Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: Meh on January 20, 2011, 06:51:37 PM
-
I like makeover shows on television they rivet me because I want to see just how different a person can be after a few days of fashion counseling, haircuts and makeup. Makeover specialists somehow explain that it is going to change a persons life, they will start dating or get married or get a better job or something along those lines. I can think of a time in my life when I was in my twenties and I thought that I could make myself over and that maybe the process would also replace the Narcissistic/Alcoholic relatives. Some part of me thought that the power of my new persona would somehow dissolve the reality that my mother could be the subject of a Stephen King movie.
-
Hi, MuffinBuster.
I don't post much, but I come here frequently to read. I just wanted to say that I'm glad to see you back. I was a bit worried about you and was wondering how you were doing.
Lollie.
-
Hi Muffin.
It would be interesting to find out if the makeovers have any long term effect. One thing I have noticed with my N-ish relatives: they are constantly doing physical makeovers. My sister spends a fortune on plastic surgery, but doesn't have enough money to buy school clothing for her child. My mother remodels, and then remodels again, in a never ending process. Our society likes to push this kind of solution. It keeps the corporate system rolling along..
-
Hi MB,
I wouldn't want the surgery but sure could use the $5000 preloaded Visa card for a wardrobe!
And I understand the fascination.
Really glad to hear your voice again.
Hops
-
Thank you for the warm thoughts. Hi Lollie-and Silver Lining- and Hopalong.
I'm not certain that I have much I feel like sharing right now. I've had a lot of draining fights with my M-mother lately. I think I have pretty much analyzed the heck out of my relationship with my N-mother and I would have to say after recent experiences with her I'm glad that I analyzed because now I just say to her "believe me I get get it....I GET IT" and she looks at me in a pissed off look. She actually said I'm really burnt out on the Narcissist stuff in my life and I desperately want to focus more on me being more secure rather then insecure and having more confidence or something.
Last week my mother starting harping on me and I stood up for myself I know I did because afterwards I got that feeling of my body being more solid- she gave me this look as if to say "how dare you stand up to me". But then the next day she started a fight with me where she starts raising her voice at me and during this she accused me of speaking to her disrespectfully as if I was a teenager. She will repeat the same thing to me 10 times and it drives me nuts. I eventually just walk away from it but I argue with her for a while and I know it is pointless.
She doesn't really surprise me anymore. I still haven't acheived no-more-contact! with my mother but I hope that someday I will and that seems like a weird goal to have. She is really mentally ill I understand that.
-
One day a few weeks ago I saw my mother with a baby belonging to "friends of the family". The baby tumbled over and my N-mother was the closest to the baby while the two parents were a little ways away. It was interesting to watch because my mother failed to pick up and comfort the baby she dismissed it and said "she's ok". I could sense the parents concern to protect the baby and my mother did not have that instinct at all. It was a small moment of awkwardness because my N-mother is viewed as a grandmother like figure to this child. It's really the only time I have ever seen my mother interact with a baby.
-
At some point in my life I will be free of my mother's Narcissism because I will be successful with the no-contact tactics.
I do question why my mother becomes angry when I don't contact her, I know it is a power thing. Since she has never attempted to cultivate a real relationship with me that is based on trust and respect it makes me wonder what is the bond that we have and why is that bond hard to break? Maybe it could be classified as a codependent thing I don't know.
I wonder why she insists on maintaining a "relationship with me" because she clearly does not like me at all.
In a childish way I fantasize about when my Nar-mother is older and she can't wheel herself around in a wheelchair and I think about how I'm going to refuse to help her. I know it is immature and I know it is pointless and it does mean I want to retaliate against her and be like "look I can do it too".
So I guess I'm still mad at her a little but at the same time I think I'm getting over the mad slowly to a "I just don't give a crap"
-
I really don't have the time or energy to write anything meaningful here. I just feel like I need to keep some sort of connection to this place.
My mother is still in my life and beyond that I am alienated from the rest of my relatives in a mutual way. I think I have avoided them because of their negative impact on my life and they have avoided me out of a disinterest in my life.
So without having family or friends or significant other, I'm left to be with myself. That state is not all bad but it is tiresome.
My mother has put me through so much crap, it use to hurt my feelings but at this point I roll my eyes and ignore her. I just wish my relatives and other people would experience her the way I do and since nobody can confirm to me my experience I still come here and write.
I don't really wish to write so much about my personal life because it looks like a failure. I'm staying at a shelter and still looking for a job. I'm thinking about moving to a different area where I might be more likely to find work.
-
This is beautiful, MB -- really spoke something true to me.
I stood up for myself I know I did because afterwards I got that feeling of my body being more solid
hug,
Hops
-
Thanks, Hops.
-
I'm sitting here in a beige painted basement of a homeless shelter. Computer and internet access in a shelter is pretty good, some places are not so well equipped. Above, the next floor up there was a community dancing class in a large room that is part of the building and I could hear 70's music and glimpsed middle aged people dancing.
Today, I spent a few hours at an employment office and managed to fax off application materials for three jobs that I would find pretty boring to do but would be lucky to get.
Walking down here to the computer terminal, I had the thought to myself "If I didn't have my mother in my life I would have nobody". My mother says things to me though that make my heart feel like a twisted dish towel.
Since the economy isn't too great in the place where I am, as a solution I think about trying to save money to take a train somewhere else. It's rather odd that I have gotten to this point in my life because prior to this I had modestly saved a good amount of money and at one point I could have made mortgage payments. I have to state that to justify myself. Oh well.
One of the women here in the shelter made some pasta for everyone. I'm usually cautious about food from mysterious origins and I like to over see preparation methods so I can decide if I should eat it or not...but tonight I just ate it.
Tomorrow I have to go to my mother's house where she has some of my belongings. It's an opportunity for her to squeeze the life out of me a little more, to accuse me of being a bad person. More of the same ol' same ol', so I will just stay focused and look forward to Saturday night when it's over with and I will figure out something to do.
I think I'm heading to read and sleep. Goodnight.
My mother actually confuses homeless shelter and hotel or college dorm in her vocabulary. It's all the same to her in her weird mind. Not only that but she is obsessed with her dog's pooping. I've written about that here before, there is just no cleansing my ears after time spent listening to her talk about her dogs poop and her own bowel movements. Oh well. I don't have any new complaints of her because the pattern has become so routine. The last argument that I was drawn into with her I realized how she had initiated the conversation and then accused me of being quarrelsome. Oh well again. I think I'm too tired. At some point it has all been written about.
g' Night it's getting late I need to scurry.
-
MB - I am so thinking your Jan 24th post is excellent. I really love it.
And about your post right after that - I wish we could form a family of like-minded children of Ns. That could be a good choice. Not all children of Ns mind you but like-minded ones. I am so needing a family. I have a number of friends whose family is not very good but they still function like a family. My father's illness has revealed to me that there is no there there in terms of family connections for me. Good to know. But the need for caring structure still exists within.
-
I am not in your shoes but I am responding to your last post. Take it with a grain of salt.
But your idea of getting on a train and going where things might be better economically (or even weatherwise) sounds like a good idea to me. Why not? Fresh start - cutting those ties - really cutting them. Do not lose hope. I think these Ns beat us down so badly as children that functioning well in this world is absurdly difficult but I believe in you and by doing so I am able to believe in me as well.
I hear hope in your posts. I want to flame your fires of hope and determination. I want to encourage you. I hope for you a system of support and encouragement.
-
Thank you, Gaining Strength.
(I have to post sentence by sentence because the computer keeps blinking out)
I think I do have some type of hope. The more extreme my life gets the less depressed I am because there is no room to be that way.
Maybe I will write more later, I'm getting tired.
-
Right now, nobody knows where I am, only me. I'm sitting on a bed in a shelter typing this on my old laptop that I just got out of storage.
I found a book here at the shelter titled "Are You Somebody?" by Nuala O' Faolain. The Author grew up in an Irish Catholic family and went to a boarding school taught by nuns. My grandmother also went to an Irish Catholic boarding school taught by nuns and it makes me wonder if there is something in the culture of my family passed down through the generations that views children as not valuable.
Maybe I'm not so many generations away from the women who didn't use birth control (great grandmother?) Who saw children as a threat to their ability to be their own person? I don't know maybe not.
In the book "Are You Somebody" Nuala describes a woman who gives birth, the grandmother ends up with the baby and the baby becomes emaciated and shrivels up from neglect. The grandmother states "who would want it?". So I guess the baby is let to die.
-
Those are the kinds of parents that are a threat to a child's ability to be their own person.
But with some self-reflection - and persistent determination - it's possible for the child to overcome and become invulnerable to the parental threat.
I'm not so sure the parents have that advantage.
-
Imagine, just for a moment, that we are that infant, that "Who would want it?" child who somehow, against the odds managed to survive physically. But the internal scars and the psychological wounds left a prickly pear that society was quick to throw stones at or uninterested enough to allow to lay fallow on the streets of life.
Now, in a non-sequitor, shifting to an outsider with wisdom and empathy and extraordinary insight, what would we tell that being about getting into a space in life where there is flourishing???? Shifting again to the being - how could we receive that wisdom and insight that is the elixir of true, substantive life and living?
Shifting back and forth - between being the "Who would want it?" child and the person of wisdom and insight, might we create a dialogue that we could understand and give and receive all that we need to guide ourselves out of the knot of destruction and into the light of life-giving life?
Phoenix Rising is writing about a dichotomy between pain and feeling good (if you feel good then you are bad but feeling bad is good (permissible) [my interpretation] . As I read your extraordinary writing -terse and powerful I am seeing parallels and I am longing and determined and seeing an organic development of individual cells symbiotically developing a map, a system to overwrite the scarring, to use the scarring organically to become the fuel into something no longer debilitating but on the vanguard of consciousness shifting into a healing that is beyond what is baseline and normal for those born into the love and nurture and protection of a loving family.
[I am not going to reread this even though I know this needs editing but I don't want to lose these thoughts and trying to rework them would mean I would not express them b/c there is no way to get them written in a way that would suit me.] MB - I am reading your thread as something more powerful that I suspect you are aware. I think it significant and I truly believe you are on that razor's edge of something that is transformative on one side and dangerous on the other.
-
Just writing here, it may not make a lot of sense. I've decided that rehashing and complaining about my Narcissist mother no matter how old it gets even to myself is important because it's a venting that I need to do that helps me to not haul off and kick her poodle.
Mind's-eye sometimes sees myself punching my mother....the image flashes through my head in an instant....but I don't do it... I better just avoid her as much as possible...punching her would equate to assault. On a personal level there must be some sort of crime of violence that is done to children of Nar-parents but of course it's not visible to most people.
I have childish ideas. I believe that there is the opposite of prayer for goodness. I believe that there is prayer for badness, not against badness, but instead in favor of hexing a person. So when I get very pissed off I pray that my mother's husband gets sick and seems to have worked because he did get sick right after I prayed for this. It's not very enlightened or Buddist like of me but there is only so much hope for people once they reach a certain age. I figure they are not contributing members of society (ha ha), only depending on unearned increment and behaving as if they are more deserving.
Yesterday I managed to get some of my boxes of paper work etc. that my mother had at her house. I reminded myself very clearly in the middle of it that I had a plan to...Get in and get out.
I have noticed that when I spend some time having discussions about the news and current events that it helps me to exercise my ability to have a dialogue or a debate.....and then the conversations with my mother that occure after this are easier for me to feel confident in holding my own verbally. There is something key here in the true meaning of "Voicelessness"....and the myriad of ways that Narcisists manage to remove the voice.
My mother is not very good at true debating or conversation and she rarely ever backs herself up with facts.
Therefore if I have the energy and have been practising I can usually out-debate her....
I just can't......out b*tch her.
I suppose a good defense for me would be to elevate a conversation beyond her own capacity for debate....that would probably close her yap.
My mother has actually told me literally to "shut-up". I realize how rude it was and didn't want to go down to that level but I did just to see what her reaction would be so I told her to "shut-up".....at that point she told me I was being disrespectful as if I was a teenager.
I find this to be a strange psychological thing where she can be disrespectful to me but I can not be disrespectful to her.
Confirming this through my little "shut-up" experiment also shines a big floodlight onto some aspect of my personality....the part of me that somehow does not believe that I am good enough or worthy. I think my mother knows that her ability to beat me down emotionally must be coming to an end.
I just wish I had understood more of these things when I was a teenager....but honestly I don't think that would have been possible.
This morning when I woke up I stood up on my tip-toes and peered out of a little window that overlooks water and a gray sky and so much fog and rain that it almost looked like it was snowing. I got in the shower and thought about how much energy it takes to keep things clean and organized without having a real place that belongs to me. A type of community exists in some homeless shelters because it is a collection of people that all share certain challenges--the challenges of scraping by, so we can exchange details and tips about the best food banks to go to, and also the ones that attract the most criminals. The area where I'm in right now is not a hardcore city area, it is more of a derelict industrial area where there are men who never left "out in the sticks" mentality behind.
This Sunday I'm sitting in a coffee shop facing out a window onto a street that once had a steamtrain railway along it. One block away there is an old building that houses the main Newspaper for this town, there is a big sign on top that lights up at night, it makes me think that maybe I'm somewhere important but no real news comes out of this place! Oh well. No news is good news. I've been in places where there is always a shooting in this neighborhood or that, so I'm a bit relieved to be temporarily away from that. I'm tempted to paint but I have no paint with me right now.
Ok, possibly I should go find something fun to do today.
I'm ashamed to admit that between the shelters that I have stayed at there were a few nights I stayed at my mother's house. The women's shelters fill up quickly in the winter and the only other option I had was to stay where all the chronic inebriate men and probably sex offenders end up--the entryway of that place has a man that sits behind a wall of plexiglass. So I avoided that place as much as I could because I don't have my own box of plexiglass.
At times I wonder if I'm a loser at Social Darwinism. I suspect that my Aunt views my father and me and my brother as such.
I have to look out onto the world and not believe this 100%.
-
The "missed-calls" area of my phone showed a distant area code, so I traced it down to an area where my father may live.
If my father was to die, my alcoholic brother would probably tell my nar-mother and she would email me.
I haven't talked to him in over 10 years, I think. Not one day went by that I missed him. There are many days that I don't even think about him.
As a kid I was too innocent to realize how degrading my parents were on my spirit.
I'm not in a position to help my father, right?
Right.
There is a pressure there, an obligation, it's a feeling that makes me feel stiff and stressful.
I don't enjoy avoiding my father, it is not a good feeling of revenge, it's just a sad remorse. Not personal remorse for not doing something I think I should but a remorse for my whole family and their whole collective disfunction.
-
I can tell you to "shut up"... and you can't tell me the same thing... when I'm physically bigger than you; when I can punish you for saying it - go to your room & forget about eating supper; don't come out until I tell you to... and you think about what you did wrong... you're going to have to apologize to me (but because I'm bigger, I don't have to apologize to you... I'm the "mom" you know - you have to do what I tell you.)
I've been calling this stuff "RULES" in all caps...
it doesn't work so well now, 'coz except for spewing negativity all over you... she can't really punish you anymore, huh?
The negativity washes off - and if you don't put it on yourself, no one knows about the negativity "back in Foo neighborhood"; they don't see it - it's not tattoo'd on your forehead. You can just be YOU.
-
I can stand up on my bed and look out this window at industrial buildings with towers and I don't want to go outside today. I can see a slide of brown shingles, water sheeting down over them. Fog in front of orange-yellow lights.
I don't have anything to write about really, I just feel so disconnected from a plan and a strategy and meaning and structure.
Recently I heard a statement "when we are in a position of weakness we don't make good long-term decisions". I'm trying to recall who said it.
Was it political commentary, I think it was.
I have people around me who will say "bless you" when I sneeze but I don't keep in touch with anyone any longer that I once knew.
When I first started writing on this Voicelessness Message Board, I was only about 50% sure that my mother might be a Nar-mother. After reading enough of other people's stories I figured that, yes my mother is exactly that. Then I started writing what I thought was my experience as a child growing up, and I questioned my interpretation of those childhood experiences. Recently I have been able to verify that my perceptions were accurate about my childhood.
The day is close to being over and I'm glad because I'm so darn tired today. I indulged myself and ate bacon and chocolate with my foodstamp money.
There is an older woman here who says that she has been working seasonal jobs at national parks for the last 10 years. She looks too old to be doing that type of work and she doesn't appear to be a passionate traveler she seems a bit "out of it". I think this sort of thing is OK for young people, college students but I feel that I'm passed a certain phase in life.
-
I got connected with a group that helps homeless women, I was assigned a social worker who is a blond haired and blue eyed college student. She suggested that I go to a local church and ask for alms. This to me is one of the strangest things I have ever had any person say to me. It is like something from a movie, a very old movie, not year 2011. I will probably do this once I figure out how it is done, of course I'm mortified but if I do it a few times I could get money for a gym membership after I get a gym membership scholarship to reduce the price then I could go get on a treadmill and look out at the fog that way.
Being "poor" is really a lot of work, no one would believe it if they had not experienced it but it is a pain in the rear end just to get the most basic things taken care of. I don't even know what being "poor" in America really means because all of the women in the shelters I have been to have stuff and objects. They have stuffed animals and junk. The challenge is building a life when at this level.
I went through my paper work and found the tax returns for 2009 so I could try to apply for financial aid in 2010. Now it's 2011 and I would have to get my two months of tax return documents from 2010 to apply for financial aid. I drag my feet because I don't believe I can string things together. I'm also tired of trying to be someone I am not.
I have to think about this a bit more.
Really I feel like a creature with my tail nailed down to the floor.
Again, I would say I have to think about this a little bit more to decide if it's true or not but then on the other hand I've had people give me the advice "don't over analyze it".
-
I don't know if I should write this or not, I think I have mentioned it before. I'm laughing as I write this, I get the feeling that my mother is into beastiality just a little bit. She has told me that she needs to take special care when she is washing her dog's genitals (Ha Ha) I'm laughing. It's so sad and strange. She gives me the creeps.
I know that there has been a prior message posted relating to the immaturity of nar-people's sexuality.
From what my mother describes she actually thinks she needs to stimulate her dogs genitals when she is giving it a bath??
I'm laughing because it is close to the weirdest thing someone could say about their mother. ? ?
Why am I writing this here?--Probably because it bothers me.
I thought I knew her....and then I thought "Who the hell is this person?"
I really don't know if this makes my mother a little weird or a lot weird or not weird at all.
I've heard from my mother that dogs have anal glands that groomers have to clean or something...but my mother explicitly has said she feels that her dog needs her to stimulate it's doggy parts ????
Oh, my god, I must seem like I am from the most f-ed up family. My mother dresses nice and has a long-career in a mediocre job and her co-workers like here quite a bit and all I can think is what if they could see the mother that I know? The person who truely has a demented relationship with her poodle? THAT person. That person that tells me to "shut up".
Oh well.
-
What is real and what isn't real. That is something I have asked myself while I get re-acquainted with my mother's personality as an adult.
I ask that about myself also. There is probably no right answer to the question.
Even if I get clear about how I ended up exactly where I am, I wonder if that would give me any power to do things differently or not.
I think about how my mother's problems are not mine, even though she impacts me and interacts with me it still isn't mine.
I imagine that people my age shouldnt be so dirrectionless. I don't really understand myself at this point in life? I mean what defines me?
-
Hello. I'm struggling with this, too:
I mean what defines me?
I feel like an adolescent with an identity crisis, you know? I can describe a whole lot about the "outer" me... but it's not really "ME". I wish I could concoct some elaborate, wordy, pseudo-philosophical bullshit that might give me some clues... but unfortunately, this is the one time I find myself tongue-tied and silent.
I could... and perhaps it's all we're allotted (I don't know, in other words)... I could just accept the feedback that people tell me about me. Of course, my N-mom won't be one of the people I include in that focus group... but when other people tell me I'm "such and such" - well, if I trust their perception and their wisdom and etc... why should I doubt what they perceive about me? Maybe they're seeing me more clearly than I'm seeing myself.
But on the other hand... that's giving them a lot of power over my own self-image - how I see myself.
Where oh where is the middle path?
-
I imagine that people my age shouldnt be so dirrectionless. I don't really understand myself at this point in life? I mean what defines me?
I'm with you on this. Here I am six months short of 50 years, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up... I feel like I was so swamped by my parents "stuff" early in life that I didn't have a chance to figure out myself until my 40's.
On the positive side, a lot seems to be coming together in recent years. And I escaped being tracked into someone else's idea of what I should be.
