Author: damynx

I write. I journal. I blog. I share.

Anger Anger Everywhere, Yet Not A Face to Slap

Okay. here I am thinking that I’m getting my anger under control, reading my book, having safeguards in my mind in case I feel one coming on, and then BOOM knocked on my ass again.  I’m explaining to Cyndi and Mom, mostly Cyndi that my diagnosis is Sever Depression, Severe Anxiety and just a touch of OCD.  Mom cracks wise about how she’s never seen me be OCD about house cleaning, Cyndi calls me Mrs. Monk.  I explained that I’m Mild in that category but I wanted to express to them what Severe Depression meant in todays standards…..Like normally in-hospital care has been prescribed for Severe depression.  No, something else became more important….I don’t remember what, just the sting that they felt what I was going through was trivial compared to whatever it was they needed to talk about.

I know it’s who they are, I shouldn’t set my expectations so high with the two of them, but I keep hoping…….

So far so Good

Today has started out to be a good day.  Got up early (thank’s to Mom…she needed help to dress), ate breakfast, I’m on my third and final soda for the day, I’ve taken my handful of pills and am contemplating getting up and doing my projects for today…..one hour in each bedroom and office.

It would be so nice to have an office to go to to snuggle with instead of my bedroom.  We can read, or I can play with her but I wouldn’t be anywhere near my bed.  As much as I love my bed, as I’ve stated before, there’s a Monster in my bed!!

Facing my Fears

Let’s see if I can get this to post again….my computer ate my last post.  Little bastard!

When I left therapy on Thursday Connie challenged me with going to the gym three times and working in my rooms for a few hours.  The instant they were on my plate I was overwhelmed.  How weak is that?  Seriously, I must be the most frail person on earth.  Needless to say, they didn’t get done.  Tomorrow is the last day to do anything and I’ll try to get something done, but again, no promises.

I have my excuses, very good ones if you ask me.  For exercise, I’ve had gastrointestinal distress, not the normal IBS, but a flu like distress.  I have a standard rule that I need to curtail any and all possibilities of fouling my britches in public.  I’m just now getting over it and things are back to a some-what solid footing again.  Yea me.  Working in my rooms?, too tired and just not wanting to.  It doesn’t help that I’ve been plagued with the feeling ill and then the whole dumb-bunny move of not taking my pills.  I need to not do that any more.  I didn’t take it yesterday because I didn’t want to take them too close together, but I think that needs to be for-gone with because I don’t think it would do me any harm to have extra calm in my system.

I’m feeling the effects of not having my pills.  I hate that the anger returns to quickly when I go off them.  I know I don’t have a lot of lead way with these little white life savers, and so I push it anyway.  I’m irritated to be around Mom so much and I wish the sisters would be more supportive and take her off my hands from time to time, but as the closest unemployed person in the family, they feel it is the least I can do.  It just irks me that I’m stuck.

I need to get better about these things.  I can’t just hide behind my overwhelmed self forever, no matter how much I’d like to.  I want to re-enter my life and take it by the horns and drive it to my desires, not to the worlds whims.  The start of that is to take my therapy more seriously, to take my drugs regularly and to participate more in my life.  It’s so much easier to say, so much harder to do, but I need to make the strides necessary, no matter how hard and/or painful.  It won’t kill me, or so I keep telling myself, and luckily I’ve gotten to a point in my life when I realize I won’t kill me either.

I’ve stopped crying….

The last blog was written over a week ago. I ‘drafted’ it until I calmed down and then I forgot. I don’t cry, as a rule and I certainly don’t cry in public, it’s humiliating enough to blubber behind closed doors. The stress caused a massive IBS attack and, trust me, you don’t need details.

Therapy today is about taking control of the idea that you have no control and to step consciously into you fears. So, I have to exercise three times before next Tuesday and call my therapist and finish up my office and bedroom. Which are on my check-list.

I’ve been trying to figure out what it is I need to do to get from the I’m-back-on-my-feet-but-don’t-know-where-to-go-from-here? to the next step. But by small things can  all things come to pass. This week it’s eating three meals and taking my meds and BSL to employed and writing again and, dare I say it, even happy and at peace again. I’m not a coward, I know I’m not, but I am afraid of the moving forward part of this
process. Why? I dunno, maybe it’s because I’m afraid of making a giant fool of myself.  I’m afraid that everyone knows that I’m in the Void….again….and know that I can’t make ends meet no matter what I try….that people just won’t like me.

