Tag Archives: therapy

Jealousy and cliques

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I realized something important tonight. I don’t think I am any more jealous of Noah going out on dates than I am of him gaming. I am just about equally as hostile to both. Well… ok so somehow I manage to actually verbalize and lash out more when it comes to the jealousy around other women. I think that part of the reason I feel more secure in being actively hostile towards him dating is because of the overall cultural/social acceptability towards being jealous of nonmonogamy. It’s not nearly so culturally acceptable to throw screaming temper tantrums about gaming, especially not in the very limited and controlled way he does it. That’s really interesting to think about. Ok, so I’m jealous. I’m so jealous I want to hit things (and I have) and I want to cry (and I have) and I want to make him hurt/angry/upset too (I think I did that too). Why am I so jealous?

I think it’s because this plays into some of my core insecurities. I don’t feel wanted. I don’t feel liked. Ok, I’m aware that people do like me. The readership of this journal alone won’t let me follow that pity party too closely. But how many of you do I see in a week? In a month? In the average year? Yeah. I don’t have a close group of friends. I’ve never had a close group of friends for any length of time. That came about because of moving around so much as a kid. I never learned how to deal with people on an extended basis. I can do short bursts and then I burn out quickly. I feel like I have to always be ‘on’ and let me tell you I am good at that act. I can be interesting, sexy, supportive, or obnoxious depending on what I think will play best to the crowd. I can’t do it for long though. In the past week and a half I spent not quite three days with a couple of friends and then about four days with a different couple of friends. I flipped out on both sets. I think that being overall kind of down contributed heavily to the fact that I didn’t have as much energy to be ‘on’ as I needed for those lengths of time. I desperately want to be able to do the long stretches of time with people but I always lose it. I want to crawl into a hole and hide because as I start running out of energy for putting on the front I get snappy which means that I start feeling bad about being mean which leads me to think about what a horrible person I am which makes me question why anyone wants to be friends with me anyway. This really is a sucky cycle. I don’t know how to change it.

Back to how this relates to Noah. Noah is the one person in my life I really trust to want to be around me. But he wants to spend time away from me doing things without me. It doesn’t really matter whether it is gaming or dating it hurts either way. Because knowing that he wants to go off without me makes me doubt that he really wants to be around me. It makes me feel like Noah is just one more person who can’t handle me because I am such an awful bitch. And when I feel like anyone doesn’t want to be around me because I am such an awful bitch it makes me get mean. And things cycle from there.

Ok. If I can look at the cycle that means I can find a way out of it. I’m just not sure where to start. Ok, I do know where to start. But he’s not home from his date yet.

Dropped my basket

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So I’m not really sure how to talk about this here but given that I’m me I feel compelled to try. I have crashed really hard. I now get to experience how difficult it is to take care of a kid while depressed and it really sucks. I’m doing it anyway because life doesn’t wait for me to feel happy or good about myself. There is still a baby to cuddle and read to and feed and change and nurse whether I feel up to it or not.

If you sum up the last year and a half it kind of makes sense that I’m losing it. One of my close friends died after an overdose and then my therapist, whom I saw for years and years and was very close to, did the same thing. And another death in my extended family was kind of the topper even if this one was expected and less tragic. I failed out of the masters program after seven years of work. I’m not sure why my writing was good enough for all those years but it just wasn’t in the end. I didn’t manage to have the home birth I was so set on; I suppose I should just be grateful I escaped the hospital without a c-section. I’ve had a miscarriage of a baby I wanted very much. I’m having an extremely hard time with some stuff with Noah; I’m really feeling very inadequate and pathetic. And on top of all that I had Shanna–which has been wonderful and fulfilling but a lot of work and physically stressful and my system is not recovered yet anyway. Many things about my core identity have been challenged in some pretty difficult ways. I feel like I don’t know who I am.

So I’m lonely and depressed and I desperately want to cut. I’m not doing it only because in some weird way I feel like it would be unfair to Shanna.

