more YES :-)

After several loud, "No!"s, I'm practicing saying "Yes!!!!" Which seems far more important just now - to *have* things to say yes to, that is...

The ready-made 'yes'es I was able to find online seem kind of boring, so I'm experimenting with MS Paint to create more interesting ones. No, it's not beautiful, but I had fun doing it :-)
















The yeses and noes (sp?) are an attempt at creating an internal navigational system, a rudimentary compass that helps guide me between the shoals of various wanted and unwanted things/people/activities in life. Crude, yes. Effective? Also yes, so far.

I've tried this before, but this time I'm actually able to *feel* the 'yes' and the 'no' in my gut, literally, if I'm paying attention. If I forget, another pretty loud indicator is a sudden surge or drop in energy. I actually made a whole bunch of 'yes' and 'no' signs and scattered them around the house to help me remember to use my guidance system. It makes me smile, especially the small flock of 'yeses' currently heading southward across my living room floor :-)

***
It's also a boundaries thing, if that isn't clear. I keep refining that, but it still seems that there's a sizable 'lump' of unfinished business right around my third and second chakras. I seem to have started at the heart chakra and worked my way outward from there, both up and down the chakra system.

I'm now as far as this intransigent lump in my spine, which is slightly higher than my belly button, but seems pretty clearly third chakra related. Something to do with willpower?

And the second chakra one is very much relational, in all kinds of ways with all kinds of people. Hence the boundary thing. That seems to be a pretty universal theme in general for me: Boundaries. How to set them, maintain them, and put no more energy into them than necessary. That last is a new idea for me, and that's all I'll say about it for now :-)

***
The other thing I'm noticing is that my legs have been getting weak lately when I'm doing something I don't want to do. It's really bizarre, but sometimes my legs get so noodly that it feels like they're going to collapse! And no, it's not a blood sugar thing - I get that all the time, so I know the difference. Low blood sugar usually starts by me feeling tired and cranky, sometimes almost a little flu-ish. This is different, and a little disturbing.

I keep having this thought that it's from when I was learning to walk, and somehow linked to being two or three years old and not getting to go through my individuation phase (terrible two's) properly.

I'm not sure what all this means, but I'm trying to learn from it.

I also wonder how many other people have to learn how to read their emotions by braille like this? And wonder what it's like to consistently have more direct access to them.

***
It's also to do with 'shoulds', which seems to be yet another way to talk about boundaries, individuation, etc.

I feel REALLY strongly that I MUST not go near my mother right now, because she is so utterly and completely oblivious to any and all boundaries I try to set with her of whatever kind. I feel like I end up getting steamrollered, every time.

[Edited to add: I tried to draw a steamroller, but between the Etch-A-Sketch-like qualities of MS paint and the fact that I don't really know what a steamroller looks like, it ended up looking like Ma Kettle driving the Flinstones-mobile. Oops. Guess I won't be showing you that one!]

***
I'm also remembering a yoga weekend I took about 10 or more years ago, where we did some Feldenkreis at the end of the long weekend of stretching, relaxation and yoga exercises, and I remember forgetting how to walk. Whatever the work was that we had done, I felt like I literally needed to re-learn my walking technique.

And it feels like I'm still 'holding' whatever that (faulty?) pattern is in my hips. It's as if I'm trying to fend someone off, as if there's an unnecessary tension (unnecessary in the physiological sense, if not in the psychological one) that's making me push them outward all the time or something.

Huh. I hope all this becomes clear really soon, because I'd like to think there's more to my life than simply untangling the mental/emotional/psychological knots that my family implanted all those years ago. I'm READY, universe, for the next thing. Please.

And, aware of the whole, "Be careful what you ask for" concept, let me be a little more specific: I want something GOOD. Something HAPPY and CHEERFUL, something DELIGHTFUL, that makes me want to LEAP out of bed each day with absolute and utter joy!

***
Oh, and another one I keep meaning to add to the breadcrumb trail (hope I'm not repeating myself, but I guess if I am, it must need repeating :-): "Once bitten, twice shy."

That one seems like an excellent metaphor (?) for the whole PTSD thing. Maybe I'll write another post on that.

YES!

NO.

NO.

Set my terms and STICK WITH THEM.

I don't know how to help myself remember this, except to repeat it over and over and over again.

I need an image, some kind of really powerful PICTURE, to help me remember this. Because it's ESSENTIAL to my survival, my sanity, my LITERAL ability to make it through all this.

The 'no' that is the title of the previous post captures it. Maybe that's all I need? Just, "No." Period. Full stop. I will not go there. Maybe the Green Eggs and Ham - no, too silly. Need something simpler, blunter, more direct, to the point, unmistakable. No joking about this.

NO.

boundaries?

Perhaps it's a boundaries thing. I keep feeling this need to express MASSIVE anger at various people - in fact spent a bunch of time ranting, rather loudly, in the yard this afternoon while I was working. It was pretty quiet, Sunday, there weren't many people around, and I actually yelled at the top of my lungs a couple of times with no response. A little scary, really.

I still have this feeling of being stuck, trapped, of being unable to make myself heard.

I have to simply NOT LET PEOPLE CLOSE TO ME who I don't trust. (Which may seem really, really obvious, but given that I grew up with people who expected me to trust them no matter WHAT they did or said - well, I'm not doing it any more. But MAN is it a hard habit to break.)

And the 'not letting people close to me til I trust them' thing is crazy, because given that I have NOBODY AT ALL to be close to, and the need for close human contact is as powerful as the need for air, food and water - what the FUCK am I supposed to do? I get sucked into every passing vortex just because I fucking NEED, CRAVE, am literally STARVING TO DEATH for interaction of any sort whatsoever.

And of course I try really hard to hide it, this aching, painful need; but I'm sure everyone can see it. I'm not embarassed by it, any more - I just don't know how to deal with it. It's like someone who's dying of thirst finally encountering water and trying not to choke to death on the first few gulps because they're so desperately thirsty.

But I cannot, MUST not, allow other people to make the rules, to set the terms of engagement. That's the problem: When you're the only person who admits to NEEDing anything, you're fucked, in this world where power and domination are everything and showing any sign of need whatsoever is considered weakness.

Again it's Fundamental Attribution Error. People who HAVE what they need have no capacity to grasp or comprehend what it's like to NOT have that particular thing. Even if they've been in the exact same situation themselves, even if they were only RECENTLY in that exact same situation. The human capacity for forgetting, denial and compartmentalization may be great coping/survival skills, but they sure make it a living HELL for those of us who aren't yet out of the woods.

***
I think if my stress level were any higher, you'd be able to literally hear a hum from my personal, mental hard drive melting down. I feel like one of those hummingbirds, my little wings flapping at 300 mph, consuming twenty times my body weight daily just to keep up with the stress. Eating myself alive with nervous tension.

no.

Clinging to this lifeline as to a life preserver.

I never had anyone to 'count' on in my life, and I still don't.

I am alone, in a terrifying way.

I do not trust my family; all my 'friends' are either physically or emotionally distant, either too involved in their own lives to have time for me, or they're males who only want involvement if it includes sex.

Conundrum. Again. Help.

***
I canNOT get involved with my family again.

It's so INCREDIBLY painful not to be able to see my nieces. I want so badly to spend time with them, to have SOMEbody to give all this love to that I feel welling up inside me. They, at least at their current ages, actually NEED what I have to offer.

And my brother knows it. And appreciates it.

But the PAIN involved in seeing HIM, or trying to get together without seeing my sister-in-law or mom. My GODdess, how fucking CONVOLUTED this all is. It makes my brain and my HEART hurt.

I've been looking for a way out, an escape hatch, all day. Running in emotional circles, chasing my proverbial tail. Thank the universe that it was a good gardening day today for at least a little while - I managed to get out there and get a bit of satisfaction from nurturing some plants, taking care of some of the green, growing things for a while. Felt myself rooting, grounding, connnecting a little.

But then it started to get cold, and I've since been huddled in front of this computer all afternoon, un-rooted, unconnected to anything real or tangible or alive. I feel as if I'm literally starving to death for loving, caring, kind, gentle, supportive human contact. I feel as if all these people around me KNOW exactly what's going on, and not a single one of them can spare the tiniest drop of compassion to help me survive. It's like being some kind of desert cactus - somehow I'm still alive in spite of the eternally protracted drought period, but: HOW MUCH LONGER CAN I GO ON???? My system can't take these repeated bouts of panic, terror, fear, living as if any minute might be my last. I'm literally going to burn out, fry, crisp my adrenals or whatever the hell it is that's been keeping me going for so long. Pure stubbornness (sp?) near as I can tell, or as Terry Pratchett would put it, 'sheer bloody-mindedness.'

running away from the trap

All the layers that I so successfully peeled away - all the pain, the shame, the rage - I feel it trying to creep back in. It's like I can't see myself as valuable unless -

This is the mom thing again.

The obliviation - what's the word - obliteration thing.

