Quitter

My parents used to call me a quitter.

• After a year or so of Campfire Girls, I didn't go back. It wasn't any fun and I have some very bad memories of it.
• I was in Honor Choir in 5th grade and I quit it to play softball. Because our lives revolved around my brother's sports, I thought I'd get some of the attention if I played a sport. (There is a whole, ugly story around this, but now isn't the time.) I wish I hadn't done this. I'd have been happier in Choir. But I was only 10 or 11.
• In 6th grade, I joined Girl Scouts. After about five months, all we had done were a handful of crafts. We didn't go anywhere or do anything. I had joined with two other girls, and they were also bored and unhappy. They made me the spokesman to tell the leader we were quitting. She cried. I was 11. My folk began calling me a quitter to my face.
• I was forced to join Job's Daughters when I was in 7th grade. Didn't want to, but the family had promised my dying grandfather (and given several things, I certainly felt no compulsion to follow that promise). I stayed for a year and a half before being able to leave it. My parents again accused me of quitting, of never being able to stick with a thing.

Not Enough

Today was my mother's birthday. She would have been 72.

I'm doing particularly badly today, but have been doing generally badly for weeks. I've done virtually nothing on one of my jobs; I'm sure they are just so glad they asked me to do it.

I'm so miserable and I don't know what to do about it that I'm not already doing. I think it wouldn't be a bad thing to be dead on almost a daily basis. I hurt and there is nothing that gives me any reason to think I'm going to become appreciably better. I have no family. What friends I do have are really just friends: none of them will ever come to visit me here or make me truly part of their family. And I haven't made any constant friends since I moved here. Given my experience, that's likely to remain the case.

Anyone who's reading this is already thinking "oh you should have hope" and "you don't really mean that" and "you don't know that's the case" and all that other optimistic stuff. And I wouldn't be able to convince such people — even if I bothered trying — that I have done and thought and felt all the hopeful, positive, productive things anyone has ever told me about, asked me about, or that I've read about or even thought of independently and none of it has worked.  But nobody ever believes me about that anyway. Just call me Cassandra.

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.

Turn Off, Tune Out

Even with the new ideas I'm having here, the great work, and the epiphanies, I still ignore my life. I am still not living, I'm only taking up space and air.

Most people in my position would be finding some work, any work to help pay bills. Most people would have made the calls to find financial help.

I just watch streaming video and read blogs.

I have lived vibrantly in the past, even in my adulthood. I've even lived vibrantly in the last few years. But I've done so less and less and that disturbs me. I don't want to spend how many years I have left just taking up space, simply existing. I want to enjoy living.

Sure, right now the zest is still pretty much gone, with Mom gone and my having a distinct lack of social life. I love my online friends, but I need face time. I need to be able to hug someone, or even just touch their arm or their hand. Not being able to touch is kind of like being in prison.

I've had some times with The Man that were beautiful, truly beautiful. I've spent some time with one of my girlfriends here, just talking and talking, that was very fine. When I still lived at the beach, and was walking regularly on the beach, and was not wallowing in self-pity because I didn't have any friends at the beach or a lover, life was beautiful and joyous. (And my body was in good shape, too!)

I want ... I need ... what I don't have, and that stunts me. I feel that living is unpleasant and a chore. I'm sure as hell not having fun and haven't had much in a long time. I know — just do it and all that other stuff. It's ungodly difficult when I don't see any payoff for me in terms of what I want, what I need. I'm not such a great person that I can live to serve others. In many ways, I've been there and done that, from family to manager to lover. I keep thinking the pendulum is going to swing back my way, but family is gone, I'm desperate for an income so I don't have a lot of choice about a managerial relationship, and I don't see The Man choosing me (yet, in some ways, I honestly see us together) nor do I see me choosing another.

So far I've gotten little zings here and there, from mental breakthroughs and good therapy, but it's all popcorn stuff — it doesn't satisfy except for a few moments.

Voices talk to me in my mind — not those kind of voices! — telling me all that stuff about just do it, be satisfied with what you've got, ya gotta give before you can get,  you'll only get love/friends/whatever once you stop wanting it (and what kind of psycho came up with that one?), etc. 

In the Buddhism book I like to read, the author refers to a couple of her friends who died young of cancer. One of them wrote a letter to all his friends about how he would have wanted more, but he had never wanted other.  You know the sayings about living without regrets? My life is filled with regrets and ways I wish my life had been "other." This is nothing like the life I wanted to live, and I never imagined I would be on the far side of middle age and completely alone as regards family and geographically close friends. This is nothing like the life I always imagined, not just in little ways but in huge, powerful, reasons for living ways.

So it's not really hard to figure out why I don't look forward to tomorrow and why my depression recurs and why this time it is so damned hard to shake. I can't even call my mom to talk to her about my sadness and get her sympathy and pep-talk the way I have a thousand million times before. 

I have no one I with whom I can exchange "I love you." "I love you, too." I miss it.

Therapy knocked me down and made me cry

Yeah, that therapy is a big ol' bully. Makes me cry. Makes me look at things that hurt me. Knocks me clear on my butt and leaves me sore and tired all the rest of the day. Sheesh.  Therapy is a mean muthuh.

What made me cry? Well, we talked about Mother's Day. I didn't get teary or even emotional yesterday. But I cried on Saturday because someone told me she was aware that this, my first one without Mom, would be extra hard and that she was thinking of me. No one else said anything to me, until they read the blog. Not my oldest friends. Not my mom's friends; not even her best friend who was supposed to adopt me. I felt ignored and that the people who say they care simply didn't think about me or felt it wasn't important. I felt even more alone and isolated than ever.

So when Karen-the-therapist and I began talking about it, I began crying. The more we talked about it and how I felt and why, the harder I cried. I even became inarticulate from time to time, I was crying so hard. It just wouldn't stop, all my feelings of loneliness and missing Mom and feeling that my friends don't think of me (whether they do or not, this is how I feel) came flooding out. 

I was a mess.

I read something in a blog comment today that really bothered me. Someone had written in about how isolated and hurting she felt, and how hard it was to see how well the blog author was doing after a year and the woman who wrote in felt she'd made no progress. 

One of the commenters was trying to be helpful and going on about how the only person you can count on is you, that only you can do this stuff, and you always have to do it alone. Except, I don't think the commenter is all alone. I think she has family. When you have backup, even if you are doing things yourself, you are not in isolation. It bothered me because I truly am doing things all alone and I'm not doing so well or quickly. It's harder than the commenter made it out to be. But I didn't want to be mean on the blog, even though I didn't think it was good advice to the woman who had written in.

So many of my buttons were pushed in therapy: loneliness, abandonment, fear of total isolation and friendlessness, anger that someone has diminished my experience. And therapy caused me to live through and describe each one, which hurt like hell.

That's how therapy beat me up, knocked me down, and made me cry.

Stole my lunch money too, but you have to pay for the privilege.