Good enough

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One of my wonderful friends told me that I inspire her because I have accomplished so much and I started out with so little. If I stop and think about that even semi-objectively she is right. But there is always that voice in the back of my head saying, “But you didn’t do ‘x’ and you failed at ‘y'” and those things seem to cancel out my accomplishments. But why? How do I lose credit for the things I have done? I got a high school diploma. I was the first one in my family to do so. I managed to avoid pregnancy/abortion when most folks in my life circumstances didn’t. I am not an addict and I seriously doubt I ever will be–given my familial background that is huge. I have a bachelors degree and a teaching credential. I have been to five foreign countries. I have been to 30 states including an amazing backpacking trip in Alaska (have I said thank you lately, DA?). I am a fairly technically skilled top. I am a very good teacher. I have a good eye for putting together colors in interior decorating (if I do say so myself. :P). I’m a good mom. I’m a good wife.

I am sane. I own my shit. I am good about boundaries. I give and receive respect. I am an honorable person.

If I fail the masters exam what have I lost? I lose out on the chance to have a piece of paper to hang on my wall. I lose out on the ability to feel snotty and superior because of my formally recognized education. In reality I won’t be more educated if I get the piece of paper. I will still be in the top pay bracket if I go back to teaching because no one can take away the units I have earned.

I’ve been having a serious identity crises lately because I feel like who I am has somehow become less since I became a mother. It’s rather bullshit though. I’m not actively doing a lot outside of being a mother right now, but that’s ok. That is the season of life I am in. I wanted it and doing this does not devalue me.

I am good enough.

Anxiety

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I’ve been having a lot of anxiety lately. I feel anxious about all kinds of things. The comp exam, interactions with people, am I doing ‘enough’ in various ways, and of course my ever present internal push to be Mary Poppins. (People keep saying Martha Stewart and Hell No I think she is a wasteful twat.) I don’t keep my house clean enough. I feel confused by the barrage of information out there about health and diet and trying to be good to the planet. I feel confused by the myriad of different parenting philosophies. I feel like I am not being a good enough partner to Noah. I feel like I am not exercising enough. I feel like I must be doing Something Wrong as a parent. I don’t have any frame of reference for ‘normal’ for children so I have no idea if she is doing alright. (I think she is, but how in the hell would I know?) I alternate feeling kind of lonely and feeling like I am tired of dealing with people and it would be fine if I never saw anyone ever again. I feel frustrated by stupid interactions. I feel like I am being judged and found wanting in just about every way. I realized yesterday that my mother plans to come up here for Shanna’s first birthday party and she plans to fly to Oklahoma in July. How in the hell is she going to pay for that? Wait–is she going to expect me to? I am feeling a lot of pressure to save money and yet it seems like one of the easiest things I can do to help me not stress out all the time is spend money. (I think I’m fairly frugal but of course there are people out there who are more frugal so I feel like I am awful and terrible.) I have this problem of feeling like if I am not in the top 10% of (x) skill/ability/talent/whatever/activity then I am obviously pathetic and a loser.

That paragraph is hard to read. That’s how my brain looks right now though. I’ve never heard of postpartum anxiety but this doesn’t sound like postpartum depression. I’m not sad. I’m just anxious. I’m not happy with the fact that having a baby made it so that I don’t enjoy sex much. What the fuck happened? I enjoy the closeness and the intimate feeling, but it’s just not all that… exciting. I feel really fussy about having to be the one to initiate dates and sex when most of it is happening because it helps Noah stay cheerful. I understand that I have to be the one to initiate because I’m the one who can get Shanna to sleep most of the time, but still. I don’t feel sexy or interesting anymore. I gave a friend most of my ‘interesting’ clothes this weekend. I have weird feelings about that. On one hand I won’t be able to wear any of it for a long time (I’m too fat) but I feel like I just gave up on being interesting. I’m not worth looking at like that anymore. I’m completely de-sexed. I’m really thrilled that she is getting to enjoy the clothes though and I’m happy she is going out and having fun. So I get to feel like I’m a nice person for assisting her in fun and I get to feel like I’m just kind of pathetic and lame because I’m not having that kind of fun anymore. It’s a mixed bag.

So yeah. I feel like my brain is going close to a mile a minute lately and there isn’t much I can to do calm down and just feel content. My life is where I want it to be and that is hard. I’ve always been striving in the past and I don’t know how to stop doing that. I need to find my zen and just be happy in knowing that I accomplished (almost) everything I wanted to accomplish. It’s ok that my house isn’t perfectly clean–it doesn’t make me a bad person. Noah doesn’t care. I actually don’t care that much of the time. I worry about the hypothetical people out there who do care. I feel like they think I am pathetic because “You have all that time at home and your house is still dirty?!” It’s all about projecting stuff.

