![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erikaScenes over the last few weeks:
Thank god for spring.
Sometimes, no matter what I do, my emotions are going to shit and eventually I just need to be like, look, we can think about our plan to kill ourselves WHILE we do the dishes, motherfucker.
And then maybe I notice that sleeping and exercising and having clean clothes helps me feel a little better. oh. I guess I'm productive ANYWAY, here I am, getting stuff done and making waves, being appreciated. So EAT IT, SUICIDALITY.
Confronting bad feelings head on doesn't work for me, because the feelings have like, time and energy and shit behind them, and the more I confront them the more energy they gain. I don't have that to lose.
So I go AROUND them. I sneak up on them with accomplishments that I can't deny and people who truly care about me who've snuck through the shrubbery and into the back porch, the gracious acceptance of a sun-room.
A few days ago:
My head hurts. It's the steady ache of my days, separating dream from reality. Lucid dreaming's a snap when you have chronic pain; if I'm in reality, then I'm in pain. The ache in my head is unrelenting, though modest, a steady drumming thrum of plucked strings and high wires.
My heart hurts: it aches so deeply that I experience "heartbreak" as so much more than a word. Maybe it's impossible to convey, that searing agony that forces me to my knees and desperate tears to my face, denial already on my lips, like a punch from a cannon into my sternum. But—but—it passes. It dwells within me and then escapes, only to come back at the oddest times to remind me of the pain, to make me think "Oh god, I will die. I'm dying right now."
You say [Hername] went with you on that hike, and I wonder what else you're keeping from me. I remember how you said, "I think it's for the best," it plays over and over in my head, underscoring that——I don't know what's for the best anymore.
The last section speaks to the fact that while under unimaginable emotional stress, Josh broke up with me for a few days.
I told him, fine, move out, but I'm keeping the lease. I rallied my support system, and played "So What" by P!nk a lot, but I was okay, fundamentally. That surprised me more than anything else. Afterwards, he said he was proud of me for telling him to get out and asserting myself like that.
"What would it look like if it weren't that", my social worker asks me.
She nearly interrupted me when I started talking, a preemptive apology for phrasing it badly—that's how I know she was either embarrassed or I make fun of people too much for weird phrasing, but I interrupted her right back and said "No, no, it stuck in my head."
I'd been rambling about how I worry, like usual, that I'm not helping anyone at work and that I'm a major burden, but she had said that and it felt ... like a splinter, like the tip of an iceberg that would drench me in cold water once I'd worked it out.
So I thought about it, pondered in my mind what that meant to me, her words, because I can never resist a challenge.
What would the opposite of your fear look like, perhaps. And I had this feeling, concurrent with a stumbling inability to put emotions to words that I've recently discovered as a barrier to discussing the most important parts of me—a decent yellow flag if you think of it that way—
I felt like "the opposite of my fear is what's in reality."
As in, if I fear that I'm a burden at work, the opposite of that would be a valued contributor who pays attention to the moment and plans for the future, is rooted in reality.
In reality.
Yes, I am a valued contributor at work, says the evidence. But I'm not looking for the shadow of the mountain of evidence, I'm not listening to the appreciative thanks that land in my ears, I'm not running my fingers over the embroidered deeds and words and support I've been happily and easily given, so I don't know it.
I fear that Josh is tired of me and sickened by me, and the opposite of that is that he loves me and wants to be around me more often than he wants to be around anyone else. Again, I think that has evidence for it.
But how can I know what being a valued contributor would look like, or being really appreciated as a partner, because I've never had those experiences before or if I did, they came along too fleetingly for me to understand them, underscored by the long uncomfortable punctuations of being hurt instead of heard?
(Hurt instead of heard: a small flippancy to the dreadful experiences that I hope you'll forgive me.)
This has the flavor of the uncomfortable perspective shift that always accompanies epiphanies for the first few days.
If I don't know what it is, if I haven't defined it for myself, then I won't ever know it even if I do encounter it.
If I don't know what it is, I wouldn't recognize it were it right in front of me. Yet being with Josh, and working this last month, I've had the very strong feeling that these experiences are distinctly different from others.