I have to understand this.

It's like being eaten from the inside out by a parasite. This thing that absolutely CONSUMES you, and leaves nothing left.

And it's like this pattern applies to everybody in my family that I interact with - my youngest brother, my nieces, my sister-in-law.

There's this PENITENTIAL aspect to it all, like 'guilty 'til proven innocent.'

As if my default setting is 'WRONG', and I have to make up for it somehow. I have to constantly PROVE myself, atone for my sins.

Is that what it really is, at root? The long-standing, generations old puritanical GUILT at work here? The punitive patriarch that lurks in our souls?

How to eradicate it, or him?

I came across this article late last night, and perused it a bit, it seems relevant here:
http://dbs2000ad.com/narayan/where-art-thou-romeo.htm

It kind of goes on and on, and loops back on itself and repeats a lot, but it seems to capture many of the ideas I've had myself about how all this crap fits together (or doesn't), a kind of unified field theory of human nature and relationships and what not.

Let's see if I can find a representative quote that sums it up fairly tidily. Ach, doesn't look like it'll fit into a handy-sized nutshell, so I'll just quote some bits:

The foundational source of most of these difficulties is the paranoid patriarchal system under which we have been living for about 8000 years. And the basic parameter here is the intensely destructive gender roles that have been imposed across the board. What has happened is that males and females have been separated and trained into highly specialized and mutually incomprehensible patterns of functioning.

Hell, I'm just going to quote this whole long section, from 'Problematic Parameters':

The male is expected to be basically a problem-solving impersonal machine who is feeling-avoidant and relationship-incompetent. He is paid for being a walking cerebrum and a pair of hands, period. Sometimes he is even expected to just LOOK like a certain image. He is not paid to be a human being with feelings and with relationship capabilities and a family and commitments and needs that compete with the work world.

In the meantime, the female is basically put in responsibility almost single-handedly for the entire emotional/ecological system. What that means is that nearly everything about the process of being human and rearing children lands on her shoulders. And since this is a basic biological impossibility to pull off, her failures then become the target of much attack. The male is neither capable of handling the requirements of the situation nor is he emotionally and often even physically present.

To make matters worse, the household is expected to be a "hymn to him" process in which he is minimally demanded of emotionally and his word and whims are law. He is also the "enforcer", as in "Just wait till your father gets home!". He IS expected to bring home the bacon and to handle physical maintenance and protection, but anything in the realm of emotions, relationship and child rearing is beyond his call of duty and his ken and his capability.

For the male child, therefore, that means that he has to piece together what it means to be a man from the little snatches he gets of this distant and mysterious figure who won't tell him anything about what is going on inside and who works at a job which is highly complicated, technical and situationally set up in such a way that a child can't comprehend what's going on when his father engages in his work. So he has no one to look up to as a model and he has to fall back on mother's attitude and shaping in terms of creating his masculine manifestation.

He also learns that the real action is in the realm outside the home in a technical society that requires complete emotional suppression. In addition, he learns the "buck stops here" ultimate accountability, responsibility and authority role in which every time anything goes wrong, everybody turns to the male in the situation and he has no one to turn to. It's his job to come up with the resources and the solution to the problem. The result is a problem-solving machine.

In the meantime, the female child is inundated with training experiences in how to handle ecologies, emotions, far-reaching responsibilities, and relationships. Not infrequently, she becomes the mother's sole source of intimate love, perhaps even going into erotic involvement. In addition, she's usually pressed into service to assist in the overwhelming overload of responsibilities of her mother early on, and she very frequently is even forced to reverse roles and to be her mother's mother from a very early age. Yet at the same time, she is supposed to be nonthreateningly incompetent in many areas of personal power expression and competent world handling, so that "Big Daddy" can "take care of her". She quickly learns to hide her candle under a basket and to handle the "home front".

Now the mother in the isolated nuclear family is the lifeline for the child of either gender, especially during the first four years when the child is putting God on her face in the "in loco Deity" response resulting from the "commons" evolutionary history. But she is also the "polarity parent" (the other gender) who establishes the boy's gender identity, his personal worth as a male, and the "stand-in" for the "Home Office". She is in effect everything to him, especially in the light of the absence of the father. She thus becomes a "Statue of Liberty" figure for him -- she can crush him in an instant.

Very frequently, he also becomes her spouse-substitute and even her father-substitute due to the severe limitations of the male gender role and its effects. He in effect becomes the man in her life because she has never been fulfilled and she has been in effect neglected or abandoned by the masculine all her life. But of course, he can't deliver the goods, and she then projects all her betrayal-rage on him. He then can do no right for his unpleasable mother. She also seeks to prevent his developing his personal power, both because she doesn't want to lose him, and because she is afraid of his abuse of his power. He is thus expected to be her man while at the same time not manifesting his masculinity. He ends up utterly enraged and perplexed by women.

For the female child, the situation is one of severe deprivation of validation and gracefulness training from her father. He doesn't intervene in the profound "double bubble" dependency relationship between her and her mother, who is using her as an associate or role-reversed parent. Between his non-involvement and his non-intervention, she ends up believing she is undeserving of his attention, and she ends up depressed, self-denigrating and longing for love from a male.

This situation is horrendously confounded if in addition, he becomes sexually involved with her on the emotional or even the physical level (the latter now being reported at 60% and perhaps as high as 90%). In such a situation, all of the above reactions are extremely exacerbated because of our evolutionary history in which the female was the determiner of who became sexually involved with her. This results in her being biologically programmed to believe that she is the one responsible for this situation.

As a result of all this, she often wants to avoid full feminine maturity, and she wants to be protected and taken care of in the little girl experience she never had. She rejects her sexuality and power in order to remain an eternal girl. The eating disorders revolve around this desire not to become a mature female. And because of her profound frustrations, suppressed rage and powerlessness programming, they are also prone to helplessness feelings, seething "tripod-rage" and cancer.

Yet at the same time, she feels totally responsible and accountable for the entire emotional and physical ecology, and she therefore feels that it is all her fault when things go wrong there. This also results in her believing that all the negative things that happen to her are her "just deserts" for not having handled things in such a way as to avoid the negative outcomes for which she feels responsible.

Simultaneously, between her mother's programming and her father's betrayals, she ends up full of "tripod-rage" in which "he can do no right". But then again, she finds herself "romancing the stone" of her father-stand-ins while simultaneously subconsciously hating them. And if she gets a really relevant male, she can't relate to him because she doesn't deserve it, and besides he can do no right.

The male comes out of his experience fascinated by, terrified of, dependent upon and extremely vulnerable to women. He also puts his worst foot forward with them as a result of his "You can do no right!" experiential history with his mother. He ends up full of male shame for all his betrayals and incompetences and failures, while at the same time he is full of fury for his mother's effective destiny-destruction. And he falls into the pattern of not-thereness, exploitation and authoritation abusiveness in a hate-mate relationship pattern. The only emotions he can express are artificially inflated sexuality and rage.

The net effect of all this is that when a male and a female get together to form an intimate relationship, all of these dynamics come into play and all hell breaks loose and interacts with all the other processes going on in relationships today. And the situation is even more complex when same gender pairings occur, inasmuch as all the societal rejection comes into play, along with all the extremely confusing complications arising from the gender role dynamics having to be played out in a multi-layered kaleidoscope of profoundly painful playouts.

One of the commonest forms this takes is the "demonic dynamic". This is a situation where within seconds, the two individuals are in a blind, perhaps even homicidal rage over some passing trivial issue. It is the resultant of all the damage, pain, rage and neurotic interlocks that are the outcome of all the parameters involved. It is a mutual jackhammering process that can get physically dangerous very quickly. It reflects all the horror and pain they have both gone through all their lives in intimate relationships, starting with the most rejecting parent phenomenon.

stories

Want to keep track of my past, part of the trail of breadcrumbs, reconstruction that helps me make sense of it all. Putting all the puzzle pieces together to complete the picture, stitching in every last detail into the tapestry of my life.

I sometimes wonder, if I had a more 'connected' circle of family and friends, would all this be necessary? The blogging, and everything? The years of journaling, the many attempts to be 'heard' and seen, via whatever means or media are available to me. To chronicle everything that's happened. It seems to be an essential part of feeling 'real', of knowing that one has existed, that one's passage through time and space has been recorded somehow, somewhere, that one has made an IMPRESSION and been NOTICED, taken note of.

Answer: No. If I had a supportive, caring, concerned, involved family, none of this would be necessary. But that's a fantasy life I don't actually live, so instead I'll carry on with the writing, and hope for the best.

[Edited to add: It occurs to me, based on some recent experiences, that if I'm just aggressive and insistent enough, I can MAKE myself heard. The problem is that that kind of aggression is just not in my nature, so it's exhausting, daunting, draining. Basically, I don't want to do it. But I'm *learning* how to do it, in spite of not wanting to. As a survival tool. And guess what? It's working! Yayyyyy!!!!! And I'm even learning how not to spend so much time and energy *fretting* about it, feeling guilty for standing up for myself, and just DOING it. More yay. Onward.]