And I’m still freaking out about my therapist being dead. I wonder if that is part of the reason I have so much fuss bubbling to the top right now because I just found out that I can’t go process any of it with the person I process with. AHHHHHHHHHHHH

I had trouble sleeping

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When I got back to CA I had a message on my phone. It turns out my therapist died of an overdose while I was gone. This is the second death by that method of someone I was close to in just over a year. I’m feeling very conflicted and confused and unsettled. I knew she was cracking up when I stopped seeing her. I said snarky things about her cracking up. I was pretty sure she was on drugs. But now I feel terrible that I didn’t do something to try and help her because she was pretty clearly asking me for help–the whole taking over my therapy sessions to talk about her bit was obvious. I really liked her, both as a professional and as a person. I haven’t called the person who left me the message because I’m kind of freaked out.

My mom always said that deaths go in threes. I’m really afraid of who will be the third overdose. 🙁

How very odd.

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So I haven’t posted in a while about how much I love my therapist. There have been some reasons for this. A few months ago she had some personal medical stuff happen and she went on hiatus to deal with stuff. Fair enough. When she came back she started behaving… oddly. Our sessions started involving a lot of personal details about her life. It started feeling more like she wanted to bond than be my therapist. This was a gradual process and for a while I wasn’t sure if I was overreacting or if things were starting to get way too friendly.

A few weeks (months? my time sense is toast) ago I noticed that almost half of our session was spent with her telling me how much she and I are alike in great detail and telling me about how we have overcome the same things in our lives and how special we are. Riiiiiiiight. Then I had the prelabor issue and I canceled sessions for a while because I was afraid of driving to Oakland. During this period I talked to a few people and decided that no really, she was being completely inappropriate. After I was on bedrest for a bit she offered to drive down and do a session in my house. I figured that I needed to talk to her about the weird boundary stuff anyway so sure. Only she just couldn’t seem to get here. She called 30 minutes before the session was to begin and told me that she was getting a late start because she had been having anxiety issues and her current med cocktail makes it unsafe to drive when she is freaking out like that. I said that we should maybe cancel because I had another appointment after her with not a lot of wiggle room. She indicated that she was already on the road, but she had stopped on the way and she could make it in time. She was pretty aggressive about still wanting to come down. So I agreed hesitantly and sat and waited. At 15 minutes past the start time she sent me a text message saying she was lost but almost here. When we got to the point where I needed to leave in 15 minutes I sent her a text message saying that I needed to leave soon. She called me and said that she understood that I needed to leave and that being punctual is very important to me. She then said she was very sad because she had really wanted to at least see my house and touch base with me–she hadn’t been planning to charge me for the session anyway. *blink* ? What? This was odd. I told her to just turn around because I was going to head out.

Then she sent out an email to all her clients saying that she needed people to pay in cash for a while due to an issue in her personal life. Well that’s odd…

I agreed to one phone session after that, but there was a weird connection and she lost phone connectivity (battery?) and so she didn’t charge me for that. Then I got to the point where I was just not up for the continued weirdness and I told her that I was going to be opting out of therapy for a while because I didn’t really want to be driving to Oakland and I thought I was doing pretty well anyway. She reluctantly agreed to this.

Then tonight she called me. She has missed me and wanted to know what was going on with me and why I haven’t called her. I was very very clear on my boundaries and told her that I’m doing fine and if I want to see her again I will call. Noah couldn’t figure out who I was talking to–he thought it sounded like my conversations with Rebecca when I’m being extremely clear on what I am interested in talking about. 🙂 She wanted to be sure that I would let her know when the baby comes and that it will mean a lot to her. She stressed a few times that if I want to talk on the phone because I’m processing anything she is totally up for that and she won’t charge me at all. Or if I am able to come up and see her that she won’t mind me feeding the baby at all. I’m starting to feel pretty freaked out. I left the phone call by saying that I was feeling like maybe I wouldn’t need therapy anytime soon but if I decide I need to see her I’ll let her know. That was probably too ambiguous. I’ve been seeing her for years. The next time she calls I’m going to need to tell her to stop calling and that feels so very uncomfortable.

I wish she hadn’t freaked out on me. My therapist is not supposed to be a source of freakin conflict.

Since it came up.

