I have been really struggling lately.  I keep saving comments to answer later that days go by I don’t get to.   I keep saving them so I can reply.   I have not announced it here on the Play Time but I finally made an appointment with a therapist. 

When I made the appointment they asked a few questions and then tried to get me to come in the next morning.  I said no.  I just couldn’t deal with it.  On top of the car just needing a new engine for 4 grand due to a faulty temperature sensor we had the van checked.  It is 17 years old.  It has a lot of small stuff wrong but each fix adds up and the total was two grand.   

I am hardly sleeping and during the day the intrusive thoughts can get me struggling and crying.  So what should only take me a few hours ends up taking me 6 to 8 hours.  It is even more frustrating because my attention deficit disorder has increased to the point I can lose track of what I am doing or get switched over to something else almost without noticing so that I get pulled down rabbit holes until I see it.   

Also I find sitting at the computer gets painful so I get up and do things like the dishes.   Sadly I drive myself to the point I can’t stand or are near collapse.  That happened last night.  Ron was doing other things so I had the night before promised to take a small amount of mashed potatoes left over and fry it along with making him scrambled eggs.   Then I did dishes at noon and right after I made a red sauce.  I was exhausted and not able to stand by the time I got it done.  Ron put the red sauce aside and made us the planned supper of chicken, pork, and beef chopped up for fajitas.   But I could hardly eat. 

Then Ron found me falling asleep at my desk I was so tired.   Ron asked me as he helped me to get my nighttime meds and go to bed, Ron asked me if I had managed to get to the comments I had told him I saved.  I just sighed.  I told him I still have them saved and will get up in the morning and reply to them.  I did not do that.  I used to jump out of bed fully energized which always amazed Ron.  Now I struggle to get up, often laying there for several hours hoping to go back to sleep.  In the past I would get up in the middle of the night if I couldn’t sleep, but now I just lay there desperately hoping to sleep without a nightmare.  

But this is not what this post is about.   

I use a name not used by my abusers.  The name they used for me was a slave name.  You can see it used for one of the prominent characters in Roots.  It was used to make me an it.  I was often told how I got my name at age three.   My first real memories are a bus ride next to a woman I did not know.   I am told when she introduced me to the “family” one of my hell spawn female siblings ask “What do you call IT“   My new adoptive mother gave me the name normally given to slaves in the south as I understand.   I never used it personally and hated it all my life. 

Ron never used it even though they tried to get him to do so.  They would use it to him to refer to me and he would pretend to not know who they were talking about.   I guess good for me the name was not the one used on my birth certificate so as I got to move beyond their influence I could use my birth name and then when I got away from all their ability to influence or threaten me I modified my birth name to what I felt most comfortable.   See the only time they used the real name was to mock me and so when I got the chance to choose my name for myself I did.  

I am Scottie !!!

I love who Scottie is and think he is done very well with the life hand he was dealt.  But all this is to explain why the series of cartoons by Sophie Labelle are so important to me.  So here is the one by her that jogged me to make this post.  I had tried to restrict posts about my abuse.  But this was so on point I knew I had to do so.  Sadly I had no father or other to help me find it, they hated that I demanded they call me by it.  It caused me to hang up on them repeatedly when they would call me by my abused name.  They finally did adjust when in their old age they needed me to help them.   Hugs