"Life is full of exciting adventures to pursue!"

J shared a great article with me called Lean Into The Pain by Aaron Schwartz. I really liked the article and wanted to share it with you too! 

Enjoy!

Patterns of Anger?

1.  I have talked at length in previous posts about feeling angry when I feel unheard, unseen, and helpless, so I don't really want to talk too much about that here, but it definitely deserves a mention.

I'm sure I'll come back around to this topic soon enough, but here's what's really on my mind lately:

2. Self sacrifice is a long tradition in my family.  You are supposed to take care of other people and put your own needs last -- that's what "good" people do.  You do this without recognition, complaint, or pride and your reward will be a large gold-gilded castle on the cloud the Presbyterians call Heaven.

I've done this as long as I can remember without ever giving it a second thought -- until recently.  I'm realizing that following this edict handed down from generation to generation without question, like most things handed down in this manner, may not be the best modus operandi!

Interesting how easy it was to see the problems with same theory with other things (ahem, hello religion, my old friend), but somehow this one was a total surprise!  Also interesting how something could be SO ingrained in you that you don't even know it's there, that you're doing it, and that it's interfering with your own needs.  What's more, it's interfering with your relationship and making your resent the people you are supposedly supporting and helping.  Now, that's devious!

Nobody mentioned that when they were teaching me how to behave! Seems like an important bit of info...  Makes me wonder if I'm just repeating the same pattern of anger and resentment of my ancestors?  I know my mom has experienced similar feelings -- I wonder about my grandmother?  What would it be like to talk to her as an adult?  Did she have these same insights?  If so, why didn't she pass this knowledge on?


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The bigger question is, how do you stop doing this and deal with the pain you cause others by suddenly not being there for them in the way you used to?

Intentionally hurting people (or letting them hurt) feels like I'm taking slow, intentional steps down a dark staircase toward what everyone has been telling me all my life ends at literal Hell!  I don't actually believe in Hell, but I don't really want to go there either!

So, What Would Drew Say?  Something to the effect of "suck it up, Buttercup"?  But, in a much kinder way. He'd probably say, that I have to be ok with allowing other people to feel their hurt and still doing what I need to do to meet my own needs.

Fuck.  I don't like that answer.

Passion?

Recently I found myself upset and feeling like a cliche because I was upset and feeling like a cliche!  Ugh...  Life is complicated.  ;-)

But, c'est la vie!  I'm a cliche. What makes me think I'm too important to ponder the same questions that others have pondered?  I'm going to take this opportunity to feel one with the rest of humanity and enjoy my mid-life crisis!  I'm going to roll around in it like it's a pile of 100 dollar bills!

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I've been pondering the question of the importance of passion in my life.  I feel like I have the weigh the benefits of stability and security against the excitement of passion and intensity.  Why does it have to be one or the other?  Why can't we have it all?  Why have we as a people made it so difficult to be happy?  We've made the rules so strict...we've made it almost impossible to maintain happiness.  

Unless we choose a partner who will work with us through all the different iterations of ourselves.  A partner who will allow you to explore yourself; who will allow you to change -- sometimes drastically. 

The last few months have been full of change and I suspect the next few will prove to be full of even more while J and I continue to grow into our new selves.  I like who we are becoming.  I can't wait to meet the final transformed people.  <3

Anger 2

This feels like one of the hardest posts so far.  Usually I just sit down in front of the blank screen, put my fingers on the keys, and words start appearing.  This time I already know kind-of what I want to say, I'm seated comfortably, and I've already messed with the font and settings, so the words should be starting to appear here on the screen, but for some reason this post is being unnecessarily stubborn....suddenly taking on a life of its own...

Reading about anger has been exceptionally hard.  I don't think I ever realized just how much is wrapped up in that simple little word: anger.  Seriously!

Remember me?

I learned today that I feel anger because I feel like something is unfair, I feel powerless, and unable to simply tolerate the situation.  But, actually, I feel angry not because of the situation, but because of my perception and judgement of the situation.  So, let's change that first statement about why I get angry to include this new information:

              [I] feel angry when [I] define reality as unacceptable and I feel unable to 
             easily correct it, tolerate it, or let it go.  It's my perception that causes me 
             to become angry. (pg 17).

