Today on the Journey

Today ....

I've written several posts recently about "today".  How each day has potential.  Each day is different.

In this post, we are really talking about "today" as in the day that is just beginning as I'm writing this post to publish as soon as it's done.

Today, I woke up weak and shaky.  It's not all that uncommon but at this point in the journey towards recovery both physical and emotional, it's not all that common either.

This is where I put my frownie, unhappy face.

Yet, this is also where I sit back a bit and analyze.  What am I capable of doing today?

I have a to-do list - in my mind.  What should I keep?  What should I dismiss or put on the back burner to see if I'm physically capable of doing it later?

This is often a big question with me.  If I schedule something like meeting up with a friend to knit and pet her dog, will I be physically able of doing it on that given day at that given time?

I hate to disappoint people.

So today, I don't have all that much on my agenda.  We're babysitting the grands tomorrow so I need to make something in the crockpot for easy meal preparation when we're there.  That can (for now) be put on the back burner.  Perhaps hubby can help me with it tonight when he's home.

I need to do the weekly grocery shopping one day earlier than normal.  Again, can I do that?

As I write this at the beginning of my day, that is the BIG question:  can I do this?  What will happen to me physically/emotionally if I try?  What will I do afterwards if the chronic symptoms either kick in or get worse than they are?

In the years that I've been on this journey, I've developed some coping mechanisms.  Hubby has taught me that I can always  make a 180 and leave.  If things just are not working out, if I'm getting anxious, if my mind is starting to go bonkers, I have the right to give myself permission to stop, go home, and try again another time - without feeling guilty.  Without castigating myself.  Without telling myself that I'm an awful, horrible excuse for a human bean.

I also have the option of being gentle on myself.  To just do the bare minimum and to not fault myself that I'm not able at that given time to do more.  To do myself not only that it's ok but that I'm ok.  To remind myself of how far I've come on the journey. 

I also have the option of once I do get home back home, my base camp on the road to recovery, to just simply rest.  I've learned that rest is good, very good.  Sometimes I'm able to read while I rest.  Sometimes not.  To simply listen to my body and do what it's telling me is the best thing.  Perhaps to put on nice restful music.  Or to spray the air with lavender scent for calming purposes.

So today, I will poke my little nose outside my door.  I will go outside into the wide, not so scary world as previously, and I will see what happens.

Whatever happens with today, I will survive; tomorrow will come.  It will be different and good in its own way.

The cross at the Devil's Punch Bowl falls on the Niagara Escarpment

The Last Stop on the Chronic Journey

KOA Kampin Kabin in Saulte Ste Marie, Ontario where we spent the night
before this part of the adventure

Entering Bear Country

We now begin the last segment of this narrative which involves a double narrative - actually a triple narrative if you include the photographs: the narrative of our travels along with the narrative of the increasing chronic affects/symptoms.

I find it fascinating that this last segment is in bear country as I've always identified myself as a bear such as calling myself mama bear when my children were young and inneundos about the "den" such as not being the youngest bear in the den, etc.

Killbear Provincial Park

However, here we're talking about real life, flesh and blood, growling bears.  Right in our campground.  But fortunately not in our campsite - that we know of.

We're well familiar with the practices involved in clean camping as we did canoe camping prior to this adventure.  Everything that has any smell to it, not just food but deodorant, soap, etc., goes in the locked car or up a tree if you're in the back country with no access to your car.  All coolers, stoves, etc. are also locked in the car.

We'd camped at Killbear Provincial Park years ago when our children were still young.  We saw a bear cub scampering around which was removed.  We never saw a bear that time.

However, this time was different.  Things had changed in the intervening years since that camping trip in the 90s and this one in 2011.

Bear Spray
We've never had to use it so don't
know if it works

As I mentioned, we never saw a bear ourselves this time but nightly we heard the air horns go off meant to scare the bear away.  We talked to people who had been involved in bear encounters in the park.  One man told us that the bear was at the back of his truck ignoring him completely and trying to pry the cover on the bed of the truck loose to get at the goodies underneath it.  Here we were camping in a small tent which a bear could easily rip apart.  There was nothing solid between us and the wildlife. 

Our Camp Site At
Killbear Provincial Park

Scary.

I did what I always do in such situations: i did everything I knew to do and then asked God to take care of the rest.  It's worked in the past; it worked in this instance as well.

