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.

Pretty Well

People tell me that I'm doing pretty well right now as I'm dealing with a number of difficult tasks. It stops me each time someone says that because I'm not even thinking about how well I'm doing. I'm not thinking about how what I'm doing even has an emotional context — I'm simply doing what I need to do. That's what it seems like to me.

But when someone tells me I'm doing pretty well, or that I'm doing great, a small alarm goes off inside my mind. Why wouldn't I be doing well? Is there something I don't know? Because I am not paying attention to the larger picture. I'm looking at each discrete task and achieving it, or figuring out how to achieve it. I completely forget why I have to remove things from the house, why I have to arrange for movers, why I have the vague feeling that each day here is one more closer to my very last.

What this all means is that the emotional context will come crashing down on me all at once and swamp me. I can accept that. I hope it waits until I'm home again.

A More Civilized Pace — Please!

Change. I know life is full of it, but I do remember when the changes in my life were more leisurely, when they weren't falling over each other in their eagerness to meet me, when they weren't pulling me along at rocket-speed and dangling me behind them like a toy on a tether.

I complain about everything, right? But my life seems to be on a bullet-train of change. I'm half a century old: change should slow down! Just let me catch my breath, at least. And how about balancing things out with some positive changes, such as financial independence (or at least security), and love and friendship (close on a geographic scale, please)?

I'm not a jet-setter. I'm not an adrenaline-junkie (but there are a couple of things I wouldn't mind trying again). I may walk briskly, but I also like to "stroll about, lookin' at the shops."* I love spending long, slow hours with friends and family, telling stories and laughing, taking long and scenic drives, playing games, and watching children play. I love spending time with someone special, curled up at opposite ends of the couch, and reading news articles, comics, and book passages to each other. I like to savor.

Mind you, I'm not only slow. I enjoy fast-paced movies and books. I love to watch MythBusters and the more explosions the better! I like fast rides and short lines. There's nothing like running and laughing with children until everyone collapses with exhaustion and giggles.

My social life at home is too slow: it's dead. With no work, my days drag. If I weren't paralyzed with fear over my impending complete brokeness, I could at least write. On the other hand, there have been jobs, Mom's cancer and death and all the many months of follow-up to that (that are speeding up now), and changes in my social life that brought it to death, freelance gigs, meeting people professionally — it's cocaine one one side and pot on the other, but not balanced and neither healthy nor fun.

Do you know what I want? 

1. Financial independence, or at least financial security, so I don't worry all the time, expending my energy fruitlessly.
2. Friends with whom I spend time with frequently.
3. Enough to do without it being too much. If I work for pay, then less than 40 hours a week and little or no commute: why spend my life on things that don't add to it? If I don't need to work for pay, then enough volunteer work and activities to keep me interested and interesting but that leaves me with plenty of time and energy to spend in other ways.
4. Someone special to spend that time with on the couch.
5. Two cats.
6. An office and studio that is full of light and comfort and that inspires creativity. In fact, an entire house like that. My house.

I know life is full of change, and that you cannot control all of it, or even most of it. I know change comes at all speeds, but lately I've felt exhausted by it. I want some good change in my life, and for my vehicle of change to move a bit slower. I don't need to ride in a stealth bomber.

*Moody Blues, Days of Future Passed

Fine. Be That Way.

Yet again, no help is offered from Life. "You are so strong!" "Look at how much you've done!" "See? You have already done it!" Sigh.

Maybe from your perspective, but not so much from mine. I can see how much more there is to do. And I'm TIRED!!!! So I want a little help. (Yo, Universe! A little help?)

I don't want to recreate the wheel. If there are established ways that work in my situation, that help to develop more positive mental states that last, then it seems to me that following those paths would be efficacious. This is not necessarily a time when "go the way less travelled" or "go your own way" or thinking outside the box is the good option.

Fix now, creative later.

===

Much later ...

I've spent the evening with my neighbors on the south side of the house. They rock. I haven't had any alcohol for awhile due to my previous psych saying "no no" due to the medications I'm on (other medical folks have been less stringent), and they gave me some wine. Then some more wine. Then dinner. Then, when it was just me and her (because he was asleep on the couch in front of the TV), homemade kahlua and cream over ice. Mmm. And lots of talking about Mom and grief and Mom's choices about the estate and about their family and about my special friend (because they were a couple I shared the potential with back when it started) and all kinds of stuff. I haven't been tipsy in quite awhile. If I can, I'm going to join them for their 7:30 am walk. If not tomorrow, then definitely the following morning. Tomorrow I may not manage it. I am feeling pretty darned good.

Anyway, I got plenty of validation about being alone and trying to do things alone and it being difficult and nothing about being all positive. I liked it. I know other people are trying to be helpful, but it is also very helpful for someone to say "yes, you are alone. yes, it is hard. I hear you and my heart goes out to you. Have some more wine."

I had a great time.  Now I'm tipsy. And tired. I'll write tomorrow when I can function mentally.

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.