I imagine being part of a clan where all the stories were passed on by word of mouth, and EVERYBODY knew all the stories, to the point where some became legend, with time. I'm sure that happens with lots of folks - I hear people telling stories all the time, and have told a few myself. In fact, one of the moments that brought me closest to tears was when my middle (and currently estranged) brother told a story about *me* that I didn't realize he even knew, and told it with some details that even *I* hadn't been aware of, because I'd been so traumatized by the event itself (falling under a wagon and being dragged along on some gravel when I was about 8 or so, leaving me bruised and bloody while my brother cried and cried that I was 'dying'! Who knew that my most vicious tormenter once had great feelings of fondness for me? And what happened to change all that? I'll probably never know.)

Anyway.

So today's story is picking up from around the time of dad's death - that whole period is hazy because of all the changes and emotional trauma and stress and the horrible loneliness and complete lack of any kind of support - physical, emotional, financial, mental - from ANY source whatsoever.

I'll just start throwing bits of it out there, then maybe fill in the gaps later. Maybe retell it a time or two for continuity, to smooth things out. I like this idea :-)

***
Putting this out in 'public', as it were, makes me aware that my brothers (or their kids, or somebody connected to the family somehow) may someday read some of this, and it makes me want to be fair. To tell the truth, but not be hurtful - not to exaggerate, but to tell it as simply and clearly as I can. When I'm angry it's hard to do that - some of the things I've written while angry shock me when I read them later, but I don't want to edit out my feelings, so I leave them up as is and hope that someday, if and when there's ever an opportunity to *discuss* all this, I'll get to actually *explain* how I was feeling and *why* I was so angry (if it isn't self-evident from the stories themselves.)

I'm getting side-tracked just now by playing a bit with Microsoft Paint, it's WAYYYY more fun! :-) So maybe I'll come back to this later. To be honest, it's all a bit of Pandora's box, and *I'm* as scared of what I'll feel and say as my brothers might be. I think.

cutting ties - again

I'm hoping it will be easier this time. I've been away long enough that I really don't feel the same kind of entanglement(s) I felt before.

But the guilt is still there. I just have to keep reminding myself that this is not an equal and opposite kind of thing - that if my FAMILY felt the same kind of guilt as *I've* been feeling (which they SHOULD, as far as I'm concerned - they're equally culpable in this whole situation, I shouldn't have to be carrying all this shit alone), they would have DONE something about it by now. The fact that they've said and done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING tells me that they don't give a shit. Or, that their ability to express 'giving a shit' is so fucked up as to be something I want nothing to do with.

I am NOT going down that one-way street again. It's two-way streets or nothing from here on out.

***
I realized today that my brother seems to think he can just ignore all of what went before and that I'll be happy with the tiny little crumbs he's willing to fling casually my way.

Not so, buffalo breath.

I had made a couple of tentative moves toward re-connecting without thinking about it too hard - the birthday card for him a few weeks back, and the unexpected visit to mom's where I encountered the girls, and, briefly, my brother; and then the next day I emailed him a link to a comic/blog that i thought he might like.

All very natural, a normal desire to connect with someone who's been a long-term part of your life, right?

But things don't change so easily. I realized today how angry I still am, how nothing has changed, how there are all these assumptions being made without any discussion whatsoever. And that the same absence of conversation that has been standard operating procedure in my family for my entire life HASN'T CHANGED ONE BIT.

I thought I'd escaped unscathed, but the feeling like I wanted to make myself throw up again last night and this morning, for the first time in over a year, clued me in: I was literally 'swallowing' my anger - 'swallowing' something I didn't want to swallow. Namely the bad feelings, the fact that everyone was just brushing by me again, making light of my feelings, ignoring all the things I've said in the past as if it's all just magically better now.

Maybe I make it too easy for them. Maybe that's a habit I need to break. I don't know how to do it single-handedly - in fact, I'm pretty sure it's not POSSIBLE to make a giant, relational change like this by oneself. It takes the cooperation, interest and involvement of ALL parties.

Anyway. So, tonight, I found myself starting to feel sick, literally nauseous, as if I had eaten something bad. But I knew it wasn't food poisoning - if it had been from the food I ate earlier, it would have hit me hours ago and much more strongly.

This started with (I know this seems unlikely, but this is what I felt) a knotting in my liver. I'm wondering if the 'clenching' I was feeling is where my gall bladder used to be? And I thought, this is how the bulimia started all those years ago:

Back then, I felt incapable of expressing anger because any anger on my part made me 'bad', no matter how provoked I'd been by a person or situation - the feeling was 'unattractive' and therefore not permissible, and therefore I must bottle it up in order to be 'liked'. (See how fucked up/tangled up this gets? And how quickly? And how INSANELY DIFFICULT it is to figure out once all the complicated layers have gotten all twisted together over many long years of unquestioned bottling-up of feelings?)

And I realized that the 'backed up anger', or bile running the wrong direction (which was how I translated/interpreted the clenched (?) liver feeling), was me going against myself so as not to upset anyone in my family. Putting THEIR needs ahead of my own, once again.

As soon as I had that thought, made that connection, the nausea began to subside, and I could feel my energies begin to flow the 'right' direction again.

So I know I'm doing the right thing. I let my body be the guide here, to help me understand, feel and connect with my deepest, most powerful feelings.

It was really fucking cool! Though depressing to have to go through this all over again.

But it's like any path you travel enough times: You learn the shortcuts, how to avoid any traps or pitfalls, and you just generally learn how to make the trip as quickly as possible, especially if it's an unpleasant one.

Ideally, I suppose, you eventually learn to find a different route altogether, a PLEASANT one, or perhaps find a way to eliminate the need for whatever it was that caused you to take the unpleasant route in the first place. Although I think that last idea is just fantasy, wishful thinking - there are *some* things we can do without altogether, but close family ties isn't one of them. It's a bit like trying to do without air, water or food.

But perhaps I can learn to find other substitutes for the particular humans I started with. That's what I'm working on, for now.

***
The problem is, what if you're the only one in the family who seems to have any AWARENESS of the feelings of other people? Or, to the degree that you have that facility (or curse, handicap or whatever)?

***
I don't want to think about 'leaving the door open' or whatever - I feel like my prime directive right now is: SURVIVE.

Think ONLY and ENTIRELY about myself, no one else. No one in my life has EARNED that place of honor with me. So I will not give that 'position' away just because someone comes up and demands (or seems to expect) that I do so just because they WANT it.

Argh, this is getting all blargly again. Stop for a minute and let things coagulate (ick?) or whatever it is they need to do before I can continue 'processing' (blech-y shrinkology term.)

why are some families

so full of pain?

i saw my nieces for the first time in over a year on Monday (the 23rd), and was there long enough to end up seeing my brother as well, though only briefly. He seemed all red and tight and angry, like something that was going to explode - he made me think of a very large grape, in shape and redness. That kind of tautness that grape skins have? Like they're holding in a lot of tension?

It was at my mom's house, I'd stopped by to ask her something, and the girls were there - I kind of thought they might be, because Monday used to be their regular 'day at grandma's,' and I was pretty sure school wouldn't've started yet.

So I went in when they said they were going to have tea and asked me if I'd stay (they were all out in the yard when I got there and I was just going to ask mom the question and go, but with two nieces clinging to me and the third gazing on with an - i don't know what - kind of look on her face, I didn't have the heart to just leave them.)

It was ok at first, but then the oldest started tormenting everyone (I think she's 10 now?), she would have tormented me except I've spent so much time working on all this stuf that it hardly fazed me at all. Mostly just the shock that it's gotten so blatantly out of hand in such a short time (the bullying, I mean.) The other girls seemed sort of resigned to it, they put up a little bit of a fuss, but they both seemed to more or less do what domestic animals do when they've been mauled too much by little kids: Just lie there until the kid gets bored and goes away, and try not to do anything that might get them seriously hurt.

So I stood up to her and stood up *for* the others, and taught them little tricks to fend for themselves, right there in front of her, and shifted the balance of power a bit; but it was exhausting, and I had no notion of trying to do it on any kind of regular basis.

I wasn't thinking about how late it was, but then I heard the front door open and knew it was my brother; we scarcely exchanged a word or a glance, except that I caught the red-grapeness out of the corner of my eye and decided to keep my head down. He finally, maybe right as we all were leaving? remembered to blurt something about "Thanks for the very cool birthday card" that I'd left him on the back porch of their house almost three weeks before. At that point I was pretty much just trying to get out of there intact, so wasn't even thinking about it, and it was a pleasant surprise.

Interestingly, the one that clung to me most was the youngest (who's now 5, she tells me); I seem to have adopted the classic, defensive distancing that I remember from my *own* aunts and uncles. A family that never apologizes for anything nor takes responsibility for the effects of their behaviors and words on the other members of the family, and is unwilling to ever DISCUSS anything, carries a lot of old pain.