-
Just a random thought:
Now that I have realized how much I missed out on with my FOO, I can look at other people's children and feel jealousy or bitterness.
When I was younger I never felt jealously towards anyone and I didn't feel bitter either. I also didn't understand jealous people at all.
I try to compare my feelings of jealousy to what I think my mother's feelings are for me. I'm not sure that I can explain or justify everything my mother does and I wish I would stop analyzing her.
I compulsively analyze my mother or my family. It's probably not "just something to focus on".....I'm sure that the compulsive focusing is somesort of attempt to resove deep wounds.
I think most of the counselors I have talked to try to focus a person on something other then paying too much attention to the disfunctional family...it sort of makes sense.. but whatever wounds we may have we still carry with us.
My mother doens't seem unaware of her behavior she seems fully aware of what she does but with a weird element of denial.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, I'm sure I will end up somewhere.
-
Tonight I'm going to go to a free meditation class at a Buddist Center, operative word is FREE. I've been to similar classes in other locations a couple of times in the past when I was 20-something.
The truth is I hate Buddism. I like to meditate for my own selfish benefit, I don't want to become more compassionate. Maybe I have to justify myself, I was a very sweet person when I was younger but I'm tired now and really need everything in my life to be about me. Maybe that is not really 100% true. There is going to be a meditation and a lecture that goes along with it and the lecture sounds like it may be relevant to my life. This class may be about being kind to one's SELF rather then to other people. We will see.
When a person grows up with parents that turn them into a doormat those selflessness classes just arn't appropriate, it took me a while to figure that out.
When on a zero level budget it's a challenge to find things to do that make me feel like a regular person with a schedule. I also find it challenging to commit to living here until I am more stable so how can I get involved with anything?
Note about community services--I have never really thought about how other people get by in life that were less fortunate then me, I didn't really care, and I didn't want. I use to look at people that lined up at food banks and think of them as the "others". Maybe it was the way I was raised, my mother is quick to call people "low-lifes". Anyways, I'm surprized to find out how absurdly meager some of the resources are such as bus passes. Many buses I've been on have extra-room here. This is not the most congested city in the world....so I would think that they could give out a few more bus passes to people without weighing down the bus.....but they only give out two bus passes per week. That means a person can get to a place and then get back to where they started from with the second pass.
I don't know why I'm writing this here, I just think it's stupid......if the bus is going to go somewhere anyways even when it is half empty, then doesn't it make sense to let people ride the bus?
Anyways. That proves how incongruent Buddhist philosophy is. Buddist on the inside and Republican on the outside?
I'm exhausted and I didn't do much today, I went for a walk. I hate this sort of physical tiredness, I wonder if it's because there are still lights on when I fall asleep..that can screw up a person's circadian rythems.
-
Went to the Buddhist meditation and lecture. I'm not a Buddhism scholar at all, I've read maybe 3-4 books on the subject and have done a few versions of meditations, not enough to grasp very well the full scope of the practice.
What if I don't want to be a better person you know? What if I just want to be a powerful control freak for my own sake?
I like the idea of being in control of my mind and my life. Other people.......well....they are all "others" to me right now.
I have evolved into a different person compared to who I once was, I'm not sort of a grumpy b*tch.
I sat down to meditate and the thought popped into my mind "I hate these people"---and I don't even know why I was thinking that? Maybe in life, after a while of too many bad experiences, you just sort of give up on being socially "normal" and see some truth that others don't want to admit really exists.--That people are not so great and nice and fantastic--maybe not worth getting to know? I'm seriously insulated and alienated or alienating myself and maybe thats ok for now. Maybe just give myself a break. Sorry Dalai Lama but I'm tired and I feel like I deserve to be a b*tch every now and then I feel like I need to be on attack mode and just be a turtle shelled swirling mass of "I hate you".
When I'm at the building and I start to meditate I realize how out of touch I am with myself. I've done all this new-agey spiritual stuff in the past so I feel like I've been there and done that. I'm really out of practice though. I felt all scatter-brained and caffeinated.
When I sat down to meditate, I felt like I had a tick sucking blood out of my eye lid and a brown recluse spider crawling in my pants. Getting figetty is part of the process for me. Over all it wasn't mind-blowingly life changing.
The lecture included the concept of --"THE STORY"-- as if the story is sort of a bad thing or a pitfall. So it made me wonder if the antagonistic relationship with my nar-mother is "The Story"...It might help for me to see it that way a little bit but I wouldn't minimize the value of self-analyzing my relationship with my mother....I'm convinced that I would have at least hauled off and hit her by now if I hadn't spent so much time reading on this board and writing.
I'm going to eat a pot-sticker and come back to this thought. I'm obsessed with food. I really like to cook especially when I don't have a proper kitchen to cook in that is when I want to cook the worst. Bake a pie, like a fresh lemon or coconut pie.
I feel like Buddhism is a trick to play on myself. I think that my problems with my mother are real and are not just an illusion.
I think there is some useful stuff in Buddhism but I don't believe in reincarnation and maybe not even bad karma.
The story of me and my mother is definitely a bigger story to me then it is to my mother.
Between meditation and lecture there is a 10 minute tea break where people happily untwist their legs, get up off the ground, then walk over to a bar where there is something to drink and chat and talk and blah blah blah.
The blah blah blah face to face with people I don't know mortifies me. I would rather meditate or sit on the toilet in the bathroom or look at a brochure or stare at my fingernails then talk to people that I don't know.
I wish I could relate what I heard in the Buddihist lecture to the way I deal with my mother and my own personal situation better then I am right now. I often feel like I am memory challegeds, I understand what he is saying in the lecture, I dont' ask dumb questions, I really do understand it but repeating it back is a bit difficult. He discussed mainly the idea of three poisons.--agression being one of them, I was surprized when he said that agression describes when a person is just very iritated like we all are here on this board. The way that we react to our Nar-family would be catagorized as agression. I never thought of it that way before, I would agree with that definition. I do feel agressive or angry towards my mother. Although I usually think of agression as being an action word and even though I am angry I don't burn her house down or anything.
It makes me wonder if there is a difference between healthy contemplation compared to compulsive analyzing.
It was pretty boring, I was trying to decide if the guy giving the lecture could pass as sexually attractive or not and how annoying he would be to screw.
-
Some random thoughts for you...
I think you're right, that there is a way to use meditation to heal yourself... and not just to cover up, escape, or ignore old wounds by seeking some imaginary place within yourself where anger & pain don't exist. The new-agey idea that we become "better people" when we are all peace, love & starry-eyed nirvana-addicts... didn't appeal to me either. There are other ways of understanding buddhist concepts.
I will probably hang on to the idea that there is a good type of anger till I'm ashes blowing in the wind... that was a total revelation to me, when I was introduced to it. That I'm ALLOWED to be that kind of angry - and it doesn't automatically tar me as a bad person. Telling this apart from toxic anger - now, that's a trick and a half. That kind of anger doesn't do a person any good at all... and yes, it is like a poison... maybe there are antidotes... things that render it non-toxic... break it down into non-dangerous single chemicals or something. But the easiest "home remedy" I've found for toxic anger is to simply "get it out of my system"... to vent, bitch, kvetch, whine, accuse, blame... to let it all out... oxygen and light have a magical way of burning all that kind of anger out; removing the radioactivity - and when it's gone... you don't need an antidote. I wrote all mine down; some here... but I didn't think it was fair (I absorbed some buddhist philosophy) to spew that out all over others, all the time. Writing let me do things like write in really BIG letters... really bold... in colors even. Keeping it bottled up - protecting others from how angry I was - only destroyed me. But I didn't want to be a viking pirate running amok all the time either... so the writing was sort of the middle path... to a way out. It let me have my cake & eat it too... coz once my writing session was done, once the "hangover" of intense emotion dissipated... I could more easily go about my day.
I had a weird reaction to meditation for awhile. When I was finally quiet enough mentally, the tears started to well up and roll out in torrents. Since that time, I've noticed that when I'm really, really, really angry... I cry. There is a symbiotic relationship - sometimes - between anger & grief. At least for me. Anger I was used to... but grief scared me half to death. I really didn't want to face what I felt was an endless black hole of feelings of sadness and loss. I felt my loss was of epic proportions... and that, like Pandora's Box, once I pulled the lid off that can of worms... there would be no end to it. Well - there is an end to that kind of toxic anger; and there is an end to "endless" overwhelming flooding loss and grief, too.
But to get started on letting all that out - I needed safety. I needed to know I was safe while putting it all on paper; safe to express it verbally with other people; safe to just finally let the tears roll out until I almost dehydrated myself. Safe to recover from all that emotion and to begin to feel different emotions, too.
When it comes up again now - and it does - it's nowhere as intense; it's more like a fly buzzing my nose or a leg cramp while I'm trying to center and sink into a centered, open meditation. And ya know what? I'm still different than a lot of people - because of having been to hell and finding my way back from it. But, it's in a better way now.
I don't know if there's anything in those thoughts or my experience that would work for you... but help yourself to any of the DIY-healing or home remedy "recipes" that look interesting and feel free to rework them & adapt them to yourself.
-
I don't have anything in particular to write about.
I'm feeling restless and bored, my preference is to be actively involved in life somehow. So, I have checked into possibly volunteering some time because I can only spend so much time & energy focused on reforming my life. Volunteering seems like the wrong way to focus my energy but I'm bored and unstimulated.
I'm restless, I have started reading about three books. I have considered contacting people who were never close friends in the first place just to B.S. with them about nothing in particular.
If I had a car I would probably go hiking.
I'm posing a question to myself: How much of what I think is a "story".
Actually, I know the answer I don't believe this story philosophy. I know that my experiences are real. Calling them stories are just a mental technique to detach from them. I would think that detaching is powerful but I also think there is something important for children of Nar-people to know that our SELF's perceptions are real and not just a "story".
Is that being difficult or resistant or contrary....nah, I don't think so, I think it is an honest philosophical compromise.
I'm also questioning myself: Can I even afford to be "philosophical" or contemplative..... and I'm asking myself -"can I afford to be unaware"?
I'm in a student area and in anyway that I can take in richness of thought, I figure that is better then nothing at all.
Some version of simple abundance.
-
Nuala O' Failain's book "Are You Somebody?" ...has a title that makes it sound like a self-help book, but it is not, instead it's a memoir.
I would recommend it. Her mother was an alcoholic and her father did not have close loving relationships with children in her family, in the book she describes her experience of both of her parents passing away. It's as if she is asking herself "Am I Somebody" because her parents viewed her as possibly nobody. So, I think it may be relevant to what some people here on this board ask themselves.
-
My stomach feels a little ill because I have unwillingly ease-dropped by proximity a conversation here at this women's shelter between a mother and daughter. The mother (in drug rehab) asked the daughter for $15, the daugher says no she can't spare it. Then the mother rants about her daughter being unfair to her, mind you they are both in a homeless shelter and neither really in a position to give up scant resources. So after the mother threatens to abandon the daughter, she gets on the telephone and speaks to someone else about what just happened (sort of a group power?). Then the mother makes another call on the phone to set an appointment for blood donation. The daughter is ill in some way herself but I dare not ask about it. These people's worlds are not mine besides the fact that we are sharing space, and maybe I need to think about it that way.
I'm uncomfortably over hearing this and at the same time feeling revulsion for the mother and questioning my recent buddhist education session in compassion, still feeling disgusted at the mother.
**Oh God, now I have to listen to the mother pretend to be sick over the telephone. Faking the sick voice...and now off the phone and she says "I played pathetic"***
I hate this sort of intimacy with people, sharing space with random folks....finding out things that I don't want to know....(Oh Well)
I have been trying to find a push-pin somewhere on a bulletin board that I can have, couldn't find one and didn't want to take the one's that I did see, so I used a single lost post earring and used that to hang up my miniture Rumi poetry calander on the wall so I can keep track of time. I like these little moments of resourcefulness even if they are small I get some satisfaction out of it. Last night I broke the top off of an egg and didn't want to throw it away, so I found an icecream scooper to balance in inside of while I boiled it.
I just made arrangements for free theater tickets- I might hate the show, but oh well, free entertainment is free.
I think I may have found a place to take some free yoga classes.
On Friday I have an appointment to meet with a volunteer coordinator for a local arts organization.
Now I all I need is for someone to respond to my job applications.
I'm contemplating making a meal for all the people here with my foodstamps and then again I think maybe I should just conserve what I have for myself.
When the light switch gets flipped on here, there is a dull little glass tinkle noise in succesion of the bulbs blinking on sort of like a wind chime.
I write random stuff here, I like this board and it feels good to come here and just write and deposit thoughts.
(I just removed the "Sorry" from the above sentence, where I apologize for maybe not keeping to the point as I imagine someone else may think I am not to the point. I find it helpful to come here and write even about the mundane aspects of my life. I don't have anyone to share the mundane aspects of my life with.
I also ask myself could I date? -- No I don't think so.
I don't have a strong desire for the physical side of a "relationship" right now, mainly I think it would be nice to have someone to talk to. Because maybe somewhere in the words or the "story" my SELF become real or manifest or enfleshed. Sometimes if I don't write or talk, I feel like I lose track of myself a little or I get lost into the ether.
Normalcy would be nice.
I might apply for an office job in an abortion clinic. I hope I don't have to divulge that to the intrusive churchy people who are running this women's shelter. I myself have never had an abortion but I would still work at a place that provides this service.
Funny....life is very very strange sometimes.
-
One thing that my life has proven to me is that life is variable. Sometimes when I come and read here or write I think that I'm striving towards a goal. Other times just having some version of a voice at any point in time is enough even if I don't attain some grand goal.
My grand goal would be to have a career that allowed me freedom and power over my own life. Something that I didn't feel with my FOO. That is part of the reason why I became so depressed after I lost the job I had for so many years, I believed that IT was getting me closer to my goal. Now, I'm not so sure that a goal in my mind is really going to accomplish what I think it will.
Since life is going to be variable, there will be times when I don't feel like I have power of what is happening because that is just reality.
Are we technically Foo-Fighters? Just wondering.... :lol:
I think I can maybe accept that my GOAL of re-writing my life is not reasonable or realistic. I have wanted to do exactly that, get family portraits, have family-matron-pow-wows where we all have some sort of multi-generational healing. I thought that I could do that years ago, but now relatives are aging and it's obvious there will be no change of heart or of mind.
I'm bored and lonely to the point that I'm contemplating contacting people that I haven't talked with in a very very long time, people who probably wouldn't remember me.
It's easier to contact people when things are going well and not so easy when things are not going well, I have avoided some people for that reason. Experiencing things like this make me question human nature at it's core and I have to admit that I look at people in some sort of dark way, and I'm convinced that humans are really not that great, even if that is an unpopular point of view.
-
My grand goal would be to have a career that allowed me freedom and power over my own life.
If you find one of these careers, let me know! :D
But then, I think freedom and power over my own life exists on some other plane or level of reality, than the one careers exist in.
-
Went to theater performance and it was great to have something to look forward to, I wasn't sure how the quality would be because it was free and not really my genre of interest, still I smiled throughout the whole thing. I couldn't recruit anyone from the shelter to come with me, oh well, their loss.
Went to my volunteering interview, I'm going to start doing that next week. I'm grateful just to in the world of the normal.
I will write more later.
-
This sounds good! Like progress, even...
I'm looking forward to hearing about your interview!
-
I think volunteering will bring energy and new contacts into your life.
Who knows what doors this new chapter will open?
Glad to read you enjoyed the theater performance.
Lighter
-
Well, it wasn't so much of an interview exactly. In fact I almost wonder if they are over-estimating me because as soon as I got there I was whisked away to talk to people about a project that I was interested in helping with. They were discussing budget stuff and publicity stuff at a pretty sophisticated level. Some woman who seems to be the director came along and started delegating to me the chore of writing letters for public publicity release. Oh, well. I can try my best. I enjoy writing but my grammar is really not all that great and since I haven't formally studied writing that much I'm not confident about it, but what’s new?...
I'm just going to go with the flow for a while and hope that something comes up soon in the way of work.
Actually I look at the students who are involved in the volunteer work and I envy them, the experiences that they are having and how much they are learning and growing.
I was energized after meeting with the volunteer group though, because they themselves are energized about what they are doing. The quality of interactions is on a different level then in shelters, in shelters even the good ones, it seems that people are just focused on themselves and their problems (rightfully so)...but it gets tiresome and it's hard to connect with people on a positive
-
This day is a sneek-up-and-blow-your hat off into the river type of windy day. There are about three errands I need to do and am procrastinating on since I don't have a car and they are all far away it involves long bus rides.
I wish I could have a peaceful, quite and cozy day at home or even a get-stuff-done day..but it's just not that at all.
So, I will go make SOMETHING out of the day. At least one little something I will do.
-
I think you'd be superb at a volunteer gig that involves letter-writing, MB.
You are an EXCELLENT writer.
And that's solid work experience that goes very nicely on a resume.
Hope you enjoy it!
Hops
-
I think you write very well also, Muffin. '
You'll do just fine: )
Lighter
-
Just putting down some thoughts.
"Do what you can where you are with what you have" ~ Quote by Elliot Roosevelt or Theodore Roosevelt
This quote has always stuck in my mind and I refer to it when I don't know what else to do.
So today, while I was frustrated that I could not plant some daffodils or primroses or paint or even buy a sketch pad, instead I was surfing the internet and finally came upon a painting tutorial on youtube that demonstrated a technique that I had never thoroughly learned. I like to think that I can still learn and grow in some way even if my lifestyle is detached and ungrounded.
Many times in my life I have been preparing for some sort of impending doom. Maybe the doom really is here and more is coming.
Even If doom is here right now and is coming, I still need to make the most out of my life. I don't think this is a concept I grew up with or understood...I'm afraid that I'm disintegrating physically because I'm not exercising much and also in my mind...poverty of thought.
Making the most out of life feels like a powerful place to start because it doesn't demand that one's starting point must be ahead of the pack.
Making the most out of life can be bland or vague or cliche...or not. Making the most out of life can be very specific for each person. Maybe I'm in a good place to make the most out of my life or maybe not. I'm certainly not on "a plan". There is a church close by with stained glass windows, there is over-painting on top of the stained glass that is very well done and each pane is unique. I barely give myself the time to notice these things or enjoy them because I live like a horse with blinders on facing forward to a target. It's hard to know what exactly to focus on sometimes.
After writing so much on this board, I certainly know that focusing on my relatives is not a good place to turn my head--but focusing on how my family may impact me I think that is ok in small amounts maybe.
So I have a mental note of free meditation and yoga sessions I can participate in. I have figured out how to get free theater performance tickets. It helps, but I also know that it's possible I will only be here on a temporary basis. So, I'm asking myself how badly do I want to stay here, and why this place compared to other places?
I've been seeing pots of red petted prim-roses with yellow centers, I swear my life could revolve around such an insignificant thing.
I was trying to figure out a church to go to, I happened upon one that is inaccessible to me because it is in the hills, on the website for the church was a prayer request submission area. So I went ahead and submitted a brief prayer request for work & health & family.
I thought twice about the family part, I have always been distanced from my foo, I have never realized it so concretely though how insignificant my family is in my life.
I'm just rambling now.
-
Thank you, Hops & Lighter.
-
Since Spring is on its way here, I'm enjoying looking at things like this: www.kathyandersonstudio.com/index.htm
-
The Clock Of Life ~ Robert Smith
The clock of life is wound but once,
And no man has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop
At late or early hour.
To lose one's wealth is sad indeed,
To lose one's health is more,
To lose one's soul is such a loss
That no man can restore.
The present only is our own,
So Live, Love, toil with a will --
Place no faith in 'Tomorrow' --
For the clock may then be still.
-
Currently gorging on chocolate milk for Valentines Day!
Today I went to the little Buddhist meditation sitting, yawned a few times and then the last yawn gave me the worst feeling in my tongue, neck and head as if a migraine was going to take over my whole body. A full body migraine.
I don't know if its due to bottled up emotional stress or if my musculature is screwed up from the horrible mattress that I sleep on.
I'm tired, I don't have anything else to write now...only that I sneak out of the meditation hall as fast as I can afterwards so I don't have so stand there drinking tea and talking to people. I know it's weird but it's close to my worst nightmare. I'm ok with talking to people if there is a task at hand but not so comfortable with meet and greet...and I'm an adult. I guess it's painful shyness and I never fully grew out of it.
Well I certainly wasn't going to stand there with a full body migraine happening. I just wish I had a really hard mattress to lay on in a completely quiet place in complete darkness--that's my idea of a lovely Valentines Day.
-
Thank you. I really had no idea that chocolate and caffeine trigger headaches!
