I am a Mystery

So said my therapist today. It takes awhile for a therapist and client to get to know each other, and for the therapist to discover important things about the client. I have a history of surprising or dumbfounding my therapists.

All of this stuff — the being barely functional, the depression, the anxiety, the paralysis — she thought was just since Mom died. Some things are so old-hat to me that I don't think to mention them, or else I think I already have.

Today's session was fairly free-ranging due to my unfocused and sedated mind. (My psych bumped me up to 4 mg of Lorazepam a day, which can be taken singly or in combination not to exceed two, and rather than diminishing my anxiety, it's just sedating me, which kind of increases my anxiety.) I led Karen the Wonder Therapist all over the place.

Eventually, I got stuck talking about my ex. This is the guy I moved in with and lived with for three years. This is the guy I wanted, and fully expected, to marry and have children with. This is the guy who so diminished and battered me verbally and emotionally that I think he broke something important inside me. This is the issue that Karen thinks may be more important to explore than the sexual abuse. And when we got to where I said I felt as if something had been broken inside me from my relationship with him, she thought for a moment and then said, "You are a Mystery." She had just discovered that my dysfunctions didn't start with Mom's dying. She perceived more of the big picture that is me.

I kind of like being a Mystery (yes, the capital M matters), but I'd rather be a Mystery for something more cool than my mental and emotional dysfunctions.

Current homework: attack the estate bills in small increments, earning computer privileges. Karen is one savvy therapist.

Pecked to Death By Chickens

A good friend of mine has a plaque on one of the walls of her house that says "Having children is like being pecked to death by chickens." (The sign hasn't seemed to have done any lasting harm to her children.) They all understood the concept: they had chickens.

Readers of this blog have some idea of how my life has gone in the past year and some. I haven't blogged much in the last couple of months, what with dealing with the estate, having surgery, finding work that is low-paying but gratifying (and anxiety-producing), and now getting a fairly solid respiratory infection that may have also endangered or even ended another work situation before it started. In fact, it feels a lot like being pecked to death by chickens, Universe-style.

I'm just trying to make progress. All I want is a life of health, financial stability, and the chance to pursue my happiness and my dreams. Given all my fortunate advantages — white, from a middle-class family, well-educated, and highly experienced in my field of endeavor — getting the life I want shouldn't be so hard. But every time I think I have my feet under me, things beyond my control knock them out from under me again: Mom, overwhelming grief and depression, unemployment, emergency surgery for god's sake!, illness, and timing.

Good things have happened: friends have helped and supported me in some places, I found a great therapist (and a mediocre psychiatric nurse), I got the one project. I know that life is hard. I also know that life was simpler and easier for my parents; it wasn't a painful struggle. We were all very happy and content (until my dad died and our lives completely fell apart, but that's a separate story). I just think that continually having to try and shovel myself out of a hole full of mud is harder than it needs to be. Add to that the continuous and uneven peck-peck-peck of my life's disasters — small and large — prevents me from making progress. And it wears me out completely.

You'll notice I haven't given up. I keep trying through some, potentially foolish, belief that I can grasp that life I want, one where I can withstand the difficulties because I have enough of the good to cushion my falls. Or maybe I keep on because, really, what else is there to do?

Only keep trying to dig myself out of the mud and avoid the damned chickens at the same time.

I'm not that fond of chicken.

What's a Beautiful Morning?

I don't wake up looking forward to the mornings.

I did when I was a child. I loved life and I loved being alive. As I got older that changed, bit by bit. Was my cousin in the house? Then it might be a day where he would so something I didn't want to do. Was it a school day? By the end of elementary school, every day was a day to be tormented and made to feel like less than dirt. And then, after Daddy died, well, there were many days when it seemed like there was no reason to get up because he wasn't turning my light on and saying "Good morning!" And with the pain and the distance within our little family, well, there was nothing to look forward to.

There were times in between, when I looked forward to my days. I loved college. But then my little brother killed himself and that brought me to many years of "why bother because it goes to hell."

"I like living myself --- not just beng happy and enjoying myself and having  a good time. I mean living, --- waking up and feeling, all over me, that I'm here --- tickling all over."

Agatha Christie, A Murder Is Announced

Ray Bradbury remarked that he woke up like a rocket, all at once, bounding downstairs with life and joy at starting a new day, to spend four hours writing.

As I've grown older, I have be come less and less interested in starting a new day, less and less interested in going to sleep because when I wake I'll have to start a new day. I exist, and I don't enjoy it. There is so much I could and can do with my time, but I waste it away, trying to avoid my own life, my own experiences, to avoid that I don't wake up "tickling all over" or like a rocket.

A life of verve and vibrancy: I had it. I lost it. I want it back.