So, working out this week and finishing my rooms…..maybe roll out the yoga mat too.

Connie put up this interesting diagram today about fear, despair and anxiety and their
polar opposites…..

Negative-Positive

Fear – Trust

Anxiety – Peace

Despair – Hope

I have always believed that depression is a profound loss of Hope, peace is one of the fruits of the Spirit and trust is something I need to learn to have with Heavenly Father. I’m going to try the basic lessons I used to do on my mission. I’m going to give to the Lord what is His and trust He will help me get the money back to Cyndi for the rent. Sometimes walking in faith means you have to take the fist couple of steps without seeing where your foot will fall. And I’m talking about all faith, no “back-up” plan, no consequences for Him if He doesn’t come through the way I want Him to. I’m just going to trust that everything that happens will be for my benefit and good. Heaven help me!

Crying Is For Sissies

I want to make something clear: I DON’T CRY.  Mostly because I’m afraid I won’t stop.  Something triggered the water-works today and for a while I couldn’t get in control of myself.  I screamed, silently, hoping to clear the crying but it only made it worse.  Not until I got down on my knees and pled for the floodgates to close did I finally calm down.  I put a cold damp cloth to my face to hide the evidence.  I don’t cry pretty, and the tell-tale blotches and shiney eyes announce to the world that I’m unstable and will bust into tears at a moments notice.

The trigger was simple enough: I was late on the rent and my ever-patient landlady said I had to stop paying late and I needed to fix it or go to a smaller apartment.  I’ve never felt more like a compete failure as an adult before.  I felt weak, useless, frail and angry all at the same time, and …..here they come again.  I can’t cry here, I’m in public…..

Monsters in my Bed

I know, it wasn’t too long ago I was raving about how much I love my bed.  And I do love my bed.  It’s my own private island.  But now, I’m sensing a more sinister presence, a monster of sorts, in my bed.  When I need to get up, and I’m wide awake and I sorta want to get up, I feel these arms go around me, pulling me back down to the feather bed.  “Oh, five more minutes won’t hurt,” it would whisper to me and I’d close my eyes.  The cycle repeats itself until I’m more exhausted from sleeping and just surrender myself to the monsters arms.  The next thing I know I’ve slept the morning and half the day away and am so torpid and sluggish I feel as though I should just stay there until tomorrow.  I think I talked about tomorrow too.

Yes, I know how demented it sounds to say there is a monster in my bed.  Delusional and paranoid is the clinical terms, I believe.  No, there really isn’t a monster in my bed.  I just can’t deal with the idea that I am the monster, I’m the one who surrenders to the depression or anxiety, (I don’t know which one keeps me abed).  I guess I’m the monster…….

I’m Normal Within My Deviance

How can the word ‘Normal’ evoke both pride and disappointment at the same time?  I’ve always wanted to be normal.  That my feelings, or lack there of, were normal.  That my life isn’t so way out of proportion as the rest of the world.  And still, I reveled in the idea that I wasn’t normal.  That my uniqueness gave me insight, gave me a position as a writer to have a better or different or novel way of looking at life that would be of value to my reader.  But I’m normal in my reactions or someone that has been raised by a narcissist (Mom) and the favored of one parent (Papa).  C was liked best by my Mom and I was liked best by my Dad, which left S to have to fend for herself a lot of the time being the quintessential middle child.  Totally not fair to her.

Lack of connection, lack of intimacy, lack of confidence are all hallmarks of the child of a narcissist. And as much as I don’t want to blame anyone, especially my  Mom in this journey, at this time, blame is the only oar in the boat.  Blame yes, fault no.  I don’t believe that Mom has any control over her self-projecting behavior any more than her mother and her mother’s mother before her.  The clay from which we are founded is colored by all the people before us, what we mold urselves into is completely our choice.  I have chosen to no longer be the lump that pleases my family, I want to be a classical-Renaissance-modern piece of work that inspires and inhabits the space she has been allotted in this life.  The purpose of therapy is to give me the tools to subtract the clay that has blocked the best form from emerging from the whole.  So, I’m normal.  It’s a good foundation to start my sculpting from.

The funny thing is, I’ve known this.  I’ve been told this by dear friends, that considering the family dynamics I’m normal, even better than because I’m aware of it.  But hearing it from someone who has studied and worked with other ‘Normal’s seems to make it that much more real, and solid.  Yea, we’re off on a good start.

