Today my therapist said something very interesting. When I am meeting new people I should basically have it in my head whether I am facilitating Shanna having friends or am I looking for friends for me. Basically if I want Shanna to have friends I should deliberately not befriend the parents. I, somewhat predictably, have mixed feelings about this.
I had a good therapy session this morning.
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So Noah and I have decided that for the next while the college fund money will be diverted to paying for my therapy. That’s probably a better long-term investment right this minute. I can do this.
Not by my husband, by one of the women in my mom group. I got sent a rather hurtful email. To be defensive, because I always am, the hot sauce comment was not even vaguely serious. I would never do that. It was an unkind thing to say at all, but I don’t think this level of response was appropriate. And the ‘cold baths’ were tepid, just not warm and fun. I took zero pleasure in them and I don’t feel they were cruel. They were business like and not *fun*, but Shanna was not harmed in any way and despite not being fond of them she doesn’t seem traumatized by being in less than super warm water.
So I’ve been seeing this woman (that sounds more interesting than it is) occasionally since the first miscarriage. She’s not a bad therapist, but she has a strong focus on EMDR and some weird thing where you pinch the bridge of your nose and tap on your third eye. Not so into the talk therapy part. I feel like the EMDR worked pretty well for me when it came to things like Francesca’s death, and losing my baby, and Traci’s death. Those were fresh and new hurts that were pretty easy to isolate and treat. But right now it’s just not working for me. The last time I saw her she had to ask me, “And who is Noah again?” If you don’t even know who Noah is then you know nothing about me. I’ve been seeing her periodically for over a year and she doesn’t know my husband’s name?
I don’t really have anyone to talk to about the super hard stuff right now. I have Noah, who has nothing more to give. And I have Sarah, who is also really at max capacity. I just can’t unload on them anymore than I already am. I don’t have a space where I can talk about my Byzantine feelings about my children and myself and my future and my family. (Noah’s not really on that list because other than occasional minor irritations he’s just not any kind of problem.) I miss Traci. I hate that I feel so bad for how much I miss her. It wasn’t exactly a ‘friendship’. But she did care about me. I saw her basically every week and some periods more than once a week for over 3 years. She knew every single terrible, horrible, disgusting thing about me and she never blinked. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a person on the planet who knows as much about me as Traci did, not even Noah. It feels kind of pathetic to say that.
I feel very alone and very lonely. And I feel like no one sees me. I miss Traci. The new therapist emailed me today to check up on me. The last time I went in to see her I really really needed to talk and she shut me down to follow her EMDR script and I felt so upset. I’m sorry, visualizing myself as a little girl and giving myself a hug is not going to solve all of my problems. She seemed very aware that I left the session more upset than I arrived. I should respond to her but I don’t know what to say.
I remember how blue the sky was.
Movies like to concentrate focus in a way that is just off center. Like when you see the boot lying on its side under the bed and hear springs bouncing so you know they are having sex.
I remember how warm the rock was.
I remember watching the snot roll down the rock because I was crying.
I remember fighting at first and then not at all.
I remember white hot pain that made me want to die.
And my back has hurt to one degree or another every single day for about 20 years. I’m not sure I will ever stop hurting. I don’t remember what exact position torqued my back. At this point I truly believe it just doesn’t matter.
So everyone has times when their behavior doesn’t exactly match up with their stated positions/world views. It’s a normal thing. There are a few ways this can be dealt with. Someone can more or less subconsciously refuse to look at the discrepancy and continue on their merry hypocritical way–I think this is the majority reaction really; it is certainly the easiest. You can examine your world view more closely and decide that it no longer works for you and you should change it to align with your behavior. You can examine your behavior more closely and decide that it is inappropriate and you need to change it to align with your world view. Or, as Noah points out, you can look at your world view and behavior and decide they both kind of suck and change both. I think this last one is uncommon and maybe a bit drastic. 😉
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This morning is hard. I had a ‘moment’ where I realized that my first sexual acting out was at about three and a half. My rather clear memories of that were that I was just ‘supposed’ to do that. Now, as an adult I realize that in order to have such a clear sense of place associated with sex acts I was probably being molested at about Shanna’s age. I simply cannot conceive of anyone being such a monster that they would hurt a baby like that. But someone (someones?) did. It is becoming harder and harder for me to continue to have the self-narrative that I was just sexually precocious and any of what happened to me as a kid was by choice.
This is really really hard.
So in the past few weeks I have been in a few situations that have been challenging for me. They have been challenging for me because of old baggage and *not* because of the people I have been interacting with–let me make that clear. Ok, on to my babble.
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I’ve noticed that with a couple of friends I have a particular issue. So my friends are eldest children and they were assigned a lot of child-minding duties growing up. They very automatically step in and start doing what feels like parenting my kid. I have mostly bit my tongue about this but I’ve felt kind of butt-hurt. Recently I started talking to one of the people in particular and I think that I’m having the feelings I’m having because I have so many issues with my own sister and her attitudes around doing the same thing. But I don’t like that I’m feeling this way about my friends. They aren’t my sister and they don’t behave like her at all. Even if there are some surface similarities in ‘caring for nearby children’ it’s just not the same.