It seems that, when this is the case, everybody's so busy kind of holding themselves 'still' - you know, like when you've got a bruise or some other sore spot and you're basically just trying not to jar or bump it until it has a chance to heal properly?

But there are SO many sore spots in our family that we can hardly be in the same room with each other.

Except my mother, who blithely and glibly trots out every story and tale as if it were the breeziest, most unconcerning little family anecdote, oblivious to the winces of pain and embarassment, sometimes humiliation and shock, on the faces of her children and other listeners. She's the one who unknowingly rubs salt in the wound (smiling all the while, like a child, "See, aren't i great, aren't i a good storyteller? Just like the grownups?"), drags crushed glass across flayed, raw, bleeding skin. She has ABSOLUTELY NO AWARENESS of the feelings of other human beings, as near as I can tell.

So there are the Oblivions, like my mother, who are the emotional equivalent of the bull in the china shop; and the Passivites, like the middle niece, who just lie there and take it and hope it will be over soon; and the Explodies, like my brother, who lets it build until steam comes out his ears and he resembles one of those old-fashioned boilers, and everybody runs for the hills.

And me? I don't know which camp I'm in. I like to think I've become this detached observer, this Wise Woman (goddesss, how our family could *use* some wisdom!)

I picture myself as Justice (my name is Biblical in origin and means 'the judge', as I understand it, ho ho :-), you know, the one with the scales and everything?

The one who impartially weighs the pros and cons and reads out the verdict, assigning responsibility and recompense, assuring fairness and equity for all. Or something like that.

***
I want it to all go away and leave me alone. I've been so much happier this past year - able to make healthier connections with new people, never falling into the absolute depths of blackest despair that had me in their death grip in years past; I walked away and left it behind. I feel that I am standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and admiring its depth, but knowing I definitely don't want to fall down there! 'Cause I'll never get out again! It's a dry, sandy, dusty, chasm with no food, water or shelter from the blazing desert sun; no protection at all. "Run away! Run away," scream my instincts.

The guilt part is a tiny little voice I can barely hear, now - I've wrestled it to the ground so many times that I'm beginning to win. My OWN need for survival is becoming more important than 'looking good' to people whose 'rules' do not in any way, shape or form include concerns about MY health and well-being.

Where's a pretty picture? I've decided I'm going to start posting photos/clips from my massive cache of images just to get them out there, disseminate them, spread them on the ether-wind.

I sorted/gathered my grasshopper pictures today, maybe I'll start with them:




























***
The thing is, how long would it have been before someone from my family made contact with *me*? I mean, there's been NO effort, no energy. I walked in as if I'd never left - but it's a kind of gaslighting - my presence? My absence? It's all the same.

Except the youngest niece said, "Auntie ____, it's been years since I've seen you!" Which, from the perspective of a 5-year-old, is pretty accurate, when you get down to it. A year's a fifth of her entire life, after all....














I'm so used to feeding them all, emotionally - being aware of their needs, knowing what they need especially when they don't even know, and yet coming away hungry, myself - starving for the tiniest crumb of emotional sustenance.

The girls, especially the youngest, still give to some degree, they haven't learned to hoard it to themselves, yet; though the oldest is getting scarily good at it already and I'm afraid to learn what the middle girl's 'coping mechanisms' are turning out to be.

My youngest brother is the only one who gives anything back at all of the so-called 'adults', and even he seems to do it in spite of himself - it was reflexive when he was a child, but now he, too, has learned to 'keep it to himself.' Mostly. It's almost as if he surprises himself when he becomes unexpectedly generous. And he fights himself: There's the anger, the guilt, the shame, the resentment.

Sigh. I wish it could all be simpler, somehow, not so horrible and tangled up. I really think it's the money (or lack thereof) that messes everything up: The unfairness, the inequity, grates on everyone's nerves, and nobody wants to talk about how it got that way, and the longer we go without talking about it, the more set everybody gets in their ways, the more unwilling they are to change. The lack of contact reinforces peoples' preconceptions, biases and misconceptions, and the misunderstandings and lack of communication become set in stone. Immovable. Inert.

Sad.

But somehow I don't FEEL it - I've become inured to it. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing, but I can actually stand this close to the vortex and not get sucked in. And I don't even feel like it's an act of willpower or resistance - I'm just simply not attracted any more. I am indifferent. It has nothing to do with me.

***
I've been thinking, lately, of the 'choices' people make, many of which seem to be like the one a wolf caught in a trap makes when 'choosing' to gnaw its own leg off in order to escape: No choice at all.

Chew my leg off and live, crippled;
or die?

Many so-called 'choices' in life seem like this: Work as a coal miner and slowly die of black lung in order to 'live'? Work some meaningless white-collar job, trapped in a dimly-lit, airless cubicle through many of your most productive life hours so that you can - live???

I don't get it. There HAS to be another way.

***
Bouncing back and forth, working away at this, an invisible splinter that hurts like a sonofabitch, and I keep thinking I've gotten most of it out, yet there's still evidence of infection.

My mom. I haven't spoken to her, except briefly when it's unavoidable when she shows up at a dance, and yet when I showed up at her house the other day it was as if we'd only spoken yesterday, as if there was no animosity, as if everything was normal and fine.

It MAKES ME FUCKING CRAZY!!!!! This business where I CANNOT MAKE ANY IMPACT ON MY FAMILY WHATSOEVER.

It's like you PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE AS HARD AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN, and they don't even blink. They appear not to even notice you, at all! It's like you're this tiny, insignificant, meaningless fly speck that has no power. Maybe that's the origin of all those monster movies - children who've grown up in families like that, or with parents like that. The horrible, scary creature that crushes everything in its path, unstoppable.

Yikes. I don't like where this is going. No WONDER I had so many nightmares as a kid! It's a wonder I don't still have them now. Massive will power at work, plus staying awake until the wee hours until I'm so exhausted I HAVE to go to sleep. Keeping the demons at bay, the ones that lurk continually at the corners of your vision, always just out of conscious view, waiting for you to let down your guard so they can GET you...

Ok, now I'm REALLY going to give myself nightmares if I don't stop.

But I'm on to something, I have to follow this. Maybe not now, right this minute, but understanding the connection between staying away from my 'family' (and certain other kinds of people) and the nightmares and my continued sanity and mental health IS CRUCIAL.

I MUST stay away from them.

I MUST protect myself.

I MUST do this. At all costs.

I CANNOT AFFORD to go there again.










I do not LIKE green eggs and ham.

I will not EAT them, Sam I am.



I feel like I've been fighting an internal battle at a subconscious level for the last four days, sleeping as much as possible to 'gird my loins', maybe? Or maybe as an escape. Hard to tell. Seeing my family now is not good timing. This time is for ME, dammit. The flower only blooms under certain very specific conditions. I've been working up to this particular bloom period for a VERY long time. I WILL NOT let it be sucked dry by some random, drive-by - whatevers. Even just THINKING about it, or AVOIDING thinking about it, is taking up WAY too much time and energy. I can't afford it.

And now today I finally have a trickle of energy, and it's getting sucked into this vortex. This argument, about whether I'm a 'bad person' for not putting their needs ahead of my own.

"Kill it! Kill it!"

I've gotten so I can actually smash certain kinds of spiders (the kind I *know* to be biters) without too much regret; can I get to the point where I can turn my back on people out of self-preservation?

Yes.

I CAN. :-)

***
my shoulders and neck are all tense and sore, scrunched up as if fending off a blow. This is a sure sign that I fear 'getting in trouble' from somewhere. Here it seems apropos to quote from an article on guilt:

As the French playwright Albert Camus wrote in The Fall: ‘The more I accuse myself, the more right I have to judge you. Even better, I make you judge yourself, which comforts me the more.’

Hm. I'm not sure that's exactly what I was looking for. But i like the quote, so i'll leave it there. (And i'm not trying to be 'hip' with my lower-case 'i's' and beginnings of sentences - my shift key seems to be on the fritz and it's PISSING ME OFF to the point that i can't be bothered to keep going back and bashing on it to try to make it work right. So it's hit and - miss. Cry me a rivah.)

Ach, here's the quote I was lookin' for, I think:

Erich Fromm suggested that there are two forms of conscience. The first and most exercised is what he called an ‘authoritarian conscience’. Its universe is a fearful one, dominated by angry gods of insecurity, low self-esteem and conformity. It metes out punishment and drives us towards actions that temper its wrathful flames, including consumerism (‘retail therapy’) and malignant narcissistic behaviour like that of Schumaker’s ‘happichondriacs’.

This is the key bit, bolded by me for emPHAsis:

For Fromm, guilt was firmly part of this authoritarian conscience:

‘When most people feel “guilty”, they are actually feeling afraid because they have been disobedient. They are not really troubled by a moral issue, as they think they are, but by the fact of having disobeyed a command.’

