Half A Glass

“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” — Helen Keller

Being positive isn't easy, but as the quote says, being negative won't do much for you. When I was younger, I was quite the optimist, even a bit pollyanna-ish, but sad and bad things happened, my life became much more difficult than I could easily manage, my positivity turned over into negativity, and all I saw were spilled glasses of milk everywhere I looked.

So I tried to at least be practical. Engineer-like practical: there is half a glass of liquid. Or my favorite: that glass is twice as big as it needs to be. But the pessimism remained.

Let's face it: life has kicked me in the face a lot. I don't need to re-enumerate how right now, but my childhood optimism could not stand up to it, and pulling optimism out of the Abyss takes time and concerted effort, as well as energy that I am generally in short supply of. (Yes, I ended the sentence with a preposition. Does that bother you? Did you understand the sentence? If you understood, then the sentence is linguistically just fine and report me to the grammar police if you don't like the way I structured it.)

My friend Julie has made it her job to work on my negativity, to banish it and to train me to be more positive. I appreciate her efforts more than I have articulated to her. (Thanks, Julie!) I am a tough case, I know, and sometimes I actively resist being positive. Why? Lots of reasons, I figure. The Devil you know. Resistance to change. And the one where, every time I started feeling positive and good and upbeat, it seemed some severe catastrophe occurred. Someone I loved died (and I have three very concrete examples of just that scenario). Something I wanted — love, a job, a stable life — fell completely apart. Wants and needs were denied. (Julie will disagree with me on the 'need' part here, but that varies according to belief systems.)

Whatever has occurred in my past, I want to let go of it. I want to learn to be more positive and less negative.  (Do I sound a bit too much like Wednesday in Addam's Family Values after she spent time in the Happy Shack? Don't worry about the oddly strained smile on my face, really! And no, I don't want to be perky.) I want to be realistic and give the good in life at least half a chance to show itself.

There are things I want to do in my life and I need hope and a belief that things will go they way I want, or at least in a good direction, if I want to accomplish them. 

So I'm working on my thinking. I've ordered the SOS Help For Emotions book, which I and Karen the Wonder Therapist will work our way through. Maybe you'll actually see me writing entirely positive posts on this blog on an almost daily basis. We'll see. After all, I can't just say "yes, of course!" when I don't have any evidence of it. Not yet. Sometimes, faith has to be learned. 

Now I have to go fill my glass, because pessimists and optimists can agree when a glass is entirely empty. 

11.11.11 — Welcome to My Party

Depending on who you listen to, today's binary date brings either great evil (Zombiepocalypse anybody?) or great good (The Rapture, if you are of a specific belief system; The Rapture, if you are the rest of us). All I know is that I have fallen many steps backward in my journey out of the Abyss. As I told a friend last night, I'm just a goopy, weepy mess right now. Kind of like a puddle in the Abyss. A goopy puddle. And this is my Great Big Goddamn Pity-Party.

I'm stressed about all the stuff I still haven't done, especially the Estate bills so we can close out and I can get my damned money (you would think that would motivate me; maybe I procrastinate so the others won't get theirs?), and the manager/coordinator job, which I haven't done much at all with. I feel guilty and I beat myself up over it. And no, the apartment is no better ... it's worse. It's almost a year since it's been entirely clean. Almost a year since the carpet (which is not entirely visible) was vacuumed. I'm afraid to look under some of this stuff — I know there will be dead (please oh please oh please no) bugs under it, or in it.

Getting fatter, not getting stronger. Eating junk with lots of sugar, something I have such an addiction to that I seem powerless in the face of it. If I have sugar, then that's all I want. It's overwhelming and compelling. I'm not walking, nor am I exercising. At my age, I need to change this. I need to be as strong and flexible and mobile as I can be; there is no one to take care of me in my old age.

I feel lonely, in that "I have no family" sort of way. No family, no partner, not even any friends who love me enough to invite me to be with them during xmas or New Year's. Except my BFF, but if the others don't seem that interested, there's no point in flying all that way. And feeling unloved. My BFF and his whatever-she-is are nice enough, but exceptionally dysfunctional (pot? kettle?) that it's sometimes uncomfortable to be with them. And BFF and I have minefields galore. And I have no friends here who are so close that they will spend significant (if any) time with me, much less holidays. I love my online friends, but that's what they are: online.

I need to touch and be touched. I desperately need to be held; I have had little of that since Mom died. I need it for comfort and to fill a physical need that connects me, to the ground, and to other people. I feel so inexpressibly alone.