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I was reminded yesterday that I make a lot of references to my background that I don’t explain at the time. Part of the lack of explanation is that I have written about a lot of it in some detail over the years but I suppose it is complete narcissism to assume that people will go back and read my whole archives (not a small task) in order to find out more about me. 🙂 (I actually do that sometimes. Depends on how busy I am when I pick up a new journal.) I’m also spoiled because Noah has read my whole archive two or three times and since I seem to be the center of his universe, of course I must be for other people as well… right? 🙂 So if you have spent years reading me and you don’t want to see this again, or if you just don’t care, feel free to skip the rest of this post.
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whoo boy that’s a roller coaster.

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So I got to play on Saturday. That was fun. It was a pretty decent scene. We asked one of my dearest friends to join us and it was all happy and fun and such. Except for that crying part. That was less “happy”.

Yesterday was a complete and total roller coaster day and I think it was cause of of playing. I went between angsty and fussy and angry all day. (It didn’t help that my tummy felt awful for a lot of the day and it was 77 degrees so my body was like WTF IS IT SO HOT FOR. I don’t like warmth much.) So I try to process. Cause I’m like that.

I was irritated because yesterday the marks from the scratching (with a knife) made it really hard to sleep after playing so I got almost no sleep Saturday night. I’m having a lot of trouble sleeping on my side in one position all night anyway–having to do it on *one* side because the other side was mucho owie just caused problems.

I also found that in retrospect I had a hard time dealing with the fact that Noah and our friend were both trying to push me in terms of how much pain I could handle. When I settled into a given level of ouchie they upped it. Then upped it. Then upped it. Until I broke down crying. Then they went “ahhhhh” and stopped and were lovey and affectionate. Yesterday I felt like, “Why did you need to push until I failed?” So much of what is happening to my body right now is beyond my control and I feel like I am sucking over and over. I’m not sure it was a good thing to push things until I broke. 🙁 I still feel like a failure because I couldn’t handle what they wanted to do to me. Ok, I know that they were going to keep pushing and pushing for a long time, but in my competitive masochist sort of way I don’t like it when I have to cry uncle first. So I’m mad at me and kind of mad at them. (Not real mad. Still glad I got to play at all.)

I’m also fussy because I think I want to fire one of our birth classes. No, I don’t want to come draw a picture and tell you how I feel about it. I did that shit when I was officially crazy as a teenager and I don’t want to fucking do it now. I’m feeling really angry about the lack of information in the class compared to the amount of woo-woo crap. (Uhm, no offense to any woo-woo types reading this. If it works for you, awesome. Is not my thing.) So If feel hostile and defensive when I go. Why am I going then? Oh, we had birthing class last night and I had to go argue with them telling them that no, I am not going to be “drawing my birth landscape so I can tell you how I feel about it.” I also didn’t appreciate being told that since my big focus in birth is that I want to trust my body and my instincts to tell me what is right over the random advice of other people that I should “soften around this idea because I’m not necessarily right”. I wanted to walk out right then. Because you know what you woo-woo bitch, you are exactly who I shouldn’t listen to.

And Noah wisely pointed out yesterday that I probably shouldn’t have any more lumps of lard and meat (but chicken nuggets are SO TASTY) because my stomach hurt massively all day after having it. Which probably contributed to me being such a bitch.

Ok, this roller coaster of emotions is getting old. I want off. And I woke up in a foul mood. I have class tonight. Awesome.

good and bad news.

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My therapist hasn’t been doing so well lately health wise. She just took two weeks off trying to get a handle on it but this much time hasn’t been enough. So she is going on hiatus for a bit until she can get things to a better place. She told me that she had totally expected me to be as supportive as I was, which made me smile. She told me that I could see a replacement person for a while if I needed to but I said that I would just wait until she was better again cause I’m real fussy about who I talk to. Her response:

“Yeah, and you have just about the best support network I’ve ever seen. I don’t actually worry about you.”

I like that even my therapist knows how much my friends rock.

{my shit} Note about filter, unpretty, unworthy, hating myself

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Uhm, a note about this filter. I’ve taken people off of it because I am going through one of those major control freak periods where unsolicited comments I don’t like are really really bothering me. So I’ve cut back most of the people who make comments I don’t want to hear. Maybe that is petty, but this is my bloody journal and if I don’t get to write what I want here without being responded to in ways I don’t like I should just forget the whole thing. I label this filter pretty religiously so you know in advance that it’s the heavier shit.