And this:

Child development specialist Penelope Leach echoes this sentiment from the perspective of good parent-child relationships: ‘Guilt is the most destructive of all emotions. It mourns what has been while playing no part in what may be, now or in the future. Whatever you are doing, however you are coping, if you listen to your child and to your own feelings, there will be something you can actually do to make things right.’

i think i finally burned out my worry function

yay. it doesn't work any more - it's BROKEN! Fried from one too many jolts of hyper-adrenaline pulsing through its little worry circuits. The resultant calm is similar to the effect of certain anti-anxiety drugs, I imagine - it roadblocks all those synaptic (or whatever they are) worry-paths.

Hey, that sounds like a good name for a 'condition': I'm a bonafide worrypath! But I can't use it now, since my worrier (not to be confused with 'terrier', though both are somewhat neurotic and prone to not letting go of things), she is a fused lump of - well, not silica, what is an organic worrier made of, and what does it look like when fused? Organic analog to hard disc. Hm. Life beginning to attempt to copy - not art, but technology. Yuck. Not sure I like the way this is going.

Ok, start over.

First, I take 'dibs' on the word, 'worrypath'. I hereby officially claim its coinage on the 27th day of August, 2010, at or about 12:42 in the very early afternoon.

(Is it morning? or afternoon? I can never keep track of that a.m./p.m. thing in the vicinity of noon or midnight - so arbitrary and confusing.)

So, here it is:

Worrypath^TM is MINE! All MINE!!!!

And second: Now that the excitement of coining my very own new-word-for-the-day is over, including googling to see if somebody else already used it (only found cites for 'worry path', but not as one word, 'worrypath'. Not exhaustive research, but I think I'm good.) Plus minor side-trips to visit Creative Commons to see if a CC license is free and what's involved in appending such a thing to one's blog and/or website. More head-scratching required on this one, wasn't enough of a no-brainer to just slap it on here. Some figgerin' will be necessary, methinks.

Continuing 'and second': I'm realizing 'worrier' isn't actually out cold, she's merely stunned. I feel her twitching, trying to come back to life. I think she's been somnolescent (?) in keeping with the sudden, drastic weather change from too hot to too cold (whatever happened to 'just right'? I think she must have been hijacked by one of the Ninos... [dang, can't find one of those tilde-thingies when you need one {ok, done with the hyper-parenthesizing now, (I think?)}]) that's occurred here with an absolutely inadequate amount of warning. I spent the last two days sleeping - thank goddess this miserable weather shift didn't happen on the same day as the arbitrary time change, or I might've had to sleep for a week...

brain blarps

Blarp: A cross between a burp, a blurt and a - I don't know what. I just like the sound of it.

So. Onward...

First of all, as donated by friend G, at a dance the other night:

baby steps. It's ok to go slow, take your time, and - gasp! MAKE MISTAKES WHILE YOU LEARN HOW TO DO SOMETHING!

He didn't actually say all that - when I expressed concern about going 'too slow' in learning to use an unfamiliar technology, he simply gave me a big, encouraging grin and said, "Baby steps!"
Thanks, G! If only my parents had ever understood this basic cheerleading technique - sigh.

So, breaking the ensuing thoughts down into small bites to help unravel, untangle and overwrite the old thought-tapes that imprinted themselves in my infant cranium as a result of growing up with unsympathetic, unsupportive, clueless parents:

being allowed to go at your own speed

being allowed to MAKE MISTAKES!!!!!!!!
even if you’re really smart

not being punished for being really smart

smart people still make mistakes, and sometimes they make really big, really stupid mistakes. We’re still human, you know.*

being allowed to learn at your own pace (as distinguished from being allowed to learn at your own 'speed'- speed is the raw processing capacity for learning a *given* thing; 'pace' is when you're ready to move from one 'thing' to another, or possibly to the 'next', thing - these are all arbitrary symbolic assignments [?what word? almost said 'assignations' WRONG buffalo breath.] I mean, who gets to decide what's 'next', anyway? If Einstein had followed the 'tried and true' series of 'next' steps in life, he'd never have found his own path. So FUCK road maps, anyway. Get there however you want. Or better yet, stay home, don't go there AT ALL. Just go in your head, or something. Do something else ALTOGETHER, don't let 'them' fuck with you. The Joneseseses [or who-ever].)

(symbology SUCKS and feels REALLY REALLY LIMITING right now. I need to TALK and WAVE MY ARMS AROUND with some other REAL LIVE HUMAN BEAN who actually GETS it. NOW. Ahem.)

*I think my dad used to try to make me feel bad when I'd make mistakes because *he* often felt bad because of how smart I was - ok, let me try writing that again so it makes more sense.

So. My dad was really insecure, and didn't feel very smart a lot of the time.

Enter new baby girl, who at an unexpectedly early age shows great precociousness (yes, that would be the actual *definition* of 'precociousness', now, wouldn't it?)

So now dad feels even *more* insecure and self-conscious, because, dang it, here's this little *kid* who's constantly showing him up! And she doesn't even know it! And isn't even *trying* to make him feel bad - no, she manages to 'make him feel bad' by merely existing. This tiny, wee, brand-new baby girl stirs up such horrible feelings of insecurity in this young man that he feels compelled to (emotionally speaking) squash her like a bug. So that *he* can feel better, regain his manly sense of superiority. Or some such shit.

No, as the squashee, I *refuse* to have any sympathy for the squashER. I mean, come on - *I'm* the one who got to have my little innards splattered all over the pavement. Metaphorically speaking. Theoretically, there isn't even enough 'me' left to be capable of having sympathy for another being. Besides which, I'm the one we're having sympathy with, here. NOT him. Ok? Got it? Good.

***
Next thought-fragment:

being uninterrupted by the needs of others while you’re trying to learn how to do something

***
The thing that people from previous generations don’t understand, and even people only 10 years older, or sometimes only 5 or 6 years older, is that things are changing and have changed so fast that no one can keep up. It takes time, and energy, and focus to learn how to do all these new things, and still get all the *other* things done, as well. Especially when you have nobody to help you learn, nobody to CARE *if* you learn, or *what* you learn, let alone HOW you learn. Mostly they're just pestering you to GET ON WITH IT AND DON'T BOTHER ME WITH YOUR STUPID PROBLEMS.

So piss off, all y'all, while I figure out what the hell's WHAT here, and decide what *I* want to be doing with MY time, energy, and LIFE.

And THEN, *IF* I've got any time, energy, or LIFE *LEFT*, after all that, then MAYBE, if you're really really GOOD and NICE TO ME ALL THE TIME, I just MIGHT let you back in. To my life. MAYBE.
***

And just because our *technology* has leaped ahead at the speed of light in the last human years, doesn’t mean humans have ‘evolved’ to keep up. Yes, we’ve *adapted* to a certain degree, but our basic wiring, physiology, mental and emotional coping mechanisms haven’t changed. So there’s a massive cognitive dissonance, culture clash, etc. I'm pretty sure I don't want to be around when the results are in, when this asymptotic catastrophe curve gets close enough to ground zero to implode.

***
parents who expect you to do too much too fast because they are impatient, or you are too obviously smart (it took me a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time to get that if you're FEMALE (ack!) you're not supposed to be smart. Or, you're not supposed to show it. Or, you're supposed to hem and haw all the time and pretend not to get it so as not to step on anybody's toesies or hurt their little ... blech. Feeling ill, now. Must stop.

I guess,to be honest? I STILL don't get it. And I DON'T WANT TO!!!!! What the fuck, why the HELL should I fucking HIDE one of my best ATTRIBUTES, for FUCK's SAKE????? Jesus H. CHRIST on a fucking toothpick. I just don't GET people. ever. At ALL.)

Continuing... They put this pressure on you to grow, like those hothouse plants that are force fed nutrients so that they’ll be showy enough to sell at some particular time and place.

And that’s another thing: Feeling like you’re a performing seal or a trick pony or something. They only want you around if you’re somehow a feather in THEIR cap – you have no intrinsic value of your own, as a person, as a human being. You’re only valuable to them if they can PROJECT something onto you: Their needs, fears, wants, unrealized hopes and dreams; or, if you’re a SERVANT, and DO WHAT THEY TELL YOU; or, if you somehow COVER THEM WITH GLORY, in the reflected limelight of your successes and achievements, which they try to take credit for, again, as if you were a performing seal and they taught you all your tricks, taught you everything you know.

Which we all know is total, utter, complete CRAP, and, not to put too fine a point on it, bullshit.


***

I am making
a big mess

you know how you get these theories
and then you try them out

and sometimes they turn out to be totally wrong

but sometimes, they turn out to be totally RIGHT?

Well, this time, I think I’m on to something. I mean, I’m *often* on to something, because I’m just brilliant that way.

But – THIS time, I think I’m REALLY on to something.

Ok ok already, what is it then, madame le ultra-brilliance?