-
I went to a yoga class tonight and it's the best thing I have done for months. I'm grateful that the teacher permits non-paying students because I did my laundry with shampoo today. Guess what? My laundry came out great :)
Sometimes all the stress in my body doesn't seem to come out during the times that annoy me the most, instead it's like there is a delayed response where my muscles just become tighter and tighter. I have to ask myself is it just me or is it my environment.
As much as I know the parts of my life that are stress inducing and messed up, there is still always a mysterious element about stress to me, the unknown lurking emotions or physical remnants that are left in some muscle or in all the muscles.
Anyways. I volunteered today and it was great!!!!!! But now I'm busy and I have work to do and it's late and I'm not even employed.....oh well!
"Oh Well" is my new motto.
I have one lung that is starting to inhale again just a little bit and I'm smiling just a little bit and I love these kinds of smiles, these are the kinds of smiles that are the best defense against ambient drama and turmoil.
Good Night!!! (SMILE) I love yoga.
-
Oh Muffin,
You made my day. Really. I did not even want to do today, and your post was the first thing I read. Thank you.
I have a yoga place across the street from my apartments. Today I check it out.
CB
-
It's not just you, MB...
I have about as stressless an environment as one could have... yet I still have emotional crap energy bleeding across into the physical realm... and if I don't find a physical way to release it, I eventually get sick. I wish I could figure out how to notice and deal with it (whatever "it" is) where it belonged, before that happened, you know?
-
Thats what I mean about stress. It is easy to attribute it to SOMEthing but difficult to tell with accuracy exactly how it's generating.
Of course Buddhists would probably say it's self-generated. It’s a challenge to sit there and chant "no possessions, no honor, no body, no mind" and believe it because I have a body and I want to be healthy and if we didn't have minds we would never try to meditate in the first place but that’s just Buddhism, there are other forms of meditation.
When I was in high- school I gave a presentation about stress reduction! And here I am...many years later and STILL I'm a bit baffled by it, it sounds like many people are in the same boat!
-
Ok, So I'm going to write it anyways here because I just want to, I live in my own world in my own head and the parts of my life that actually intersect with other people are quite limited. I don't have anyone to complain to. The place where I am staying is warm and has a hot shower and is secure so that is pretty great. It's like having room-mates though, the kinds of room mates you just ended up with but didn't want to have as room mates. There is a young woman here who has been vocally going through a break up with her boyfriend. There’s no real privacy here, every person hears every thing that is said. So her boyfriend accused her of giving him herpes. Then I see one woman giving this other woman a tube of lotion for herpes infections.....and I myself have had some symptoms that I haven’t had before (in my mouth), so I am thinking to myself--did I possibly catch this from the shower knob or a bar of soap or an eating utensil. Technically the virus is only suppose to stay alive for about 20 seconds outside of the body, but I have read that inanimate objects if they are wet or warm, or if a utensil has food particles left on it then the virus may stay alive in that kind of environment. People can get it from towels. So...I'm somewhat pissed off....but there is not a lot I can do about it now.
I'm old enough that I'm not going to freak out if I have it. It's just that I have had about as much romantic action as a nun gets and it would just be one more insult on top of everything else.
I feel like I'm too old and responsible to have to deal with this crap.
So I made a doctors appointment at a community health clinic. So they can tell me one way or another and I won't have to act like a hypochondriac any longer. I can let it go and deal with it if I know what I'm dealing with, I hope. I'm pretty good at self diagnosis, based on what I've seen and read about symtoms I would say that I have it because I felt tingling in my lip (prodromal) symptom...that I have never had before. I don't have anything on my lips that look like typical herpes lesions- but I have had some areas inside my mouth that look abnormal to me. So I'm wondering is this from this person not washing her dishes well enough?
I'm a person who will hover over a toilet seat if I can instead of sitting on it.
I always wash my hands before I eat if there is a sink nearby.
The last job I had all of my co-workers got the flu but I didn't because I'm usually fastidious about hygiene.
Catching herpes from some random object was the furthest thing from my mind lately.
I even wear flip-flops into the shared shower.
This is why I need a little bit of Buddhism to remind me that no matter what sort of crummy stuff happens...all we are is dust in the wind.
Oh well.
Then again, maybe I don't have it because I just bent over and looked at a little red bump on my big toe and screamed (to myself) I even have herpes on my toes! And that is just me being crazy...so I laugh (ha ha).....oh but wait that is called herpetic whitlow. I give up. This really is too much self absorbed worry. I might start inspecting every hair folicle on my legs. OR NOT!
I'm going to the doctor, I made an appointment earlier today. Unfortunately I also want to apply for a job there. OH WELL AGAIN!! :)
I just hope they answer my questions with concrete answers, everything I might have is non-fatal, common and diagnosable.
-
I
have to GET TO volunteer tomorrow again, I have one pair of nice black pants with me, I didn't want to wear the exact same thing so I went out and found a new tunic-top for $2.00 it wasn't even used. It's not something I would normally wear but sometimes I enjoy being forced just to make do and be creative. It's a shirt that looks like a sewing project I had going on, a little bit pear-shaped maternity looking but the pattern is sort of springy. I'm forced just to look at the shirt and know that somebody did make it, there was effort put into sewing it together...so I thought about it from the perspective of-- if I sewed it myself. I'm going to wear it with black pants or jeans and try to look as good as I can and go to my little volunteer gig.
When I have volunteered in the past the roles were pretty basic, passive and "behind the scenes" such as sorting food items, so I'm surprised to find that the roles available to me now are much more active roles.
I wasn’t sure if I would be able to volunteer because my experience in the past has been to be put on a very long waiting list.
So when I was first looking into volunteering I contacted two places. Both places want me to volunteer. I hope that I don't over extend myself, I still need to leave time for work. I just wish I could work part time and volunteer the rest of the time.
So the interview I had today for the second volunteer situation would involve coordinating art projects with kids and doing things like "story time". I'm pretty shy so I don't know how public story time would work for me....but it sounds kind of fun really.
I really am that shy that I don't like to give any kind of public speeches/ talks or whatever even kid's story time is sort of like a public speech...for little people. :) ...Oh well.
I enjoy kids books because there are so many great illustrators and writers who are making these now, I'm really impressed with the variety and quality of the children's books I've seen. I grew up with the hungry caterpillar but besides that I don't remember too much out there. I'm just rambling now. I think that being around kids is an excuse to be in touch with the inner child or something like that.
-
I come here to vent, I realize that maybe it even sounds Narcissistic to come here and write out all my problems, the thing is I don't share my life with anyone, I don't tell all the people around me all of my thoughts because that would mean entering into conflict with other homeless people or something like that- many of them have substance abuse issues etc.--I just don't put it out there, I keep me to me.
I find it helpful just to write it out because then I don't feel so isolated maybe.
People share so many non-important insignificant things with their families and such on a daily basis. Someone to share the minutia with.
~ If you are reading this whoever you may be PRAY for me to get a job ok? Even a good one that leaves a little time left over to continue with the volunteer work would be way beyond my expectations but would be great.
I'm so tired my mind just went blank. Good night.
Oh, I remember, my other "impending doom" that worries are made of.....is that I can't stay where I am at for more then a month unless I do get a job soon! I know that I'm being considered for at least a couple of jobs because I have been in contact via email with employers where I applied...but still I don't have a great feeling about it. I don't want to move really because I'm just starting to get involved in activities here.
Then again maybe I will end up some place "cleaner".....I have no idea sometimes....as much as I try to plan and have a normal schedule I DON'T KNOW!!!! Sometimes I'm just all out of ideas and energy...G'Night.
-
Hey, muffin...
how do you feel about some feedback along with prayers for a job? I'm kinda grinning to myself reading your latest posts... you sound like you're in a pretty good space - headwise. These are just random responses...
the "no body" - "no mind" of meditation isn't totally literal... but sometimes the folks who're leading don't know that or just don't know how to explain that... think "transcend" instead "no"...
I hope you do read stories to kids - I think you'll find it very interesting and fun! (but remember these little humans can be a challenge, too!)
"someone to share the minutia with"... yes, I hadn't thought about it this way before; you're right... this is one of things we long for and expect from relationships/intimate connections with people... and I think there's another part of it too - having the other person care about YOUR minutia... you've just given me a way to explain what I mean when I say I want someone - hubs for instance - to spend some time in "Amber's World"... instead of always the other way.
Thank you, Muffin... I care about and enjoy reading about your minutia - and some of your loftier thoughts, too!
-
I put on my new shirt, took a shower, put on my earrings and walked to my volunteer gig. It feels so good to get dressed up sometimes, it's different for me to enjoy the dress-up process. Usually I want to take my slacks off and put on a stretchy skirt and sit in the grass under a tree. I've decided to make a creative game out of finding low-cost outfits to wear to my gig. I got there and I thought yay, I'm the springy-est most cheerful person here- maybe it's not true but that is how I felt. The meeting was pretty interesting but I wish I was given more responsibility and at the same time I can't commit to anything major yet. I had to attend a city planning consortium about a project that I'm now working on and there wasn't a cohesive vision for the project, every person represents a different need and interest. I think a college intern will end up being the project manager for the job although I really wanted to volunteer for that responsibility. I'm not sure how to deal with this yet. I don't know if I should have volunteered or not because this is only my second time being there and I'm not the most knowledgeable, but I think I have a good general intuition of the issues because the conversation topics during the meeting were things that I immediately thought of as issues that needed to be addressed. I really only need to make a very minimal amount of money to secure an on-going space as a resident where I am. So I would work as much as they wanted me to for a very modest stipend. I didn't even really think about this.
I need something like that a modest stipend where someone pays me a dirt cheap wage to do a bunch of work that I love to do and it would be enough just to get my momentum going again.
I'm going to another theater performance tonight. YAY!!!
I'm about as happy as I can possibly make myself at the moment. It's a moderate happy--mainly based on having little things to look forward to.
I have to be careful what I say to people about my personal situation because it can't be interpreted very well. There is a component of the project that requires a dedication of someone's time but no person wants to put in the time. It's not going to start until May or June though and that is too late. It's very low budget until grant money comes in. I don't think I can squeeze myself into that role..
I would do as much work as they wanted me to do for a $200 monthly stipend. I know this has got to be appealing to someone. I'm desperate for any kind of work but real interesting work would be fantastic. Can they utilize me?
I wonder if I should tell the director my personal situation and tell her I will do any kind of work full time for a measly stipend.
I have great reservations about my own qualifications for being a project manager because I don't have formal qualifications.
I have worked in professional settings and I have taken non-violent communication classes etc. etc. I think I understand the challenges and what needs to be done in the position of project manager to make sure the goals are being met, good community relationships are being maintained etc. etc.
I don't know what I should do yet.
I have another idea. I need to go work on something. Will write more later.
-
@Phoenix:
So you are thinking about "transcend" in a more sophisticated understanding of it-- that is different then "ignore the body" or non-attachment. I like attachment and passion because passion of some sort brings purpose and meaning into my life- that is where I diverge from Buddhism. "no body, no mind, no passion, blah blah"
What does transcend the body mean on that level. I like the idea of EXPAND. That is what I am trying to do personally EXPAND (not literally) but to expand my ideas of how I can find a niche for myself and EXPAND my openness to new opportunities.
"Transcend" seems at odds with tai-chi and body-centered practices- and I find the body centered stuff to be more effective for me.
What do you think?
If I was to embrace transcending the body I would have to think about the idea in a radically different way then I normally do because I have labored just to reconnect with my physicality and to take good care of my body and inhabit it.
People who have gone through some sort of abuse often have these strange detached relationships with their own body?
My experience is that calm, gentle, peaceful, ahimsa type behaviors get me into trouble-- for me I need to be fierce for my selfness.
I think I can use meditation as a tool but I essentially have belief system differences with it as a spiritual practice.
Reincarnation and eternal spirit are not ideas that I believe in. I believe in temporary spirit incarnated into a physical form.
There is falseness, if the woman leading the meditation group was deep into it wouldn't she not even dye her hair all blond? Just wondering.
No body, no clothes, no possessions, no religion too, no Buddhism...that's more zenish or something.
Oh well.
-
Lets see there are all sorts of directions. There is transcend, there is descend, there is get rooted, get grounded, get centered, there is expand and contract/retreat. Is transcend to go beyond without leaving it behind?
Going Beyond.
Outside the box.
Breaking boundaries
I think transcend is moving into nothingness. Most house-holders can not be 100% nothingness.
Ouch my foot hurts----transcend?
I don't want to die----transcend?
I hate my mother------transcend?
Honestly, I have no intention of transcending anything, I use meditation for selfish purposes. It's really an attempt to make me feel better in some way. Even the Dali Lama says that Buddhism is against normal human nature....that is why I'm not into it 100%, it's contrived.
-
MB:
I wonder if I should tell the director my personal situation and tell her I will do any kind of work full time for a measly stipend.
imo, YES!!!!!
Speak!
(Below...everyone has insecurity. And perhaps you don't. BUT, imo, the second part is worth articulating to her regardless of whether you get the job--you can't control the outcome, just the decision to speak or not...because it's practice for confident interviewing. Okay to release the outcome, and realize that you are just in that choice, practicing comfortable speech in your behalf. A good, positive experience of being comfortable as your own advocate.)
I have great reservations about my own qualifications for being a project manager because I don't have formal qualifications.
I have worked in professional settings and I have taken non-violent communication classes etc. etc. I think I understand the challenges and what needs to be done in the position of project manager to make sure the goals are being met, good community relationships are being maintained etc. etc.
Hope this made sense.
Hops
-
@ Hops
After the meeting that happened today, I was still thinking about the details of the projects so I emailed the director some ideas or actually I wrote about the fact that I saw some things really need to be defined because there are three public groups involved and all over the page with who does what etc. etc.-- there is not even 100% agreement on the point of the project and the message it will send to the community. I'm not sure what the director will think of my ideas, I want to hear back from her before I get too full of myself.
It's a new program for this area that is based on other similar programs that have been successful in other communities. Yet, there is no telling IF it would be a success here or a flop...because there are varying regional economies that have a play in things. I need to be really careful about getting too deep into this volunteer stuff until I have a plan for myself also.
But THANK you for the encouragement! I need to consider it some more, what I really want- if I even get to ask myself that question.
I know, a lack of confidence can really be shooting oneself in the foot. Maybe that is mainly what the "qualifications do" is give a person confidence.
I'm not 100% sure what role the director sees me in, I'm just a brand new volunteer but she wanted me to be involved with planning meetings that new volunteers are not typically a part of. I'm just wondering what they would think of me if they knew what my personal situation was.
People can't understand how badly I want an interesting measly job unless I tell them my personal situation and my ps does not look so good. I will have to see what happens.
-
The funny thing is I just applied for a part time job in a psychiatrist's office.
I want to say that "I feel so lost" because I have heard other people use that phrase, but I don't feel lost, I'm simply wondering am I on the right track? And I know that I am not because I am in a homeless shelter! There is a stigma to that. It's just a place to stay with a roof and a shower and why is that very different from a person staying in a house or staying in a tent or staying in a hotel or a yurt or whatever.
I'm tired I think I will sleep.
Ok, here is another weird thing. I should not even write this because I don't want it to be true and if I write it then it's written.
I almost prefer being in a homeless shelter then being in my own apartment. I had my own apartments for 8+ years before I came to this point in my life and I felt stuck living by myself in my crappy little apartments. At least when I am in homeless shelters they are temporary and I don't feel stuck and alone, instead I feel frightened because I'm lucky to even get into shelters since I don't have children.
--AND I ask how can that person in the previous paragraph be a Project Manager?
I want to make myself more light-hearted because it's unhealthy to worry all the time. Everyone who is here feels as though they are on unstable ground...and I question that because I can only think of one time that I didn't feel that way, it was when I was living in a rich guy's big house.
I'm so tired, I guess what I am getting at is I wonder what is my personal capacity to ever feel "secure" ...basically meaning safe and healthy and OK, and having a smile sometimes. That is pretty modest security.
Sometimes I wonder if I am WAY out there in crazy land. I just saw a pointless theater performance that was sort of wacko so maybe this is part of why I'm questioning myself and feeling topsy turvey.
Topsy Turvey.. "no mind, no body, no possessions, no topsy turvey...ohmm...
Part of me on the inside is horrified by my life.
Yet today is just one more day and the next day will be new again...ready for me to start my TO-DO list. The list that I use to say belonged to Miss Doo-Doo head. Doo-doo head being that part of my psyche that can't relax and has to be controlling everything.
I feel like a major control freak right now. MAJOR freak out need to control my life because it is way WAY out of control right now.
I'm almost tempted to go to an AA meeting and say I'm not a drinker but my life is so out of control I just need to be some place where I can talk about how out of control my life feels and I ask what would the point be and I wouldn't fit in and really dont want to spend my spare time doing such a thing.
I feel really worried. Tonight I have a warm cozy bed to sleep in and that is all I can hope for I think.
Being unemployed in the fashion that I am would make any person feel crazy.
The thing not just any person is unemployed like I am...and then that thinking leads me to start saying to myself:
"what is wrong with me"
This is the phrase I would say to myself when I was growing up and at some point I decided that there wasn't something wrong with me just because I was living a wrong life.
I'm just venting. When I got into the little theater tonight, I sat down in the seat and the lights dimmed, then I had to talk myself out of what started to feel like the first part of a panic attack.
I haven't been having any panic attacks recently but I feel that I am ripe for them.
I just re-read a part of what I wrote and teared up and exhaled a big EXHALE. I've been bottling it up. There is no privacy around here I don't just cry and I have been too busy to cry. I just need to be allowed to be a normal imperfect human being.
Maybe I am just trying to live a life that I am not "cut out for". CUT OUT FOR would mean like a cookie cutter or something, that the shape of a person's life would naturally lead them to do something/become something. The problem is the things that I would naturally be led to do based on the shape of my life are BAD. BAD. BAD!!!!
I need to get over my overwhelm, realize that I am too stuffed up with unhealthy emotions that are going to mess me up. I need plans lots and lots of plans. At least this is my normal response but clearly my plans dont work so well.
-
CUT OUT FOR would mean like a cookie cutter or something, that the shape of a person's life would naturally lead them to do something/become something.
You'd think this would be how it works for people, wouldn't you? And that they'd be happy with what they became... right? One of the biggest illusions going is that "successful" people are happy doing what they're doing. Almost every single person like this that I've met have a "Plan B"... that is worlds away from what they're doing for money; for their living. Even some creative people. I like the idea that we each of us, create our own opportunities... and it sounds like you're in the process of finding out how this works. What I've also noticed about people who ARE happy with how they make a living, is that they looked for those opportunities that connected with something in themselves... something that clicked... and pushed one of those secret smiles to the face... and then maybe by accident they found just the job that let them do this.
I was a project manager... in a lot of different situations. The words used will vary... but here's all that's really required to do the job well (everything else you need, you can learn from the rest of the team)... you must be obsessively organized and not daunted by a huge pile of seemingly unrelated details - those details need to be categorized, translated to action items, tasks, sub-projects and assigned to someone with a report-back time/date... and an overall completion timeline created and managed. You may also be asked to "synthesize" all those details into a summary narrative of the goal of the project, the benefits or efficiencies that are expected to result from the project... and then gussy up the narrative into marketing language - to sell for buy-in from constituents, to sell for grant money, to sell for public support. Sometimes the second half of that is done by someone else... I had the background and the B.S. (the bull...) degree, to do the second half too.
[By the way, being a project manager is kind of an "outlet" for that controlling reflex. It can get out of hand, tho. In reality, the project's success is only as good as the relationships between the manager and the team - and the team's work is way more important than the manager's!]
Ya know? I really worried about you moving into a shelter... I couldn't foresee any good coming from it at all. But, I was wrong. I don't think it's wack to prefer this type of situation over being alone all the time in your apartment. For you. For right now. I think there's something in this experience that's helping you. I don't know what yet... maybe you don't either. It's part of that process I mentioned - creating an opportunity. It's like making a dream come true - in reality - out there, with all those people... something you imagined becomes real. It's a really cool feeling when that happens, you know? I think the shelter - for all the negatives about it - I think there's something really valuable in this experience for you.
Transcend... I'm not completely sure I know what I meant! LOL... you're on the right track, tho. It's through being centered in the body, that you get to what I mean... I just don't know what words to use to describe it. It's not like "no body"... beyond comes closer... but body's still there, necessary, valuable... same with mind, all the thought-chatter, even the fleeting feelings - moods and even shades or tints of emotions.