However, when it was only with Josh, and me not seeing this effect in other areas of my life, perforce unique, entirely, to recognize that he values me. Adding to that when I got this job and they value me too, it wasn't as shocking and it also meant——hey, this isn't just a fluke.
Somehow I find this revelation comforting, even affirming. It says to me "yes, Virginia, there is hope. These things do exist, and may even be in your life right now, but you haven't learned to recognize them." Now I know I haven't learned to recognize them.
As Archimedes said, give me a lever and a place to stand.
The opposite of my fear is what's in reality also has another meaning to me. I think sometimes I... react to my fears like they are reality. Even often, I do that, perhaps. Certainly more than I want to.
The epiphany of these last few paragraphs serves to move my world view a few degrees, and here I am, rotated into seeing my life differently with that arc of space.
Many times I fear things that may not or probably won't happen and act as though they must BECOME reality at some point. For whatever reason: a fertile imagination, past bad experiences, playing too many video games——that last was a joke.
I don't want to waste my energy like that anymore. I have better things to do.
Thank god for spring.
Sometimes, no matter what I do, my emotions are going to shit and eventually I just need to be like, look, we can think about our plan to kill ourselves WHILE we do the dishes, motherfucker.
And then maybe I notice that sleeping and exercising and having clean clothes helps me feel a little better. oh. I guess I'm productive ANYWAY, here I am, getting stuff done and making waves, being appreciated. So EAT IT, SUICIDALITY.
Confronting bad feelings head on doesn't work for me, because the feelings have like, time and energy and shit behind them, and the more I confront them the more energy they gain. I don't have that to lose.
So I go AROUND them. I sneak up on them with accomplishments that I can't deny and people who truly care about me who've snuck through the shrubbery and into the back porch, the gracious acceptance of a sun-room.
A few days ago:
My head hurts. It's the steady ache of my days, separating dream from reality. Lucid dreaming's a snap when you have chronic pain; if I'm in reality, then I'm in pain. The ache in my head is unrelenting, though modest, a steady drumming thrum of plucked strings and high wires.
My heart hurts: it aches so deeply that I experience "heartbreak" as so much more than a word. Maybe it's impossible to convey, that searing agony that forces me to my knees and desperate tears to my face, denial already on my lips, like a punch from a cannon into my sternum. But—but—it passes. It dwells within me and then escapes, only to come back at the oddest times to remind me of the pain, to make me think "Oh god, I will die. I'm dying right now."
You say [Hername] went with you on that hike, and I wonder what else you're keeping from me. I remember how you said, "I think it's for the best," it plays over and over in my head, underscoring that——I don't know what's for the best anymore.
The last section speaks to the fact that while under unimaginable emotional stress, Josh broke up with me for a few days.
I told him, fine, move out, but I'm keeping the lease. I rallied my support system, and played "So What" by P!nk a lot, but I was okay, fundamentally. That surprised me more than anything else. Afterwards, he said he was proud of me for telling him to get out and asserting myself like that.
"What would it look like if it weren't that", my social worker asks me.
She nearly interrupted me when I started talking, a preemptive apology for phrasing it badly—that's how I know she was either embarrassed or I make fun of people too much for weird phrasing, but I interrupted her right back and said "No, no, it stuck in my head."
I'd been rambling about how I worry, like usual, that I'm not helping anyone at work and that I'm a major burden, but she had said that and it felt ... like a splinter, like the tip of an iceberg that would drench me in cold water once I'd worked it out.
So I thought about it, pondered in my mind what that meant to me, her words, because I can never resist a challenge.
What would the opposite of your fear look like, perhaps. And I had this feeling, concurrent with a stumbling inability to put emotions to words that I've recently discovered as a barrier to discussing the most important parts of me—a decent yellow flag if you think of it that way—
I felt like "the opposite of my fear is what's in reality."
As in, if I fear that I'm a burden at work, the opposite of that would be a valued contributor who pays attention to the moment and plans for the future, is rooted in reality.
In reality.