But, then I found out that I might feel angry to protect myself because I really have feelings of hurt that leave me, on top of feeling hurt, also feeling vulnerable.  I was overwhelmed when I read the list of hurt feelings that often lead to anger.  There are instances that I can recall in which I've felt angry AND most of this list all at once.

I can feel my stomach tense up at that realization.  Suddenly I'm super uncomfortable and I don't want to be writing this post anymore.  No wonder I need anger to protect myself from hurt.  In the two general instances that I'm thinking about now, I felt at least 20 of the 26 items on that list.

I had to take a break from the book at this point.  I stopped and did some reflecting.  I'm going to direct this section of this blog to my mom, but there are others for whom this directly applies and although I'm not saying it below, I'm thinking of you too. <3

In thinking about times that I've been truly angry, I spent a lot of time thinking about myself and how I've felt and with all those emotions listed above floating around inside my head, it's easy for me to overlook other people's emotions.  I know that you were also hurt or angry and I apologize for not being able to get out of my own pain and anger enough to address yours.

I still find myself wondering about your feelings during those times of anger and I think the beginning of this book is helping me to see why.  If anger was protecting me from what I was really feeling, maybe it was doing that for you too?  Maybe instead of just feeling the angry stuff you showed me, you were also feeling some of the hurt feelings on the list above?  That makes me really sad.  It makes me really sad that we were both feeling SO hurt, but only showed each other anger or our tough-cold side.

Mom, even though you've told be 1,000 times since then, there are still times that I wonder if you felt love for me back then.

This makes me wonder what impression you have of me from those days.  If I stop and try to think about the situation from your perspective; I mean, really try to think about things the way you say they were.  If I try to put myself in your shoes and imagine me, Iola, doing and saying the things that I know I did and said, I look like a very angry, resentful, and indignant person.  I was all those things.  But, I was also very hurt.  I also felt abandoned, afraid, disrespected, helpless, humiliated, ignored....  

It occurred to me that if I'm still unsure about your feelings during those times that maybe you're not sure about mine either.  The fact of the matter is, I don't think I could feel that many overwhelming emotions, so much so that I would need anger to protect me from them if I didn't care very, very deeply.  So, to answer this question, during those times when I was angry with you, I loved you very much!  I don't think I could have been so angry if I hadn't!

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Awesome paper created by Markhal and for the truly curious, instructions on how to create your own paper can be found here.

Anger: Friend or Foe?

I've been struggling lately with how to deal with anger.  My anger is a little sneaky sometimes; I don't really realize that I'm angry until I've started talking about something and I'm off on a rant about it and I have to pause and think to myself, "Oh, I guess that really upsets me."  Mostly I try to hide any anger I feel from everyone, including myself, because let's face it, I am hard pressed to find a time when I ever expressed anger in a productive manner and had a positive outcome.

So, my typical response to a discovery like this is to find books to read on the topic.  The first book seemed good....except that it left me thinking that I have major anger issues that are with me every minute of every day and they can only be solved by accepting Jesus Christ into my life and allowing Him to determine my worth and not the people around me.  Oops, wrong book.

The second book gave great descriptions of different styles of anger and focused on how to let go of your anger.  This book showed me how sneaky my anger is -- this is why I didn't really recognize it as anger for a long time.  This book was ok, but still left me searching....

Finally, I stumbled upon The Gift of Anger by Marcia Cannon!  So far, this book is amazing!  It presents anger as natural protection against our environment.  She likens anger to the flashing lights at a train crossing warning you of a problem in your life or your immediate surroundings.  This allows you to feel ok about having anger -- nobody would say that those flashing lights at train crossings are inherently bad things!  She offers examples of how anger helped people do things that they needed to do -- stand up for themselves, protect themselves, etc -- and she even offers an example of when anger saved her own life!  She makes you feel like it's totally ok to have anger and like there's nothing wrong with you if you experience anger.  Anger is not something you have to banish from your life.  The book tells you how anger makes you stronger and even refers to it as a "Power-Boost"!  This left me with such a warm, comfortable feeling that I was able to think about my own anger without such resentment towards it and without the absolute goal of banishing it from my life for all time.

Then the book eases you into trying to think about your own anger and realizing that you already have ideas and attitudes about your anger.  No, the book does more than that, it makes it so ok, so natural that you would already have ideas and attitudes about your anger -- of course you would, you're a thinking being with experiences, memory, and emotion!  It only makes sense that you have thoughts and opinions about anger, so let's just go ahead and address that right up front and talk about it and talk about ways to avoid letting those opinions get in the way of dealing with and understanding that anger.

