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But Yoda, Try Is All I’ve Got

Every once in a while it hits me.

I’m angry, and i have no idea why.

Although i’m slowly learning to live a more conscious life, i’m not, nor do i want to be, a deeply introspective person. Whatever that means. I don’t fucking know what i mean.

I’m still pissed off.
I want to know who i am and what i want and what i think and why i think it, but i don’t want to live my life as a floating head. You know, all cerebral and nothing visceral. All thought and no action. Never going outside and getting dirty. As if i’m sitting on a mountaintop crosslegged, watching the world happen while i smile and sway to some wicked sitar music. I wouldn’t mind seeing the view from up there, but those folks in the valley really know how to party.

Some balance is what i’m aiming for in my life. I don’t need to see everything coming, but if i get coldcocked, i’d at least like to know by whom. I have enough reasonably uncrazy time under my belt now that i recognise this has been happening for a long time. Maybe all my time. I don’t know if i’m triggered by anything in particular, or if it’s like a bleed valve and i had too much pressure built up. I don’t think it matters for now.
The first step is recognising it’s happening. So, check. Now i have some basic ideas about where to go from here, based on identifying other emotional/behavioural issues before this one became a blip on my radar. It mostly involves being aware it’s going on and doing a lot of information gathering:

– What was happening before i noticed this issue?
– Is this relatable more to the current precipitous event, or could it be a childhood-based reflex?
– How have i handled this before, and has there been fallout from that as well?

Then i just get down to the business of trying.

I do not subscribe to Yoda’s philosophy, particularly “No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.” It makes a great story, but in my life it has no place. The foundation upon which all my successes are built is trying. It’s the bedrock that provided stability as i floundered around in the soft, shifting loam that has been my own personal edification.

What i mean is i make as educated a guess as i’m able, then i just try something to see if it helps. Something that cuts down on or (ideally) eliminates negative outcomes. Then i assess its effectiveness and tweak to improve my results. Some things i try don’t work at all and some work pretty well. Nothing’s ever worked perfectly, but i’ve never expected it to. I’ve never found a panacea and i don’t think that’s even possible.
What i expect is some level of chaos and mess, and in that i’ve never been disappointed. I care about that kind of thing less and less these days. As i let go of my desire to be liked, accepted, and understood by everyone, my fear of rejection has diminished to the point where i just wade in and start swimming towards that other shoreline. I can’t let a few sharks stop me from getting there, and i see a couple of boats i can ask to take me in if i need a break.

I now realise that occasionally i find myself inexplicably angry. Even enraged. I’d like to know what it’s about so i can figure out what, if anything, i can or want to do about it.

And it’s already over. A couple of simple steps later and it’s gone. But the next time it comes ’round, i’ll be ready. Well, i’ll try, that’s for sure.

~H~

IMAGE: Umit Y Buz

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Off You Go

I like this British idiom. It seems to mean giving someone leave to go and do something in particular. An informal, and not unkind way to indicate that if one is prepared for a particular action, then one should go ahead and begin.

So off i go…

I’ll be spending this year concentrating on small, significant lifestyle tweaks intended to improve my health and well-being. Not just mental and emotional, but physical too. My physical health has consistently taken a back seat to my other issues, but i intend to make it a priority this year. I tried to last year, but i just didn’t have enough good brain days to make it work. Now, i finally have some decent experience with managing my mental issues, and i’ve been able to live months (MONTHS!) without any significant chaos or mental hiccoughs.

Don’t get me wrong, life still happens. I have a particularly large issue that finally required my complete attention last year. I’ve been in the shit ever since because of it, and after a year of quietly and calmly dealing with it, it’s clear it’s not going anywhere, anytime soon. And just to make things interesting, another issue is surfacing, one that may prove particularly challenging, one that holds the potential for a lot of short-term drama. Whee.

I’m implementing two small changes to my lifestyle today. One is that i intend to go for a walk outside every day. No matter the weather and no matter the company, and regardless of whether i’m on the treadmill or elliptical that day. I live in a beautiful place, where i’m very fortunate not to have to see people regularly. I’m also most fortunate to have furry companions that love to go for walkies. I already take them out fairly regularly, but it’s one of the first things to go when i’m feeling low. Physical exercise and being outdoors have both been proven in multiple peer-reviewed, scientific studies to have a positive effect on mental illness, both in prevention of onset symptoms and treatment should symptoms occur. So, pretty clearly a beneficial addition to my daily schedule.