Edit in: WAIT! I know... it's like the arrangement "shifts"... the order or hierarchy is subtly different; the priorities change... I don't know if that's completely "it" either...
-
Along the way, personal items have been lost and discarded intentionally and unintentionally. Most of my family pictures have been hastily discarded (imagine that) because I know I don't have children to show them to, even if I did I would not be compelled to tell untrue stories about the warmth of family. I looked at my family photos and all I saw was a failure of marriage or lies.
There were two post-cards that I have had for years that didn't get discarded, one is a black and white photo of a little boy sitting in a window ledge from the 1940's. The other postcard is of a custom-altered Volkswagen bus that was welded together to be very very compact, it has the phrase on it "life is short".
For years, I would look at the postcard of the boy and I always imagined him to represent a street urchin on a train, I suppose that appealed to me. Few days ago I was looking at the postcard and realized he is not sitting in an old train like a child hobo in India.
I guess my point, is that I realize how I saw the world the way I wanted to see it rather then for what it really was. Now I question if I am still doing that to some degree.
-
The director responded to my e-mailed ideas and she was very positive about my input. She is encouraging to me and she still wants me to continue contributing at least in a small part on the pieces that I am working on.
The one idea I was most worried to put out there she actually liked and commented the most strongly about!
I'm glad that she thinks my contributions are valuable. I know that my self esteem is more vulnerable then it typically is.
Something else, this morning I just had a conversation with a person in the shelter about alcoholism in families and Adult Children of Alcoholics. I have such little contact with my family but I'm considering going to an Adult Children's meeting because she told me that there is one near by, the existence of these meetings is a little rare. It's not something that I want to be a part of but maybe the 12 step process could help me bring a little more structure into how I relate with the events in my life. I don't know but I will consider it.
-
MB
what I have noticed about the adult children of any major dysfunction is that the adult children have similar problems and ways of coping with life. The variable seems to be what is the dysfunction in the parents. Whether it is alcohol, drugs, a mental health issue or just plain dysfunctional living--it is the lack of control and the feeling that life makes no sense that is the shared legacy.
I hope you will go. Please let us know what you think.
CB
-
The thing that really caught my attention about the conversation I had with the other woman in the shelter about ACOA/AA stuff was the behavior of self-isolation because it echoed what I just read recently in the book by Nuala O'Faolain because she describes her mother as being isolated.
The lady here was telling me how un-social she is but she seems quite personable to me. It made me start thinking about my own behavior and wondering how much may be some sort of self-isolating habit?
Well, I looked up the time and place info for the local meeting next week, I may go.
-
Clearly I need a new strategy.
-
Tear Tracks
Thank you.
-
Hey Muffin...
that self-isolating effect... has a why with it - why self-isolate?
The reasons are as different as there are people... but I think the feeling that goes with it is the same one (manifested differently).
(((((((((Muffin)))))))))
-
Hi MB,
Those standardized rejection letters can get to you...I wonder if a lot of it is that these days people submit resume after resume over the Internet. It becomes an automatic checklist kind of thing but isn't always the path in to a workplace.
Whenever you get the chance to write a cover letter, your writing is so good that I hope it will catch an ear. Keep on doing the Internet search, but make sure the online submissions don't eat all the time/energy for the job search. Make another block of time about in-person contacts, volunteering, attending workshops, writing personalized queries and thank-yous to individual people, stuff like that.
But this is also why your in-person volunteering and engagement is such a brilliant move. That really is networking. And you're already doing it very intelligently. I am very impressed. It's not that you can control or predict HOW things will change, it's just that you really are doing wise things that ENCOURAGE the openings to present for you.
Don't panic. Each question or encounter or communication? It's practice. It's going to be okay. Just try as best you can to do the "one day at a time" thing.
I don't know if this works for you but sometime ages ago when I was very anxious about something similar, somebody told me to think of it as "good practice" -- and that took so much pressure off the event itself. I let go of the outcome and got relocated in the present. So I could be more relaxed and engaged without focusing on my anxiety. Literally letting go the result made the effort more easeful.
One last bit of random advice? Don't begin to "believe in" your homelessness. Don't wrap yourself up snugly in that label. Don't let the word take on a toxic glow, like a special disease that dooms you. Or that it's something you "deserve". Nah. It's weather, rough weather, and it will change. That's the certainty.
You and millions of other Americans are going through a difficult time. And you are not a drug addict, you are caring for your appearance and health, walking, continuing to reflect, write, search and drive forward. You are showing up in your life. You have not abandoned it.
Don't "believe in it". Homeless is one adjective and it is temporary. And it will be a meaningful benchmark when you look back as a wise old thing just the way people who weather a terrible accident but heal and return to the world with immense gratitude for life.
You'll find a job, you'll eventually have a pleasant housemate, a simple place to live, and it will be okay.
There is no reason for you NOT to be one of those who moves up and out of this situation. You have a lot going for you, MB.
Don't "believe in" your mother, either. She's unable to be helpful. And as you gather more of your OWN experience that you look at through your OWN thoughts and opinions, you will be less rocked by what's missing with her.
One day if you write a memoir, I'll gladly buy it. In hardback.
love
Hops
-
Went to my doctor's appointment. I said "I'm living in a shelter, please test me for HSV-1 and I have toe fungus, sorry I'm scrungy I didn't take a shower this morning, while you are scraping my toe, I have a quick question for you, there seems to be a lot of turn around here and I see that the receptionist & data entry jobs are open, I have applied for jobs here but haven't gotten a response, can you give me any insight or tips?-- Do you only hire college students here?"
~I know it's not professional but I have already applied for two jobs at this place and didn't get an interview. I talked to the person at the front desk she wasn't doing anything that I couldn't do better.
The doctor told me to try applying again. I will when I go back in for my blood test next week I will bring them a PACKET of application materials and I will email them and I will call them and call them and call them until they tell me to go away.
The doctor asked me why I can't get hired back at my last job and I told her the truth "I was downsized and it was a bad experience" I wasn't really expecting her to ask me that, there is no way to finesse it.
She didn't think my toe thing was even fungus so weirdly enough maybe I had hard-water calcium build up on one toe??
Living in communal places is hard in someways I'm hyper vigilant about what I might catch because one place I stayed at EVERYBODY was passing around a new cold/flu every week, it was constant coughing and runny nose and someone said their kid had whooping cough and on and on.
-
Thanks Hops,
Yes, I'm getting very experienced at something. I went to an interviewing skills workshop just to please the shelter manager and during the workshop we started discussing questions employers should not ask and unusual questions? When I started giving all my examples of questions that I have been asked at interviews the workshop leader started looking at me in a weird and irritated way? She said "I have never heard of that before"...
Yes it's true, I have been asked if I have children at interviews, I have been asked if I'm single or married or if I live by myself or other people, I was asked what kind of car I would be if I was a car, I have been asked what religion I am.
I don't know the legalities of it, I just read a list of 30 questions employers are not suppose to ask and I have been asked at least 26 of them at some time or other.
My only point is that it seems I have been on more interviews then the person giving the interviewing class tips has been on. You would think that would make me pretty good at it but there is always something that rules me out, the last interview it was definitely because I was not a college student.
Some community colleges allow people to sit in on partially full classes for free. I don't know if they have that policy here, but I may do it, sit in on any ol'fricken class so I can say YES YES I'm a STUDENT!!!! Without it being a total lie. -and I could do it without commiting to anything or wasting future financial aid income. --because you can only get so much financial aid for school I think, I wouldn't want to waste it on a golf management class.
-
Hey Muffin...
that self-isolating effect... has a why with it - why self-isolate?
The reasons are as different as there are people... but I think the feeling that goes with it is the same one (manifested differently).
(((((((((Muffin)))))))))
I need to learn more about it because there seems to be a behavioral linkage for the ACOA/ Alcoholism and self-isolating.
It's very 12-stepy.
My Nar mother is not very social at all. My something-father is extremely isolated. My alcoholic brother is isolated. My mother's alcoholic husband is very introverted. My nar-mother's alcoholic father was very introverted.
My Nar-mother's Alcoholic mother is very social though.
My father's mother was permanently stationed in front of a television her whole life.
There is something to it.
-
Inside knowledge about food banks and shelters--
Another woman here has an ex-boyfriend who worked at the local food bank. She said he took stuff from the food bank he wasn't supposed to take.
Last shelter I was at (observed this myself)- one of the managers was helping herself and removing all of the good donations for her own personal use and re-sale. Even she would take food home before giving it to the shelter, one time I thought I was helping by receiving and putting out donated food...and she got mad at me because she wanted to take it home for herself....and I had to apologetically say I didn't mean to overstep my boundaries and that it wasn't my authority to give food donations to the residents at the shelter. YEAH RIGHT.
This same shelter would also take people's food stamp benefits (most don't do this) and purchase the type of food they wanted (fat-farm-junk) for the "shelter"-and the employees would help themselves to this food...getting free lunch etc.
--Same shelter requires cleaning chores ok that is fair--but they added onto the chore list that the women go in and clean the restroom for the private business office that is only used by managers and staff --not the residents cleaning up after themselves instead that is the residents being used as maid service. It was requested by a man who worked there. I'm sorry but I had to laugh over this with another woman in the shelter and she said "and you know he isn't making it into the toilet". Ugghhhhh.
I'm tempted one day to write a letter to the agency that gives GRANT money so the shelter could continue to operate- they waste healthy food because they are too lazy to prepare fresh veggies donated by kind farmers, they buy crap food with food stamps, they eat the food themselves, the play computer games when they should be hooking residents up with services and resources, it is more extensive then that.
Its really not important for me any longer- I do have other priorities for me. This is not a utopian world, I just think that many don't realize the systems are screwy.
Go to a place that gives out single one-way bus ride passes --and I only can get TWO a month. That is a single round trip per month when there are often empty seats on the bus. JUST saying--these programs and services seem superficial --
Sometimes the drug-addicts in the shelters are more compassionate and morally correct then the shelter management.
Two women here also said that the last shelter she was at was almost empty even though they were telling people that they were full- the alternative to that woman's shelter is to spend the night in a two-gender shelter where a woman was killed and another woman was raped- and they release people onto the streets at very early AM in the dark. --This is something I noticed also shelters are not always full when they turn people away--it is true that they can not accomodate every person and there are rules--but sometimes I think they turn eligible people away because they just want an easy week at work- and yes they are getting a pay check with $ signs on it--not volunteers.
--So we had a shelter-dinner table conversation about the possible reasons they say the shelter is full when it's empty, we figure maybe it's because they have enough people to get funding and keep their jobs. --Because fewer people would make their jobs easier??
I bet you wouldn't think that here in America people skim off the top of social service programs like this, maybe in India yes.
I was surprised to learn about all of this but I'm finding it's not uncommon.
-
Last night I was up until midnight googling maps of an old neighborhood where the woman who taught me to ride a bike lived.
I think she is probably deceased because she had a catastrophic illness the last time I saw her when I was a kid.
There are very few people in my life that are constants- the only constants have been the fam.
I was trying to find her death record not because I have hopes of her being alive and well --more because a death record says what day and year she passed away and where she is buried if anywhere.
I think when life is so inconsistent I go back to the only person that made me feel safe you know?
I couldnt remember the name of the street she lived on but I remember it was next an elementary school and I remember what the house looked like and there was a park nearby so I was trying to remember the name of the park. I couldnt figure it out BUT on the google map I saw a museum she took me to and a public rose garden that she took me to and a country-side park she took me to.
Seeing photographs I havent been to since I was a kid sort of freaked me out.....I've come a long way in life...only to end up here!
Childhood stuff always makes me sad but I think I was looking just to have some idea of familiar or something somewhere is the same.
That museum is still there and probably some of the displays inside the museum are the same. Maybe someday I will take a roadtrip and end up there again.
Why do we like to go back to places of our childhood? To me it is like a shocking reference point.
Guess what I have volunteer homework to do. I better go do it :D
I have faith in my own evolution and intuition, I don't have faith in the people and world around me.
-
There is a mother-daughter team here. Mother is a recovering drug addict daughter is 20-something with some type of issue that I'm not sure I want to state because I don't know for sure...ok...maybe anorexic ??
It could be something else...but it's obviously very very serious stage whatever it is...
The mother sometimes talks to the daughter as if the daughter is this total pain in the rear-end...she isn't from what I can see. They were both going out together someone was picking them up and the daughter just needed to grab her coat and a few items (takes 1-2 minutes longer) mother made a big stink about the daughter taking so long--even though she really wasn’t taking an abnormal about of time. (Impatience)--and then the mother turns it into an issue by saying that the daughter is making it difficult for the mother to go out as if the daughter is dependent on her but from what I have witnessed the mother is more dependent on the daughter- asking her for money and for favors etc. etc. I haven’t seen the daughter ask the mother for anything.
Maybe I'm missing something but I think I am actually an observer of a type of emotional abuse, it would be interesting to know more about them but I don't really need to focus on that.
I think there is another woman here who is picking up on it also because she is really nice to the ill 20-something year old.
I have mixed feelings, I don't want to get involved in anyway I have even been warned by the director that as soon the women see me as being part of the turmoil here its not good. So far I'm cheerful and kind of talkative but not groupy.
I'm tempted to ask the daughter what she thinks about her interactions with her mother and what sort of health issue she has but that is not going to come to any good. I mean she has doctor's visits.
-
I notice how I have a high energy level after I volunteer and then a little bit for the next day and then after that I lose my motivation to work on my little volunteer projects (this is when I am no longer there). When I say energy, it's not just like feeling good, it's that I'm engaged somehow and that I care and that I am motivated. That is the key thing I think...I feel motivated for a while.
I don't know, motivation is like caring about something or feeling good about a goal.
It's not the same as doing something out of fear. I hate when people say a person will be motivated when they are afraid enough or hurting enough. That's more like forced or coerced.
Fear and stress-suffering de-energize me, maybe compels me to act/respond in some way but it's not the same as good energy motivation.
I'm going to call good energy motivation "authentic motivation"
I think stress can over-power authentic motivation--even maybe to the point where a person can become so stressed out that they can't feel the authentic motivation and come to believe that they don't have authentic motivation in something due to lack of interest or connection with the activity when in reality it is stress that is clouding one's ability to experience the reward/joy from authentic motivation?
For example, say I wanted to go to Ireland on vacation and I have been planning it since I was 18 years old, then at some point years later stars align and I'm able to go to Ireland but a couple of days before my flight over there I have a panic attack or I'm so stressed out that I'm no longer excited about the trip that once beckoned to me. Then someone says to me "maybe you have grown out of it or it's no longer important for me to go"....then I may agree with them. When really the problem could have been my stress level not my lack of abilty to be passionate about life in someway.
Why don't we just call depression another word like stression instead?
I just think that when I was younger and the idea that depression and anxiety were real problems --gave me a big misunderstanding about myself.
I was excited when I volunteered because I got to listen to lots of people talk about interesting stuff, then after a few days, got my period and it's blowing freezing cold wind outside, and I just want to lay-down and take it easy. That doesnt make me depressed.
I'm afraid of the depressed label now to the point that if I spend a day just chilling there is like a part of me PUSHing from behind saying GET UP-GO-GET OUT AND FIX SOMETHING---FIX YOURSELF---FIX YOUR LIFE--HURRY---.
It's one thing to say that kids in a nar family maybe have on going stress and that is why they develop depression....and maybe it is another thing to say --kids in a nar family don't have a good understanding or experience of authentic motivation.
I guess I'm writing this because the women in my family do a lot of things with a big sense of grudge and burden as part of the motivation- or at least that is the message I got.
I don't think I had a healthy understanding of authentic motivation because I have had therapists ask me "what makes you happy"--and it was hard for me to answer that question because maybe I didn't understand the nuances of happy.
Maybe some people dont even learn to understand how to respect their own energy level and the fact that they change.
I mean a kid being subdued by parents in an on-going way has got to have poor sensitivity or thinking about their own energy levels--what is normal what is not-
What is my point...I don't know I think it is really just having a type of awareness about feeling good or being inspired.
Really, I think it has just been so long since I was truly motivated and inspired by life..that when I do have the experience it is different.
It makes me wonder how often can a person be inspired and how long can it last?
I wonder what the psychological basis or scientific basis of inspiration is? I never really looked it up.....I will...maybe
Like what does the brain look like when a person is inspired??
I mean inspired has got to be the opposite of depressed.
So inspired is the opposite of stression.
Because happy is probably not the opposite of depression. ---but we have these things in our vocabulary and popular ideas right?
-
This makes complete sense to me:
stress can over-power authentic motivation--even maybe to the point where a person can become so stressed out that they can't feel the authentic motivation and come to believe that they don't have authentic motivation in something due to lack of interest or connection with the activity when in reality it is stress that is clouding one's ability to experience the reward/joy from authentic motivation
And well put, Guest.
I can relate to this.
Thank you.
Hops
-
I'm writing a lot, I'm going to justify it, maybe there is some Aha in there.
Living a voiceless life is devoid of inspiration for me because I experience it as a dulling of the senses and sensitivities that make me aware to my own feelings and inhibits me from experiencing the aliveness around me.
Why are voiceless people sometimes called over sensitive when they don't have sensitivity to their own needs?
I can put an explanation onto why I decided no contact with my father for about the last 10 years. It is because he discouraged me from doing the things in life that inspired me the most.
(I literally felt a downward moving tingling sensation right on top of my heart area on my chest as I read that last line back to self)
Maybe it was some sadness but I felt it as a movement in my body not as a concept of sad.
Really WHAT are these tingles in our hearts? I mean they are no longer new-age stuff that cow-boy men refuse to talk about.
Are the tingles in my heart area the same thing that makes my energy level go down or go up depending on many factors in me and my life?
I can see not only how I didn't receive as a kid but I can also see how something was taken away from me.
I know it's sounds like victim mentality.....yet there is WAY more to it then that.
To have inspiration cut off or put out like a fire is to take away from. It is an act of violence to the spirit-soul-body.
The idea to seek out inspiration agressively seems more powerful to me right now then it ever has not just because of my personal situation.
It's like deciding to recapture life again.
I mean life is lots of things even the dark cave of "depression" can be rich.
You know what? I think depression is band-aid-land. It's like a BIG dark psychic band-aid on a wounded life that is trying to heal. Maybe.
While walking tonight, I looked up at an extraordinary clear sky, could hear live music emanating from some place about love.
It's nice that people favor love so much, as for me though, I much prefer inspiration. Good Night.
------------OR maybe not TAKEN AWAY but buried in a box, a time capsule that has things in there, dirty rusty old bits waiting for a very very long time.
-
Hi MB,
I credited Guest with the quote I meant to thank YOU for (brain addled).
As to inspiration, you're in that column for me.
Hops
-
Today, I had a computer issue and thought that I made it worse by trying to fix it. The computer is ok now. I freaked out a little bit. My computer and internet connection is a lifeline to me, it's the only convenience I have and I'm always trying to find information. Not only that but I need to type up a document for my volunteer gig.
The stupid place where I am staying wanted me to get "a note from my mother" to say why I couldn't stay with her to prove why I need to stay here. So I contacted my mother about it and felt horrible. It's been a few weeks since I have had contact with her and I feel better when I don't.
There is a sense I get of creepy meanness she has towards me. I hate her. I'm angry at her and I hate her.
Sometimes I wish someone would put their arms around me and say "I'm sorry you're not feeling well", "I'm sorry you had a crummy day".
But I think that most people at my age are not suppose to require that any longer, even if I had a friend that knew what was going on in my life, I still imagine them looking at me as if "what's wrong..aren't you old enough to handle all of this, why do you need a hug?"
I'm on my period and I just want to CRY!!!!! And I'm sort of laughing and sort of teary and I'm tired and I have a lot of crap to get done and to deal with. Who doesn’t?
A woman here in the shelter is now encouraging me to go to ACOA meetings.
She is a "recovering alcoholic" and I've had good conversations with her about the subject.
Still I don't really want to go for 4 reasons.
1) There are some people I don't want to become familiar with
2) I don't see it as a positive thing, I see it as a sad downer
3) More rewarding tasks could fill that time slot
4) Can't remember this reason right now I'm tired and emotional
5) I don't like the "higher power" stuff
I feel like the "higher power" stuff is dependent on me. I don't believe in god. I believe in some sort of human evolution so --the higher power concept just puts the burden back on me to evolve more (uh maybe power tripping) or something.
I'm not a scientologist-- I just believe in ideas that are more logic based rather then faith based.
Faith has not served me well in life. It seems naive to me.