Ok. I’m going to make a resolution for myself. I’m going to work on my butt-hurt feelings. In all seriousness these friends who take these kinds of self-imposed caretaking roles are going to be the closest my children have to family experiences. I really want my children to feel what it is like to have people other than me who love them and take care of them. That means I need to get comfortable with it and not fuck it up for them because of my issues. I really wish that the list of ‘shit to work on’ was getting smaller instead of longer.
(Shanna asked to watch videos so I got to type again. 😛 )
I notice that when I feel bad about something and I don’t act on it because I feel confused/anxious/uncertain about how to handle it I tend to get very fussy and anxious overall and it bleeds over into way more of my life than it should. I tend to hold on to things for a long time in that state building it up into my head until I am so frustrated by it that the smallest hint of an infraction in that direction feels like THAT’S IT!!! I’M DONE WITH YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!!! Often this doesn’t go all that well. When I completely over react like that I feel terrible and guilty and like if I were just a better person I wouldn’t blow up like that. But the situation doesn’t really get resolved and it continues on and the cycle continues.
But if I manage to say my piece in a way that is maybe not perfectly polite but not a complete and total overreaction directed at one person I feel way better about myself. And I will have an easier time enforcing that boundary for a long time afterward. I’m always super happy when I manage to do this.
And just because this is the kind of thing I almost never say–I’ve been doing pretty well lately. I’m having lots of emotional cycles but I’ve not been depressed in quite a while. Frustration seems to be ever present while pregnant though. 🙂
This week has been remarkably stable and upbeat. I had the brief manic phase last week as kind of a ‘end of depression festivity’ and since then… very calm. I have been doing stuff to relax many of the evenings, but not every evening and not at all during the day. I feel better. I feel like I am not going to freak out if something is less than perfect. I haven’t had self harming ideation at all this week.
I hired my nephew to come do a lot of the work in the garage. That was a wise choice. He has worked out there probably ~16 hours over the past week and he has made amazing progress. He has about two more hours of mudding left to do. I am, of course, extremely grateful to Paula for coming over and telling us how to do this more efficiently. 🙂 Not to mention the work she did in general. 🙂 Yayyyyyy Paula! The mudding will be finished tomorrow and he will be coming over next week to start the painting. The garage won’t be ‘done’ by Christmas but it will be usable which was by goal. It’s kind of funny, but I am proud of myself for realizing that I wouldn’t be able to get it done by myself and asking for help. That’s a big deal for me. And I’m grateful that Denny was willing to come do so much work. And I’m super super super grateful to T and L for all the enormous work they have done so far. I’m feeling very humbled by the good people in my life. I may not have people who are available to ‘hang out’ much, but when I need help it appears. That is something I need to spend more time being aware of.
We haven’t finished making Christmas presents and we haven’t mailed anything. Oops. 🙂 Stuff may be late this year. And you know what? That’s ok too.
This is why I believe in the roller coaster model of life. Everything that is up must come down and everything that is down must come up. Thank goodness for upswings.
I haven’t been posting filtered stuff. As a result I have ceased to feel safe posting about some of the stuff going through my head and I’m tired of feeling like I can’t post on my journal. So I’m back to filters. This isn’t a particularly broad filter. There are many cases of one person in a partnership being on this filter when the other person isn’t. I’m not asking you to keep secrets from your partner but I would prefer if you didn’t go out of your way to bring this stuff up. I still like all of your respective partners I just don’t want to be argued with right now.
Most people talk about the first year of their kid’s life as being really difficult, sometimes awful. For me it was rather good, you see… I wasn’t ovulating. I didn’t realize how much that affected everything.
I’ve kind of realized something recently. I’m having a lot of trouble with anxiety and frustration. I’m having a really hard time with mood swings. I think that a lot of the problem is that I am allowing myself to get into positions repeatedly where I feel like I ‘have’ to put up with stuff I don’t like. Where in the hell are my lauded boundaries?! I’m going to stop being in the position where I have expectations of flaky people. It’s bothering me a lot.
Noah has found a way to change some of the stresses within our lives and that’s really awesome. Go him.
I’ve thought quite a bit lately about trying psych meds again because of how bad things have been for me. But I don’t want to be on meds. I know what I need to do if I am going to stay off of meds. It’s going to involve stepping on a few toes and stating some boundaries in ways that might piss people off or hurt feelings but my sanity is worth that. I can’t be a good mom as long as I am blowing in the wind of other peoples indecision and moods.
I need to stop bitching about the people who suck and just cut them out of my life. It isn’t worth going up and down with them. I suffer from it. They aren’t worth it.
Quite some time ago (more than three years) I embarked on the journey of permanent body modification. I didn’t start the project lightly. I assumed for most of my life that I would never get a tattoo because they were usually a bad idea. But I started dreaming about this tattoo and I decided that I wanted to do it.
So here is the story, once again, including pictures. Continue reading
A while ago I said that I was just happy and that I didn’t need to process anything for a long time. I guess that span is over. I’m getting good stuff out of the processing though. Don’t read the cut tag stuff if you are likely to scoff at my woo. I don’t want to hear it.
Yesterday I had my second session with this new therapist. We spent an hour going over my history so that she would have at least some idea of who I am before we got into the fresh stuff.
It was amazing. I’m sad when talking about the old stuff because it is all sad stuff. But when we started talking about Francesca, when we talked about my child, I sobbed. That’s the difference. That’s what I’m struggling with. That’s grief.
I was given therapy homework. She asked for a timeline.
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