I'm so excited to continue this book, but I wanted to share it with you in case anyone else was also struggling and wanted to read along with me!

Filling In The Space

It's been a long time since I last wrote.  I'm sorry, life has been a little confusing lately and I haven't been sure how to talk about it.  I'm still not sure, but I've missed you, so I decided to pop over and say hi!



I saw Drew yesterday and he got me thinking about a recurring problem in my life.  Throughout most of my life, people have tended to either decide for themselves what feelings I'm having without my input or discounted what I've said my feelings were and replaced those with whatever feelings they thought I should be having or whatever feelings were more convenient for them.


There are examples of this from my adolescence and on through to my life today, but that's not the point of this post.  The point of this post is the REASON for this behavior.  I learned very early in my life that it wasn't safe to share my feelings; and frankly it often wasn't safe to even HAVE most of my feelings.  I spent a lot of my life burying my feelings deep inside -- hiding them from everyone, even myself. So, I guess there were a lot of blanks for people to fill in.  My emotions, apparently, needed to be guessed and interpreted. 

But, the fact of the matter is, even when I didn't know what I was feeling and people were filling in the blanks for me, they were filling them in incorrectly.  When people guess my feelings and fill in any empty space with their interpretation of my feelings and emotions they are almost always wrong (clear exceptions are J and Drew, but probably because they don't guess -- they ask).

So, the point of this post is to let everyone know fully and finally, that I'm done with that shit!  I want to fill in all that empty space on my own now.  I plan to try anyway.  Even if I'm not always 100% right about what I'm feeling, I'd rather the mistakes be mine and not yours.  I no longer intend to go along with anyone else's interpretations of me and my feelings.

If you don't know what I'm feeling and you want to know, please, ask me!  It will mean a lot to me that you've asked!  It will mean that you care enough to want to know how I feel.  It will mean that you respect me enough to allow me to present my feelings in my own way.  And it will mean that you trust me enough to know myself better than you know me.

Evolution?

I've always thought that relationships could evolve along with the people in them.  That when you start out with someone, over time you change, the person (or people) in the relationship with you changes, and therefore, by transitive property, the relationship changes.


I still think that's true, but I'm realizing now that all parts of the relationship don't evolve equally.  It seems obvious now that I'm trying to write it down for you, but SURPRISE! only the parts you work on and talk about evolve along with you!  The parts you ignore remain stagnant -- locked in one time point -- even though you and your partner may have moved past that time point long ago.


Funny how you are so busy talking about everything else in your life that sometimes you forget to talk about small stuff...  How easily the small stuff turns into big stuff when you're not paying attention.


It starts out innocent enough.  You and your partner are a team.  You each have to make sacrifices.  So, you sacrifice little things like social events so your partner doesn't feel anxious and you don't have to go alone.  Eventually, you're not sacrificing social events because you're not invited -- your circle of friends is very small and getting smaller.  You say you don't mind, you don't miss it, but when you do get a chance to go let your hair down you recognize the lie in that statement.  You DO miss it.  You need an outlet.  You enjoy being around more people, being silly, and over indulging!  Maybe there are more things you miss?  Or don't even know you are missing?




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I don't know...we're learning about ourselves and growing into these new emotional people, but I need to also explore the positive emotions!  We spend a LOT of time exploring and learning about how the sad emotions feel.  I want to spend a little bit of time figuring out what happiness feels like!  I also want to enjoy life!


I don't know what I'm talking about anymore.  But, a video blogger I like to watch recently said that we learn more by getting involved in someone else's process rather than just by receiving facts.  So, here you have it.  This is my process.


(PS, if you're interested, this is the video blog.  It's a really good video if you have time to watch.)






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On this same topic, I have a question for you -- and for some reason, I wrote this one in a british accent.  Imagine this in the voice of Dan Is Not On Fire.   


Can a relationship's evolution take a quirky path and go from an awkward, uncomfortable sexual relationship into an intimate friendship?  Imagine if you will, an intimate friendship that was going along swimmingly until someone said, "woah, this is awesome!  we should add sex!"  Then it got totally awkward and someone said, "ugh, this is awkward!"  Any chance the relationship, if the two people actually cared very much for each other, could then evolve into a great friendship?