It is this: When I was little, I was not allowed to be messy (and somehow, my mother never made the connection between her obsession with cleanliness and my fear to make a mess and my hyper-organizedness, which, even she, when I was a little kid, admitted blew her away. Maybe being organized was actually *hard* for her [yes, I would say so, given her *current* lifestyle], so I totally flummoxed her with the apparent ease with which I, this tiny little kid, with no training or experience, could put things together? Wow.)

Anyway. So NOW, as an ‘adult’, I’m making up for it. In spades. Or something. As in, “It’s MY house, MY life, and I’ll make a great big mess in it IF I WANT TO.” And you can’t stop me. So neener neener.

In summary? Because I wasn't allowed to be a messy little kid, I have to be messy now. To make up for it.

***
More random thought bubbles from the same gassy patch of memory-swamp:

I think my parents resented how *easy* I made things seem, things that *they’d* always struggled with. (Actually, I think my dad was the one who really resented it - my mom's reactions seemed to be anywhere from a vaguely perplexed, "huh - should she really be able to do that at that age?" to a more opportunistic, "Hey, this could save me a *lot* of time!" The main problem with the latter response was that it seemed to label me as 'adult' long before I was anything *like* an adult [at least, in my mom's mind] - she used to say I was "Two going on twenty." Curses, foiled again.)

But what they forget is, I learned from THEM. From watching them. I learned quickly, and easily, and I had lots of examples, all the time, all around me, both of GOOD ways to things and BAD ways to do things. Did I say I learned quickly? And without being taught. The basic definition of high intelligence: One who learns by observing rather than being told how to do it.

The point being, I think, that i sort of wish I could go back in time to my too-young, clueless parents and say: "Hey, it's ok that she's really smart. It doesn't actually HURT you for her to be smart - in fact, in can be an advantage, right? And guess what, even though she's really smart, she still has to pick up what she's learning from somewhere, right? And guess who she's learning all this really cool stuff from? You two! That's right! You parental units have actually made a significant contribution to all this brilliance! Yay! You're not just loser slug-heads!"

Actually, I'm pretty sure mom never thought of herself this way (as a loser slug-head) - her defense mechanisms were too solidly in place for that. And my dad? I think he pretty much went to his grave doubting himself, though he learned how to hide it reasonably well by the time we (kids) would've been old enough to begin questioning him about it. Which was right about the time he died.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, maybe dad would've felt better if he'd realized I wasn't just totally figuring all that stuff out out of thin air? That I actually gleaned it from somewhere, and hey, who else would I have learned it from if it wasn't him or mom? But maybe that wouldn't have made him feel better after all. I don't know.

And the truth is, by the time I was a little over three, I was already reading so fast and furiously that I think a lot of my ideas *were* coming from 'outside' sources.

Reading so much at an early age is the only way I can explain having such different notions from my parents, because I had very little interaction with others outside the family (maybe because we moved so much, my dad was gone a lot, and my mom was pretty anti-social between raising two young kids pretty much single-handedly and various other factors I can only guess at?)

There really weren't any other 'outside influences' to speak of until I went to school, I was something of a hermit between ages 3 and 5 while my mother cloistered me (unintentionally - I think she was trying to do the right thing, but simply didn't 'get' that a kid that young shouldn't be left alone so much) in her pseudo-'Montessori' space up in the attic that she made for me. I don't really remember that time - I have a flash image of a dark space with lots of 'stuff' for me to play with, and a screaming little brother downstairs taking all her attention. I'm pretty sure this is when I began my lifelong tendency to escape into books, and why I get absorbed in them so quickly and easily, and why I read so fast: They were my own personal equivalent of TV. All that was a coping skill rather than a talent, although it served me well in later years. Two-edged swords, once again.

***
part of it's being an energetic, talented, smart WOMAN in a world where GIRLS (blech) are expected to SIT AROUND BEING PRETTY and NON-THREATENING in case there are any MALES (note: I did *not* say 'men') in the vicinity to feel THREATENED by your superior mental fire-power and general all-around AWESOMENESS.

Note to all be-penised ones: I will not SMALLIFY myself any more. Yer on yer OWN.

FUCK this 'nurturing the yayhoos that get all the power in the first place'. FUCK that shit. And the dinosaur it rode in on.

imperfectionism

At some point I decided to go with the flow of who I am instead of constantly trying to change myself. In keeping with this whole 'radical acceptance' approach, I came up with something called "the three D's" as a way to remember (and 'validate') these amazingly useful life-coping strategies: Denial, distraction and dissociation. As far as I can tell, most people rely pretty heavily on one or more of these D's to get through life, why should I be any different, or be held to some higher, more-holy-than-thou standard? Answer: I shouldn't. I should just get on with the dirty, messy business of life and not worry about it.

I've always had this (mistaken) notion that perfection was actually, somehow, achievable. And have wasted a HUGE percentage of my precious life energy stressing over the ways in which I was continually failing to reach various goals. But now I think I can finally say that I've overcome this particular little mental blip and can blissfully live my life in the haphazard and unpredictable way I was already doing, only, without the GUILT. BIG smile on grasshopper's green, chitinous 'face' here. (If you can imagine such a scary image :-)



I think everybody else on the planet but me already knows about the D's and uses them all the time , without ever stopping to think about it. Somehow I never got the memo - my take-home message from the school of life was that if I didn't get it 'right' the first time, I was somehow shameful and horrible and a bad person and could never show my face in public again

However, I've now recovered (mostly) from my early training, and am well on my way to becoming a full-fledged, blissfully happy imperfectionist.

Serotonin and dopamine and other feel-good brain chemicals, oh my :-)

small things

Oh, I was so HAPPY today! I planted this really cool fuchsia in the back yard about two years ago (actually, it's still in its pot, I have a hard time putting things in the ground when I feel so impermanent, like I'm going to have to move again and haul all my favorite growies with me when I go). But anyway, so this little guy has been struggling along back there, somehow surviving the winter (I cover my favorites up with plastic to help them get through the coldest bits), and this year I must have given it a boost at just the right moment, because about two weeks ago it started producing huge quantities of blooms, these gorgeous masses of deep coral-orange-red trumpets with bright yellow centers (maybe if I can find a photo of this particular, unusual cultivar I'll post it, no camera to take a picture of my own flowers, dang it! Unless I use the old technology point and shoot. Got to look again for a cheap digital, I really long to take photos on a regular basis.)

Anyway. So, yesterday I glanced at the fuchsia as I was walking past, and lo and behold, finally a hummingbird had noticed them! Yay! I'd been hearing one in the yard that day, and kept thinking, sorry little bugger, no food for you, unless you've happened to notice that lovely fuchsia in the back yard? And today, finally he (she?) noticed! I think it was, in fact, a 'she', because, as well as I could tell in the near-dusk shade that the fuchsia was in, it looked like her body was that shimmery, all-green color that I think the female (Anna's? not sure on my varieties here) has. She was hovering like a little rocket under each one (the bells hang straight down on this particular variety, and can't really be tipped up the way most varietes can, so she'd have to point her beak straight up to drink the nectar. They're really amazing to watch, these little hover-buggers.) At one point, I swear she became aware of me watching her, because she stopped and sat for a while on the longest branch, just sat, resting, maybe? Anyway, she *seemed* to be looking at me (I like to think we were communing in our mutual admiration of fabulous fuchsias), and we watched each other for a while, til I decided to go back in the house, and she went back to her nectar-slurping. FABULOUS! Thank you, universe, for hummingbirds and fuschias and perfect sunny days, oh my.

Yay for hummingbirds! Inspires me to possibly, finally, at the dog end (?) of summer, plant the other poor stragglers of hummingbird bait in some more easily accessible and enticing location. Also, while house-sitting for friends this last month, I got to know *their* hummingbirds pretty well (they have a really nice feeder that I learned how to fill properly), and it has me scanning Craigslist for a cheap feeder of the same type to hang outside my window. We'll see, the list of 'to do's' is already pretty dang long.

***
And the other one: When I first moved in here, almost five years ago, I dug up this flower bed along the front of the house and filled it with perennials and a gorgeous, purple clematis. The first year the clematis had a few straggly flowers and didn't do much; the second year it started ok but then got eaten by a squirrel (?) or something, and I thought it was a goner. The next year it did even better, but I'd planted it in the corner by the chimney, hoping it would climb up there and make a bright splash of color against the blue-gray of the house.

This year I thought it had died altogether over the winter, and sort of poured a bunch of stuff on it as a last-ditch effort, but without any particular expectation.

Two weeks later, I saw some green shoots, but it still didn't seem to be up to much (too much cool, wet weather for too long, too late into the season?) Anyway, so I fed it again, began to pay it a little more attention (after basically nearly abandoning hope) and, slowly but surely, it began to put on more green leaves.

Then one day I went out and saw that it had completely gone nuts, sprawling and spreading all over the place, and even, (at long last!) sending a shoot up the side of the chimney, where I'd hoped it would grow all along.