Yes, I am a valued contributor at work, says the evidence. But I'm not looking for the shadow of the mountain of evidence, I'm not listening to the appreciative thanks that land in my ears, I'm not running my fingers over the embroidered deeds and words and support I've been happily and easily given, so I don't know it.
I fear that Josh is tired of me and sickened by me, and the opposite of that is that he loves me and wants to be around me more often than he wants to be around anyone else. Again, I think that has evidence for it.
But how can I know what being a valued contributor would look like, or being really appreciated as a partner, because I've never had those experiences before or if I did, they came along too fleetingly for me to understand them, underscored by the long uncomfortable punctuations of being hurt instead of heard?
(Hurt instead of heard: a small flippancy to the dreadful experiences that I hope you'll forgive me.)
This has the flavor of the uncomfortable perspective shift that always accompanies epiphanies for the first few days.
If I don't know what it is, if I haven't defined it for myself, then I won't ever know it even if I do encounter it.
If I don't know what it is, I wouldn't recognize it were it right in front of me. Yet being with Josh, and working this last month, I've had the very strong feeling that these experiences are distinctly different from others.
However, when it was only with Josh, and me not seeing this effect in other areas of my life, perforce unique, entirely, to recognize that he values me. Adding to that when I got this job and they value me too, it wasn't as shocking and it also meant——hey, this isn't just a fluke.
Somehow I find this revelation comforting, even affirming. It says to me "yes, Virginia, there is hope. These things do exist, and may even be in your life right now, but you haven't learned to recognize them." Now I know I haven't learned to recognize them.
As Archimedes said, give me a lever and a place to stand.
The opposite of my fear is what's in reality also has another meaning to me. I think sometimes I... react to my fears like they are reality. Even often, I do that, perhaps. Certainly more than I want to.
The epiphany of these last few paragraphs serves to move my world view a few degrees, and here I am, rotated into seeing my life differently with that arc of space.
Many times I fear things that may not or probably won't happen and act as though they must BECOME reality at some point. For whatever reason: a fertile imagination, past bad experiences, playing too many video games——that last was a joke.
I don't want to waste my energy like that anymore. I have better things to do.
no subject
on Tuesday, April 15th, 2014 02:35 pm (UTC)Also, isn't it strange how sometimes the abrupt emotions come out as crystallized when doing something completely banal like dishes???
You are showing an ability to differiante between reality vs feelings. I know that just makes us feeling crazier, like we can't trust what we are seeing (or conversely what we are feeling.) the disconnect can sometimes be worse than anything actual events.
But you are aware of that. That's important.
Josh and you have a strange relationship. Not bad, but strange. It sometimes feels like the two of you are struggling to separate your grief from one another's. Like who is feeling what, and is what you are feeling actually yours and not some reflection of his feelings?
I could also be talking out of my ass about that, so feel free to tell me to fuck off.
I like what you said about how if you can't define something you won't know if you encounter it. That is serious brain food and I need to write about that.
no subject
on Friday, April 18th, 2014 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
on Friday, May 9th, 2014 11:06 am (UTC)I've thought a LOT about this. I agree with what you've said; often I do 'feel' Josh's emotions for him. I'm kinda thinking, on my end, that maybe that's because of the childhood shit, that I learnt to mirror how people were feeling.
This comment, no joke, also led to a very important discussion. We've talked a lot over these last few weeks about whether or not Josh may have Asperger's. He's incredibly bad at 'getting' how to empathize but he's trying REALLY hard. He hates being around people, he was 'odder than the odd group' in school, and there's about 50 other little things I could tell you that point to it. A friend of mine (she works with little kids who have severe autism) refers to the idea that someone acts that little bit off as 'spectrum-y'. Like, could be ASD, could be normal, on the edge.
So my wondering thought goes something like, am I acting out the emotions that he literally cannot? It's food for thought.
I apologize for any scatteredness in this comment or anything else. I'm here but not all there.
no subject
on Monday, April 21st, 2014 02:16 pm (UTC)Yes. That feeling.
Good luck.
no subject
on Thursday, May 15th, 2014 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
on Monday, May 19th, 2014 10:03 pm (UTC)