (Of Sorts)

Today is my new birthday. That's right, I celebrate today as the day of my new beginning. Today is the anniversary of the day I was officially "found". I had already been in the hospital a couple of days when I was identified, but today is the official day to celebrate!! Of course, for me it didn't happen until 5/5. That was when I "met" my parents, and my road to recovery really began.

TV - As Vital As Google

Here's something new. TV shows are starting to come back to me. Not overall synopses, but individual episodes. I'm currently watching Star Trek: TNG to relearn what I liked and why. Loving it so far. All of the sudden, I remembered (while doing dishes, if we want to make this even more random) the episode where counselor Deanna Troi has a baby. No reason to remember it, just out of the blue it popped into my head.  

Fact and Fiction

I have been told that some of the things I put in this blog are lies. Since everything I post in this blog is memories (in other words, not just things other people have told me, but stuff I have actually remembered on my own over time) this statement got me wondering. How do we tell the difference between real memories and memories we have created in our minds/fantasies?

How many of you have looked at a picture and thought "I remember that!" when in fact you are "remembering" a story that has been planted in your head by your mother (father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, grandparent) repeating what happened so many times that you built a memory around it? How do you know when what you remember is real and what has been influenced by others around you?