What To Do When There's Nothing To Do?

I am at a loss.  I don't know what to do.


What do you do when there's nothing you can do?  When you've poured your heart out to someone and they just don't care?  When you've said all you can say and done all you can do and it's just not enough?  What then?


What do you do when your best isn't enough?  When honesty isn't enough?


Seriously, I want to know.






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This is where I am.  I feel like I've done and said everything I can.  


Now I just have to wait and hope that she doesn't hate me.  Hope that she didn't really mean all the hurtful things she said to me.  Hope that she doesn't really leave with things feeling the way they do.  :'(

I AM A Good Person...I Swear.

This week I have had the joy of defending myself against a bit of mud slinging.  I'm not going to lie, it was a bit brutal.  I didn't believe most of it.  In fact, most of it seemed so far fetched that I didn't really think the slinger believed it, but for some reason it resonated with me.  Like an echo from decades past.

I can almost hear the words "Turn off the water works" and "She's only doing that to get her way" echoing from years gone by directly into present day.  I must shout out to everyone and anyone that will listen, "NO!  I'm not manipulating anyone!  These are my actual feelings.  I am being genuine."

Which soon changes slightly to "I AM genuine.", "I am real.", and eventually, "I am here."

I haven't felt this way in a long, long time and I hope not to feel this way again for another long time.  Then again, it's nice to know that there was a reason I was blocking out all those feelings.

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I hadn't realized I felt this way until I started typing this and seeing here in black and white leaves me feeling a little empty inside.  What I mean is, I knew that I felt lonely and sad for a long time, but I didn't realize just HOW lonely -- so lonely that I felt invisible, unseen.  Maybe I WAS crying to get my own way, but not necessarily the "way" that was being presented to me at the time.  Maybe I was crying to be seen, to be recognized?  And, instead I was made to feel like a schemer, a deviant, who was only doing things for her own selfish aims.  

I guess that's why it was so important to me to correct that misconception.  I was trying to be seen, but certainly didn't want to be seen as an asshole.  I'd rather be invisible.  I'd rather not be than be a hurtful person.  That's a truth I've felt for a long time.

Can I Borrow A Feeling?

I'm in a very tricky position right now.  I have a tough decision to make where both options are terrible.  Or, maybe I don't have to make a decision at all...I don't actually know...


Option #1: Shut these emotions down immediately (or try to).  
Honestly, there's some draw to this option.  I don't really want to feel most of these emotions anyway!  But, there's a part of me that thinks there's something bigger waiting on the other side.  Once I sort through all the old boxes of crap that I stored so compactly and haphazardly in the basement corner for so long, maybe way back in the corner all covered in dust I'll find some peace sitting there just waiting to be discovered.  The idea of getting all this stuff to fit back into such a small space is also intimidating -- I just don't know if it'll fit...I don't know if I can wrestle it all back -- it's so powerful.  But, that power is what makes me want to put it back away.  These emotions are too much most of the time!  It would be nice to not HAVE to deal with them...  This is a confusing proposition.  Every pro leads to a con and every con back to another pro.  Every third time I see Drew I consider quitting, but then I show up for the next visit.


Option #2:  Stop The Great Experiment.  
I care deeply for the 3rd, but any emotion, confusion, or scent of a feeling from me sends her dark passenger into a whirlwind of panic and sends her body into a literal run.  The thing is, I totally get it.  Never in her life has another person's emotion not ended with her pain and devastation.


But, understanding it and being able to deal with it are two very different things.  If I'm going to learn to open up and experience emotions I need to be able to experience them without dire consequences.  I need to take time and experience them in full -- roll them around on my tongue, smell their bouquet, examine their color -- to really discover what they mean...what they are about.  I need to be able to experience them without devastating the people I love and in turn having the people I love devastate me.  

So, here we are....Option #1 or Option #2?

I only hope Option #2 doesn't end with the loss of a dear friend.

Flow?

I've always kind of thought of myself as a bit of a social chameleon.  I don't have a hugely wide range, but when I compare myself to less socially malleable people I find that I can feel fairly comfortable in a range of social situations.  I'm able to adjust myself quite a bit and feel comfortable enough to not avoid those situations and to actually enjoy most of them.  On the online do-it-yourself version of the Myers Briggs Introvert-Extrovert scale I tend slightly toward the E side.