But still no buds, just lots of green, healthy leaves. So I fed it some fish fertilizer (supposed to be good for flower blooming) and some liquid kelp (generally good for strengthening the plant, especially when the weather's stressing it out a bit). Two weeks later, guess what? Billions upon billions of buds! (I exaggerate slightly).

And the little tendril that crawled up the chimney? Is now covered with blossoms, I came home the other day to check on the plants (from house-sitting) and it was absolutely gorgeous, the little buggers had gone nuts in the day since I'd been back. So I watered (it was another hot stretch), and almost lost them on one 90-degree day (agggghhhhh!) But they recovered - I watered them like mad, cooling down the wall behind them by hosing it a little (without getting any on the leaves or flowers, so they wouldn't get burnt by being wetted in the direct, hot sun).

Oh, I wish I had a camera so I could show you! They're so gorgeous, I'm so proud! Like a mama hen or something. Maybe I'll use the point-and-shoot just so I have some record.

the problem with smokers

is that they’re PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE!!!!!

They SMOKE instead of talking. (The funniest one was this guy I dated briefly who, when I cornered him about the, “Are we serious about this or not?” question, actually had TWO lit cigarettes going at once, one in each hand, and I swear he would have lit a third if he could. This was a guy who'd claimed, not long before: “I don’t smoke.” These people are maddening, infuriating - because they have NO IDEA WHAT THEY’RE DOING most of the time. They’ve taken dissociation to such an extreme degree that it’s almost as if they’re two separate people in the same body. Almost like a socially-approved version of schizophrenia. Like, as long as they can actually function in the things society cares about, who gives a shit if those ‘nearest and dearest’ to them (or possibly just unfortunate enough to be related) are tormented by their cluelessness (not to mention choking to death on the f*cking fumes.) So I’ve learned to use it as a clue: He’s smoking because he doesn't want to feel something; the feeling freaks him out; he goes to have a cig; the cig gives him a burst of all those ‘feel-good’ chemicals supposedly associated with a heroin hit; he comes back, all calmed and soothed, until the next time some unwanted FEELING (oh my god!) presents itself on the horizon, at which our hero busts out yet another cancer stick/pacifier and goes to curl up with his blanky.

I’m not contemptuous of the need for the blanky, per se: It’s the bullshit game of pretend that surrounds it, that boasts (?):

a) He doesn’t have feelings

b) He doesn’t need help

c) He’s therefore totally self-sufficient, and OOH, such a MANLY man, and, the kicker:

d) YOU, then, who don’t/can’t/won’t succumb to his heinous habit, and are so uncool as to want to actually talk about and/or dealwith your feelings - are a lame-oid, pathetic, ‘needy’ loser.

Whereupon this paragon, this model of self-control and social non-obtrusiveness, proceeds to calmy, obliviously, with the nonchalance of your average two-year-old who’s just completely made a shambles of your dining room table, gaze at you with this wide grin and a look of complete innonence - and a total and utter lack of awareness of the devastation he has just wreaked. His grin (just like the two-year-old's) says: Aren’t I great? Big smile. Aren’t I perfect? Fabulous? Never mind that you're gagging on the stench of the horrible cancer sticks, and smelling/seeing the fricking BUTTS everywhere… and please also to ignore the fact that this ‘man’ acts like the world is his TRASH CAN and... argh argh argh.

Them endorphins and shit, they’re somethin’, aint’ they? Gotta go git me some. They eradicate all manner of self-immolating feeling: Guilt, shame, humiliation – any kind of social-behavior-mediating kinds of stuff.

emotion is not a disease

http://ezinearticles.com/?Human-Emotion-is-Not-a-Disease&id=4569494

The disease model has become so prevalent in the United States that it seems people are becoming incapable of thinking of behaviors *outside* this model. Some quotes from the above linked article:

"If it is not a mental health illness to feel happy when you win a lottery why is it an illness to feel sad when a loved one dies. If it is not an illness to feel nervous before performing on a stage, why is it an illness to feel anxious sometimes? Stress in relation to work or finance is a normal response depending on the circumstances and is not an illness.

"So here is the problem. Feeling stressed or down or a bit anxious is not the same as a mental illness. Conditions like anxiety and depression represent one end of a spectrum of human emotion and behavior. Labeling every emotion as a disease is good for sales of medications, for groups seeking to raise funds and for academics pushing research agendas."

I do NOT agree with everything this guy writes. He says some things about being a 'victim' that I think is very slippery ground - I'll say it again (and will keep saying it over and over, because I feel that it's true and needs to be repeated til it sinks in: People constantly mis-attribute their successes, failures, and ability to overcome hurdles (or not) in their lives.

Almost without exception, people who 'succeed', or are able to 'recover' from dire illness, stress, or other trauma or difficulty: They had help.

And let me make this perfectly clear: I am not at ALL saying that people should feel guilty for having been helped. To the contrary, I beliee we all need help, and should all get whatever help we need. Ideally. The problem with people being unaware of having received help is that they, and many others who are equally unaware, deny the rest of us, who haven't been as fortunate, both our need and the recognition that they DIDN'T 'do it alone'.

I see this myth of self-sufficiency as a big hot-air balloon that needs to be shot down. It's BULLshit, and is a HUGE handicap for those of us who aren't as 'lucky'.

I'll return to my favorite analogies of plants: Imagine there are three daisies in a field. One of them had the great good fortune to sprout up smack in the middle of the sunniest, most perfect spot in the meadow: Plenty of sun, a little shade for a brief period in the hottest part of the late afternoon; the same tree that provides it shade also serves as a windbreak so that it only receives the calmest of zephyrs, a light, gentle, calm breeze. It's also far enough out in the open that it receives plenty of rain, but the soil is so perfectly drained, yet also so full of nutrients, that it never becomes water-logged and is easily able to spread its roots far and wide to seek out what it needs. There are no predators to attack the daisy here: No bindweed to choke its life out; no competitor weeds who crowd it out.

The second flower is not so fortunate. It finds itself in the most barren spot in the whole field: Gravel-strewn, dusty soil provides not a speck of nutrition even for such a hardy soul as a daisy. When it pours, most of the water drains off, running downfield to her more fortunate cousin in his primo spot. When it's dry, what little soil there is blows away and clogs the daisy's pores with dust. There's a large thistle growing right next to her that sucks up what little moisture *does* find its way into this parched spot; it also blocks her sun most of the day, while failing entirely to shelter her from the harsh winds that happen to blast through that particular corner of the field.

The third daisy finds itself in a small swamp, a lowland, eternally shaded section of the field that never drains properly. She's in the shade of a giant oak, so never gets even the tiniest glimmer of sunshine. It's a miracle she ever sprouted at all in this miserable, gloomy spot; in fact, she often wishes she hadn't. Soggy Daisy gazes longingly at Perfect Daisy in her sweet spot in the middle of the field; she even eyes Droughty Daisy, envying her moments in the sun, even though she knows it must be painful sometimes to be so dry. Because, you see, daisies are really weeds, at heart: They're basically quite hardy and don't need much, but do need at least the bare minimum basics of non-soggy soil and good sun. A daisy without these will languish, but still survive - she's too tough to kill, but will be miserable nontheless.

Where as that fortunate flower who gets just a little more than she actually needs? Will thrive, flourish, even, and appear to be almost a different species altogether from her poor, unfortunate neighbors on whom Fate has not seen fit to bestow these blessings.

A feminist take on the history of so-called 'madness' in women

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/femhist/madness.shtml

Excerpt:

"All of the common mental illnesses for women in today's society center around women's oppression. Female depression focuses on women who question their placement in life. They often feel as if they do not serve a specific purpose in society and are thus inferior to many men. Their learned passivity has thus caused them to be unfulfilled. Women who commit suicide are also unhappy with their placement in life. As most are housewives, one can assume their unhappiness also stems from lack of involvement in society. Again, their learned passivity caused them to be discontented. Schizophrenia is an attack on man-like women. These women who exhibit male dominated characteristics are supposedly mad as it goes against traditional gender roles. These women, who thus refused to be passive, are judged as ill because of it.

"Though women have suffered from many types of illnesses throughout the years, the common trends persist: women?s madness stems from man?s attempts to maintain power, and the mental illnesses of today are a result of years of oppression. Women are thus not naturally the weaker sex- man has made her so."

being around people who don't understand you

I think it can be tolerable if there's at least *one* person somewhere in your life who you feel 'gets' you. But when there's no one? I think every interaction can then become painful, excruciating, fingernails on chalkboard, salt in the wound... because all the backlog can't ever come out. And this crazy idea that some random peson (aka, shrink) is going to understand you just because you're paying them a lot of money? Is bullshit. (I think the letdown from going to a meeting with a shrink with the expectation - or even the hope - that you'll find something you haven't been able to find elsewhere is almost sadistic in its potential to re-traumatize someone whose whole problem is the lack of experiencing a true meeting of the minds.)

