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.  :-)