Walking into the shelter tonight I felt claustrophobic and like I wanted to vomit. I think I just feel really out of control of my life and I don't like that feeling. I'm tired of being here. I try to make the best out things and I can for a short time but I don't really like the people here, they are not exactly friends. It's not a home. The energy is not good here because it's full of troubled people.
I think I feel disappointed right now. I'm glad tomorrow is a holiday because the places I need to go will be closed that means it will give me time to catch up with stuff I put off doing. Maybe.
-
Years ago I took a yoga class, another student in that class worked at a psychiatric institute and one day she told the class about two of the residents physically beating a third resident in a sneaky way so no bruises would show.
I have a hard time understand these types of things, I understand anger but I don't really get this sort of abuse.
There is something wrong with my mother's personality, she reminds me of the above scenario. There is something very screwed up about my mother and I'm not even sure that Narcissism or Co-dependency as related to alcoholism even describes my mother's meanness.
My mother enjoy's it when I'm struggling or having a difficult time in my life. It's not simply that I wish someone was there to give me a hug because I had a down day---It's that I DON'T want somebody in my life who is getting pleasure out of knowing that I'm having a bad day. I don't want someone in my life who thinks that I deserve to suffer.
Maybe she is not mentally ill, maybe she doesn’t have Narcissism, maybe she is just a very mean person.
Sometimes I imagine that all people are mean the way my mother is or have the same potential to be just like her as if it's just a component of human nature.
Knowing that I share genetic material with her sometimes disgusts me just a little bit. I don't want to be related to her.
I know it's immature but I want to write it anyways because I'm thinking it.
I'm hating the stupid shelter people for wanting documents from my family that explain why I can't stay with them.
I'm hating that b*tch right now I really am for requesting something this stupid. AND being stupid/ignorant enough to request it.
The shelter director might see lots of people come in and out and be familiar with all sorts of problems BUT SHE does NOT get it like I do.
I get angry when I see that people don't understand, people who are in some position of authority or power that think they know--and DON'T know.
My mother is a hideous b*tch of a person. It's as if she has one of those things inside of her from the "Alien" movie.
I'm convinced the makers of the Alien movie know my mother personally.
I know, "I'm in a bad mood right now". Why can't it just be a mood?
Why does being unhappy or angry have to be judged as "BAD" mood...instead of a MOOD.
What if feeling unhappy or angry was good because it's the natural response to a screwed up situation. That makes sense to me.
-
This stuff gets on my nerves because it doesn't seem authentic to me. I can't pin point any specifics in there it's just general gushy new-age crap. I swear to god the person who sent this to me must be in some form of denial. I just don't get it.
I'm suppose to say this to myself over and over again and it's going to change my life?
"EVERY CELL IN MY BODY IS HAPPY"?
Do Cells even get Happy??
You ever try to have a real conversation with one of these people, they get pissed if I ask questions. How can we conjure a power for good? Call it up? Like hocus pocus poof and a sprinkle of glitter now everything is better. It's almost like snake oil. I mean I believe in the power of prayer and positive thought but not this!!!
Reading this actually sounds nice at first to me but it also pisses me off. You know how it is, when you are just having a bad day or struggling and someone says "just smile". I'm smiling right now at my computer screen and I look like my teeth are bared like fangs, that is how well those ideas work. I can't fake a smile, I just can't!! They are real or they are not real. I'm no good at being inauthentic.
It's really not this communication that got me pissed off, it was the second communication that pissed me off.
Let's see non-violent communication...I felt angry when I read the second communication because it did not meet my need for authenticity and understanding.
"Dear One,
right now as you read and absorb this pray that I speak in the first person, remember there is only One, really only, One of us:
There is a Power for Good in the universe and I call It up NOW! I take a deep breath and deepen my connection with this Power for Good. I breathe in and relax into this loving space, knowing I am being looked after! Nothing can get in the way of this deep communion that is occurring with-in me NOW! Each conscious breath I take reminds me how loved I AM. I know I am loved, I repeat this affirmation over and over again. I know I am loved, I know I am loved. I know because the essence of me is LOVE!
In this powerful now moment I am experiencing and feeling my perfect employment, my perfect health and it feels great! I am delighted with my new job and my radiant health I am so happy, all those around me feel my new status, one of satisfation and delight!!! I focus on these things! and let go of fear......[False Evidence Appearing Real.] I write down what I want with color and gusto and await the Good that is ready to show up!! I repeat, I am so grateful for my Good!
I am so grateful that I realize I am supported and loved by this fantastic Energy, It is all around ME I feel it, I allow the soothing glow to enter my body, mind and Spirit................ I place my arms around myself and just experience Gods love, guidance and support.
I now accept my perfect employment with gusto, I arrive with a happy smile on my face, from this moment forward. I am patience, peace filled and lighthearted....... Life is Good, I am Good! I am blessed. and so it is
"EVERY CELL IN MY BODY IS HAPPY!!"
Oh well whatever, it's not important. I have tried everything. I have, I even did try these stupid affirmations 13 years ago.
I've tried everyTHING
I have been to therapists.
I have been to group therapy.
I tried prozac, paxil, zoloft, wellbutrin. --How could people that "cared" about me put me on that junk?
I have done exercise addiction.
I have changed myself physically.
I have read self help books.
I have talked to people about it.
I have gone to various meditation classes of different styles.
I have done emotional catharting.
I have done journaling.
I have done distractions.
I have done workaholism.
I have done vacationing.
Something is still very very wrong in my life. Maybe it's not me.
I'm really tired of trying. I'm tired of trying to fix my life and fix me and make things better. REALLY REALLY tired. The only reason why I don't give up is out of fear, it's not out of authentic motivation. I'm exhausted really really really exhausted like a volcano crater empty of all the lava and about to cave in.
I can see why I was so introverted in highschool, I retreated into a smaller and smaller center circle that was more ME and less of the WORLD.
Maybe tomorrow will be better.
-
You know what, I think I just write the same old crap all the time. Just some kind of self agonizing. I'm exhausted of my "stuff".
I'm really done with self help this is why I don't want to do the ACOA meetings. More process more agonizing as if I have not done that enough already!!!!!!
I have known exactly what I wanted my whole life. Even though one of the energy healers I went to years ago told me I didn't know what I wanted. I KNOW WHAT I WANT. Every day. I mean how passive can I be in my own ability to know for myself what I want.
When people are telling me what I think.... can I just say EEEEEEEEEEEEEE WRONG! BuZZZZZZZZZZZZ! WRONG
That is WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG, NO can't hear you, not listening. WRONG.
Or "What makes you right"...."what makes you think that you know more about me then I know about myself"
I don't know why I'm writing this, I think some of my motivation to get into the self help when I was younger was that people were confused about me and by me and thought that I was off. People always act like their not sure what is going on with me or my life.
I'm tired of dumbfounded people explaining my life to ME.
wow, I sound really b@tchy. WOW.
I just think that when I was going to therapy sometimes the therapists served to put more FOG into my life. First I had to beg them to give me prozac, after that first prescription was filled all doctors ever did was look at the precedence of a prescription to justify more.
No therapist ever told me I was an Adult Child of Alcoholics, no therapist even wanted to discuss alcoholism in my family, no therapist explained to me that my mother was Narcissistic. Therapists just wanted to talk about me being a "DEPRESSIVE". Therapists labeled me.
That stupid label didn't EXPLAIN anything, it only confused me. It's regretful.
I'm tired of people treating me like "whats wrong with you". NO what's wrong with you?---wait a minute I DON'T CARE!
I'm too tired and too emotional to make any freaken sense.
Tired of parents, school teachers, shelter directors, social workers, therapists, tired of politely sitting there having the obligatory interactions with these people THE WAY THEY WANT the conversation to go. I'm tired of being talked to. I'm tired of being managed. I'm tired of being somebody's social experiment. I'm tired of people MESSING WITH ME!!! I'm tired of people thinking that my time is so valueless that they have the right to waste it. I'm not doing it anymore. I'm having my conversations. I'm going to see my life just however I see it-- that is what it is.
GOOD NIGHT.
I'm tired of being nice. I'm ok with polite, but I'm really tired of nice. I hate nice. Really really hate nice. Like, I will go get the dog leash and put it around my own neck myself to make it easier for you to drag me around the block.
I'm just totally pissed off at having to get a "note from my mother" and all sorts of stupid stuff.
-
I'm tired of being around sick, anorexic, alcoholic, recovering meth-addicts, raped and molested women, poor people.
It's like the biggist social rejects are the ones that were f@cked up the most in life.
How does my mother call these people "low lifes"......I'm tired of being a "low life", I'm tired of being around "low-lifes", I'm tired of people who hate and judge "low lifes".
You know why they are called low-lifes, it means low-life forms, what is the significance of that---well if a person is a "low-life" it means that you can treat them like they are nothing, garbage, foul, worthless, unwanted, undeserving creatures.
Women here internalize all of that--- I have heard them say they feel like "unwanted garbage" or "white trash" "unworthy".
I think it is all a sick social system.
-
Muffin:
I think anyone would tire of being the "identified patient" when their family members are the ones with personality disorders.
It's so dreadfully unfair.
Also, your mother may not be an N.
She may be a sociopath with heavy N features, or a borderline personality disordered person, or any number of co-morbid possibilities.
Sometimes, you just have to accept that you'll never know, for sure, and stop trying to figure it out.
About that letter to the shelter lady......
I think it would be interesting if you wrote that letter, for your own benefit (don't actually send your version, of course):
Dear Dim Shelter Lady:
Muffin may not live in my home, because I'm a mean personality disordered person, who likes to view herself as a caring tough-love kind of mother, who would take Muffin in if it was in her best interest. It's not, but for reasons different than any you could conjure on your own, but back to me. Muffin has always been a weak, confused child, who has no idea what she wants, when she should have just accepted the mantle I thrust apon her. Too strong willed. Unable to completely suspend her belief in reality...... just a very difficult child, as you can imagine. Your shelters full of just such "types." I know you understand. Tisk tisk, yes?
Muffin doesn't understand my need to marginalize her humanity. She still struggles under the strain of my efforts. If Muffin could just lie there, and take it, whimpering occassionally to show she's paying attention but otherwise compliant, I'd let her come home. Sure I would, and you believe me, right? Of course you do, bc you want to. It makes more sense than the truth...... I hate my child and causing her to suffer brings me...... relief. So, if you look at this the right way, Muffin could come home, but chooses not to. I would think that this constitutes a willful display on Muffin's part that perhaps should lose her her space at the shelter. Don't you?
Not that I'd welcome her here, even if she did comply, if you haven't figured that out yet. I only wrote that because you're easily manipulated. Well, let me fill you in, sweetcheeks..... this is how I treat Muffin, and I'll always treat her this way. It's not what I do, it's what I am, and I'll never change, bc I can't. If I could, I would.
Please understand that I love my daughter. I wish her the best in this life.... and if you should find it necessary to put her out on the street, I wish that too.
Sincerely,
Muffin's PDMother
I don't know enough about your relationship with your mother to do that letter justice, Muffin. Maybe it would help you to write it yourself, maybe not.
Your latest posts have the sound of someone who's coming to grips with a painful truth, your mother will never love you the way you deserved to be loved.
Your anger is justified, and will perhaps help move you to a place where you can give yourself permission to trust and mother yourself.
Give you permission to give up hope that your mother will ever change.
Lighter
-
Eating little "health food" versions of chocolate peanut butter cups, tried hard to find a quiet corner in a cafe to sit with computer but no luck, Sunday is a busy day around this town and the cafes are packed at every inch, I woke up in a better mood, went on my quest for volunteer gig outfits and found another $2.00 shirt it has a little orange in it just like I have pictured in my mind. Sitting on a hard, black leather sofa, I'm uncomfortable in my clothes right now, jeans too tight or muscles too tight, like a squirming kid I want to take my jeans off and kick the table in front of me and scream, ok that is way over exagerated, but if I was a kid that is exactly what I would do. I would break something, rip my clothes off and cry and scream until my face was red and wet with tears, I would probably pull my hair and do a lot of kicking and hitting.
I don't have any hope that my mother will change. When a person is financially desperate like I am at the moment, I will take any help I can get like when my mother gives me a box of tampons, I take it.
I normally don't say this but sometimes I need help, I don't believe that I can live my life all on my own never needing anybody.
My whole life I have tried to become someone who never needs anything or anybody.
I don't have anything to say today. Only that my stress level, for various reasons is way beyond normal.
Guess I can just write down all the things that are a worry to me and all the things I have to do, it would help to write it down probably.
When I can't control certain situations (not mother) other- ones, when I can't control -- the result is I get angry at myself.
So I can be angry at all sorts of people around me and at society at a whole and be angry at myself also. It's a lot to carry around.
Some things are worth getting angry about though- it just indicates that it's important. Oh, and that I'm not getting what I want.
Right now, I know that it's not in my best interest to contract and disconnect and introvert and worry, I know that I need to expand and seek outwards for new experiences and possibility. I need to have a plan for the next three weeks, I know it sounds stupid but I plan out my weeks like a person does for work the day-planning thing, it helps me to stay on task and helps me a little bit with the worry.
Organizing and planning maybe is part of my control-stuff but it does help me to be a little more calm if I know that I'm getting things done.
-
@Lighter,
Thanks for the mock-dim-shelter-lady letter.
-
William Wordsworth
Lines Written in Early Spring
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
-
I'm going to go try my meditation class again just for the sake of not hanging out at the shelter.
~ Now I'm back from the class, it was very good, there was a talk afterwards that was fun to listen to about karmic doom and destruction and duality and it was much better then listening to shelter people having burping contests.
Faith as described by a flyer on the Buddhist center wall is two things: genuineness and gentleness or something like that. That is part of why I like Buddhism because it doesn't make any sense at all. The description of faith says nothing about belief that good will happen in the future.
During the meditation part I got bored, after a while I looked at the artwork on the walls, noticing the lotus blossoms that the dudes are sitting on.
So I figured it might help me to meditate if I imagined myself on a lotus blossom (I know thinking mind) any-who I let myself think when I meditate, I figure why fight the thinking mind? So I'm sitting on a light pink, many pettled lotus blossom. There were a few moments when the lotus blossom could have been a carnivorous plant but then it finally transformed into a sturdy tame lotus. Then I looked ahead of me and I was looking at a mirror image of me sitting on the lotus. Right about this time the meditation was over and the leader started to talk and ding the bell. Ding-ding. So I lost my little visualization but it was fun while it lasted.
So then after that was the talk part where some intense-wild looking guy started talking about some concept and it all sounded like turmoil and grief and problems --like a different version of an ACOA meeting might be, so I wondered if doing this is just as good as going to an ACOA meeting. I sort of hope so.
Started thinking tonight how depression is a label of sorts and so is Narcissism to be fair. I thought well what would these people be if they all shared certain habits and behaviors but were not labeled--they would still be a type of person or a STYLE of person maybe.
Guess what, today I had tea with everybody else at the meditation center, I'm glad that I had my tiny little step at attempting to act like I am acceptable. There is one person there, one of the leaders that is going out of his way to make me feel welcome as a new person-so that makes it easier for me to be there standing with my tea cup and feeling awkward about what to say and who to say it to because that is the etiquette to talk to people.
Buddhism has a lot of room for turmoil and suffering and those things get addressed a lot. So for a while I will continue with the classes as I can. I feel guilty for attending and not paying but if they are going to have them and there is extra space then I might as well be there.
Truth be told its a pretty small group.
I imagine that they think in principle they should allow people to attend without paying but they probably resent people who actually do it. I think they put the verbage out there about the policy of being open even for people who are unable to pay but maybe they still dont like it. But that is sort of their problem for now because Buddhism has some rules and standards and after all it is sort of the Dali Lama who started all this.
-
What a gift to the group, you are, MB.
There are different forms of payment, and one is "showing up" on the level that you are. That kind of practice seems to be working cooperatively with some structure well inside you. (I understand what you say about needing certain dogma-things to be absent, so you can be present in a spiritual activity.)
If you just keep showing up to it, find your own visualization and trust that you belong (words are just sounds humans make up; none of them can exclude you from the permission to exist you give yourself)...maybe this is what/where/how.
Thank you for the Wordsworth, too.
Hops
-
Thanks Hops!
"80 percent of success is just showing up" — Woody Allen
-
This morning I'm thinking that Nar-ways go against a natural nature and order of things.
In religions of all sorts there is a right way to live and a wrong way to live. The right way to live in theory prevents problems/bad karma while the bad way creates more problems/downfall/karma/hell etc.
I'm not sure how much I believe in religion but I think it's good to realize that the difficulty probably doesnt come from our own weakness but from the results of parents "wrong-living". Things such as abuse, lies, alcoholism, nar-habits are bound to cause problems.
Samsara is translated into something like: "The Wheel of Suffering".----See---See why I dig Buddhism so much? They get it!
So do I, I get the wheel of suffering thing, I'm an expert at it!
Ok, I'm cutting myself off of this message board until 5:30 PM today. Bye Board.
-
Back to board a little bit early.
I did my volunteer gig, just sent some info off to the director, I'm concerned that I'm not "good enough" because I really have not been cultivating my skills in an academic environment. So I'm sort of stressed out.
I'm overwhelmed. I have my weekly yoga class tonight THANK GOODness.
On the inside I feel like I'm not good enough. I need to be careful not to depreciate my SELF. I just wonder if one of the student interns would be better?
There are so many projects going on, I can't believe all the things this woman has got happening in what appears to be a very disorganized manor, this woman is like a power house of ambition. I'm very methodical and into clarifying details...but more about that later. I asked her a question about liability insurance who would carry this for the project and it was interesting.
My little heart is worried about every thing (big span of the arms motion here gesturing towards the horizon).
The director told me today she is going to have me write a grant. I have no idea what is going on and I think a look of fear came over my face when she said that to me.
I swear to god I did not misrepresent myself, I said I wanted to volunteer they didn't ask to see my resume or anything.
She asked my if I have ever written a grant and I said "NO" with fear on my face and she said "That's ok!, you can do it, it's just like journalism"
She saw me reading a book so I guess that = I'm a journalist.
I don't know. Deep breathing here, I wait to see how she responds to the last thing I sent her step by step, each time I give her something I'm very careful to see if she approves or not.
Crossing my fingers. I WANT TO WORK on the grant.
I'm so overwhelmed. So instead of organizing and planning, I'm going to start running in front of all these things whizzing about in my mind.
Got to go. FINGERS CROSSED and tearing up because I'm overwhelmed and hopeful and excited but not sure if I'm in the right place at the right time? I hope I'm the right person for this!!!!!
Write more later. I'm so glad this board is here. It's like the best friend that I don't have.
-
Whoo hoo, write Muffin, write.
Feeling your not good enough is probably one of the things that will drive you to do excellent work writing that grant!
Lighter
-
Okay, MB...no more whizzing.
How about a quiet hug for yourself?
But a calm one.
Like a peaceful, confident friendly hand. Reaching over and patting you. (NOT poking, prodding or pushing!) Just a friendly, peaceful "pat."
Yup. MB, you are an intelligent woman who writes very well.
Grants are not mysteries. They're just a format.
She CAN teach you or show you. And you can do it.
(SO tickled for you. Yabba dabba doo!)
Hops
-
To top it off, a paramedic flirted with me today while he was on his lunch break. Not that I take this stuff seriously but it's a nice entertainment every once in a while. That someone would even flirt at all...sort of makes me feel human. I'm not really much of a flirt, mostly I just smile politely and stare at them a little bit shocked. :)
Thank goodness I got dressed up for my volunteer gig because I would never get dressed up thinking that a paramedic would flirt with me.
Yes, I just emailed the director a few mins. ago and told her I would be glad to work on the grant. I know I gave her a worried look at first so I figured I better confirm it. The whole thing is a bit confusing, it's that creative-people-chaos thing, well it's confusing because today she said verbally to me again that the other group doesn’t have the time to manage this project. So I think she is asking me in an oblique way if I want to do that? I would only be doing it as a volunteer pro-bono as far as I know. The other group had money for an intern.
Still just keeping an open mind and my fingers crossed.
I actually have always wondered about grant writing. This director seems willing to give me opportunities and some hands-off mentoring.
I'm just waiting to see what happens, I'm worried that she is going to figure out that I'm really dumb!
I mean I know that I have some insights some of the time.
I guess I don't want to disappoint, you know what I mean?
Still, going back to fingers crossed, being gentle to SELF...
--Oh I can hear that my poor neighbor woman in the shelter got groped while she was waiting in a line with homeless guys. –That kind of stuff absolutely sucks. That is exactly why I avoid some of the resources that are out there because showing up for them can be a risk for single women.