The second thing is no eating after 9pm. Pure suckage here, but it’s an absolute no-brainer. I’ve been a nighthawk my entire life, and i’m trying to transition slowly into a more regular schedule. It’s been tough. Daytime means people and normalcy and nighttime means alone and as strange as i wanna be. There are all kinds of studies out that show some initial support for certain kinds people having legitimate reasons for keeping late hours, but they aren’t definitive, and even if they were i wouldn’t care. I want to experience life as a Daywalker. I may actually like it – hell, i might even prefer to live amongst the living. Heh.

Of course it’s not just the matter of my circadian rhythms. Food and weight have been an issue since i was 8yrs old. There were many nights i ate myself into a coma and woke with one helluva hangover. And although i haven’t lived like that for over a decade, my weight has crept back up due to mental illness, medication, and yes, complacency. I’ve addressed the illness, and my medication levels may always require adjustment, but it’s time to require more of myself with regards to eating. Nothing to eat after 9pm will encourage me to go to bed at a reasonable hour, and it should also keep me from more than one after supper snack. Plus, my brain seems to be really grooving on a regular schedule. I think i might thrive on rules and regimens. Rules and regimens that are mine, made by me, of course. Because screw you – i do what i want. Heh.

Oh and by the way, life has thrown me a super suckass curve ball today. Just its way of welcoming me to the neighbourhood. Life can be a real asshole. Still and all, i’m gonna finish my tea, put on a sweater, and take my fuzzbuddies for a walk.

Have As Good A Day As You Can,
~H~

IMAGE: Delphine Beausoleil

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Thoughts That I Have Pt. II

“The heart wants what it wants.”

About that…

My heart gets it wrong. A LOT. I mean, a lot a lot. And my heart doesn’t “know” anything. It’s just one of the areas that manifest the feelings generated by the thoughts in my brain.* And as i’ve mentioned before, my brain doesn’t always work well or properly – and my choices in both sexual and non-sexual relationships is often a stark example of that fact. So yeah, sometimes i want relationships that aren’t good, healthy or otherwise beneficial to me. I’ve often heard it said the heart wants what it wants, and the tone of resignation that usually accompanies it. It seems to hint that one is helpless against its desires. That against the onslaught of emotions (especially romantic ones) i’m just along for the ride, and i should allow myself to be swept away. “Don’t fight it, H. The heart wants what it wants, after all.” Insert shrugged shoulders and a deep sigh.

It almost seems like an excuse to me. Like, i want the person i know isn’t a good choice to be in a relationship with, so i’m gonna blame the destructive inevitability of my heart’s desires to abdicate responsibility for this choice i am indeed making.

And so while i’m not gonna stop enjoying love expressed through art -the poems, ballads, epic romances, the sweeping historical novels and all the rest- i need to see it for what it is and what it is not. What it is, is the way we communicate with each other regarding how it can feel to care for someone. What it isn’t, is the organ with which i make decisions. Not simple ones like whether or not to return a passing smile, and certainly not much more complex ones like whom to marry and/or create a family.

You may think that’s obvious, and maybe it should’ve been, but it certainly wasn’t to me. Based on results, i was choosing my relationships on the whims of some nebulous idea that my heart was its own little person, with a mind of its own. I thought my heart always knew what was right for me, even if i didn’t know it intellectually. That –along with a large dose of religion and an absurd belief in romantic predestination– led me to make some (mostly) disastrous choices in both friends and intimate partners.

What happens in my heart when i meet someone i’m attracted to, whether for friendship or something more, isn’t something i should follow blindly. Nor am i helpless to resist such feelings. Sometimes my taste sucks, sometimes i’m just plain wrong, and sometimes the feelings simply aren’t reciprocated. Perhaps they aren’t returned as much as i’d like them to be, or (the worst) they stop being returned at all. That last one has happened to me many, many times.

Getting dumped is the absolute shits. It’s painful, and for me, embarrassing and shameful. I was the family scapegoat until i slipped their grasp, but i wasn’t able to shake the feeling that everything that went wrong around me was my fault. I was terrified of rejection and it caused reflexive blame, self-loathing, powerlessness, and a pervasive sense of doom. Quite often it also triggered depression or mania or other behaviors associated with my mental issues. Sometimes the price i paid was high, and often my children and eventually my husband paid, too.