Most of the time I don’t say too much about people commenting on stuff. I ignore stuff I don’t want to respond to or I take someone off a filter and that’s about the end of it. On this filter I’m going to ask everyone to think before you comment. I’m not saying that anyone has to sycophantically agree with me or suck up, just think pretty hard before you comment. If your comment is tangential or not really about what is being brought up, please don’t comment. This filter is where I write about a lot of the stuff that is the hardest for me. I let people read it because many people have expressed that they really want to see what is happening for me as I work through this stuff. But as people stop feeling safe for me to process in front of they are simply removed. It isn’t up for discussion or negotiation. If you feel like you no longer want to be on this filter, please let me know. I am happy to take you off.

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{my shit} Therapy homework

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My therapist is so laid back that she practically lays down during our sessions. This is really good for me cause I need mellow people desperately. But this week she got all aggressive like and gave me *gasp* homework. Alright.

I’m supposed to go through the messages I have gotten around money. I’ve been having some issues around class stuff really bothering me and she thinks this might be a good starting place for working through it. (I’m not saying I have fully embraced all of these, but they exist for me.)

*”You should advertise here so you can get more money.” – The strong implication was the only career I should head for is prostitution. I was about 12. This came from my brother and my cousin.
*My mom was destitute but my father was actually middle class. He controlled all of the purse strings and therefore basically all of the safety and security and happiness in my family.
*If my mom wanted child support she had to go fuck my dad.
*I was often the only white kid who was poor. I knew other kids who were equally in bad shape, but they seemed to have cultural support in dealing with it. It was somehow extra shameful that I was so poor and white.
*Poor people should be grateful for anything well off people decide to give them/do for them. Even if it nothing like what you need or want.
*My mother often spent money selfishly/foolishly and it meant that I did without some basic necessities at times. I grew to believe that spending money on yourself meant hurting the people around you because my mother spent money on herself and it sometimes hurt me. I don’t want to be like that.
*I have the obligation to work hard for money and then give it to my family when they need it. Even if that means fucking up my own life.
*It’s ok to spend money on something that costs less than $10 basically anytime you want to. Even though all of those small purchases add up and cause a problem later. It was cheap and therefore ok to buy.
*It’s always ok to buy clothes, movies, and books. Even if you don’t have enough food.
*Supporting children is an obligation that should be shoved off on someone else as often and for as long as possible.
*It’s ok to lie about how much money you have when someone asks you if they can have money, but it isn’t ok to say “no.”
*Car maintanence is an extravagance that should be put off as long as possible.
*Food should be cheap and plentiful because spending more money on a small amount is stupid and wasteful.
*Wanting more than someone can provide makes you selfish and bad. You should stop wanting.
*Wanting nicer things (like matched dishes) is snobby and vain and selfish.
*Using paper napkins/plates/etc at Thanksigiving/Christmas is low class and disgusting.

I can’t think of anything else right now. I may edit this later.

{my shit} Oh, look! I have a navel!

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I’ve been trying to figure out why I am so bothered by the kid calling me an asshole and the resulting fuss. It isn’t that I think I should be more respected because I AM THE AUTHORITY. No, just no–that isn’t my deal. I feel like when kids react to me that way that I am being told that I am bad. I wish I could just strike that word from my conscious. When kids aren’t doing what they should be doing and are failing I feel like they are doing so because *I* have failed. But I haven’t. I managed to push, pull, and drag over a hundred kids through a very successful year of English. Why do I feel like a failure because about 20 kids don’t care about school? That isn’t about me. And really–the number is only about 20 who have fallen through the cracks.

And stuff has been rocky with Noah all week for a variety of reasons. I’ve been thinking and thinking on why. It’s both awesome and frustrating that I can never say, “We are having problems because he is an asshole.” And even going so far as to say that we are having problems feels like an overstatement. I’m being confused and unhappy and grumpy in his direction; he is being quiet and patient and understanding. I really have the best husband in the whole wide world (for me). Today when I realized that I was upset about the kids because I feel like I am failing and bad I started to put two and two together that I am upset about the Noah stuff for the same reason. (Yes, this may be obvious to those of you watching at home–I’m slow.)

Talking about his family (or my family) sucks for me because I feel like any and all issues have to be because I am just terrible. So when there are problems I assume all blame internally even when I am saying out loud that it isn’t my fault. So I’m arguing with myself in my head about blame and I feel like shit. Then I lash out because it hurts and the only way I really know to deal with hurt is to hurt back, even if that just means myself. It’s quite the vicious cycle.