We slept and awoke safely in the morning.  There was a camper on the site next to us so they had solid walls between them and any wildlife.  The woman told me in the morning that she'd wondered how we were doing in our little tent.  I told her about doing what I knew to do and then asking God to do the rest.  But she didn't understand what I was saying.

Waiting for the Sunset

You can probably sense a theme in my ramblings about this trip in that we were largely revisiting places we'd been before.  Places that provided at least a semblance of a comfort zone.  Being in our small canoe camping tent rather than our larger one as it created a sense of comfort and safety.  During that time, small became better than large.  Isolated better than crowded.  Nature better than cities.

Tandem Kyack

I could tolerate people in small doses and large distances.  For example, in the next campsite or further along the beach.  But close up and personal, such as in the washroom ... NOOOOOOO.  Hypervigilence, anxiety, fear.  They all came crowding in.  At that point, as these were still in their infancy in my chronic experience, I didn't have the coping skills I've developed since.

Kyacking Georgian Bay

As long as hubby was with me, I was more or less OK.  However, hubbies aren't allowed in the women's wash room.  That I had to figure out how to handle on my own.

Fatigue was also getting increasingly worrisome.  I went to sleep early.  Very early.  And woke up as tired as if I hadn't slept at all.  I often had to lay down mid down unable to move.

Interesting Rock Formation

Yet, contrasting the physical affects was the incredibly rugged yet peaceful scenery we were surrounded by.

Hubby had been wanting to try a tandem kyack, so we did.  It was a beautifully calm day, the day we rented it.  But the weather changed drastically over night and the wind came up.  So the day we took it out at Snug Harbour, the weather and the water were anything but calm.

Sunset

But we went out anyway.  I loved it!  In a kyack, you're down low close to the water and your lower half is enclosed.  The kyack rolled with the waves.  I found it exhilarating.  Like being in a down low, roller coaster with no fear of running off the tracks.

Hubby found it too enclosing for his longer legs.

But what an experience!

Even though that was probably the last of my limited energy for a while to come, I have that memory and those pictures to look back on.  To enjoy.  To remember that even in the bad times, there is something good, something enjoyable.

We left and went to nearby Parry Sound, again another "comfort zone" for me and checked into a motel we'd been to several times before.  By that time, I was so fatigued that I had to rest for several hours lying prostrate and unmoving on the bed before I could even contemplate going out for a meal.

My best purchase ever: a rope hammock so that I could lie down outside rather than in the tent when I couldn't do anything else.

The rugged landscape of that area

Our tent site which while not frequented by a bear during our time there, was visited by deer.

Ready to capture the sunset.  Each day was different.  A final farewell to our adventure.

While this post is the ending of that particular trip, that short segment of my life where the chronic symptoms began, it is not an ending, but rather a beginning.

A beginning of the real journey post workplace abuse towards recovery both physical and psychological.

I hope you will continue with me on the journey.

Where the Acute Morphed Into the Chronic

As life as I know it would, I wrote a very good blog posting this morning - if I do say so myself.  I was so excited about it. I saved it, I thought, scheduled it to post on Friday at 3 a.m., started another blog posting, and left to run some errands.  When I went to do the final edit, I discovered much to my chagrin and dismay that everything I wrote, even the captions of the pictures, etc. was gone.  All gone.  If I had the energy, I would cry.  Should I see what I can do to recreate it?  Or should I just post that today's blog is missing because the dog ate it?

Oh yes.  I don't have a dog. 

Our campsite at Lands End park in Tobermory, ON.  Hubby setting up.

There are times in life when you have a clear cut beginning to a different phase in a situation whether it be physical, emotional or both.  There are other times when you don't, when things just morph from one thing to another without a clear cut divide.  For me, when the acute phase following workplace bullying morphed into the chronic phase, there was a dividing point I can look at and recognize as we were heading to a camping vacation about six months or so after the first stress breakdown.

Although I knew I hadn't been feeling up to par, I had no idea that there was something called the chronic phase after a trauma much less what it looked like, tasted like and, most importantly, felt like. This is the phase that feels like it never ends.  The one with intangible, mostly vague symptoms which are both physical and psychological: a fatigue that never seems to end, lack of balance, hyper vigilance, combined with the aforementioned continuation of both cognitive/psychological problems and verbal screw ups.

Oh joy, oh delight.

Just what I didn't want and also  something I was totally unprepared for.