I keep seeing over and over again how a person who was struggling and struggling suddenly is able to turn it around and overcome their obstacles because one person was there for them when they most needed support, and the supporter really understood what was needed and gave that thing unstintingly until the struggling person was actually steady on their feet and able to make it on their own. In other words, the supporting person stuck around long enough to actually see it through, so that the person who was in trouble was able to focus on learning what they needed to learn and not focus on 'looking good' or appearing to have it together, which is the biggest, most complete and total waste of time imaginable.

More often than not I think people get stuck, not because they can't do the thing that needs doing (although there are certainly plenty of people who have *that* hurdle as well), but because they don't have the infrastructure that allows them to get it done - time, money, enough space, the right materials and tools, someone around to help them if they need another pair of hands or an extra brain to brainstorm with.

old messages

My needs are wrong and bad.

that's what i learned from my parents. i can feel my neck and shoulders scrunching up as i say that, as if expecting to be hit. But as far as I know my parents never hit me (physically) though their words often hit me so hard that i can *still* feel the blows, all these years later... it wasn't that they shouted, or called me names; it was that they said things that were so callously unfeeling, so inconsiderate, so thoughtless, so - cutting. They'd cut me to the bone, over and over again, and leave me there to bleed. And then they wondered why, at some point, i lost all enthusiasm for everything and just wanted to lie there and read.

***
i agree with some of Reich's ideas, i think, though not all of them (sorry, my shift key isn't working very well and i don't feel like messing with it right now.) It seems to fit with the whole idea that the physical and emotional are not separate, but are one and the same.

if this is true, then the meridians and their pathways, and the whole idea about body segments, are just different symbologies (the way geometry is for understanding 3-D objects) for understanding how things - thoughts, feelings, etc. - manifest themselves in the body. Which is still a dual/dichotomous/dialectical (? not sure which word is right for this application) way of thinking about it. i keep wishing I could get back to the more animalistic way of doing things, without losing my hard-won awareness. hm. might just have to give that up, it may be getting in my way. And all the 'thinking' isn't really the same as 'awareness', is it? Afraid to let go of the one thing that's always gotten me through, though: Thinking. my brain. Reading and writing and using words to hang on to when there was nothing else (other than a stuffed dog or something.)

dreams

Still trying to catch the tail of that dream, there’s something in there I didn’t quite get. Guess if it needs to get my attention I’ll just dream about it again :)

Abandonment revelation (think I may have to repeat this one over and over again for a while 'til it sinks in): The reason I had nightmares for 10 years after my dad died, I think, is because I never really had him even when he was alive. So the ‘loss’ occurred long before he died, possibly when I was quite young. I remember having my first abandonment nightmare when I was about 6, the one about dad leaving me stuck on a crowded bus while he got off and the bus drove away with me still on it.

The abandonment dreams about my father during the ten or so years after he died were all extremely confusing – I never knew if he was alive or dead, or he’d keep showing up after I thought he was dead, or somehow I’d lost touch with him and wasn’t sure if he’d died while I wasn’t looking (which actually happened in real life – during the three months it took my father to die, a friend and I took a little two-day vacation to a friend of hers’ little seaside trailer along the Oregon coast. It was a nice, and much-needed, little break during that stressful time – but I remember waking up in a cold sweat from a nightmare that my dad had died while I was gone and I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to him. That real-life nightmare remained, I think, tangled in my dreams/nightmares about my father for many years afterward. Guilt about having abandoned him – funny, never thought of that before? Might have more thoughts about that later.)

fear (again :-)

29 july 2010

fear

I keep wishing I could take it all less seriously. But then I realize that’s just another judgmental voice from my family, my culture, saying, “Don’t be a buzzkill.” Telling me yet again, but with different words, that my feelings don’t matter, are irrelevant. Only their feelings and needs matter. In fact, they seem totally unaware that they even ever express feelings and needs. They just seem to take what they need, when they need it, or want it, without any apparent awareness of how it affects others, or, particularly, me.

Maybe that’s the difference between those who ‘succeed’ and those who don’t? Maybe those who were ‘fed’ properly as children – emotionally, physically and otherwise – don’t have this bottomless need to be seen and heard, don’t constantly doubt their worthiness and value, don’t constantly question whether they should even be here. They have a basic comfort level with themselves, a rootedness, a solidity, that comes from being treated as real and valuable and important. From being treated as if they matter.

***
I had a nightmare about my father again last night, though this time a difference I’m realizing as I write this is that he and I were actually arguing, which, it occurs to me, is quite different from the sense of powerlessness I had in previous dreams. He would just go away, and there’d be nothing I could do to stop him. He wouldn’t tell me where he was going, or when he’d be back – it was as if he was just gone, forever.

I’m realizing that I blend this eternal sense of abandonment by him (and by my mother as well) into the loss of him through death. Somehow that second loss seems less powerful – it’s as if I never had him, really – he was always just out of reach, always unavailable in the very deep ways I needed him to be there.

There were a few times, a very few times, when he seemed to let down that barrier, and want to let me in. But they were the extremely rare exceptions, and he made those overtures so infrequently and withdrew them so quickly at the slightest sign of rejection, that I didn’t really trust it. It felt almost like a relief when he went away again, because then I didn’t have to put my trust in someone who was for sure going to let me down.

(It’s funny, the thing on the surface is never the thing that’s really bugging me – it’s like a symbol, a representation, the end of a long string that I have to pull on and untangle in order to make sense of. Like the dream.

So it seems, suddenly, that all the nightmares over all the years have been the root level, survival level, existential dread of having both a mother and a father who didn’t know how to be ‘present’ for me in that deepest, comforting-the-middle-of-the-night-terrors kind of way.

***
The other dream was about an older man who was very influential (again a symbol, not anyone I know from real life) who for some reason thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I sort of pooh-poohed it, because I was so used to being treated like nothing and nobody that I couldn't’t believe that anybody would really See anything of value in me. Again, my inclination is to avoid ever rising to any height at all, because there’s always somebody out there who’ll take a swing at you and try to knock you down. It’s easier to just never get ‘up’ there in the first place, so that no one will take a swing at you. Less pain that way. Or so it seems. Child mind?

Anyway, this guy was some bigwig who’d decided to take me on, but then suddenly there was this lady involved who was going to play cribbage (???) with him to decide whether he’d do it or not. So it was (almost literally) a crap shoot – my one (?) chance rested on the luck of this complete stranger and her interaction with this other complete stranger.

May take me a little while to sort that one out. Or, actually, I know already – it’s the sense of the randomness and fickleness of life, and how so many people who are ‘successful’ are completely oblivious to the fact that their so-called ‘success’ was absolutely NOT achieved single-handedly – that somewhere along the way some important and influential person (and I mean on the level of a parent or other relative, or a boss, or a teacher, or some such thing, not anything fancier than that) helped them in a way that turned out to be quite significant, but they did it in such a low key way that the person being helped never even noticed how they were being supported by this older, more experienced, more powerful person. They just completely took it for granted, as if it were the air they breathed.

And how I never trust such ‘relationships’ anyway, because they always come with strings attached, or at least the one in the dream did: The man expected a certain fealty, which I wasn’t about to give. My friend, who advised me to not rock the boat, because this guy was a big shot and could influence my whole future, seemed to accept this as the way of things. But I felt that it too clearly made me dependent on someone who, like my parents, was fickle and unreliable and couldn’t be counted on when it came to a pinch. I needed someone who genuinely had my back, through thick or thin, no matter what. Don’t know that I’ve ever experienced that with anyone. The closest I’ve ever come to that was with my youngest brother – I think we had that kind of relationship on and off over the years, but when he got married he transferred that loyalty to his wife. Which kind of pisses me off, because it feels like *I* taught him that way of being, of doing things, but she’s the one who gets to benefit from it. Whereas *I’m* left out here in the cold, waiting for *my* opposite number to come along… cold days in hell and all that. Humph.

night sweats

28 july 2010
part the 2nd

I was having the night sweats just now, only during the day – I could attribute it to this weird spider bite I got, or maybe I ate too much sugar, or how it went from being really cold this morning to briefly being sweltering and is now, rather drastically, back to that slightly clammy, cool coastal evening feeling. It’s like it’s fall already, but we only got summer about three weeks ago! Blam. Like being slammed through a revolving door, suddenly you’re out the other side and you have no idea how you got there, no recollection of the whole transition.

peace of mind

28 july 2010

Yesterday, misting the fuschias in that perfect window of coolth (opposite of warmth :-) before the moving line of shade dissolved in the sun’s heat – I saw a spider, one leg monitoring his web for telltale vibrations, waving his arms menacingly at a small, passing hover-hornet (those tiny little black-and-white-striped ones). “Hey, hey,” he seemed to say, “Watch out for me, I’m gonna eat you.” Reminded me of the crabby crabs guarding the vent ports along the sewage treatment pipeline in Finding Nemo.