But, now I find myself faced with a new situation that I'm not sure about.  I've never had to face a situation quite like this one.  I mean, at work I "go with the flow" all the time.  I do this with friends or on outings...  But, none of these situations involve emotions.  I have no emotional investment in which restaurant we go to for dinner or if we go to the beach or the boardwalk to take photos on Saturday. 

But, there's a definite emotional investment in intimate relationships!  I want to go with the flow.  I know that there is mutual caring and respect.  I know that we MUST do things this way so that she can deal with her emotions and trauma.  But, this way is also making me deal with my past and my emotions.  

This could be a bumpy ride.  Hold on!

 

Trust

Today I'm thinking a lot about trust.  Actually, I spend a lot of my time thinking about trust, but today even more than usual.  


How do we learn to trust someone new?  I have this weird pattern of trusting people right away and taking everything they say at face value....right up until I don't.  I don't know how it came about that I have this strange relationship with trust.  Why am I so willing to trust people, but then as soon as I think I can't....just like the snap of your fingers, that trust is gone.  It's not a slow fade from trust to slight distrust and finally realizing that I no longer trust the person, it's a slap in the face from warm sunshine and trust into distrustful darkness.


Part of me feels like the problem must be with the other person.  I mean, if they could seem so genuine that I believed them and trusted them that they must have believed it themselves.  They must have thought they were telling the truth.  They were fully "in the moment" with me.  Therefore, they must not have just been lying to me.  If they can't trust themselves enough to be fully honest how can I possibly trust them?  Makes sense.  And, it makes me completely rational and faultless!  I like it!



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Again, I'm left wondering.....Old or New?


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Wonder what their stream of consciousness is telling them?  How are they rationalizing the confusion?  Because, that's what we're really talking about here, right?  It's more likely that neither thing the person said was a lie, but rather that both were equally true.  This is a less clear cut solution and one that has multiple possible endings.  As J so eloquently put it, the other person has to eventually choose a truth to believe, but so do you.  It's not all on them to figure out...I have to figure out my shit too.  Fuck.


Can I trust that people are telling me the truth and not just what I want to hear?  Especially when that truth changes over time?  When the fluctuation of that truth is like the swinging of a pendulum?  I really REALLY want to...but how?

Old or New?

How do you know? 

I'm new to this whole feelings thing and so when one hits me all of a sudden I have a hard time answering the question: Is this emotion old or new?  Am I feeling this way now because of something that happened a long time ago and what's going on now is just triggering those old feelings?  Or, is this something new? 

Like I said, life is complicated!  Not only do we have to feel all these emotions and learn how to react to them rationally, but now we have to figure out if they're based on the current situation or just echos from the past?  How are we supposed to get through the day? 

Seems like it would be easier to differentiate if I had been feeling things all along, no?  The fact that I'm just learning how to feel things from my childhood seems to be complicating my adult feelings even more.  Or, maybe I just don't know because I've never had adult feelings uncomplicated by an emotionally stable childhood?

 How can I relay all this information to those closest to me if I'm just figuring it out for myself?  Especially when they are going through similarly intense emotions of their own related to now and their own past?  It seems too overwhelming.

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Now the strong part of me says:

That's a cop out. Everyone has troubles.  It would be easier for black people if they were white.  Women if they were men.  Poor if they were rich.  We all have our shit -- that's what makes us who we are.  That's what makes us strong.  Human.  Empathetic.  

Yes, it's hard.  Yes, it sucks.  But, without struggle where would you be?  Without struggle WHO would you be?

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When I watch movies I always get exhausted watching the heroine fight to survive or overcome and I always think to myself, "I would have given up by now. I would just lay down and take a nap."

And, in reality I might do that.  But, eventually I think I would wake up from that nap and continue to survive.  Maybe I am not meant for hand-to-hand combat, but in the end I think there's a part of me that's a fighter.

I will continue to struggle, to fight, to live.  My fight may be less cinematic, but it's no less romantic.  I'm struggling and fighting to find my "happily ever after."  Not that I believe for a second that the struggling will ever come to an end, but to give up is to give up on the idea of happiness....maybe that's why the movie heroines continue to fight?

