feeling totally, completely rudderless

[added: I keep changing the title because I can't figure out what that last word should be.]

I know this is ridiculous, but I just feel like I'm flailing here.

I feel like, my whole life, what've I've really needed is somebody to care. To notice. To pay attention to what I'm saying and doing and give some USEFUL fricking feedback.

I feel like nobody can really see who I AM, what I'm good at, what I'm useful for. I mean, the culture, of course, has all kinds of definitions of what a woman 'should' be and what a grown adult human 'should' be able to do and achieve.

But how does one get there, to this magical place of 'adulthood', all grown up, all figured out, all put together?

Nobody ever seems to want to talk about this stuff, and the people who seem to HAVE it together seem to have no idea whatsoever what I'm talking about. If I try to ask them questions or talk about it, it's as if I've sprouted three heads or started speaking Swahili or something.

I feel like Rip Van Winkle, like somehow I've been asleep or something all this time, and my body has kept aging, and I've continued to live life and have experiences, but - somehow, I, the essential me, has been disconnected from it all. And now all of a sudden I've got all this catching up to do, and no CLUE whatsoever how to it with very few financial, emotional or other resources.

What am I supposed to DO? People look away, as if you're something shameful, when you try to talk about this stuff. So I try to avoid such people, who are either in denial that anything like that has ever happened to them, or who really never have experienced having no safety net. Or, not the safety net you always assumed was there until you found yourself falling, screaming through space, terrified, and realized that - you were going to shatter. And no one was going to care. No one was going to help you pick up the pieces, or put them back together again. No one was going to care whether you managed to put the pieces together again. You begin to feel like some kind of Frankenstein's monster - all patches and seams and crooked places out of joint, like you've got this gigantic hump on your back that no one can literally see, but everybody reacts to as if you're some kind of - FREAK.

***
It's the same as it ever was - that feeling of not belonging, of having no place to fit in. Of being accepted (and even liked) in certain places, but it's just not enough - little fragments here and there that are never enough to create a whole picture. Like trying to put together a puzzle with half the pieces missing, or trying to sew a queen-size quilt with 3 square feet of fabric.

I keep searching for metaphors, some simple, straightforward explanation, something that fits neatly into a nutshell so that when I'm trying to explain, for the thousandth time, what's going on with me and WHY I need help (you can't ever just say, "Hey, I really need help with this, could you help me?" There's always this, "Why? Why can't you just do it yourself?" and it always seems pretty goddamn self-evident that, hey, if I could have done it all by myself I would have fucking DONE it by now, you fucking maroon.)

***
At this moment I feel less angry than simply perplexed, puzzled, at a loss, frantic to figure out WHAT THE BLOODY FUCKING HELL I'm supposed to DO.

I keep trying things, and nothing ever seems to make a substantial change. I've said this before, but I feel like one of those stupid beetles that keeps falling over on its back, and every time it falls over it lies there, helplessly, with no one to set it upright. It just flails its stupid beetle legs in the air, gaining no traction, making no progress. And if I *do* turn it over? It immediately falls over on its back again. It's like it LIKES lying there on its back, flailing its little legs with no meaning or purpose. Stupid beetle.

***
When your parents use you as a projection screen for their hopes, fears, needs, etc., you never have a chance. You never have a chance to be seen, to be heard, for who you really are. Because all you are is fragments of the bits that they project onto you - you never really get to be yourself.

(Thinking of the Snow Queen here, and the mirror shard that gets into


***
The pieces I need help with are (I'm pretty sure) developmental stage issues as far back as that murky, shadow time when I was a blob of cells lurking around in amniotic fluid, more than a twinkle in somebody's eye, less than a fully-formed, fully embodied being.

Gah. It gets so - esoteric, so weird, so quickly. I mean, I've spent years reading the literature, googling seven million questions from Sunday, and feel like my head is full of all these ideas of how things could be, should be, but simply AREN'T.

And then the three-heads phenomenon: Either they're touchy-feely, woo-woo New-Age bullshit practitioners who have no more clue what I'm on about than the most ill-read, ill-educated average Joe Clueless, or they're people who ought to know better, but somehow, they don't.

Just got a flash of an answer, try to grab its tail: Friend, lots of money, divorced, teenage kid. When she was quite young he was worried how the divorce was affecting her, and was afraid that he wasn't doing a 'good job' as a parent.

Now, I'm glad he asked for help, and that he had the money to BUY the help.

But there's this sneaking suspicion that, in a way, having money let him off the hook of doing his job properly. That these so-called 'experts' are just another scam, and he basically paid somebody to pat him on the head and tell him it's all going to be ok. Kind of like a mutual admiration society or something, or like one of those crystal ball readers who only tells good fortunes. Can't seem to quite capture the thought here...

***
Another attempt at nutshelling: The feeling is like, I've got all these parts, and I'm pretty sure they're supposed to make a bicycle - there's the wheels, and these gears, and a chain, and a seat. And some other bits and pieces that seem pretty bicycle-like.