Decommissioned Lighthouse,  Tobermory, 

I hadn't been feeling my best for some weeks before we left for a car camping adventure the fall after the end for me at the workplace came and the breakdowns started.  My mind was definitely down for the count.  It wasn't working well enough to get all our gear together.  So helpful hubby put everything together.  He chose the tent, our small canoe camping one - which turned out to be a good decision as I started seeking places that felt safe and the smaller tent felt safer to me than the larger one we usually use for what we call car camping.  He also forgot to test things beforehand, so we had a few surprises and had to find a hardware store first off.

I had two indications right off that something was definitely off inside me.  First, I was always tired.  So tired, that functioning wasn't  happening and sleep didn't help.  I never felt refreshed after a sleep.  I still felt tired and draggy without any let up.

Second, is what I now know is hyper vigilance.  At that time, I didn't even know the term existed, let alone what it translated to in real life, my life.

As we were walking in the small town of Tobermory after getting set up at the campground, a young child ran past me whooping loudly just as she passed me.  I jumped.  I started breathing rapidly.  I was scarred and ready to run.  Only hubby's presence kept me vertical.

It was then we realized that going into a crowded, noisy restaurant was not going to happen.  So hubby suggested we go to the grocery story and buy sandwiches, drinks, etc. which we then took to the lighthouse to eat.  All around the lighthouse are rocks.  Big rocks,  Uneven rocks.  Hubby found a crevice in the rocks where we could be half hidden from other humans as we ate.  It was good.  Very good.

First crisis averted - barely.

Cedar Strip Canoe

While sitting in our little hidey hole, we had a good view of the water around us watching boats including this one which paddled ashore.

That first night, I was snuggled in my warm, down-filled sleeping bag by 7 p.m.

Cabot Head Lighthouse

We've been to Tobermory many times over the years so it was familiar to me.  Kind of a safe place for me.

This time we did different things than we'd done before.  Partly because of my symptoms but also because the weather was bad and most boat excursions were not going out.

Therefore, we went to Cabot Head Lighthouse for the first time.

Looking at the picture above, I look "normal".  I look like everyone else.  There is no indication that I have PTSD and trauma.  There is no indication that anything is wacky inside me.

That's what PTSD and trauma are about.  They're invisible to the naked eye.  One has to look below the surface.  Way below the surface to "see" it.  One has to engage the person in conversation and listen - really listen - and get to know them under the skin.  Get to know the person inside the outward shell.

Which most people don't have the time or inclination to do.

Cabot Head Lighthouse

At that time, I was still thinking that the exhaustion and fatigue I was experiencing were short-term and would go away soon.  I had no idea that not only had they come to stay but were in the process of making themselves at  home in my body.

I was still looking for ways to go forward in my life not only post workplace abuse but also post work.  I discovered that people who below to the friends of Cabot Lighthouse association could volunteer to spend a week or so in the lighthouse in the former lighthouse keeper's accommodations for a modest fee in exchange for volunteer work which could range from groundskeeping to lighthouse tours.

Cabot Head Lighthouse

We spent time inspecting the lighthouse, walking various trails around the grounds and, of course, taking lots and lots of pictures.

Sunset at Singing Sands, part of the Fathom Five National Park

No trip to Tobermory would be complete for us without a trip to Singing Sands especially at sunset where the above picture was taken.

Friends of ours were also in the area at the same time.  When we were at Tobermory at the same time, we would arrange to meet at Singing Sands to enjoy - and photograph - the sunset together.  This time, the weather was bad and hubby and I discussed if we should go to Singing Sands as we weren't sure that the other couple would come.  After some discussion, we went anyway.  Just in case.  It turns out the other couple had the same discussion and came to the same conclusion.

The picture above came out of that meeting.  That decision to go just in case the others did too.

It reminds me of how there is always hope in even the darkest of situations.

In my case, hope for healing.

Time to leave Tobermory and head on to new adventures.

As with all good, and even not so good, things must come to an end, so did this part of our adventure along with this part of the noticeable beginnings of the chronic stage post trauma.

We left on the ChiCheemaun (Big Canoe) ferry across Lake Huron on one side and Georgian Bay on the other to Manitoulin Island and from there to the mainland and the Trans Canada Highway.

This part of the adventure ended, but more both good and bad are around the corner.

Looking down from a passenger deck

*****

Although I've done my best to remember and recreate what I wrote this morning, it's not the same.  There are things added and there are things which didn't make it into this narrative.

Even though it's not the same as the original narrative, I hope it will still speak to you and let you know that you're not alone.