And Then There Were Three

What happens when you decide to expand your family from 2 to 3?  You're adding another person, do you just add that much more love and intimacy?  Or does the intimacy between the first 2 people somehow diminish?  Is there a way to maintain the original amount of intimacy and build on that solid foundation? 

That must be what people think when they decide to have a child, right?  That the child can only add to the love the family already shares.  That the bond between the original 2 lovers will envelope the new addition and protect her from anything that could (or has) ever hurt her.  That they can fold her into their love and she will become a part of what they already share.

This is my hope for my new family.  That my bond with J will remain as strong as ever and our new addition will fold into this foundation and be surrounded by the love and stability we already have together.



Or is it inevitable that by developing intimacy with someone new we will absolutely lose intimacy between each other?  Is it guaranteed that by being intimate with another person one of the original couple will feel left out?  Is this experiment a failure before it really gets started?


I guess all I can do is hope...and talk about it.  A lot.  If talking about things can solve all problems then I think we will be ok.  :-)

Surprise! Feelings.

This weekend this new openness just up and slapped me in the face.  I found myself getting overly emotional about something and, of course, not understanding those feelings.  I kept wondering why I was feeling so worked up and it really didn't make sense. 

Dubs, in all her wisdom, mentioned the importance I place on The Nuclear Family and speculated that it might have to do with my biological family and feelings from the past.  J asked if this felt the way I felt with my mom when she would be close to me and then literally so detached from me that she would be living in a separate home? 

All caught up in the moment, I couldn't put all that together, but after a pause and some reckless tears, I was able to step back a half a step and notice where those intense feelings were coming from.  Identifying where the emotion was coming from (deep in my stomach where my fear stems from, not my heart where my sadness tends to start) I could somehow tell that it was not a new feeling.  This is something I've felt before.  And, what's more, this feelings doesn't really seem to have anything to do with now.  The fear and pain feel older somehow.  Now that I'm out of the moment, it doesn't feel like a fresh wound.  I think that whatever happened today just rubbed against it and tore the scab off.


Now I am overwhelmingly relieved.  This I can handle.  :-)

Change?

I've been thinking a lot about change lately and I have a lot of questions.  Usually I embrace change.  It's exciting, it's new, and, quite frankly, until recently, anything was better than what I had so bring on the change!

Now, I don't know.  Things are pretty awesome right now.  I dare to say perfect.  But, what if they're not perfect...they're just the most perfect that I've ever known and with one more change would there be one more layer of perfect?  Like going through the Emerald Door at Frazier's spa?  Or, what if there are 100 more layers of perfect, but I'm stuck here in -100 perfect because I'm too afraid to risk loosing the perfect that I have?  Would that even be a bad thing?  Right now, I think this is 100% perfect.  Are you really giving something up if you don't know if it exists?

Do I even know if I want this change?  How could I know...I don't even know if I want a nap or chicken.


If you do decide to take the plunge and make a change just to see if it's something you want, how do you do it?  Do you have to lay out a step-by-step plan and follow it to the letter?  And, if anything doesn't go 100% according to the plan, do you take that as a sign that the change isn't working? How/when do you figure out if the change is working for the better or worse?  Do you follow the plan through to the end no matter what and then decide if it's working?  That seems risky!


When I was younger, I would think of things that I wanted to do and somehow they just got done.  Slowly, one by one, pieces began to fall into place and eventually some change was made.  Things seem more complicated now.

My Partner, J

Today I have no idea what I should write about.  The whole idea of understanding my feelings is new to me and I haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet.  I have times when I know -- literally deep in my gut -- that some feeling is stirring inside me, but I'm not sure what it is.  I've been struggling with this for a while now and I feel absolutely ridiculous when I can't name a feeling that I'm having.  Today is one of those days.

This reminds me of... 

My partner and I share one car and we don't work in the exact same place.  He really likes having the car during the day so he can have a quiet place to go read and have some time alone during his lunch break, so he usually drops me off at work and then I either get a ride from someone else or wait for him to pick me up.  For a while, he was complaining about how much longer his drive home is when he has to pick me up from work.  This really started to hurt my feelings because I was feeling like a chore for him and in all fairness we both own the car so why should I feel bad needing a ride home from work?  So, anyway, I was getting frustrated and irritated about the Ride-Home-Situation, but I wasn't really able to name the feeling I was having.  This added to my frustration -- I'm a 33 year old woman and we're supposed to learn the names of feelings in elementary school.  Why can't I name this 'simple' feeling?