I got to talk to a neato chick yesterday about issues in our lives and issues we each had with Noah (SEE! I don’t hate all of his ex’s!!) and it was interesting getting the comraderie. So that lead to some more interesting talking with Noah. I started thinking about why I feel upset about some of it. Oh wait, I feel compared–which means I have to lose, cause I’m bad.

I really hate this word. I need to find a way to get it out of my head.

Thrive on adversity

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Noah and I have been seeing a therapist for a few weeks and I honestly have some mixed feelings about how it is going. I think that what we are looking for is some new tricks in how to handle things and I’m not sure we are getting our money’s worth. Last night turned into a big argument in fact. It’s awesome when someone says something and then says, “I didn’t say that” in a patronizing voice. That’s a good way to have me be instantly furious. I was fairly seething. Noah could tell how angry I was. I’m pretty sure that anyone with half a brain could tell. Her reaction was… interesting. She is big on somatic work so she tried to abruptly change the tone and way things were going by breaking the flow and telling me to make physical motions so that I could “establish boundaries.” Well, I told her no, that I was going to establish my boundaries by not doing what she told me to do. That seemed to throw her. She gave the plattitudes about how conflict is good, but I don’t think she really believes it…

But what really rocked for me was that Noah totally defended me. That rocked.

{my shit} Freakin out

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Not a good day. Not a good day at all. I’m having anxiety attacks and freaking out. I can point at specific things and say, “See–that’s why I am feeling this way” but it isn’t entirely true. Yes, I feel like this because of those things, but it is my interpretation of those things that creates the problem.

I want to be cryptic and I want to get this shit off my chest before kids get here so I can maybe calm down. I’m sorry baby, I don’t think privacy is going to win this time.

I’m still freaking out because of the scene that went so badly for me in December. I still feel edgy and scared and disturbed. I still don’t want to have sex much. I feel unsafe. But my beloved baby doesn’t feel these same things because he didn’t have the same experience. I don’t say that as a slam or negative statement about him–just as a statement of truth with no judgment. The trouble comes in because I don’t want to have sex. He does. Having ridiculous amounts of sex has been one of the big pillars of our relationship. So uhhhh now we are having a hard time because I don’t feel safe enough to do it and yet he still has the same libido he has always had. I feel pressured and like I am failing to live up to the basics of our relationship. Mostly due to the fact that I am pathetic, insecure, and stupid we aren’t doing the open relationship thing right now so he doesn’t have any other outlet either. This is a problem because I feel like I am not willing to meet his needs and I am keeping him from getting them met elsewhere. This very much feels like the whole situations becomes “all my fault.” It doesn’t help that we have this whole brutal honesty thing. I know he isn’t happy and I feel terribly guilty and awful.

Noah gets upset with me because I can take things he says and twist them just a little bit and use them to beat myself up for a long time. There is a lot right now I am doing that with. I’m having a hard time really believing that he should be with me given that I am failing to a)meet his needs b)allow him to get his needs met elsewhere. I feel like he is suffering because I am crazy and stupid and that isn’t fair to him.

I started thinking at some point this morning that I should just start completely shutting ‘me’ down and just do it. I realized years ago that I am just a hair and a bad day away from being multiple. I am very good at putting on a completely different personality in order to get through various things. I’ve done this since I was a little kid but I have always fought very hard to keep the different personas highly conscious of one another so I am not a real multiple. If I stopped fighting so hard I could easily disassociate completely though. It has certainly happened. I kind of feel like it might be better/easier if I just started doing that. I know that it would be a new and exciting kind of psychological damage and I shouldn’t be seeking new damage in the course of trying to deal with old shit but it feels right now like I am so broken that there is no point in trying to be anything else anyway.

I want to cut. I want to cut so bad I can barely breathe. I would almost like to retreat to the relative comfort/hiding place of being suicidal but I am just functional enough to know that it isn’t an option. I wish it was. Somewhere along the way of fixing my shit I realized that suicide is entirely selfish and I am just functional enough to know how much it would hurt many people for me to do it. I kind of with I didn’t realize it because sometimes I feel like I am drowning under the weight of having to suck it up for the sake of other people.

I don’t know how to be the partner Noah deserves right now. I feel so awful and pathetic and terrible. I hate that I *feel* like he would be better off if I completely disappeared so he could find someone better. I hate that intellectually I know that would destroy him and he would probably never feel safe enough to really look if I did something like that. I would give just about anything to not hurt right now.