When it comes to this level of social services it's a very good idea to segregate by sex. I just knew she was going to have a problem when she told me she was going to go check it out.
Yoga soon.
-
Thanks, Lighter and Hops,
I keep on talking myself into it!!! :P
-
This board is like a crutch for me at the moment.
While walking back "home" from the yoga class tonight with another woman from this place, she told me that I was able to describe things well, same things that she had "in her head" but was unable to get out. I can't help but to think this board helps me with that. There are definitely times where my ability to articulate really declines. So I'm glad for being able to come here and just write.
I also imagine that the woman listening to me talk her ear off is benefited by it also in some little way. We ended up having an honest laugh-out loud moment on the walk home and it was really great. She is the one who has a very slight build and is struggling with some sort of physical issue. It's really good that I can laugh and share it with someone else who probably needs to laugh.
I have been more chit-chatty recently.
--So I volunteered to do the grant and she responded to me, she wants me to do it so Yay! I guess.
I really want to get excited about it, but I feel worry.
What I'm noticing is that some people would naturally pat themselves on the back and feel proud of themselves and it would show on their face that they are proud. I don't do that really, it's a big stretch to really FEEL that. Just an observation. I'm almost wondering if I can bring my inner child in on that. Oh, and by the way I think my inner child may even approve of the volunteer project I'm working on! Another bonus.
The volunteer project is a good thing for me to do on many different levels, it’s very creative in scope and I love that so it's truly in alignment with my values and passions. It benefits the community in numerous ways. It feels like it could open doors for people, not just me, albeit little mouse doors but still....opening doors is a really good thing. At first I didn't realize how many projects were going on with this organization, this woman is amazing to me--I guess she probably needs a person to pour over all this paperwork and figure it out because she is more like one of those outgoing social people and that's her gift. She has a lot of energy, if I ever get through all of this, one day maybe I will send her a flower arrangement and tell her how important it was for me to be involved in the work she is doing.
If I do have an interview and someone asks me what I am doing I can say I'm meeting with directors and writing grants, it sounds much better then "nothing"...I just hope the shelter director sees it as positively as I do.
Someone hugged me tonight, the yoga teacher did. She is really a sweetheart, I plan to find some treasure-object I have stored away somewhere so I can give her a little gift-probably one of my mini-paintings. Sitting on the yoga mat I noticied that it had once belonged to someone with the initials (MB) because that was marked on the corner in ink--MB- just like Muffin Buster.
-
I'm intensely engulfed in my life, I think it's justified for me to have all of this self-centered energy right now and yet I still question it a little bit. This doesnt represent balance.
I had this friend in high-school that I dearly miss, we would sit on the beach near railroad tracks and we could share anything with each other.
That kind of exchange has not been a part of my life for a long while especially not with the kinds of conversations I have had, mostly the conversations are a monitoring process and proving that I am staying on track and doing what I'm suppose to be doing--that's very authoritarian. Friends are not authoritarian at all instead friends meet each other on common ground-that almost seems like a surreal space. I still can't explain the friendship I had with this person from highschool it was just so different like it was from another planet.
I'm tired, G'Night!
-
MB:
Perhaps you ca rekindle that connection with your old highschool friend?
It sounds like it was a healthy reciprocal relationship that built you up.
Hope you slept well.
Lighter
-
WOW MB....
Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of fun happy things you have to talk about! I'm so happy for you!
It sounds like your methodical detail oriented self is exactly what will compliment the director's 40 directions at once, social butterfly director needs. Someone to help keep her on track, you know? Keep her focussed on the goals, while you're attending to the details necessary to meet those goals. Perfect.
Grant writing... well... it's probably not as hard as it sounds. Usually, you'll have instructions about the form the grant will need to take - and a list of things that need to be submitted. And the creative spark - well, that's probably going to be explained to you by the director... so all you'll have to do is "translate" it into the form that the instructions lay out. Maybe you can look at some other successful grant applications, too - for some ideas.
In reference to your worry... feeling not good enough too... at one point, I realized the actual feeling I was feeling was actually excitement and anticipation - looking forward to something... but that I'd learned (god knows where/how) to interpret this feeling in my mind, negatively instead... as anxiety and worry and self-doubt. And when I allowed my mind to look at it as excitement... yes, yes it really was... and though I wanted to do well... I was able to relax into that feeling of wanting to do well... and figure out what that required; how it would be measured and that enabled me to do well... instead of "experiencing" that feeling as anxiety, worry, self-doubt.
I don't know if this is just something weird about me... but I thought I'd share it, in case you want to try this and see if it works for you too. Because when I realized my feeling was excitement instead of dread/worry... I was able to pat myself on the back and just enjoy a private smile to myself about those things... ok, maybe I did a little "happy dance" when no one was looking, too!
;)
-
So tired right now, cooked a big batch of teriyaki chicken for the shelter, it took all night to defrost, marinade and bake. I have never cooked big bunches of food before oh well, must appease the forces that be. Attempted to make foodbank fare into gourmet meal, didn't quite work out. Live and learn. I think I made one new friend at least for the attempt. I can't believe this week has gone by so fast.
As I was standing in the foodbank line today, snow started blowing around, it's formed a white blanket now and I'm in bed wondering what the morning will look like. I think I may have come a little closer to some kind of forgiveness for my own sake.
While I was standing there I thought it was like a scene from a movie.
I didn't go to the ACOA meeting tonight. Maybe next week.
-
I hope you slept well, Muffin.
Lighter
-
I think I may have come a little closer to some kind of forgiveness for my own sake.
I love the sound of this.
The sound of the green blade pushing up through the sidewalk.
That's the power, MB...
So happy to hear that thought you're having, it will multiply and it DOES heal.
xo
Hops
-
Thanks, Lighter and Hops.
I do sleep ok considering the circumstances it could be a lot worse. I have been feeling tired though.
Probably lack of exercise, too much caffeine, and stress.
A few months ago I filled out a gym scholarship form for a reduced fee to exercise, I was awarded it but was never able to make use of it. I found out that I can stiil use it about 6 more times before it runs out so that means I will be at the gym for the next three days. That should help with my energy level.
-
I recently started working out regularly again.
I feel so much better, have improved mood and more energy.
Hard to get started, but worth it, IME.
Lighter
-
I agree Lighter, I think working out is worth the effort.
I'm good with routines and keeping them, it's when my life changes and then I have to find a new way to exercise or a new gym etc.
If I can stay where I am I will try to get more involved with walking groups or something.
I see women out together in the early morning and that is something I would like to do, I just don't want to do it by myself because there are not very many people out and about yet and still a little dark in the AM.
-
Now I need to brain storm.
-
Decided to go to the Buddhist classes on their "generosity policy", frankly I would feel generous if I actually paid them because it's all so philosophical. Got started on the program logic model for my gig. Thought this night would be good for an early retirement to bed for once. Whatever was discussed in the Buddhist class went in one of my ears and out the other, the focus was the body.
A circle was formed out of navy blue cushions on the red painted floor, then the small group talked and listened. Maybe being involved in something as simple as this is a choice to have a voice in a little way.
Class talked about clear perceiving I almost blurted something out about Nar-people not "clear perceiving" I didn't blurt it out.
The thing is I think my mother does have a perception about her own behavior. I don't believe nar-people are unaware of how they treat people BECAUSE my mother did go to a counselor one time and for about 2.5 weeks she was NICE to me! AND it was weird...but it proves that she knows how to be nice, she knows the meaning of it.
Enough about my mother, back to me, no back to you....no back to sleep. Good night.
-
Jumping rope, with a $10.00 speed rope, is good.... plastic, goes very fast.
You can do it anywhere, in any weather, and it's great for building endurance.
You don't leave the ground but an inch or so, so you're not pounding the heck out of your joints.
You can pretend to jump rope at first, then add one when you can. Ringside has them. Standing on rope, measure to your hips on either side, and that's your rope length.
You can stand near a clock, jump for 2 minutes, take 30 seconds off, jump 2 minutes for as long as you can swing it.
40 minutes would be good.
Start with a minute, or less, if you have to build up endurance.
High energy music helps.
Lighter
-
Hiya MB--
I'm not sure part-blue is actually equivalent to part-green...
it proves that she knows how to be nice, she knows the meaning of it.
I think if you mean she "knows the definition of what is 'nice behavior'", sounds like she does. But I think it would take more empathy (where she's damaged and limited) to really sense the meaning of it.
IOW, so much "niceness" seems empty and meaningless...unless one is actually vibrating with some empathy for the other, in which case one often recognizes that small kindnesses and courtesies and gentle language...mean something less than they appear on the surface. (Where they just look like "rules.")
dunno if that made sense,
Hops
-
I had my meeting with the shelter director, she was excited that I'm working on the grant but I don't know...I still don't have a job. The rule is school or job.
Any who....
So I went to the gym tonight, straight to the treadmill because that is an easy comfort zone thing to do. Walked and walked and walked some more, I'm a slow warmer upper then after that I got out of my comfort zone and got onto one of the gigantic stair step machines. Then I got back on the treadmill and ran and ran and ran. I decided that my fanny has the consistency of two pizza dough balls. Ha
Under the little bit of extra flab I still have some muscle even if I am many years out of shape I exceeded my expectations.
Some college girl was looking over at me in contempt because I was running and she is maybe just too dang lazy.
I have an imaginary friend on the tread mill, it's a horse that runs along besides me sort of like Mister Ed but this horse hasn't said anything to me yet. He is my pace setter.
After I got off the treadmill I discovered there is a rock climbing wall, really wish I could get on it but I can't get too distracted with too many activities no matter how "normal" I want my life to feel, I'm afraid the rug is going to be pulled out from under me. I shouldn't have too much fun or try to be normal...that is the script or the truth.
Earlier today I went to get a referral for a job that is posted on a state-job bank site. The pre-screening guy I talked to argued with me telling me that I wasn't qualified to apply for the job so he didn't want to give me the referral. I argued back because I HAD READ the job posting, I said, that it does not require managerial experience, he was trying to tell me that it did, then he went and he called the employer to find out what they really wanted, he walked back to me and apologized because he was wrong, then he continued to argue with me some more about something else. So I kind of figure he just didn't like the way I looked or something. I got the damn referral though.
I'm an expert at looking for jobs and I know how to read a job posting even better then Mr. Expert who is lucky enough to be employed at the office for job seekers (paid by tax payers) - not only that but I can politely argue circles around him.
Good Night.
-
Hiya MB--
I'm not sure part-blue is actually equivalent to part-green...
it proves that she knows how to be nice, she knows the meaning of it.
I think if you mean she "knows the definition of what is 'nice behavior'", sounds like she does. But I think it would take more empathy (where she's damaged and limited) to really sense the meaning of it.
IOW, so much "niceness" seems empty and meaningless...unless one is actually vibrating with some empathy for the other, in which case one often recognizes that small kindnesses and courtesies and gentle language...mean something less than they appear on the surface. (Where they just look like "rules.")
dunno if that made sense,
Hops
Hops, I agree with what you wrote it does make sense to me. What I have in my mind is that she treats her alcoholic husband well. At work she also acts normal. Her problem seems to be the kids, me and my brother both receive the weirdness.
I think she probably does have empathy but not for me. Selective empathy. Is that Narcissism?
I thought well if she was abused as a kid then that would explain it--but I'm just not sure something doesn't mesh for me--I prefer to think that maybe she is just possessed by an evil spirit.
If it was Nar-personality disorder wouldn't she expose everyone to her disorder instead of saving it all up for the daughter? I don't know.
One day my mother used the term "SILENT DESPERATION" to describe something I was experiencing and then I KNEW that SHE was aware of her own abuse. Otherwise she wouldn't be aware maybe? I don't really know it's not my area of expertise.
It's more like my mother treats me like crap because she thinks she can get away with it. It's always private between her and me or maybe her husband or aunt or brother is triangulated into it. One time I even told her she was triangulating and I realized that she was familiar with that term and she said defiantly "I don't care".
I don't think my mother is a psychopath she just hates me. It is weird to be hated by one's own mother for no good reason.
-
Hi Muffin! I want you to know how much I appreciate the things you've written and your viewpoint. I've had a really tough week but I've been reading... and well, it's been like touching solid rock for me to read your updates. It's been reassuring to me to see how you're thinking and feeling about things... like I'm not crazy for thinking about things the way I do, after all! Yeah, I was seriously starting to lose it... :: weak half-hearted laugh ::
I got a good giggle out of your story about the bureaucratic peon. Poor guy! Sounds like he was so sure of himself and the facts and that was the only bit of real "power" he has in that position. Then he had to apologize...
... and admit he was wrong. Point to Muffin! :D
And that's the difference between your mom and other people, you know. It matters not whether she's NPD, BPD, or just plain mean and doesn't like you - you might never know for sure (I don't). All most of us would do anything for... including sabotaging ourselves or becoming the targets of abuse... is to have someone sincerely say they are sorry; they were wrong; and to really mean it and change their behavior to prove they mean it (because there just isn't any more trust in words after certain boundaries are crossed).
It's a sad fact of life though that some people can't frame those words "I'm sorry" or "I was wrong" with their lips, much less really and truly mean it. I don't know why... it's almost as if they fear they will cease to exist - POOF! - if they admit they were/are wrong or screwed up... as if the burden of shame for being wrong is so great (even for simple transgressions) that their emotional defense mechanisms overcompensate and go into warp drive...
... I don't know - I'm just trying to find a way to explain the incomprehensible to myself.
-
If it was Nar-personality disorder wouldn't she expose everyone to her disorder instead of saving it all up for the daughter? I don't know.
That's a very good question, MB. It breaks my heart to know you feel hated by her. I don't know that I'd dignify her destructiveness with such a massive word as hate...but I sure understand that's what it looks like and sounds like and feels like. She's just broken. She can't love you well.
My Nmother had a student she had taught 60 years ago coming by to visit her every Christmas. He adored her. I could see him just awash with sentiment, sitting in the living room admiring her. She was like a Norman Rockwell image of an elementary school teacher...just perfectly put together, a sweet-looking round face, an eternally engaging, twinky facial expression, and a lively, musical way of talking. Skillful with social conventions and always, always telling (the same...groan) anecdotes. Kind of like a female Ronald Regan. She had a sort of cloud of "I am adorable, and delightful and I am perky" kind of nature that her public persona projected perfectly. She had reams of admirers. She was twinkly. She was amazingly responsive to others in conversation. She would do girlish gasps, intakes of breath, spasms of delightedness in conversation.
Numbly, exhaustedly, I watched...for decades. She was a beautiful parrot.
So, no...I think none of them knew that she was a narcissist. There may have been an occasional confusion I saw on her smarter friends' faces. But the twinkles, and the tea parties, and the social liveliness...brought them back for more.
By the end, though, in the last hardest years, I realized she really had no close friends. One, perhaps, but Mom looked down at her, and the woman's cringing loyalty wasn't something Mom seemed moved by. Ultimately, she was alone...with me.
I do believe I, and my daughter to a degree, were the only ones who knew her well enough to hit that sharp rocky shallow that was unexpectedly close to the surface of the stream. Most others, I think, just saw the sparkly musical water.
Hops
-
Hops,
I have been looking at it from the perspective as she is broken and somehow that takes responsibility away. I've noticed how no one in my family, aunt, uncles, grandparents never expected her to have real responsibility.
“She’s broken she can’t help it, she can’t help herself, he is an alcoholic he can’t help himself, or she is a bully she can’t help herself….
You know what I mean? I think I categorize a different type of forgiveness for me but don’t need to offer excuses or justifications for her??
I don’t know, just thinking out loud here.
I rather have something I call “hateful-forgiveness” It's where I forgive and let go enough for me to be healthy but stay alert and realistic enough to always remember the need for protecting myself. Or something like that I will have to come back to it another time.
I guess I bring it up because there is some interplay between forgiveness, personal strength, boundaries, self-deception, denial etc.
I wonder if thinking of her as broken is not the best way to look at it? Wondering if looking at it as hateful isn't somehow more powerful for me. Not so much about feeling bad about the situation, just thinking that "broken" is too kind absolving responsibility.
Anyways, it's not in the forefront of my mind now it's an after-thought on-going dialogue with self about mother.
I'm not feeling bad about it, I just think I slip into a state of forgetting how mean she really is because it's a dark undercurrent that she doesn't always allow to surface but it's always there.
-
I got a good giggle out of your story about the bureaucratic peon. Poor guy! Sounds like he was so sure of himself and the facts and that was the only bit of real "power" he has in that position. Then he had to apologize...
... and admit he was wrong. Point to Muffin! :D
Glad it made you laugh. It's not that I am trying to be right and make other people wrong, it's just that my life recently has helped me find a fierceness that I never had before. That elusive thing called standing up for oneself, I think I'm finally starting to do it. I guess these people really don't know what I've been through and it feels good to me to experience what it's like to be a tough cookie and advocate for myself.
I thought he was being odd because I have gotten referrals before through these job-bank-offices without so much fuss --But it was great that I could go back to the facts over and over and that in the end I got what I needed. I needed to have that experience!
You are right about the power thing, they get a little power-thing going on. That's fine, they can be however they want to be.
One time I worked a job where I sat as a receptionist in an entrance way to a fancy corporate headquarters office. The controllers office was right next to my desk, she talked on the phone all day, when she had her door open I could listen to her and I always admired her ability to "argue".
It wasn't like nar-arguments or drunk fights it was arguing with intelligence or something else.
The controller was a petite pretty woman, she worked with a lot of tall men in business suits and she held her own, she was respected. She would be discussing multi-million dollar accounts over the phone in her office and I would just listen to her day after day.
Funny that she came to my mind because I haven't thought about her for years but maybe unconsciously I thought of her as being a role model of sorts.
-
If it was Nar-personality disorder wouldn't she expose everyone to her disorder instead of saving it all up for the daughter? I don't know.
My Nmother had a student she had taught 60 years ago coming by to visit her every Christmas. He adored her. I could see him just awash with sentiment, sitting in the living room admiring her. She was like a Norman Rockwell image of an elementary school teacher...just perfectly put together, a sweet-looking round face, an eternally engaging, twinky facial expression, and a lively, musical way of talking. Skillful with social conventions and always, always telling (the same...groan) anecdotes. Kind of like a female Ronald Regan. She had a sort of cloud of "I am adorable, and delightful and I am perky" kind of nature that her public persona projected perfectly. She had reams of admirers. She was twinkly. She was amazingly responsive to others in conversation. She would do girlish gasps, intakes of breath, spasms of delightedness in conversation.
Numbly, exhaustedly, I watched...for decades. She was a beautiful parrot.
So, no...I think none of them knew that she was a narcissist. Hops
Hops, THANK YOU for sharing this, it's confirming towards my own experience. As one person looking out and feeling like I am the only one who sees it, it's something that was very hard as a child, little less difficult as an adult but still messes with one's confidence in the world and CONFIDENCE in one's own perceptions.
Makes me wonder if the nice part is a real aspect of the "nar"-personality or if the receiver of the niceness is a pawn in the nar-charade.
-
Ok, now I'm cutting myself off from the board until later this evening.
I'm reminding myself not to identify too much with the habits of the shelter people even though I need to get-along.
I'm not obligated to do anything or take responsibility for any person in the shelter.
-
I have about three pages worth of random thoughts about my grant application. Went to the library and filled out library card application and THEN got three books about grant writing. Located an intro to grant writing class happening this Monday.
I'm a bit intimidated, out of practice, still trying.
I get it, I just don't know if I can get it out.
I have attended a meeting at a community foundation that awards grant money, I understand the idea of quantifiable goals and measurements. It's just putting it all together.
My brain is working very hard. Poor little brain. It's been a very long time since I have had to do any type of homework.
I'm just going to keep brain storming as much as I can and then put something together in a draft.
It's going to come together. It's going to come together.
It's just technical writing in a specific format.
I'm going to do it, I'm doing it.
The foundation is looking for a project that will enhance community connections.
Ok, So "Keep it Simple Stupid"
I have all the resources I need at my fingertips.
I realize that other people have developed these types of programs over long-periods of time. I'm getting a crash course on a whole lot of stuff right now.
-
It's starting to come together little by little, sentence by sentence. I had to go old-school and break down the components in an outline format that is helping because now I just address one section at a time.
-
Oh YEAH -
I absolutely need outlines when I'm doing "formal" writing... it helps me know when I've said enough and keeps me from saying too much. And charts and diagrams... being able to present information visually (in addition to the narrative) to highlight points or simply complicated relationships - so many people respond more quickly to visual info like this.