I'm embarrassed to admit that it actually took me awhile and a bit of talking with Drew to figure out what was going on.  I'm sure it won't be a surprise to you that I was angry at being made to feel like a burden and like my feelings weren't being considered.

So, then I wondered why it was so hard for me to admit and/or acknowledge that I was angry at J, my partner, for not considering me?  It's so obvious?  Is my self-esteem THAT low?  Then it took me another good chunk of time before I figured out why it was so hard for me to realize/acknowledge that I was even angry at him.  Finally, it struck me one night on a walk around the neighborhood.  "Oh my god, I'm afraid that he might leave me."  I am constantly trying to make him happy or trying to not upset him so that he doesn't leave me.  I really don't think of myself as that person, but there you have it.  I change who I am all the time to try and keep him happy all in an effort to delay the inevitable abandonment.

In my logical self, I really don't think he will leave me, but as soon as I say that the less logical part of myself, the part I'm just discovering, the part of me that usually holds all these feelings (I say this word with dripping amounts of bitterness, because today I really don't want to have them) roars to the surface and says, "maybe he won't leave you today, but you don't know what tomorrow holds."










Where did this part of me get her information?  Why does she doubt the logical part of me so much?  The logical part of me really knows J well and believes him when he says he's in it for the long haul.  He loves me and I love him and we have worked so hard to be honest with each other and learn and grow together for the past 13 years.

Well, to answer the question about where I may have learned a fear of abandonment, I have to face some ugly truths.  I have to look back past my life with my current partner and look at my life with my original family.  From as far back as I can remember, I spent alternating years living with many different members of my family.  Which if looked at from a certain light could show how many people were willing to accept me into their lives, but, of course, a young child doesn't have that perspective.  From my young eyes, I saw it exactly the opposite way: I can no longer live with my mom.  Or, sometimes even worse: my mom doesn't want me anymore.  I'd live with my grandparents for a while and then eventually go back to live with my mom.  Although I was delighted to live with my mom again, a part of me still thought: my grandparents don't want me anymore.  Then, my mom would move in with a new father-figure, but I couldn't move in there at first, so back to my grandparents house.  Obviously it wasn't true, but when you're young it feels like mom loves this new father-figure more than you or she'd choose to live with you instead.  Then I moved in with mom and new father-figure and out of my grandparents house and again: I must have been too much for my grandparents.  I'm sure mom and new father-figure were just ready for me to move in, but again, I was a child and in a family that doesn't talk about these things.  This happened quite a few times and ultimately the father-figures left for some reason or another.  I have no idea what those reasons were, but the point is that they too left.  The final step was when I moved in with my aunt, her husband left her, she met someone else, invited him over for 2 weeks and told me that I "wouldn't be there."  I was in college by this point and have lived with my partner ever since. 

He's been there and has supported me through everything.  He's not like anyone I've ever known and I have an unbelievable amount of respect for him.  J, thanks for always being there, always supporting me, and always loving me.  I love you like nobody else.



FILDI.

Finishing Stamp!

If you're wondering, it's my finishing stamp!  

I'm 33 years old and this is the first time in my life that I've ever felt creative.  Can you believe that?  I don't have any illusions that this will last for long, but I'm taking advantage while it's here!  

I was always envious of creative people.  Or maybe I was just envious of all people.  People who had skills: creative, athletic, academic.  I felt like I didn't have anything to offer.  I probably still don't, but at least now I have a few experiences that I can share.  I feel like the stigma around therapy and emotional growth is enough of a reason to share my experiences.  Even if I'm not a great literary genius, or a devout Buddhist master, or whatever it is that makes one wise enough to share their wisdom with the masses, maybe I have something to say that a few people might find of interest or helpful?

If not, you don't have to read this!

Mom

After I had been seeing Drew for about 5 months, my mom came to visit for 2 weeks.  My mom and I have never been especially close and we are very different in many ways.  But, we have both made a commitment to develop a closer relationship and this visit was a step in that direction.  To that end, I invited her to attend a therapy session with Drew and me and without hesitation she accepted. 

I was as nervous as a bride on her wedding day (almost as nervous as my first visit to that office), but my mom maintained her stoic front.  She wasn’t nervous because he is a doctor and….well, I still don’t know why she wasn’t nervous. 

