Category: Random Voidness

A Well Medicated Machine

I chatted with Dr. W the other day and he would like me to come in every day….he feels I’m a breath of fresh air.  So, I’m doing well.  Backing down the Lexapro from 50 back to 40 has relieved the tension in my jaw, something that I’m able to counter with carrot sticks and the Buspar is still keeping me from climbing out of my skin and keeping me from losing it when things get bad.  So, I know IT’S NOT ME.

Mom on the other hand has decided to go off all psyche meds and feels the pacemaker will keep her sane.  It might bloody well keep her sane, but it’s really messing with my wellbeing.  I don’t want to be around her because I’m tired of feeling like I’m being used by her.  If she’s trying to manipulate me into getting a job she’s winning.  If she thinks I’m going to pay for a house keeper out of my money, she’s so not going to win that one.

I am feeling a little manipulated because she did a major one last night.  I’ve been sick.  She played sick all day too because I was.  It’s either to make me feel bad and take care of her because she’s sicker than I am or she wanted to guilt me into doing the dishes with bleach because she wanted me to feel like I had poisoned her with the filth in the kitchen or that I don’t clean the dishes well enough to keep her well.  So, I did the dishes, she still mewed about how sick she felt, how she didn’t think she could make it to Patrick’s dinner party and wanted me to go instead of her, I refused.  I already told him I was sick and I couldn’t make it.  She tried guilting me into going, tried bribing me into going, then Patrick called and said he couldn’t pick her up so I had to bring her.  Finally she pulled the “what if I throw up and want to leave early” card and I gave in.  She thought I didn’t want to go because I didn’t have the money to cover my bill.  It turns out I do have the money, I just didn’t want to be trapped in the car with her and I wanted the house all to myself for an hour or two……

I’m stopping this now before I get all wrapped up in some sort of straight jacket of righteous indignation.  I was manipulated which means I allowed it.  She was doing what she does, it’s my fault.  I should be pissed at myself instead of at her. It’s just easier to blame her than to blame my screwed up internal wiring.  If it’s her fault I don’t have to change.  I need to change because I don’t want to be here any more.  I don’t want to be treated like a servant and I don’t want to snap at her like she’s a burden.  Currently, without her meds, she is a burden to me.  I can’t to anything for myself without having to have to include her, or bring her along, or feed her the same things…etc.  She wants to saddle her identity to mine and be what I am, but I won’t allow her to share in the identity I’ve had to struggle to form.  Yes, she was never allowed that as a child, but honestly, neither was I.  I’m trying to make this time a time where she can do that, find herself,  for herself.  I’m not willing to share mine.

I need to get back to reading on a daily basis, and writing on a daily basis too.  I keep talking about spending the time doing 300 lines a day, but I’ve only done it once or twice.  Mom needs me, yes, but she can’t have me all the time, I can’t handle it without her medication and I’m not going to put myself in harms way because she is messing with the mechanisms in our relationship.

A Palpable Silence

I’ve been in such a funk these past few days.  I started reading The Homecoming by Bradshaw, I had some spare time in the early afternoon because I was between doctors appointments so I thought I would crack the book and see what is in store for me.  I got a few pages into the introduction and I had to stop.  Not just because they called my name but because I don’t think I could handle any more of hearing the letters these people were writing to their parents without pulling up the dregs of my own wounded child.  In some regards I wasn’t as horribly treated as some, but some hit so close to home and stirred up other emotions and memories that I keep forgetting I’ve buried.

I’ve gone silent.  Which in a way is good, I got some wholesale editing done today on my pinks but I’m not very talkative to Mom and she’s irritating me.  She won’t shut up and let me just have the silence.  She actually realized that I was trying to pseudo-nap today, what I call floating, that she needed to stop talking and trying to engage me into some form of conversation.  I need to get back to the basics with my anger management and I think I’m going to put Bradshaw on a shelf and re-read When Anger Hurts and actually do the journal this time.  I think I can handle adding the extra work onto my list of things to do.

What is annoying me is that this has been hanging on for two days now.  Normally I shake it off and go on like nothing happened.  I’m worried that I’m pushing back reading the book because I don’t want to dredge up the skeletons in my past and see them again, rotted flesh and vacant eyes, staring at me, accusing me for not protecting them when I was a child.  I couldn’t, I was a child, but tell that to them.

My mind has been focusing on scenarios that are never going to happen again, and I can’t seem to derail them.  It’s just the spinning and spinning and the whole “What would you do if-” BS that I don’t even need to waste my time on.  It’s family stuff, it’s annoying and it’s really never going to happen….at least not to me.