But somehow there's something missing - the main frame, maybe? So, what the hell IS this thing, and how the hell do I put it together, all by myself with no models, no help, no frame of reference, and no fricking instruction manual? HELLO, can somebody PLEASE HELP ME????

The thing that's REALLY crazy-making is that all my life, people seem to act as if *I'm* in charge, as if *I'm* the one who knows what I'm doing. It's as if, when I ask them for help, I'm letting them down, somehow, because they NEEDED me to be the one in charge. Or something. Gah. I wish somebody would read this and tell me that it makes sense.

***
The word crawstep seems applicable, here - a kind of indirect, sideways shuffle that gets you where you're going, eventually, but you have to look nonchalant, as if there's no purpose or meaning to your movements, and sort of trick people into looking the other way while you're doing it, so that suddenly, while nobody's looking, you're there (wherever *there*, is. Cryptic.)

***
I think what I need is just someplace where I fit, where I'm *not* the oddball, odd woman out, etc. Someplace where I feel needed, wanted, accepted, understood. I don't have that feeling with my nominal 'family', (though I feel like my youngest brother accepted me pretty well til our falling out about a year ago).

Someplace that isn't a job, isn't a place of employment. I know it's supposed to be your 'family', but so often the cost of that so-called 'unconditional acceptance' is a whole lot of silence, an entire elephant shoved under the rug of 'issues we do not discuss'.

***
I think the truth is, everybody's faking it. Everybody's playing that 'man-behind-the-curtain' role, filling their lives with smoke and mirrors and we all accept it because - why? The alternative is too scary?

I've asked other people about this - that feeling that one day, you'll be there, that you'll know, you'll actually FEEL grown-up. But the truth is, most of us? are children hiding our insecurities in ever-aging bodies.

***
I've answered my own question: I don't have enough support.

How do I get enough support? Where is the support system for smart, sensitive, talented people who've somehow washed up onto the beach of later life without many of the things we're 'supposed' to have achieved by now, but somehow haven't?

I have to remember Fundamental Attribution Error. It's so easy to blame oneself for circumstances beyond one's control, especially when nobody else will accpet any responsibility.

Anger is a PRIMARY emotion

I get irritated by this idea that anger is a 'secondary' emotion. It seems patently stupid.

Look at a newborn infant. See that squalling, red, angry face? That maddened bellow is pure, raw life force, expressing itself from the very deepest level of the organism's need to survive. That newborn hasn't yet had the chance to develop the multitudinuous and ever-increasingly complex layers of obfuscation and delusion that allow us to survive in a world filled with bullshittery. That baby is telling it like it is: "I want what I want, and I want it NOW! And all y'all better drop everything you're doing and get it for me or I'll just scream and scream and scream 'til my little lungs come out my body or I DIE, whichever comes first..."

Anger is, then, the ultimate protective force, the power that is our shield, our armor, our battering ram, the life force that propels us unstoppably through life.

It's all the other emotions that are secondary, that come afterward, from damming up and blocking that life force, such as shame, guilt, humiliation, even sadness. Sadness at opportunities lost comes rather painfully to mind.

Calling anger a 'secondary' emotion is a cop-out by generations of sheep-people who've been too brainwashed to see or think straight any more. It's another one of those bogeymen/man-behind-the-curtain distractions used to scare children (and not very bright people) into conforming to the expectations of others. It's just another bludgeon or cudgel that power abusers use to keep others in line with their expectations. (People who see anger as a problem in *others* are often the ones who most often use anger as a weapon themselves...)

This (shrink-written) article says some things about anger that I quite agree with (and says a few other things that I find objectionable - shrinks are always a little too sure of themselves, making broad sweeping generalizations based solely on their own experiences. Like Freud, e.g.)

I've split it up into smaller pieces so that I can focus on each bit more easily. From this website:

www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evil-deeds/200901/the-primacy-anger-problems

In psychotherapy, the single most powerful and healing intervention the clinician can offer is to listen to the angry patient, and to acknowledge and accept his or her rage.

Yay! One of the paid brainwashers finally tells the truth!!!

Anger and rage have to first be validated, expressed and understood before the underlying affects or cognitions can be effectively addressed. The dilemma is that most mental health professionals denigrate and demonize anger, dismissing it as an inappropriate, destructive and negative and neurotic emotion.

Yes, exactly. The whole reason people remain 'trapped' in anger is because people trap them by being unwilling to listen to, hear or understand their perfectly valid reasons for being angry in the first place. Thus perpetuating the cycle endlessly.

Like the stupid idiot who wonders why you're hassling him about his behavior yet again. Clue stick, asshole: I'm hassling you again because you're still being a fucking asshole.

Very simple equation for you, you mindless twit: You do something to piss me off? I'm pissed. It's not random, or crazy, or wacky, or incomprehensible. It is a totally rational response to YOU being a complete fucking asshole.

***

This is how I see anger:

But anger is an appropriate, natural and healthy response to frustration, injury, insult, and anything that threatens one's survival or psychological integrity. We need to be able to get angry at such obstacles, challenges and assaults.

Anger can bestow strength and tenacity in the face of adversity.