My heart though? My heart just wanted them back. Every one of them. It wasn’t until i got distance from them along with some traction regarding my mental health that my feelings were gradually overridden by my brain. I see now some of them weren’t right for me, some of them were no longer a good fit, and some of them had done me a huge favour by leaving.

* Again with the obvious statements, i know.

IMAGE: Robb North

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Thoughts That I Have That Are Mine and Are Not Yours Because They Are Mine

“The heart never lies.”

Ah, bull pucky. Besides the fact that my heart isn’t the place where my feelings come from, and my heart doesn’t have an agenda, my feelings come from my brain* and my brain not only has been through some stuff, it may have been born or otherwise emerged from my formative years with some serious defects or flaws or quirks, or whatever you’d prefer to call them. To be blunt, i’ve had some screwed up ways of looking at things.

I was indoctrinated by religion, pummeled by years of abuse, and systematically and vigorously taught not to think for myself. My upbringing showed me a twisted version of love, and skewed my perceptions about people generally, and relationships specifically. And no, i didn’t know in my heart that something was wrong. I thought it was normal. It didn’t feel good all the time, but sometimes it did. It felt natural and comfortable absolutely. I didn’t realise how i’d been raised was spectacularly wrong until i was 21 years old.

As a result, i’ve had a number of crappy relationships with crappy people. I’ve remained loyal to some who were utterly unworthy of it for ruinously long periods of time. Such is my loyalty that i’ll tell you with very few exceptions, it was them that ended the relationship and not me. (Except with men, but let’s save that particular ball of crazy for another time.) I loved them and wanted them in my life, and my physical response was a varying combination of an elevated heartbeat that either feels all bursty with the joyousness of human connection, or painfully aching and rather clenched with the threat of that connection being ended.

These were people who said awful things about me behind my back. Some had assaulted me physically and/or sexually. Some were only in it for what i gave them, be that my body, my time, my money, or even just my unconditional support and my i’ll-never-leave-youness. People who didn’t particularly want me, but for whom i was better than nobody. And my favourite, those who thought it was either their calling or their duty to be in my life. And i’ll be brutally honest and tell you that although i sucked at relationships of any kind, regardless of whether sex was involved or not, i wanted them all – every selfish, cruel, judgmental, unavailable one of them. They may have been one, or all of those things, plus others, but i’m trying not to dwell here (no really, heh). The important thing is they weren’t good for me, either for a period of time or for all my time.

They used me up. They sucked me dry of everything i had to give and then summarily dropped me. Now, my capacity to give was admittedly limited, but i didn’t really know that at the time. All i knew when they ended the relationship was i’d done something wrong, i’d screwed things up again, somehow. And to be fair, i think some of them were as clueless as me –about themselves and their own machinations– and to them i just seemed to become unsuitable friend material. But my heart was crushed because i wanted them.

In fact, my heart thought i needed them. It reached out towards them and urged me to fix things. It imbued me with a desire to make things right regardless of the cost. And on those occasions that i obeyed its desperate pleas, it rewarded me with feelings that might qualify as blissful. I’d be floating on a pink, fluffy cloud and gazing down at the apple trees and honey bees and snow white turtle doves. However, life with the person i thought i wanted in my life was never harmonious like that song by The New Seekers. My heart was manifesting the things in my brain that were dysfunctional.

The parts of my brain that functioned fairly well were pretty sure it wasn’t going to work out, and i was going to get hurt all over again.

* I know this is obvious stuff everyone knows. Sometimes i find a bromide helpful.

IMAGE: Allessandro Valli

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Rub ‘Til It Bleeds

The title made you wince right? Heh, me too. Every time. While it’s from a song by PJ Harvey, whether or not it refers to anything i’m about to touch on would be open to interpretation and debate (which is how she may prefer it). What the lyric is for me, is a very apt description of what anxiety is like.