Tomorrow Is Always A Day Away

Little Orphan Annie sings that song in the play. The thing of it is, it’s always a day away. It’s never the now. I have so many grand plans for the ever elusive tomorrow that I give myself on a pass for today. I’ll get up earlier tomorrow. I’ll get my room straightened out tomorrow. I’ll find a job tomorrow. I’ll train Sammy how to poop on command tomorrow. I’ll read a book tomorrow. I’ll get my laundry done tomorrow. I’ll shower tomorrow. I’ll take care of my blood sugar tomorrow. I’ll be happy tomorrow. I’ll be better tomorrow. I won’t be tomorrow. Tomorrow exists in that fleeting nanosecond between tick and tock just as the first chime ring in the new day. Then it’s today, it’s now, it’s never. But, there’s always tomorrow.

Safe in Bed

I am blessed to have a Victorian bed.  It is made from church pews for both head and foot boards.  It stands higher than the norm because the Victorians weren’t fond of sleeping with the household vermin so the cast iron bedrails were placed well above rat reach.  On top of that height I have a standard box spring and matrices so I’m even higher than the average bed is meant to be.  And I love it.  It’s my own private island.  These days it has been my retreat, my solace, my sanctuary  from the world.  Some day I’m going to have to find the will, the energy, the medication to leave it behind and go forward into the world around me and make a mark or two.  But for now, I know I’m safe in bed.

The Separate Self

This is the first section in Viorst’s book of Necessary Losses. In essence it’s about cutting the umbilical cord from Mommy and Daddy and learning to stand on your own two feet. However, it debunks the idea that you cut the cord when you turn 18, move out, go to University and then forward in your life through self-propelled societal rites of passages. So not true.

Cutting the umbilici starts the day of birth and progresses throughout life. We are expelled from our mother’s womb, hopefully without incident and brought into a world of foreign sterility, naked and cold we scream for what we have lost.

From the womb we become attached and form a sort of nirvana with our mother who feeds us and gently  ares for us in the harsh bright world we’ve been brought into. Until she leaves us, the first whack at the connection between mother and child. Papa was there eventually to fill in and to help us gain our footing, showing us that we can be one and together within the family structure. This is our first
experience with love; both giving and receiving love. Agape. Unconditional love.

As time moves forward the abandonment because more of an agreed upon  eparation and a coming back together. Again, small gnawing strikes at the ties that bind until we are a single, self-loving, self-empowered human being capable of giving and receiving love without fear of loss of love or self. Like a butterfly who has to push itself away from the chrysalis on it’s own. If you stop to help the transformed to flight it will not have the necessary strength to survive.

How does this apply to me?

  • I trip over the umbilici here at home, so we know that it hasn’t been
    severed.  But not severed by who (or isit whom? I never could get that right.)?  I realized while reading this book about how children from narcissistic parents raise narcissistic kids, and it’s a repeated thing.  I’ve somehow been put into the roll of my Mothers mother, and I am taking care of her the way she has never been taken care of before.  She is completely unencumbered by the stresses of every-day living, she doesn’t have to worry about anything, in general.  She has said several times that she’s the happiest she’s ever been.  This conflicts with my lack of maternal instinct.  Whatever desire I had to be a mother was sated by the nieces and the nephews, I don’t feel like I have it to give now. I’ve learned that love and hate are part of the same process, that thinking about the hate you have for someone you love/like doesn’t make you a bad person, acting on it does.  One must make a conscious decision not to do bad things, our choices determined who/what we are.  Like Newton’s theory of Motion…To all things there is an equal and opposite reaction.  One cannot exist without the other.
  • Despite my best efforts, I appear to be more narcissistic than I want to be.  Though self-love is vital part of ones esteem, it shouldn’t be all ncompassing to the point of drowning.  Therapy, in and of itself, is an indulgence into self, but a necessary one and I shouldn’t feel like I’m being a ‘bad’ person because of it.
  •  Being the person I want to be instead of the person I present to the world is going to take more work than just pretending I am who I say I am.
  • I need to let go of my fearful and childish black-and-white simplifications for  the difficult ambiguities of real life.  This is going to hurt.  Black and white means there is a wrong and a right (where I can be more right than wrong) and a world of ambiguities will never have that satisfaction.
  • I’ve got a freakish amount of work to be ME again.