All of which leads me to the goopy, weepy mess. Fat & flappy? Check. Self-pitying? Check. Weepy? Check. Sliding backward, erasing months of progress? Double-check.

Thoughts (which Karen the Therapist would tell me I should address with Cognitive Therapeutic thoughts, but I just don't feel up to it, or even deserving of it):

• If no one else cares enough to take care of me, why should I care enough?
• I'm going to disappoint everyone eventually; might as well get it over with.
• I'm going to live my life alone. I'm going to end my life alone. So what's the point of it? I'm not suicidal, but some days the thought of slurping down the entire bottle of one of my meds seems attractive.
• Maybe some people are right and mental and emotional problems only get worse as we get older — never better. That would suggest that I am engaged in a futile waste of energy.
• I cannot have the man I love. I have seen him less than 5 times this year. It's not entirely rational, but I feel unloveable and always second-best. Hell, the guy I lived with for a few years even chose computer games and video recordings over me. Given my experience — decades of it — I have to conclude that men just don't want me particularly. They don't value me particularly. It's all written in invisible neon lights over my head.

Well, that should provide a selection of what I'm thinking and feeling. I'm a mess. I'm weepy. And I am gloopy — disgusting and flabby and disturbingly sticky.

I don't like myself. I don't like my life. I want out. But I don't see any way to like myself or get a life I like, so I'm stuck. I don't see anything — possible — that I want or that is more satisfying that what I have.

If you are still reading, then thank you for attending my pity party. Time to go now. I feel another cry coming on.

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.

A Cry for Help in the Darkness

Anger, resentment, discontent, desire, scarcity: these feelings fill my mind and my heart far more than any positive emotions. I tried very hard to develop more positivity in my thoughts and was doing pretty well, I thought. 

Slowly, stealthily, the positive thoughts and constructs leaked out of my mind and the dark, negative thoughts slid in. I didn't even notice, the dark ones feel so familiar. I feel consumed by the unfairness of life, grief, and loss. There's a positivity-sized hole in my mind: how do I stop it so I can keep my mind balanced and positive? After all, a friend spent an entire week writing about positivity in response to my desire for validation for my less-than-positive reality.

My mind is not a happy place to reside in. I cruise my usual blogs, but comment seldom because the useful- and/or positive-comment area of my brain is empty. All around me, fairies are falling to the ground and kittens are crying. I can feel my hair and my clothing turning black. What's the music Emo kids listen to these days?

When my mind is filled with sadness and despair, my body hurts. One of the joys of fibro, but it's also a side-effect of depression. My sleep is affected and pretty much everything sucks, thus completing the feedback loop that says the Universe is a dark and dreadful place.

It's like a prison. I want out.

It seems I am always saying — and asking for — help. This case falls under a request for help doing or learning to do something. I want a coach to help me regain my positive frame of mind, my reality-tinged optimism of former days. A coach who is sensitive to what I've gone through, the validation I need, and who won't go all perky and chipper on me. But I expect that, as usual, I will be left to do this all alone. Again. I honestly think this makes the process go much more slowly, leaving me depressed and and full of darkness for much longer. I can't see how this helps me. But then, it's not the Universe's place to be helpful or play fair. The Universe is just what it is. 

But maybe the force and energy that is Life will help me out a little. Something, someone, please give me some help here.

Sometimes

Ya know, sometimes it's just not possible to be positive. And sometimes I want to be negative, or at least not-positive. This has been an ungodly shitty year, the latest in a life punctuated by unexpected and tragic losses and other traumas. (I am the poster child for fibromyalgia, which is thought to develop as a result of one major physical or emotional trauma, or repeated ones. I'm in on all counts.) Sometimes I need to acknowledge the shit.

I need to acknowledge that my life sucks right now and that the non-sucky part is still somewhere past the horizon and that it's quite possible that my life is going to suck even more in the very near future unless a series of miracles occur.

To me, being positive in the face of these things or, even worse, about these things is like saying they don't matter or they aren't real. It's unrealistic and irrational. Bad stuff must be acknowledged. Pain and fear and the very real possibly of going stone broke — even having spent my jars of coins on food — is right before my eyes. I can see it. That's not being pessimistic, that's being rational.

Acknowledging the bad doesn't give it extra power. I think that ignoring it gives it power; the power to overwhelm you because you were so busy positively ignoring it that all the realistic things you might have done you didn't.

Sometimes, when I'm trying to be all bright and hopeful and positive, I'm really on the edge of tears.

This has been my life. This is my life. If things entirely out of your control repeat in your life, is that a lesson? If so, mine appears to be that life is about pain and helplessness that slowly whittle you down to nothing over time.