Ever since putting up this blog, i’ve been experiencing anxiety. The kind of anxiety where describing it to a friend would go like this:

Friend: Are you okay?
Me: Why? What am i doing?
*panics*
Friend: You seem anxious.
Me: Anxiety?
*eyes bulge*
Do i have anxiety?
*shrill laughter*
Lemme tell ya ’bout anxiety!
*twitches*

As with most intense emotions, i wasn’t initially aware of feeling that way yesterday. I was out of sorts due to an issue in the home, but i knew that would be dealt with later, so i put it away until then. Hey, i can compartmentalise thoughts, feelings, and situations like i used to play that old Hasbro game Perfection – and i could finish that with time left over.

I began to realise something was off when i went to see a friend. I noticed that my thoughts were racing. Now bear in mind that social situations of any kind already cause my thoughts to speed up a fair bit, but this was far worse than usual. She doesn’t make me feel any more uncomfortable than i generally do being around people. In fact, it’s probably less, as i like her and think she’s a nice, kind person. Nevertheless, my thoughts were racing so fast that my conversation with her was zigzagging all over the place, like one of those jerks in rush hour that darts in and out of lanes and never signals.

In the time it took for the man-thingy to pick me up and get me something to eat at a local restaurant, i was utterly out of sorts. I nearly took his head off for no reason. Fortunately someone we know was working there, which kept me from activating beast mode. Instead, i was able to realise i’d gone off the rails somewhere, and i had to figure out where and why.

So here i am today with my answers. It’s the blog, and it’s because as soon as i put it up, i began picking apart ways it could go wrong. Ways that could compromise my pursuit of happiness or otherwise blow up in my face. To avoid that, some parameters seem necessary:

  1. If you’re someone i know, especially locally, know i absolutely will NEVER discuss your personal business, nor will i discuss specifics of our interactions. If we have any issues between us, they’ll never be fodder for this blog. I was never much for gossip, and these days i don’t tolerate it at all. There will be no identifiable details of any kind, ever.
  2. This is my new blog. It is not my old blog. The old blog was a purge, which i’ve now done, and i’ll only refer to it in an ancillary way. It was locked down long ago. I’ve also learned a great deal about my particular mental diagnoses. That, coupled with knowing some of the methods used to cause me harm, has enabled me to sort through what happened. Some i know with surety, some i’m reasonably confident, and some may have been coloured by illness, drugs, terror, or just the way the brain functions with regard to memory. This blog is not that blog.

This morning started with the terrible kind of anxiety that threatens to make you a prisoner of your bed. I woke with a headache, and my face and jaw were on fire, despite the mouth guard i now wear every night. My throat ached as it often does when i’ve spent the night dreaming emotionally charged dreams. I wanted so badly to escape back into the relative unconsciousness of sleep, but i couldn’t. It was the kind of anxiety where, if i’m able to drift back to some sort of almost-asleepness, it won’t last long. There’s this dread that grips me at regular intervals, like a knife in my chest. It causes a painful twinge, my guts to drop, and my head to explode like a piñata full of poisoned candy that i’m helpless to resist eating. It fills me up with terrible scenarios, dozens of what-ifs, all played to terrible conclusions. It holds me tight in its arms and drags me further down into despair.

I’ve fought this closet monster and won though, more than once. So i got my ass out of bed and forced myself to do things i’ve put in place to do when i’m in the grip of anxiety. A set morning routine that quickly affords me a sense of accomplishment and functionality. A regularity that calms me and buoys my morale and my mood, which in turn brightens my outlook. It renews my resolve to move steadily forward, turning my mind away from myself, towards more egalitarian pursuits.

Friend: Are you feeling better now?
Me: Ever so. *smiles*

IMAGE: ian dooley

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Happy Birfday To Me

I’m going to blog. For a year, maybe more, but at least one year. It will be about what it’s like to be me, living the life i have lived, and trying to live the life that i want to live, as i approach my fiftieth birthday. I don’t think it’s realistic or reasonable to expect myself to write something here every day, so i won’t. What i will do is write often, and hopefully substantively, at least to myself, and ideally to anyone who reads, as well.

I’ve tried to plan it out a bit, but not much. I’ve tried to figure out what i want it to be, but not very hard. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but i’m committed to the process, and hopefully that becomes apparent. If i happen to get more tech savvy along the way, my family and friends would be as grateful as i. I’ve examined my life and found it worth living, which someone, somewhere, once implied would be the case. So on to the business of it, with life doing what it will, and me navigating the waters with grace and aplomb. Heh.

I’ll leave it public for a while, but that may change.
Love and Peace,

~H~

IMAGE: Brett Jordan