In the mean time, Mom keeps asking me why I’m so quiet and I have nothing to tell her.  She hasn’t done anything lately, all she did was leave a trail of dead bodies behind in my psyche that I need to give a proper burial to.  I don’t think there is going to be an easy route through this part of my education….Damnit!

Comforting The Wounded Child

Thich Nhat Hanh says there is a wounded child in all of us in need of comfort and needs to be brought into our mindfulness practices in order to facilitate healing.  He talks about bringing her along on meditative walks, maybe even spending a whole week with her, etc.  As flippant as I’d like to be at this concept I can’t find it in me.  He’s right.  The wounded little girl in me has been sending up flares for me to pay attention to her for a long time now. I’ve just thought it was a way for my anger to flare at my Mom in retaliation to all of her self-centered demands for things like they never were when I was growing up.

Memories of being hit, of going hungry, of being isolated in corners while my mother slept have been coming up in my mind.  Of remembering, or rather not remembering, my mother ever showing me how to clean house, just demanding that it be done, and yelling or spanking me when it wasn’t done right.  Of being called stupid, weird, strange, fat, pig, etc.  I won’t allow myself to believe these taunts, beatings and shunning were malicious, intentional attacks on my as a child, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.

I guess this harkens back to the whole “getting in touch with your inner child” psycho-babble of the 70’s and 80’s, but as I recall, that just encouraged the rich and self-indulgent to be childish.  This isn’t about getting in touch with your “child” but the “wounded” child.  Two completely different entities.  Christ talks about how we need to become as children, but He was talking in faith, in wonder, in guile.  The wounded child had her wonder and guile taken from her.  Luckily I still have my faith.  I need to work at bringing her back to that child-like state and get away from the angry, child-ish frame of mind.

It seems appropriate for me to comfort her and pay attention to her because I’m trying to re-raise me as well as my mom.  To not only be the mother to her she always wanted and for me to be the mother to me I never had.  An integral  part of that is going to be spending time with my wounded poppet and comfort her, tell her she is loved and wanted and that I am grateful she was born and is a treasure if to no one else but me, and I value that treasure beyond all worth on earth.

I’m not sure how to apply this concept though.  Do I schedule something on the calendar or do I try to remember it in my daily practice and life?  I hope she tells me what she needs because I don’t want to mess myself up more than I already am.

A Night @ The Opera

Went to see Turnadot at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House.  Puccini’s final work.  My understanding was that he didn’t finish it.  I don’t know how much of it was finished before he died, but it was finished perfectly on stage.  The spectical  of opera always lightens my spirit and my mind.  The talent of the performers, the costumes, the stage dressing….AMAZING.  I’m blessed to have a friend who loves the opera and invites me along. Turnadot is my hero and my new favorite opera.  She was cold, unfeeling and sort of a man hater, but she melted and cried when she finally fell in love.  She gives me hope that I will feel again and maybe find love…beyond the concept anyway.

Had a bite to eat at the Blue Muse by the garage I parked at and played with my phone and just enjoying my own company.

The opera soothes the savage beast as well,  as shampooing the carpet.  Something far more respectable in my opinion.

Writing is Exhausting

So, I wrote 10 pages in my journal last night and it dried out my brain.  I’m worried that I won’t be able to do the amount of work I’m going to need to do in order to get my current project edited and scarier still, I won’t be able to put the work into the one I’m shopping around when it gets picked up by a publishing house.  Doing blogs doesn’t do it because, though I’m writing, I’m skimming the cream off the top of my brain, the ideas that are easy to reach and discuss.  Last night I was trying to figure out why my body was protesting the idea of getting some sort of bariatic surgery to help me get well.  I had to dig through dust and move through the psychic hoard with a shovel.  Though it wasn’t ‘creative’ that normally burns me out like this, it was work and it made me feel like I’d worked all night long even though it was only a few hours, I got it done.

What is the point of recovering if all I’m going to be able to write is light extemporania and not plumb the depths (okay, shallows) of my vast experiences to write about?  What’s the point of going forward with anything?

Indentured Servitude

It’s not all in my mind.  Yes!!  A lot of people seem to think that when I tell them my mother orders me around like an indentured servant, they don’t believe me.  Mostly because they just see her when she’s up for company and on her bestest behavior.  S and D were here to help me move around Mom’s room.  Actually, they had it pretty well done before I got back from getting blood drawn, but that’s not my point.  They were all getting along very well.  Then when I started to help orders started to fly at me.  S eventually got her to go to the front room where I made her breakfast and went back to work.