An outline is like a first composition sketch....
I just read a very well written article in this week's Bloomberg magazine - it's by Mary Meeker, a techie from the "old days" who has moved on to finance. It's called "USA, Inc"... never mind the subject matter. I brought it up, because it's concise, to the point, is enjoyable to read, and simplifies a very, very complex topic so well that one can't miss the "meaning" and significance of the statistics she packs her article with. Page 49.
No matter what anyone says about content being the most important thing in writing (and I agree with them), I've found that the graphics background I have - and presenting info in an organized and attractive fashion - helps get the thing read - heard - and makes it stand out.
Good luck kiddo! It sounds like you're off to a good start...
-
Thank you, Phoenix.
A portion of this is about city beautification. I'm having a little struggle with the value of that because so often it is not thought of as a high priority amongst the people I have worked with who are very plain, status acheiver, analytical types.
Many people like "beautification" in the end even Hells Angels can like beautiful areas.
So maybe I just need to be careful about how to word this part. I don't like the word beautification it sounds like going to the spa.
Sounds like blow drying a poodle into a puff-ball shape.
Instead I need to move it towards something that indicates healthy, vibrant, inspiring etc.
Heeeehh....I have faith that it will work itself out if I keep writing long enough. Like a tortoise. Keep on keep on.......
God, I think I will have to do an all-nighter. It's just like an international flight to get somewhere.
My heart is happy and sad, burdened and inspired all at the same time. Every time I feel the sensation of fear in my chest, I need to breathe not be too constricted. Fear is contracting to me, a consolidating contraction. Each time I feel fear I take a mini moment and sit with it, my normal thing to do is just keep on moving faster and faster out-running myself almost. Away from the body moving into the future mind ahead of my feet. There is snow melting outside, I had to walk here in the snow this morning, but I have secured my little corner of the universe in this cafe. My little corner has a view out the window.
Most of what I am writing is about putting together it is not deep from my soul but it is uncanny that I ended up working on this.
I can explain more later, maybe in the end there will be one or two lines where my individual soul gets to speak, a peek-a-boo standing out in the formula that defies convention. Just a little line in there somewhere.
This is pretty much a vision and mission statement for a project.
I have written vision and mission statements before.
My eyes were trying to focus on an object sitting on a dresser, it's an onion but for a moment I thought it was a sea-urchin because I'm tired.
-
A while ago I made up a character called Miss Do-Do list because she was my control freak part.
Recently I have so much to do that I have let her take over my life. I wonder if she helps me get things done though-- I don't know.
Today: One down and a bazillion left to finish.
-
I agree with you about "beautification", MB...
...very treacly term. (But maybe it "has to" be used anyway, no matter.)
You are doing an excellent job, it is absolutely obvious.
Give yourself some mercy while you go.
Some kind pats.
Okay?
Hops
-
Went to my "big important meeting" today with the city planning representatives and business associations, was hoping for more focus and clarity of vision but instead I was shocked that the "plans" seem to be bounding in every direction and growing even though they don't have any money for this project yet. They talked about all their ideas and then the very last second of the meeting they wanted to email me about the grant application....maybe to include all of their wild ideas? I thought the whole meeting should be about how to secure funding.
I'm feeling overwhelm and a bit irritated. That is me because I'm uptight and I like to have a clear plan.
There is a chance that if this is not organized well or targeted it won't get funded at all.
In the end, I suppose I need to let it go, only do my best based on the circumstances at hand as life presents it's self.
There is one "as life presents it's SELF"
I feel like it's chaos and the city groups are really using the arts community for generating more money for business --that is fine that is a part of it but the grant is not going to be compelling if it's about just making more money because the foundation that gives the money likes to give to cultural, arts and social services projects not just greedy business owners. The business owner advocates want the grant to say more about their stuff. I don't know. At first I thought these people know what's going on but then after the meeting I changed my mind that they were all over the place with this weird planning thing. I guess that's what these weird community projects are all about.
I have heard people complain about these types of community projects before because there are too many people stirring the pot.
I just have to wait and see what they forward me.
I have learned a lot already even if this is not a successful project. I'm worried that I could be blamed for it not getting funded because of the application but they have had other projects that didn't get funded.
I feel sad because I invest a lot of myself into projects and jobs or whatever and I want to see something be successful and authentic meaning that it does serve the goals of the grantee.
Today they were adding on things out of the blue "lets add an art cafe" Maybe we will change the whole theme of the project. Blah blah blah....it changes week to week. Do these people even know what they want?
I'm all for brain-storming but this is solid vision time.
Maybe it's my control freak talking here. I'm accustomed to science environments.
These people still have not decided exactly what this project IS. I feel like we should leave the experimentation up to the artists but the organizing planning committee should be organized and should have a plan.
If I was at the foundation reviewing this project, I would like the concept, it is worthy and addresses a community issue --but I would not award the money based on poor planning/organization and lack of vision.
The city and business groups want to use the artists they just don't want the artists to run-a-muck and take over the city or something-----like teenage mutant ninja turtles?
-
You are one sharp tack, MB...
I think you're seeing it all perfectly accurately, and that you will get the very most out of this experience if you...
go with it.
Just like you said, go with it as it comes and see what shapes it takes, make your peace with your (valid) criticisms, recognize there's just no way you can control all the parts or all the players, release the outcome, do your best but also have some fun with it.
This is you, shining.
This laboratory is full of the unexpected and you can handle that.
(No WAY they would make you responsible if the funding doesn't happen...what matters is you're doing a champ job giving it .)
Winning it don't matter. Doing it matters, that is ALL.
All you need to be into. The doing.
And you are!
(The rest will take care of itself. This is just a great thing to be doing, regardless.)
GOOD JOB. GOOD, GOOD JOB!
:)
Hops
-
Thank you Hops,
It feels good to hear "good job".
-
Yoga class is tonight thankfully.
After "the big important meeting" I came "home" to where my new "friend" decided to have an open hearted divulging about her ex-husband who is a homosexual and incestuous.
I feel like I am surrounded by chaos and trouble.
After yoga, I'm coming back to fill up my day-planner with my minutia--it helps me feel calm even if the day planner is --"dust in the wind".
I need to set some limits and boundaries for myself maybe...do this much ( ) and then hand it off.
I hate it when life determines my priorities rather then my soul/spirit/body deciding what the priority is for my life.
I want to shape my life like a sculpture but even art has it's unexpected moments. If I was good enough I could control it, skillfully deciding. --That is one of those underlying thoughts.
-
Meh.
Truth is, it's our subconscious and it's ability to tap into collective consciousness - or the void I used to call it - that provides that spark of inspiration - sometimes whole images - for "art". It's a whiff of something in the air... a charge of electricity at some just below awareness frequency... we learn to "go with the flow" some... just to be able to catch the wave long enough, to try to "surf life"...
but enough pseudo-profound babble. Practically speaking, I cringe at the thought of designing a project by committee - especially a large one - precisely for the reasons you're worried. What has worked for me in the past, is to list everyone's idea/contribution... and thank them for their important contribution (ego-stroking, yes, but very important to recognize their work and ideas). Then, with a very small group of people (where's your director in all this?)... rank the ideas for chance of success for the grant, feasibility to implement, value to the overall vision of the mission... what stays? what goes? what has the most chance of standing out among other grant entries?
Toss the "tried & tired" ideas... but look for a commonality in some of the wackier ideas to those old successful ones... some element that gets to the point of the whole project. Then, it's important to know "who decides" what gets in the final grant - typically that's not the grant writer - but it does sound as if you've been given a fair amount of input into that process. That's good - but I don't think it would be fair to "stick you" with the decision of what goes into the grant, along with writing it, and also making you the messenger of the final design back to the stakeholders on the committee. You should only have one of those responsibilities - "officially", that is. There might be fuzzy lines in reality... but officially, it doesn't work for you to wear all 3 hats... and I can see where you might worry! I wouldn't be all that comfortable in that position - because I've been there before and it's not a happy place. That person can get blame from all sides... you know? EVEN if the grant application succeeds...
I'd say it's time to touch base with your director, even if she was at the meeting, to carve out better definitions of roles & responsibilities - and get her take on the collection of ideas you've got.
GOOD LUCK, Muffin! This sounds really exciting... and it is possible to "surf this" too... and I hope your experience with this is much better than mine was...
-
Some days I find it so hard to stay connected with life.
The days when I feel good are usually when I feel like I have learned something or done something new.
Days when I feel bad are one's where I waste time and get no-where.
I'm faced with the Maslow's hierarchy of needs issue daily.
I feel like I can't get off of the bottom two levels of that stupid pyramid no matter what I do.
Physiological and Safety always cause me worry. The Belonging and Self Esteem are a struggle.
The very top of the pyramid is where the "meaning" part is.
The problem is I don't feel motivated to survive without meaning or something to look forward to. I just feel fear and stress that is the motivation.
I think people need all of those things all the time. Need food, need safety, need belonging, need self-esteem, need purpose.
I'm tired of trying so hard to get those things when I think I see other's taking them for granted.
The concept of "effort" comes up in Buddhist teachings. Worry and stress feel like effort but it doesn't lead to an actual goal.
I'm burnt out.
-
Days when I feel bad are one's where I waste time and get no-where.
Maybe I can interpret this differently. See it differently.
Days when you waste time and get no-where... are days when you need to rest... not think about the big projects in front of you (and the plural is not a typo)... when you just need a time-out for self-care... some yoga... special healing foods... an extra meditation session - or just doing something you need to do, that you've let the new work schedule hog all the time for...
I have learned - the hard way - that throwing more & more time and effort at anything, till I'm obsessed and consumed (chewed up & spit out) is the surest way to guarantee that I'm not doing my best - and working myself into a self-fulfilling prophecy (based on anxiety). And I do think this approach is a result - a response to living in a dysfunctional FOO situation, with upside-down relationships and responsibilities... I've also found that there are parts of me that cling to this approach as if my life depended on it and refuses to change - and even sabotages attempts to change. I feel horrible too when I can't seem to drag my butt into what lives on my to-do list...
It is hard work to teach myself that it's OK - nothing bad will happen - if I deliberately give myself a day off, or a half-day to just rest or do something fun... my fingers are still clamped down in a death-grip on the infinitely steep and difficult rock wall I'm trying to climb...
... and I forget from time to time, that it's OK (in fact it's necessary for me) to arrange my life in such a way that there is balance between the work & sacrifices I make and the things I do for me... and I've even added other people now, on that side of the balance sheet - things I do for other people or with other people - that are refreshing to me.
The work will be there after you've taken care of yourself... and if you take care of yourself FIRST... you'll be able to bring more to the work - more creativity, problem-solving, more energy, more YOU - and also receive more good stuff from the work. No one will think badly of you and you aren't being lazy or worthless simply because you require a time-out to care for yourself... even exciting, fun things can use up energy... and to keep them fun and exciting it's absolutely necessary to allow yourself the physical, emotional and mental rest you need.
It's OK, Muffin.
-
A chamber orchestra came to a theater a few blocks away from where I'm at, two tickets were gifted to me for being a volunteer, last night I brought a bi-polar, homeless alcoholic for companionship.
The day before I was strongly encouraged by one of the other women to go over to a church and look through their free stuff for homeless people, I did rummage through the old used stuff, I found a black & red & gold velvety brocade type fabric jacket. The jacket has one missing button, an abstract pattern of gold butterflies, and red roses. The same place had a pile of scarves, I grabbed a red old grandma scarf not realizing that it was an accessory for the jacket.
So last night, I put on my jacket and red scarf, went to art gallery with my companion and looked at encaustic paintings.
Then we went to the theater that (I think) auspiciously was beautifully red, black and gold inside.
The music was fine, my companion seemed to follow the music during the performance with her breathing, I think she enjoyed it.
Prior to this, just the day before, she had a tooth extracted. Her face and body language looks haggard most of the time.
I don't really want to become long-term friends with her, I think she may be dangerous somehow, but it was one good night.
The way she relates to me feels like an alcoholics anonymous meeting even on a Friday night out on the town, she can't stop talking about her challenge with alcohol and her fear that some guy is going to follow her home at night walking in the dark. Walking with her made me a little nervous because her fearful body language is an attractant.
Putting her faults aside and my faults aside, the nice thing was that she paid attention to the art more then I do, and I consider myself to be a creative type. Sometimes we appreciate life more with the help of other's ability to see.
-----
I truly live with a bunch of freaks, I say that in a cynical humorous but true way.
The young woman 24ish who is very thin 80-90lbs max (anorexic/bulimic) woke up this morning and started using a children's cake baking play-set that came in a cardboard box with pictures of a cartoon girl with pink hair on it for a logo. She was standing in the shared kitchen in plaid high-heels, a pastel apron while mixing sugar and dye for this kid's mini-microwave cake. She talks in a little girl’s voice. She had me smell the blue fondant cake mix.
I'm in my 30's and I'm wearing a used grandma outfit sitting here trying to find space for myself that doesn’t smell like fake cake and burning bacon, that doesn’t involve watching a stranger track dirt into an area I'm obligated to clean.
There is an older woman at the shelter that I don't like very much, she burps a lot, when she burps she vocalizes the burps into Bart Simpson like expressions. "buuurr--doo'oohhh" I'm not sure if she has turrets or what but sometimes I just want to tell her to shut-up.
I so wish I had a private office to go to (my own) not a job office but a different place.
I would have a desk for writing and an area for painting. I would have some plants in my office.
The floor would be clean, wood, there would be very little clutter, it would smell clean it would be sunny.
I would spread out all the papers I have on the desk and I would file them.
Not much else to say.
I woke up with an acid stomach, asked the other women if they get that also due to stress, only feedback I got was that it could be a sign of ulcers.
Mind went blank that is all I have to write now.
-
Hi Muffin,
There are many scholarship opportunities available, each with different criteria. I am not aware of any specific to homeless women, but financial need is considered in many of the scholarships that the Foundation offers. To get started, you would want to visit the Financial Aid office on campus. (I’ve attached a campus map with directions.) They can help address your financial needs and explain all of the options that may be available to you through Foundation scholarships, as well as other scholarships, grants, and/or student loans.
As far as Foundation scholarships go: The online application for Foundation Scholarships will be posted within the next week or so. You will want to collect one letter of recommendation, and an unofficial copy of your most recent transcript. In addition, the application will ask you to answer 3 short essay questions regarding your interest in attending & professional goals, your professional experience &/or community service, and growth experiences overcoming obstacles. Once the application is posted, you will have more detailed information about all of this. In addition, the Foundation Scholarship application requires you to have completed a FAFSA which is also available through the Financial Aid Office in.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
I go dull when I read this stuff, the paperwork scares me, all I hear is yes this community college will find a way to take my money and I won't have any financial aid left over to attend a university. Truth be told I don't "get it"-- financial aid, I don't know how it works at all.
An impending mess and debt is all I sense...not excited about the programs or classes.
I'm not a black girl with children, I expect that's the intended recipient of these scholarships.
Maybe I have an emotional barrier or maybe it's something real, an intuitive knowing.
I don't know. There is some stage I don't seem to move beyond. I don't want to go to community college, kids writing papers about Lady Gaga or whatever. Who cares about that bullcrap.
I get frustrated and angry when I have to sign up for classes or even figure out the paper work.
What if I only get a certain amount of financial aid and it's squandered and wasted on the wrong program.
I feel contempt for these people who talk at me. Lips moving me staring at them feeling overwhelmed.
---
When I was taking college classes, long time ago, one day I went to the counselor there, I unexpectedly broke down crying in the women's center student counselor office. The office was advertised as a place for students to talk about problems with school. I still clearly remember her saying to me that maybe "school is too much for you right now".
I was shocked, thinking I would get some kind of help and the only message I got was discouragement. It stood out in my memory more then what any of the instructors taught.
That was probably longer then 10 years ago? And....and...now school is still the same "too much for me right now".
When I hear these things I feel hateful, especially when people take the idea of MY future into their own hands.
I can look at people with a mean arrogance, a smart ass cynical person.
-------------
Thinking about the housing director. I hate that strangers have power over important aspects of my life, and that they are ignorant about me.
Listening to Pearl Jam: Just Breathe Lyrics....
-
This day is too long, I tried to meet a hiking group but it was cancelled due to someone's bad back. It's a boring tired type of day, sat down at a piano and plunked a few notes. The shade of sunlight is off like a bad note. It's sunny but it's dissonantly wrong.
Four cups of coffee.....fighting against one more. Wish I could have a party and cook all of this perishable food-bank food. The people in the shelter don't usually sit down and eat together. I could try to read.
These are days when I'm most lonely, wish someone was here to fill the gap, could go somewhere and do something. I walked over to a party type gathering at the Buddhist center, walked up the stairs, took my shoes off, listened outside the door for a second at the voices that know each other then turned around. I can't do it today. I stand there with my cup of tea and someone else always has to start the conversation.
I could lay in my backward spine bending bed and read an Annie Dillard book I found on a free books shelf. But my back! I'm going to pout, drink some decaf tea, eat some chocolate, then maybe go to the gym and walk very slowly on the treadmill. Maybe.
Contemplating writing a letter to the local art museum because they don't have a free day. Most museums have a one-day a month is free day.
It would be pointless, I may be the only person who cares around here.
I don't hear anything from my family. Nothing. I hear seagulls and cars and shuffles from feet.
Conversations with strangers only go so far to fill in the gaps of my life.
--Day for deep compassion to myself. Allow myself to be slow and tired and bored and heart broken.
Even the sunset is the most putrid shade of yellow ocher.
-
The concept of "effort" comes up in Buddhist teachings. Worry and stress feel like effort but it doesn't lead to an actual goal.
It really helped me to read this, MB...just in my own stuff. Thanks for it.
I loved that you got an evening out, some time with art, and good music.
I wonder if it might help a bit to start thinking about the financial aid forms, the instructions, and so forth, as value-free? Kind of like forks in a drawer? You take a fork because you'd like to ferry the food to your mouth. But the fork has no meaning and says nothing about you.
The paperwork, the forms, even the bureaucratic explanations (given you as part of someone's bureaucratic job) -- say nothing about you.
But they're the forks. You need to pick them up.
You have nothing to be ashamed of. Being bored and tired and heartbroken is how you are right now.
The FAFSA is just mechanical. You can do that online.
I hope you will answer the questions and fill out the forms and stop telling yourself there is no way it can work (like I've been doing).
It can work. It's just the first few times something DOES work are scary. Because if you have the habit (and the self-talk) about how your life doesn't work, and you don't work...that gets to be what's comfortable and familiar.
So advocating for yourself and allowing yourself to start wanting more is scary. Within it is the possibiliy (inevitability) of imperfection, mistakes, and change.
But if you keep holding a space open for things to work, more things will. Not all, but more.
love,
Hops (who can dish it out, etc...)
-
My evening made up for my stagnant day, went to a theater show, started reading Maytrees by Annie Dillard, thought of an idea for classes that I'm hoping the director will approve of because I'm tired of bumping around aimlessly.
When I first started writing on the board I must have felt more anonymous then I do now. I was going to be truthful about how I felt here, say the things that I don't say elsewhere or whatnot. I think I've fallen into a little bit of weakness about the truths of my emotions, although admitting that I'm so lonely I would rather stay here then in a little apartment by self--felt like a big weird truth. I still act like I'm hiding my deficiencies though.
I think about the young woman here who is anorexic/bulimic; I stay out of it, every day I feel like saying something to her because she doesn’t see herself as thin. I feel like it is being responsible to say something to her about it.
Money came into my thought patterns today, my life is more stressed beyond the self-supporting/job situation. I was dismally depressed before I got to this point and I had money when I was dismally depressed, quite a bit of it I had saved up. Sure the economy is bad no doubt, simultaneously though I had a spiritual-break-down. An emotional break down or call it whatever, a deep-terrified and alive part of me gave up...or not....you know...maybe it's one of those dualistic things, it is all wrong and all right. Or all right and still quite wrong.
These programs, such as this shelter....well it is just housing.....but there is the idea that if money and counseling can be added to the person's life things will somehow turn around. I had money and I went to counseling before I got here. I was paralyzed by something else.
This is just me, right here, every day not knowing what events will come with tomorrow, I do know where I have been. I know what I have tried, what I have seen with my own two eyes. I know.
I'm sure my life is an echo chamber in my body, I just look out.
I'm alienated if it's self alienation or not.
Closing my window, hiding my computer, going to sleep.