I guess the main thing I'm trying to say is this: sometimes being positive and pushing the bad stuff aside invalidates the very reality of the bad stuff and the pain that has been happening and that is happening right now. And just because something good happens or I have a good day does not negate everything else that continues to be Not Good in my life. I've been doing all that I am able to do, from when all I could do is crawl out of bed in the morning and back into it in the evening until now when I can wash my breakfast dishes as well. I have not been capable of looking for a job in an organized or energetic or even useful manner if at all, so no money is coming in. All the affirmations and visualizations in the world have not brought me money through other means (bequests, lottery tickets, philanthropy, whatever). Reality says that if I don't become stone broke in the next 6 weeks, then I'm going to miss it by only a hair and that missing it might as well be luck.

So, this being positive thing. Don't take it to extremes. Doing so feels disrespectful and invalidating. I rather need some validation now and then throughout this terribly shitty time. I need some now. Just because I can manage a smile doesn't mean I'm not in hell.

The Depression, She Returns

I guess it was the quietude before the sinkhole. I know recovery is not linear — I've said it often enough to myself, my therapist, on this blog. But it's still a shock when it happens. Even though I met a person in business who could be a great help to me, and who I could be a great help to, I feel overwhelmed and sad and in a hole. My laughter has disappeared again, and my smiles are small and variable. It's depression and it sucks.

Hell, even with an amazing thunderstorm, I didn't get too excited.

The sleepiness came upon me (I should have had more to eat for lunch, but I thought I'd be going out again) and I gave in, set the alarm for 45 minutes (I really need to set a more boisterous alarm), and woke about an hour and a half later when the phone rang. It was The Man and we had a decent time of talking, both of us sleepy. He can't go to the Dog Show with me because he has worked too hard again and had too little sleep this week, so he'll be welcoming his son home and sleeping. After having him for long lunches both days last weekend, I know better than to expect him again this weekend, but still it makes me a little sad. After we talked I lay back on the couch to just relax a bit before getting up, then spent the next four hours drowsing off and on ... until 9 pm. That's extreme even for me. I had dreams, but I don't remember them.

I still believe I will end up together with The Man. It doesn't feel like a desperate wish, just a calm sureness. I generally know when I'm fooling myself; if I am in this instance then I've become much, much better at it!

And now it's another weekend, which will be quiet and solitary. I should walk; my legs hurt from inaction and I'm doing myself damage by being so immobile. I should work on the house — I have some energy right now. The flesh is willing but the spirit is weak. Not quite the usual thing.

A good weekend to start a little yoga, a little meditation (probably walking for me, otherwise I tend to drift off). And there's nothing wrong with doing some work on my professional presence on the weekend; it's not like I've been doing any during the week.

If the depression lifts. It's a heavy thing and sometimes holds me down like a large boulder that has smashed me flat on the ground. And I've no one to help roll it off of me.

When the depression hits, so does my loneliness, my sadness, and I suppose my self-pity. Poor, poor me. Such a sad sack with such an awful life. Sniff, sniff.

So finally another post. And it's pathetic.

Motionless

Our bodies are made for movement. To whatever extent a body can move, it needs to move. Recent articles tell how all kinds of non-good and even bad things happen to and within your body when you don't move it.

I have barely moved in 10 months. My muscles are shortened and tight. My body hurts, yet walking causes pain as well. While I fear what I am doing to my body, my inner paralyzation controls me more than that fear. As my therapist says, what you do depends on which fear is strongest.

My life has been motionless as well. I haven't looked for work (and even if I'd had an interview, I don't think I'd have managed it well, given how messed up I've been). I haven't pursued help for financial problems. I've been a little mouse in a little hole who fears a cat is waiting right outside the hole.

This is not how I want to be! I used to climb trees and ride my bike. I also used to lie on my bed and read for hours. When we had a swimming pool, I could swim laps for hours, enjoying the feel of the water and the movement of my body. (And one time, when no one was around, I swam naked, which is the most blissful feeling in the world.) I used to dance in my house in the evening with my stereo turned up and the only light the flickering of candles.

Of course, I felt safer then. When I was a child, I didn't have to worry because my parents took care of us. After Dad died, I felt the beginnings of the instability of life. Later, I usually had enough money to get by. Even when I had no health insurance, I was healthy and young and didn't need it. I had work, I had enough friends, I had comfortable homes, even if I did move rather a lot at first. For all the problems I had and the traumas and griefs I endured, I still felt a measure of safety that allowed me to move.