The bell rings in three minutes. No more time for me to be stupid and self absorbed.

Therapy and boot camp and tooth pain, OH My!

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Last night we had therapy. It is interesting to go with Noah. Cause that means all sorts of stuff is coming up which doesn’t usually. It’s scarier than usual. It’s also interesting becasue I know that a lot of my “turning inward” stuff never comes up in therapy but this therapist has already seen it more than once. It’s… disconcerting.

Boot camp is kicking my ass. I need to start taking the stomach medicine before I go because I’m in serious pain and I want to puke before it is over. 🙁 But I kept going through the whole thing even though I was doing it very slowly. My whole body hurts. I am so fried. And three more days this week… *sigh*

I get to run off for more dental appointment crap today. I’m not really looking forward to this. But… has to be done.

And tonight is a Pryankster pryactice in the south bay so I’m going to do my best to go. I’m wondering if I will be physically able to move, but I’ll try! I’m terribly GGG.

Now I will go back to watching Toy Story with the few remaining kids in my Comp and Lit class. (The sophmores are off taking the exit exam.)

{my shit} roller coaster of therapy

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For a variety of reasons I have had therapy with different people on: Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, and I have an appointment for today. I am feeling very very overwhelmed and I think today is going to consist of me telling this (new) person today that I am not going to be continuing to see her.

Short explanation: I was handed off from one person at the Y to another and I am not happy about it because it happened without my permission or even knowledge. 🙁 We have shopped around for a therapist to see together because we are running into a couple of walls and seeing those new people has resulted in a vast overload of processing and I’m feeling very very burnt out and drained. No more processing. 🙁

{my shit} Therapy homework.

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It is interesting to me as I sit here dispassionately looking at the many escapist ways I have of not getting to thinking about what I don’t want to think about. I hyper-notice the cleaning that NEEDS to happen (emphasis added to explain degree of obsession), and I need to go eat. Cleaning house was always one of the few things I could do to make my mother happy. I am also back to a feeling I haven’t had in a long while. When I am completely overwhelmed by my emotional state I cannot eat enough food to make me feel food. My stomach aches with hunger even after consuming a decent sized meal. Given how much of my life I have spent feeling this way I must stop and realize that I actually have a decently quick metabolism. Hm. But I am babbling because I want to procrastinate. I need to stop, but I really don’t want to do this.

Oh, this is going to be one of the few times I really ramble on and on as if this is a paper journal just for me. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to follow my ramblings and ickiness. And just to prove how much you really don’t need to read it: Here. It’s not even on your screen.

{my shit} Feeling brittle

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I am so incredibly on edge it isn’t funny. The slightest things set me off. Last night Noah made a rather silly comment and I took it very personally and basically threw a temper tantrum and left the room to sleep in the guest room. It seemed like a better option than continuing to be petty and stupid and nasty. It seems like everything is over the top right now. Proportionate reactions are a thing of the distant past. Although, in our defense–when we stop the nastiness and get around to actually trying to figure out what happened it is taking less and less time. I’m hopeful.

My therapist had some lovely things to say about my family. When I said I felt bad about being so angry she said, “Uhm, sounds like they are assholes and you should be angry” and when I asked her for advice on how to handle their manipulations better without yelling she said, “Oh, you mean how can you give them more of what they want and still not feel like shit about it?” She so has me pegged. Still not easy though. I haven’t figured out what I am going to do about them. Given that within the next month we need to send out save the date announcements for the wedding my current plan is to just not send any to anyone in my family. 🙁

{therapy} Shrink visit and cathartic play

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Yesterday I went to see my therapist and she opened with, “I want to give you the quick and dirty answer to whether I will see your mom first: no. Now let me explain…” We talked about how she wouldn’t exactly be fair with my mom so there isn’t much point in having the session happen. That made me happy. This conversation actually took a little bit. 🙂 Then I said: “I’ve had an eventful two weeks! I found out that my step-mother died and that no one thought I would care so they didn’t tell me. I called my mom for the first time in six months and drama ensued. I had an enormously stressful trip to Chicago which included some huge triggering things and a blow up at the end and such fucked up travel that we left a day late and almost returned a day late. My car blew up. My apartment flooded.” Her response? “Wow. You’ve been busy.” Smartass.