Our culture expends vast quantities of human energy on bottling up anger, one way or another. I've always thought this was stupid, and wrong. Yes, I agree it's important to try not to do damage with one's anger. But I think it's like sword-fighting - in theory a person who really knows what they're doing with a rapier can be like a surgeon, cutting away the dreck and using their sharp edge to keep others from doing them harm. But like anything else, an inexperienced swordsperson can do incredible amounts of damage. So, they need to be trained. Not how to not use the sword, but how to use it carefully, in a controlled fashion. Like some of what I've read of martial arts training, where preparedness is everything. Or, as Edna Mode puts it,

"I'm sure I don't know, dahling. Luck favors the prepared."

Also:

When we are socialized to view getting angry as negative, evil, immoral or unspiritual, as so many of us have been, we repress our anger--as we repress other impulses or passions of which we are ashamed.

This is exactly what Jung describes as the shadow: those aspects of experience we find unacceptable, reject, and quarantine to unconsciousness. Anger is commonly experienced (if it is consciously experienced at all) as a shameful emotion which must be hidden from others, and often, even from ourselves.

The last thing therapists should do when working with angry patients is to further shame them for feeling angry.

Shout it from the rooftops.

my biggest fear

is that no one will ever care.

No one will ever see
or hear
my fears
my tears
my pain
my terror

at being so alone
for so long.

With nobody to EVER catch me when I fall,
to help me put things back together again,
to even fucking NOTICE when I'm hurting
or ashamed
or frightened

They turn away from me
constantly
shun me
as if I am something too horrific to be borne.

A monster,
a freak,
something that belongs in a circus
because of my unwillingness to

(cut and pasted the rest from a Word doc - had to bail from Blogger 'cause it kept locking up on me)

because I am unwilling to conform, to submit,
to their culture of silence.

So they shun me, they shut me out, even though I’m sitting right there with them, in the same room, at the same table, maybe even engaged in a conversation.

They shut me out because – why? I do not know.

Is it too hard?
Too frightening?

What are they scared of?

Are they simply greedy, lazy, selfish, stupid? All of the above?

I just don’t get it. I assume that if I were actually bleeding to death, they might stop to help me. I would hope. But I’m not so sure.

My uncle is dying, and I don’t care.

I feel nothing.

It is as if all those years of feeling too much were a kind of emotional ‘cry wolf,’ and now the machine is broken, it doesn’t work any more, there’s no more sympathy, or empathy, or compassion left for anybody but ME. If they won’t give me any, then I’ll have to fucking do it myself.

And right now? At this moment? It’s taking every fucking ounce of strength I’ve got just to get through each day, one day at a time. I have to carefully construct every hour, every event has to be carefully strategized so that I don’t somehow use up my tiny scraps of energy before the main event. Some days I have to choose between eating and taking a shower, because it’s too much trouble to cook, even to wash a can so that I can have a can of soup. Even washing the spoon is too much trouble – I’ll boil a kettle of water, then pour it over the dishes, and wipe them with some paper towels, and hope for the best.

I have dropped to many of the stones of my life’s meaning into that bottomless well of silence, hearing no echo, no sound in return to show that I was fucking HEARD, at any point whatsoever. They think that silence is a fucking VIRTUE.

Well, FUCK them. They can all go to hell.
****
My only option these days is to shut them all out, cut them off. Just as they have done with me my whole life.

How can you live with people who can’t SEE or HEAR you, who act as if you’re COMPLETELY FUCKING INVISIBLE?

And how the fucking HELL are you supposed to survive two parents who are so utterly, totally, COMPLETELY fucking CLUELESS? I mean, why didn’t they just fucking let me play on the FREEWAY while they were at it? If they hated me that bad, if I was that much of a fucking NUISANCE to them, then why the HELL did they keep me around?
****
Right now I am terrified of getting some kind of cancer – of my reproductive organs. I’m having all these weird sensations in my bladder area, and my periods have started again, but have gotten heavier. And now I’m having spotty bleeding in between, which I haven’t had since I was on the pill 20 years ago.

I’m afraid to talk to a doctor about it (I don’t have health insurance) – it seems like they’ll tell you anything to get you to go away and leave them alone. They don’t want to have to address your fears and concerns as if they’re real and valid, any more than your family did.
****
I want to move on.

I want to find people, NOW, who know how to fucking CARE about each other.

Not in this touchy-feely, woo-woo bullshit way, but in real, solid, tangible ways. Like an actual hug now and then, for fuck’s sake. That isn’t about fucking SEX. Like, concern. Caring, you know? Is that really such an impossibly difficult concept???
****
A culture that pays attention to all the wrong things, and doesn’t give a shit about any of the things that actually matter.
****
I feel as if my father has poisoned me – as if he passed on his cancer to me. As if I took it on – all the pain for the entire family, like this kind of – shunt, or conduit, or some kind of device that is meant to handle the overflow when there’s just too much.

But I can’t do it any more. My system is worn out. No one human is ever meant to process, single-handedly, the kind of pain a family can dish out and accumulate.

They want me to heal them, to take care of them, to make it better, like I always did.

Well, I won’t. They’re on their own now. I am no longer a dumping ground for their
****