Then, in my mid-30s, I had my first immobilizing depression and anxiety. I eventually overcame them, or they went away, and I recovered. I had a few other times that weren't quite as bad, but still I moved less than before. But none of those times of immobility were as long as this one, or as completely paralyzing as this time. Even at the worst of those times, I would get up and move — dance just a little, go into the garden and pick something to eat, walk around the block or on the beach.

I'm old enough that everything I do physically is more significant for my future than anything I've done until now. If I want to be physically fit and in good condition so I'm self-mobile and can take care of myself for a long, long time, I need to move now. I need to exercise now — not the run-a-marathon type or the body-builder type or the gym-rat type. However, I need to be able to walk long distances, briskly, while holding a conversation. I need to be flexible and strong (yoga, pilates perhaps). I need upper body strength as well as lower-body and, most of all, I need to enjoy moving my body, and to move my body because I enjoy it.

Maybe part of my immobility comes down to enjoyment: I don't do what I enjoy. My mind is a strange and sometimes unfathomable place, even to me — it wouldn't be impossible that I am punishing myself for some perceived fault. Fear or punishment, does it matter? I hold myself motionless, strapped down with invisible bonds — and not in the good way. I've emptied my life of so much I enjoy, other than the hurtful binges of fat and sugar that only mimic pleasure, that I'm empty of almost everything but fear and pain and grief and longing ... and the memory of everything good.

Years ago, when I owned my first home, I bought an orchard ladder: a very, very tall three-legged ladder made for people picking fruit from tall trees. I've had a fear of heights since I was a child, but it was my house, and my fruit. As I told my friends and myself, "I will not live my life controlled by my fears." For some time, I lived by that credo. Even a few years ago, when I made a major, unbelievable change in my life, I chose to do so in spite of my fears.

The incalculable grief and loss of the last year, all the changes in my life that I had absolutely no control of, the feeling of falling from a high cliff toward rocks many miles below — through them I forgot how brave I am. I forgot my credo from many years ago. I forgot me.

I'm still walking a tightrope with no net below me and each day is scarier than the last, with my continued unemployment and my dwindling resources and my beloved safety net gone forever.  But I can do it. I can do this. I have endured and overcome so many, many things in my life and I have come up from the Abyss again and again to smile, love, and enjoy my life. I need to remember: it never wins.

Remembering this, I must get up again and smile and love and live. Because pain sucks and just existing sucks and if I run out of money and have to go live in someone's basement it will suck, too.

Smiling and loving and living won't hurt me any worse than I hurt now. At least they will make room in the fear and pain I've surrounded myself with so I can move. And the next time that I get knocked down, get my feet wet in the Abyss — because it will happen again and again in my life — the voice inside me will remind me that it never wins and I'll get up and walk and dance my way out of that damned Abyss, out of the paralysis of fear and I will win, because I have done so before. If I can do it as many times as I have, there is every reason I can do it again.

So move.

Deep thoughts #2 --- Going ... up?

Do you ever find, after having been terribly sick or terribly down for a long time, that you resist feeling or seeming or accepting being better?

For example, I have bitten my nails most of my life and over the past decade and a half have managed to slowly make time periods between biting them longer and longer. Then last summer, when the troubles began to get worse, I began biting my nails again. I bit all of them, at some point, to the point of pain. 

A friend recently pointed out how they are growing again. "No they aren't," I said, pointing to the shortest one. "I bit this off just recently." "Yes," she said, "but I see white on all of them."

I wanted to argue with her. I'm not letting my nails grow. I'm still biting them because I'm Not Better Yet! I'm not getting better!

Why? Why would I resist any sign that I may be rising from the Abyss? Why would I want to continue to be or appear to be suffering or ill or unbelievably depressed?

Maybe I'm afraid that if I seem to be getting better, then no one will have patience with me if I'm not completely better — Now! — and all the time hereafter. Or maybe they'll think I was malingering: how long do you have to be in a Bad Place or State before you have legitimacy?

Or maybe I'm afraid I'm doing a disservice to my mom's memory by getting better now. Or maybe to myself in some odd way: if I'm well now, was I really that down and unreachable or was it really just ... all in my mind. Nerves. All those things that say I'm just a hypochondriac or just trying to get attention. Or maybe that I'm actually crazy. But something.

I have honestly turned the corner and I want to live now. That's an amazement in itself.

I'm still not doing my homework regularly, but I believe that my sleeping sickness over my vacation trumps that. Once I have the sleepiness under control and am feeling more me-normal again, the new "better-ness" will be more perceptible.

I'm going to show it off. Let others make their own judgments. I've been down to the Abyss yet again — my third time? my fourth or fifth? — and I beat it yet again. How many others can say that?