I whispered the question “How can you work with her ordering you around like that?”

Her response was rather shocking: “She just started that when you came in.”

I don’t know if I want things to change, honestly.  No, I don’t like the way she’s treating me, but I don’t feel like I want to go back to the loving relationship we had.  She hasn’t really treated me any differently, my perception of it was different.  Then she reminded me just how sharp her words are and it hurt because I had allowed myself to be vulnerable with her.  As long as she treats me like a hired servant I am comfortable with my decision to pull away from her again, at least while I’m trying to heal.  I thought building a relationship with her would be beneficial to me, helping her to have the mother that I need and helping me to be the mother she never had.  I think she needs to be in on this concept, and as stated before, I’m not willing to share.

The Anger Wins Again

The anger from the last few days has exhausted me, emotionally and mentally.  I’m sleeping, but not as much as I would like (like 15+ hrs).  The house is still a mess and I’m feeling like a slag for not getting it done.  Not to prove to my mom that I can but to prove to myself that I can.  I just want to curl up in a ball and hide from the world again.  I see nothing but manipulation spewing from my mother’s mouth.  I hate the anger and yet at the same time it’s safe, I’m safe when I have those barbed walls around me.  I wish I could just cuddle Sammy close to me and wait for the end of days, but parrots aren’t exactly the cuddling type, come to think of it, neither is anger.

Stung Again!

There’s this fable or tale or anecdote out there about the frog and the scorpion.  The scorpion asks the frog to take him across the pond, and the frog responded:

F: No, you’ll sting me.

S: No I won’t.  If I did we’d both die.  That isn’t in my best interest.

F: Okay

So, the scorpion mounts the frogs back and the frog glides out into the dark green water when the scorpion stung him.

F: Why did you do that?  Now we’re both going to die.

S: It’s in my nature.

I’ve been working with Mom in trying to build a better relationship with her by letting her in, and it has been going well.  Until, the reason why I stopped sharing with her came back to me today like a ton of bricks being hurled at me one by one, each deftly hitting every tender spot on newly exposed heart, she used them against me.  SHE EVEN USED THE SAME WORDS THAT I TOLD HER I FELT WERE HURTFUL.

Yes, it hurt, and yes, it’s my fault.  I keep forgetting that just because I’m on a fast track right now, I’m trying to grow and heal she isn’t.  Her nature is to be a manipulative bitch and to open myself up to that will only mean that I will drown, whether or not she goes down with me.

Good thing I have therapy tomorrow, huh.

The Ants Go Marching One By One

I sweear it feels like I have bugs crawling on me all the time, and some have burrowed beneith my skin and tickle me for fun.  I scratch and scratch and there isn’t even a welt when I’m done, so I know it’s not a histamine reaction, it’s just all in my head….Like I need the image of an ant hill nesteled in my brain sending out raiding parties to look for bits of me they can bring back to the nest to feed the little larval neurosis the queen gives birth to daily.

Standing Still

I’ve been wondering why I haven’t felt like I’m moving forward in my recovery for the past week or so. I’ve still been hopeful, I had the whole manic thing and, I’ll admit, it scared me just a tetch, but I didn’t expect to end up standing still. It’s annoying. Tonight while I was doing dishes I was pondering this over the suds and realized I haven’t read, I haven’t actually put work into it to get anything out of it. I’m still holding onto my anger pretty well. I am able to get myself worked up over some sort of dreamed up scenario and how I would ‘get even’ with the perceived attackers. Then I remind myself that those people have to look beyond their own needs to be motivated enough to stick their noses into mine. That is both meant as a realization and knowing that I’m not as spectacular in everyone elses universe as I am in mine, and because, honestly, they’ve never shown an interest in the areas I’d like them to before now. I don’t think anyone in my family has read my public blog. Grant it, at first, I didn’t tell them. But now that they know they don’t have the time. Their friends have looked, and even commented on them, but my family, not so much.

See, that last comment again is evidence that I need to get back to studying and trying to grow the foundation passed where I stopped. I just wonder though, is this what I’m going to have to do every day for the rest of my life to ward off the darkness? Though I’ve been rather hopeful for the future (an idealized one I realize), the idea of getting through a day now is overwhelming. Having to have to exercise, meditate and grow my defenses against the void added to a normal human day is almost unfathomable. I’m going to need one hellavah foundation, aren’t I.