We spent a while talking about the situation with japlady‘s dad. Whether she wants to admit it or not he has a condecending tone of voice and that is hard for me to swallow ever let alone when I haven’t slept well in days, haven’t eaten a meal that agrees with me in days, have been in majorly stressful situations over and over for days, and just generally am away from home so I feel kind of off-balance. In talking about my reaction to him we couldn’t come up with anyone he reminds me of exactly. Yes, the situation japlady lives with is similar to what my father would have been willing to do me but it never actually happened so I don’t know if that is much of it. I know that I hate how he treats her and I hold a lot of anger towards him for that reason. (Yes, japlady doesn’t believe the anger is warranted–but when has that stopped me?) It is huge and complicated and messy. We also got around to the part that the only thing I really dislike about japlady is the name dropping and her father does it more/worse than she does. So I probably resented not only that he was doing it but that he fostered this habit in someone I otherwise think is so totally terrific. I don’t have full resolution on this issue yet in my head so I am going to keep thinking on it. I feel like the conclusions I have reached so far are very superficial and I am not confident that I have hit the meat of the matter.

Then we move on to last night. I played with a good friend on Wednesday knowing that I was going to be playing with her again last night. She has recently gone through a really bad breakup and I have been aware that she is really hurting emotionally. I also know that she is a very heavy masochist. I don’t know how or why I decided to be arrogant enough to try and help her process through some of her stuff, but I did. On Wednesday I tried to take her down hard and fast and get her to cry in a gut wrenching sort of way and it worked. I tested the waters to see how much anger would come up when I started hurting her like that. Oh, I did it by punching her. Punching is a very primal and overwhelming sort of way to be hurt, and I hit rather hard. When she started getting to a really angry place on Wednesday I kept up my litany of telling her that she is a good girl, but other than that I didn’t really get into a dialogue about what was coming up for her. Last night I did. Before we started playing I told her that I was going to be asking her why I was beating her and the answer I wanted her to give is: “Because I’m a good girl.” I gave her a little bit of a warm up with spanking and light punching before switching to canes. Not very far into the scene I asked her why I was doing it and she couldn’t tell me that she was a good girl. She started getting into negative self-talk repeating things that were said to her during her horrible break up. Things about her being bad. I stopped hitting her. I turned her around and held her face up close to mine and told her that I would not hit her again if she believed that I was doing it because she was bad. I told her I would never ever reinforce that idea in her brain. It took a little more talking but eventually she started to be able to say that she was good and I resumed the scene. We went back and forth talking as I beat the living crap out of her about how the negative things he told her were wrong. That she is good and deserving. She was very upset and screamed out a lot of her rage and pain generating from how she was treated. After a while I started ramping up harder and harder. I am not a weak girl and I was hitting her just about as hard as I am capable. Towards the end she was Not Having Fun anymore and that was my goal. I told her that I wanted her to tell me to stop. That I want her to have the power to say that when she isn’t enjoying it anymore that it needs to end. At first she resisted and said she couldn’t but after a few more minutes she finally could ask me to stop.

I spent almost as much time crying during this scene as she did. It was tremendously difficult to do, but I feel very good about having done it. After I stopped beating her I pulled her to the ground and started telling her again how much I love her. I asked some of her women friends to join me in telling her so and how strong she is.

I think that a good way to understand just how far I pushed her was encapsulated when Spot said later, “Everything I have read has said you don’t do that.” Yeah. SM play is a very scary beast. When you are experiencing as much physical pain as she was in you are opening up your mind and spirit to be receptive to things that normally just aren’t available to you. It is very rare that I play that heavily and I would only attempt a scene where I knew I was working towards such catharsis with someone I have known as long and as well as I have known this person. If I had not spent so many years seeing how her relationship worked and knowing the kind of self-talk she does I wouldn’t have done this. But I do feel ok with the fact that I did this with her. I actually feel really good about it.

Honey–I love you. Thank you for opening yourself to me this way. I hope I get to continue to know you for a very long time.

And thank you to the girl who stretched herself sooooo much by being there and participating to the level you did. I know how hard it was for you and I have only love and admiration for your courage and strength and giving heart. Thank you.

{my shit} Crazy?

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Yesterday was a very productive therapy session. Lots of looking at shit and why things work out the way they do for me. I really want to talk about it and it is all very disorganized in my head. I want to curl up in bed and talk to someone about all the ways in which I am crazy and there is no one to do that with.

Today isn’t so fun.