I think that something happened to me when I got sick in November last year, more than six months ago. I developed pneumonia after a bout of the flu, and all together I had rather high fever and other symtoms for over four weeks. The first week I stayed at home and tried to rest, but the following ones, I tried to cope with things I needed to do in school, and I of course wanted to be a present mother for little S the whole time. I couldn't put my life on hold, quite simply, and pushed on as best I could.
Which I honestly think is an ok strategy when dealing with prolonged illness - sometimes the answer is to rest completely, but more often a bit of activity actually helps the healing process. But to me, this time, it came with a great cost. In order to function and perform to the level I thought I had to, I went back to old habits and old ways of solving things, that I learned as a child and teenager, when I was all alone and noone would listen to me or help me, and the only thing that counted was me doing what was expected of me. I shut down, bowed my head against the wind and trudged on, in the same non-feeling, non-thinking way that I applied then.
The problem is that I can't do that and still be submissive and open to Mistress' control. The key-word here is open. If I shut down feelings and hurt and pain and tiredness I don't want to feel, I also shut down her ability to influence me. I go along, and do as best as I can with the things in front of me, but I stop listening to her - I don't want to listen, I don't want to feel, I don't want to be present in the moment, because the moment becomes intolerable to me. All I do is struggle on and waiting for the pain to pass, essentially for my life to pass. It's not a happy existence, and eventually, it led to depression.
Both then, I've figured out in retrospect that I most probably was clinically depressed both when I was ten (shortly after my parents divorce) and when I was fourteen, and now - in january, I scored for moderate depression on MADRS and was having persistent fantasies about suicide that frighetend me badly. Usually in the shower or when I was nursing little S to sleep in the dark bedroom, I would get images in my head of nooses and about hanging myself from things, and it was really really creepy. Everything was dreary and difficult and hard, and I was trapped in an almost constant inner monologue deriding myself and feeling ashamed of my many failures.
Anyway, I got anxiety pills from the doctor, slacked off in school, and waited for the spring that finally arrived, and the depression lessened. But I think the anger I've had inside me since November is what has driven the arguments and the mistrust and my lack of submissiveness. I shut her out when I most needed her, because I was afraid and ashamed and didn't know what else to do, fearing of losing her love because of my inadequacy being ill and tired. That was stupid of me, but it also left me feeling abandoned and alone.And so, when all else was solved, the feelings of having been abandoned stayed on.
I think it has passed now. It took a long while, much too long, and I need to do things differently in the future. The short term gain because I managed school and housework and little S while sick was so not worth six months of depression and anguish. Not to mention the fact that I think it was totally unnecessary. If I had let myself feel what I felt and admitted my fear and pain and fatigue, I don't really think it would have made anything worse - it would probably made it easier. But my instinct is to shut down and hide any weakness, and sometimes that causes a lot of trouble.
This is only one reason why I always want to be there for little S, why I want to help her put words to her emotions, respect her integrity, never leave her alone if she doesn't want to, and never ever tell her to stop crying. I want to give her that safe place to be in, in any shift in life, that Mistress usually creates for me now as an adult, and that I think parents really should provide for their kids, even though mine didn't.
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