Anyway, we went and we talked.  I can’t even remember everything that we talked about that first time.  My mom talked about how things were for her growing up and I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between her childhood and mine.  I spent time living alternately with both my mother and my grandparents, so I definitely could relate to her experiences with her parents.  She was raised partially by older members of our family that I don’t know well, but I still believe our experiences were similar.  In our family, praise and signs of affection were not handed out often.  As my mother put it, “if you weren’t being yelled at, you were to assume you were in good graces.”  That was true of my upbringing as well.  You knew you family loved you, so they didn’t need to tell you.  I don’t know how many times I have convinced myself of this fact when the question would come up in my mind. 

This session with Drew and my mom went better than I expected.  My mom absolutely loved Drew and actually heard whatever it was that I said and she wasn’t defensive or offensive.  I was relieved.  My family has a history of fighting and not speaking for long periods of time, so I was worried that this might be the end of my relationship with my mother.  But, I had to try.  Therapy and learning about my emotions and figuring out how to deal with them has become such a huge part of my life – there’s no way I could have an honest relationship with my mom that didn’t include those things.

After the first session, my mom still had a second week with us in CA, so I invited her to come to a second therapy session.  This time I planned ahead and knew what I wanted to talk about and how I wanted to talk about it.  I learned from the first session that flying by the seat of my pants wasn’t a great plan!

The second session was incredible.  I want to detail every bit of that session for you, but I feel like I would be breaking her trust by doing so.  What I do want to share from that session is how open and willing my mother was to hear how I felt about our relationship.  It must have been incredibly hard to hear her daughter say those things, but she did more than simply accept them.  She went home to Pennsylvania and really thought about what I said and has actually made an effort to change things in her life to improve those things.  It’s actually pretty incredible.

Since then, we have had a few pretty intense conversations in which I’ve actually told her that growing up, I didn’t feel like she loved me.  This was huge for me.  It took me a week to decide to actually tell her this and how to tell her this.  In response, she sent me a beautiful letter where she detailed how much she loves (and loved) me, how proud she is of me, and how sorry she is that I ever felt that way.  She even wrote about how she could understand why I felt that way and it was exactly right – she really understood my point of view. 

I’ve always cringed at the idea of being anything like my mom, but if at the age of 60 she’s willing and able to see her own flaws and learn and grow then maybe it’s ok if there’s a little mom in me after all?

Let's Get This Shit Started

How to start?  I’ve never thought of myself as a writer, so this whole idea is new for me, but so is expressing my feelings so I might as well dive in headfirst!  Please keep both of those things in mind as you read this blog.  Don’t expect elegant prose or perfectly worded explanations for how I was feeling.  But, what I can promise you is that I will tell you the truth.  This is the #1 rule in our house – Tell The Truth, the deep down truth.  Even to yourself and even when it sucks.

So here goes.  My partner started seeing a therapist and really enjoyed the interactions and growth he was getting out of it and suggested that I might also learn from the experience.  This, of course, sent panic through every fiber of my being.  From as far back as I can remember I knew that at some point I was going to need therapy and would be deemed crazy, after all, most of my family is crazy and crazy is obviously genetic.  I went for it anyway, even though the panic never stopped coursing through my veins.  Luckily, I could plan this entire thing via email, so I was able to portray a non-crazy person – until I showed up for the first session!  I have no clue what I said during that first hour with Drew, but I know for a fact that I used more tissues than words.  I was more afraid than I’ve ever been in my life.  I was revealing myself to a stranger.  Paying him to tell me that I am crazy.  Why?  Why did I decide to do this to myself? 

Well, during that first session, Drew never once said the words I expected to hear.  Honestly, I don’t know what words I expected to hear….a barrage of questions ultimately leading up to an official DSM diagnosis? 

What I didn’t expect him to say was, “that makes perfect sense”, “of course you feel that way”, and “that’s perfectly healthy.”  Words he’s repeated over the next several months many, many times. 

This is the start of my journey towards a more emotionally aware self.  A journey back through all my emotional baggage, sorting out all my childhood emotions of deprivation and isolation, teenage angst, and an early adulthood of avoidance.  I have no clue how far along in this journey I am, so I really don’t know how this story ends.  Like I said at the beginning, please bear with me while I figure this out.  :-)