-
Hey Muffin... I hear ya about applying and the whole impersonal, screwed up application/admissions process. The first time I tried this, I walked out halfway through. Years later, I wound up teaching, then working behind the scenes at colleges. It sucks there too. Like Hops said, this "process" is a means to an end - nothing more, nothing less and from experience I can tell you the way you feel you're being treated really isn't personal. That in itself probably triggers some warning signals, huh?
Those poor front-line folk at colleges are kind of like first-responders. They learn quickly (or get other jobs) to not become personally involved with each person who shows up in front of them. They'll act friendly, be polite, and even sometimes go out of their way to be helpful... but if you're a perceptive person you'll catch on quickly that they really don't care. If they did really care about each and every person they worked with - they'd be burnt out and exhausted by lunch! Every day. Many are.
And the application, financial aid, etc bureaucratic process is incredibly redundant, cumbersome, absurdly targeted toward 18 yr olds who haven't graduated high school yet. Why this application process hasn't changed to reflect the reality that MOST of their students are now working adults - or at least adults trying to further their education - boggles the mind of rational people... and these are people who feel they're going to provide a great benefit of "education" to others??! BIG DUH.
OK - so that's the negative side of this mini-self-contained world within the real world. I'm not trying to discourage you at all - just saying you're perceptive, you are seeing things accurately, and I'm validating that and also your wariness about "what am I getting into??" Sometimes it's good to put the negative right out there... call it like it is... and then decide if you CAN or WANT to put up with that for the very real benefits/value attached to the pieces of paper issued by these places - and the opportunity to avail yourself of all the resources associated with school. (Truth: sometimes the resources available are way more important that the piece of paper at the end... even tho that's all employers usually care about.)
IF you do think you can put with the negative... then here's an idea - get to know some of these school bureaucrats in person. Even receptionists know how things work around there, who to talk to and will take you under their wing. They are very much real genuine people (some good, some fakey and lording it over others - just people, you know?). Get them involved in your story and in you and what you want to do... you will benefit from having a mentor or champion or buffer (or explainer of how this strange world works)... on the "inside" of the process. Professors are even good ones to select for this - though they're so busy, it's harder to get their attention... for instance an art prof might walk you through the whole app process and give you some good advice along the way, even if you only take one or two art classes and major in something else.
But what you need to get through that initial confrontation with paperwork and BS, is a real connection with a real person. There are people in all schools who know that there are people like you and me - I felt assaulted by the whole rigamarole of applying, you know? Of course, one is being "judged", too - ACT/SAT test scores, writing ability, etc. But it is possible to get through that process, with some assistance from someone you've connected with. I did quite a bit of this with students from other cultures who barely spoke english - but after they'd arrived on campus... because at that stage, there's usually quite a bit more "orientation" needed even for commuter students into this strange world... with it's own geography... rules... rulers...
So let me dangle a carrot now, about what I said about school resources being way more important than the end result. You are obviously a self-learner... someone who doesn't need "teaching" as much as the space and time to immerse yourself in the knowledge, information, and application of that in a real way... school provides this. It also provides "membership" - in your graduating class, in a classroom, in the new people you'll meet. You can blend in as much as you want - and still be an individual; seen as an individual. Recognized for yourself and your current and potential skills and value AS A PERSON. You'll have an opportunity - whether you avail yourself of it or not - to make some real lasting relationships. Maybe not with other students, necessarily - but with teachers, janitors, librarians, etc - the real people in those places. The real humans behind the bureaucracy.
It's a relatively safe place to re-assemble yourself, grow into yourself, and figure out where you really want to "land" after launching after school. To learn the rules of "navigation" out in the real world... and decide if it's worth it.
My hubs is one those people that I met in the school setting and many of our friends we met there, continue to be friends long after we've all left that space.
But only you can know if that's a path that has any value or attraction for you. Plenty of people actually do just fine, without pieces of paper... my hubs is one who attended classes... and didn't graduate... and he's way smarter than a lot of the administrators he worked for.
-
........and from experience I can tell you the way you feel you're being treated really isn't personal. That in itself probably triggers some warning signals, huh?
No, I didn't take it personally. I think my statement has been interpreted incorrectly.
-
I'm sorry if I misunderstood, MB...
your feelings matter but they're weather, that's what I meant.
It's okay to be however you want to be.
And if you need to just vent, and not be prodded/pushed/prompted, I hear that!
love,
Hops
-
Sorry bout that, Muffin!
I'll try to read closer... and engage brain before opening mouth!
My batting average this week, on replies, isn't so hot.
Edit:
What I mean by that is that I seem to be out of sync with a lot of people... and what I'm hearing/reading - what jumps out to me - seems to be world's apart and irrelevant to the person I'm trying to communicate with. Don't know why... hope it's not permanent!
-
Thats ok,
It's certainly something I learned from my non-violent communication classes is how common it is that .... we (human beings) misunderstand each other, it's the limitations in the habitual ways people relate and talk with each other I guess.
-
Just a random thought, not sure what it has to do with if anything with voicelessness.
I've noticed how important this to-do list thing is with me, I think it is some kind of reassurace that I am making progress in the "fix-me-up" project. I have a fix me upper attitude towards me every single day that is probably exhausting me.
Yes, when I get out of bed in the morning my mind is already ahead of myself working on this goal.
I was getting frustrated from a multitude of reasons. Some parts of the frustration are really rage beyond mild frustration.
I realized I got to the point where I am procrastinating on doing certain things or they are a stand still for now.
"Feeling Good" was a horrible self-help book I read one time long ago. I thought of the cognitive feedback exercise in it and superimposed my procrastination/standstill elements in my life on the feed back chart but doing it differently then the book.
Very good reasons for things being at stand still or procrastinations.
I decided that since there were good reasons for not doing certain things, I should stop pressure cookerizing myself about it for today. BECAUSE....there are always other things I can add to the freakin to-do list that don't have the same emotional consequences attached to them.
-
Lately, more then one example of voicefulness has come into my life. Simultaneously in considering self-isolating or ostracism depending on how it's viewed, this has increasingly brought to my awareness the way that voice is not often if ever separated from community of some version. I think of the corny sayings "what is the sound of one hand clapping, or if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, did it fall"....something like that.
At least 8 examples of voicefulness in my life easily come to my mind tonight, not one of these examples can honestly be removed from the context of community. It's something that I have understood for quite a long time but never identified as clearly as I do right now, mainly because I have attempted to edge myself closer to community of all sorts and in each case "voice" is a prominent subject/motivator. OR conversely deterrent to joining a community, like picking a church for example. Even my Buddhist meditation group contains voicefulness and a lot of it.
I've always been an alternative person, not by choice, just because...so it makes sense that I would seek alternative choices for experiencing voicefulness.
I think of Doctor Seuss and the Lorax who spoke for the trees.
"Mister!" he said with a sawdusty sneeze, "I am the Lorax. I speak for trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues. And I'm asking you sir, at the top of my lungs" - he was very upset as he shouted and puffed - "What's that THING you've made out of my Truffula tuft?"
The trees did not have the ability to talk or defend themselves. The Lorax finally got angry. The voiceless tree was changed and transformed, no longer it's natural self.
Community is a double edge sword for voicefulness.
An event tonight, all about voicefulness didn't require skill in the practice of having and knowing one's own voice...but it would have been very helpful for some...so I guess what I'm getting at is that Voicefulness must be on some level inherent in each person but also cultivated in a direction.
I think the experience of Voicelessness is partially being split off from the authenticity of SELF.
Even if all the narcissists in my life were to die of heart-attacks right this very instant...I would still be left with my experience of voicefulness.....something that is an on-going exercise more then it is a historical event that happened to me.
Voicefulness is a struggle for many that don't even have nar-people in their lives.
Voicefulness changes and at the same time has some constancy in the same way that people change but still some part is core. The identity of SELF evolves and is perishable. Identity, community, voice, these things all go together IMO.
Sparks of enthusiams are showing up in my life, realistically I don't have the energetic reserves or choice to commit to these signals of life though.
Thats just my reality. I'm already asking when are these going to fizzle. Part of it is novelty of new people, new places.
I have heard that great communication is key for determining the quality of relationships that a person has. It's more then just using words or speaking though--I was thinking about this today.
I'm tired, good night.
-
Good morning!
HMMMMM....
Communication
Community
Commune
.... hmmmmmm.....
-
Voicefulness is a struggle for many that don't even have nar-people in their lives.
This strikes a chord with me too, MB. It made me think of women, generally. And children, generally. And minorities or the disenfranchised or oppressed, generally.
Another thing it made me think of is the wonderful distinction between assertiveness vs. aggressiveness.
Once one gets that, I think, fear is greatly reduced.
I just happened to read up on that before going into a scary meeting w/Nboss. It went better than I expected. The personalization and emotion was mostly pre-drained by having just read a reminder list of personal boundaries and what positive self-hood feels and looks like (even a posture reminder and also a releasing the outcome reminder), so I stayed in myself, feeling that a good place to be. When I spoke up it was with confidence and self-respect but not emotional lability and defensiveness (which anxiety triggers in me if I'm not watchful).
thanks for this,
Hops
-
Tonight, went out for a little live jazz..you know to feed my soul.
Some jazz gets me some doesn't--tonight there was a song with lots of busy short notes all over the place, busy busy little notes like impressionism.
That was the one song worth going for so I just closed my eyes and it was good.
Luckily I did get to enjoy the music for a while. When the band took a break, an old guy came up to me and started chatting my ear off, a "jazz musician" not in the live band playing tonight, who was in the Navy...old school sort of person, I was polite at first telling myself that meeting new people is good. The thing is he talked on and on, I didn't really want to talk to him 100% maybe 10% of interest for collecting new facts or something....at one point he looked at my finger and pointed out that I wasn't married, and he said that he was married... and he said something else about how it doesn't matter where men get their sexual fantasies from as long as they take it home to their wife.
There is some kind of saying about that.....anyways. He asked me what I do for a living...and god knows I really wasn't digging this conversation.
The thing that really got me though was when I responded to him out of politeness telling him about what I did (operative word) for a living. He got this look on his face as soon as I started talking of his attention was going elsewhere. Not that I wanted his attention....but some people! Then after my few seconds of saying what field of work I'm in, he launched back in about the work that he does and his attention was right back on his face--fully animated and wanting me to pay attention to him.
Some people are clueless, he asked me to come listen to him play music----eh, yeah....maybe next year.
I can see when a person's awareness comes and goes sometimes. Guys like this get on my nerves, my mother would listen to my grandfather ramble on and on for hours.
I feel like a boundary was crossed and it happened so fast and I was standing there....and what was I suppose to say?
So if I go to this jazz club again this guy is going to annoyingly recognize me and I will just have to be a b*tch or take a man with me.
Hum practice. Awkward practice. It's awkward because he is being rude but I'm the one who has to point it out.
I really don't want to talk to him at all, what if he is whack.
I guess I just make lots of excuses and walk away..that is easy in theory.
Why do old men do this-slip sexual content into casual conversations? I mean I wouldn't go start a conversation with an 18 year old guy and slip sexual comments in there. IT's really lame and innappropriate.
I could say:
"You know what, I really have a horrible headache, oddly enough listening to jazz helps but listening to the sound of men talk makes it worse, isn't that strange? Bye Bye."
"I'm really having difficulty following this conversation, I'm heavily medicated right now?...No that's not good at all.
TEXT MSG! Oh my friend just texted me. I have to respond RIGHT NOW!!!.
That is very very easy.
-
[q]Why do old men do this-slip sexual content into casual conversations?[/q]
For the same reason some young men slip the money card in when they sense an older single woman might have some they can get their hands on. No couth. Senior males haven't captured the market on boorish behavior. So I'd leave the age card out and handle this old guys intrusion the same way you'd handle unwarranted intrusions from any other person.tt
Yes, that is correct OLD men.
When I make a statement as a question, usually I'm just writing in general and not requesting advice. Especially in this case I wasn't needing advice.
It's more of "question/comment to Self".
I wrote about a specific behavior I experience from OLD men. So yes, the "age-card" does have something to do with it in my personal experience.
I'm not interested in a debate about it, if you disagree that's fine.
I'm just going to say it, I don't like OLD men. That is just my preference. I don't like the double standards between men and women.
I'm not enamored with men in general, don't get me started.
-
Today I found out that the director wants the grant today even though the deadline wasn't until the end of next week. She never told me she would want it by today so I think there are some communication problems. It wasn't complete and I thought maybe she is sort of ticked off at me. I gave it over to her in outline/brainstorm form. In reality that is probably best because she likes to edit extravagantly. I don't know how much I am helping or not but she keeps giving me more stuff to do. Exciting stuff.
Oddly, one of the other community groups hasn't fulfilled an important key piece and I offered to help...but I think they are the group that has the paid intern.
I'm sticking with it despite it not being a wonderfully organized effort. I get bogged down with a careful mind that wants to really get all the little details figured out so it takes me longer to "get stuff" sometimes. I forwarded an article to the director that I thought would be helpful for the project and she said it was a good article for her to have because she had no idea about a particular community concept---it's actually what the grant is all about. So I don't know if that made me feel better knowing that the director doesn't even fully get it or not--one thing is for sure, some people are more comfortable throwing themselves into something feet first. I pretty much have to measure all around and stick a telescope there before I tip toe in... not leap in. I noticed that all of the documents she produces have errors in them and she likes to chit-chat about random stuff A LOT during times that are focus times. So it's a challenge in different personalities. I think what I have learned is that I need to know what to ask for (all of the supporting documentation) way ahead of time. I have never been comfortable "winging it", EVER. That is sort of my control freak part.
Surprisingly to me the director offered me another grant to work on!.......so...um.....I think that is yay!?.... It is YAY!!!... I'm GLAD!!!!
I'm pleased and trying to forgive myself for not perfecting the first grant. BUT in the process I did find a new inspiration for something else that I think is very cool.
-
These community projects and this director's "winging it style" make my head swim so I take that as a sign that I'm learning something new.
I thought about knitting and how when I taught myself there were points that I agonized over --a feeling like I was literally squeezing out new brain cells--THE Struggle part--or labor part. Then I got over it--- and I knew---AND I thought "why did that seem so hard?"
So I remind myself of this when I struggle. To be obsessively passionate is good motivation but to do it with some detachment to the outcome is the hard part.
-
I hope you enjoy this, Muffin! It sounds like you're a valuable asset to the group and learning things yourself all at the same time. Synergy!
I can kinda relate to both personality styles you've described - your very careful, document, back up, explore and know the facts self... and the "winging it" director. I guess I can sorta shift between the two or something like that. The "winging it" side of me shows up less often, but looking back at the times I was making big decisions on the fly... faced with brand-new information and no time to research or "decide"... I don't do too badly. And I found this to be a thrilling kind of fun - like a roller-coaster ride. And it builds a trust and confidence in myself - a simple (and really complex to parse into it's parts) feeling that eluded me for years & years.
But I never, ever saw myself as being that kind of person. Asking me to wing anything would cause a panic attack. I would've described myself as being the one who agonized over every comma and phrase... who wanted to always make something as perfect, right and true as possible. I was always so afraid of making a mistake, getting something wrong - and even choosing wrong. But the other kind of experience above eventually got through my thick head that hey! It's not fatal - nor will the world come to an end - if I make a mistake or choose wrong. I can fix a mistake, deal with what consequences it caused. I can change my mind about my decision...
That realization helped me a whole lot. It's like lowering the risk level. In my mind, I'd raised the level of risk so impossibly high that I scared myself to death and put way too much pressure on myself - and duh... that wasn't much fun. It also threw a huge wet blanket over my creativity, too... automatically lowering my ability; inhibiting myself; reducing my choices. My mantra became: nothing bad will happen.
Now I do both on important things. I exhaustively research and do my homework. And then, I move (mentally) back to the biggest picture perspective I can find: what am I trying to decide and what are the 3 most important things I hope to accomplish? And I roll the dice... trust my intuition (which has already been informed by homework)... and I don't have so much anxiety or worry throughout the whole process. I've learned that it's just not possible to know enough, or be able to predict all possible effects of a decision... and that's less scary than it used to be, since I finally figured out that I'm allowed to change my mind!
I think you'll find yourself learning something similar about yourself through this experience. I really hope you can also enjoy it!
-
and he said something else about how it doesn't matter where men get their sexual fantasies from as long as they take it home to their wife
Not that I do this myself, of course...what follows is just a fantasy of what going autopilot with healthy boundaries would be like, using this good sample scenario. Again, not me, but fantasy-Hops (after much more practice):
1) Conversation underway.
2) Vibe is beginning to feel unpleasant. (I alert to my inner voice.)
3) Man says this.
I immediately and calmly walk away (without drama, explanation, or tension).
I forget about it within a few moments.
I do this automatically out of habitual self respect and comfort with my sturdy self.
HOOO-AHHHH! The world is a better place.
(World hasn't changed. Fantasy Hops has.)
Just felt delightful to write that down. Visualization-wise.
(I am after all, into writing fiction).
I believe every single encounter is an opportunity for practice.
(Perfection is off the table). For me, it's encouraging to think "practice".
Doesn't matter if I blow it.
Thanks MB,
Hops
-
Hops: laughing loudly and long and THEN walking away is also effective!
-
Wow, the poor people in JAPAN!!!
My little problems are very significant to me and my life---but when something huge like this happens--wow. It makes me want to even love the nar-people in my life--almost.
Why do disasters make people so sentimental--is it a coming to reality and waking up or is it an accentuated experience that alters one's mood.
I prefer to think it is a reminder in a very real way to make the most out of life--if at all possible.
Some people say this is a part of (2012) prophesy, I don't want to buy in 100% to all of the new-age ideas but there have been some very good predictions and I do believe in this kind of instinctual intelligence. This in combination with our huge oil spill and Haiti for me already confirms prophesy ability. Mother nature is the biggest shock and awe there is.
Today I just feel sad and shocked about the Earthquakes. I know it's far away but I still want to cry. I overheard a conversation today between two women, one of the women has her daughter over there near one of the reactors--very stressful for some people now.
I did a couple of important things for myself today but don't feel like writing about it yet--until I find out more.
My second volunteer thing kicked in after a long wait--so that means I will be reading books to kids and setting up art projects etc.
I don't know how I feel about it but I'm just going to go with it for now.
My mother is visiting me tomorrow and I feel anxiety and conflict--as usual this is what I feel like before she visits me.
-
Hi Muffin Buster,
I'm not interested in a debate about it, if you disagree that's fine.
I'm just going to say it, I don't like OLD men. That is just my preference. I don't like the double standards between men and women
I like it that we all have the freedom to express our preferences and boundaries. I respect the right of everyone to express their thoughts here. Mine is just 1 woman's opinion. Not very significant in the big picture!
tt
Tear Tracks, I think about this sort of thing, when different people don't have the same opinion about something and the end result of ----
Does a person lose their voicefulness if there is not agreement?
I think some people feel like they have lost their own voice when another person disagrees with them.
I know I have felt this way at times --and I have learned that I will not maintain my own sense of voicefulness if it's dependant on everyone agreeing with me. Because that is not the real world.
I think sometimes people do lose their voicefulness and then I think there really are situations where people can have different opinion but still keep their own voicefulness.
I'm working on this sort of thing. There are things on this board that I don't agree with because I have a different life perspective, usually I don't comment on them.
But I am working on somehow maintaining my own sense of voice even when there are others in this big world that believe something or do something that --leads to me thinking or experiencing a sense of voice loss. I have to allow people to be them, and still experience me---and not always homogenize opinion or view point. I am learning to let go of somethings--but still holding on at the same time. ?
Just because others in this world may not respect my voice, see life my way or have conflict of interests------figuring out how to still be me even when other's reflect back to me that my ideas are "wrong" or "different" or my voice is not on their side etc.
Dealing with people on a day-to-day basis, I have received a lot of judgemental, negative, bleak, discouraging feedback about my life situation and I have had to deal with it by leting go of other's opinions and sticking with my own internal compass/voice. I have had to have a different kind of faith in my integrity--or else I would go really really crazy.
-
In my mind, I'd raised the level of risk so impossibly high that I scared myself to death and put way too much pressure on myself - and duh... that wasn't much fun. It also threw a huge wet blanket over my creativity, too... automatically lowering my ability; inhibiting myself; reducing my choices.
Maybe I am learning something similar to what you described
In the past I did work in life and death situations--but the volunteer thing is not that at all--so I don't need to carry over my habits.
My family also raised me to me very serious- there was not a lot of fun growing up-everything seemed to have grave consequences.
I like how you point out that you moved between winging it and being more careful.
This is when I wonder if we get pegged with a "personality" when it's habits or learned behavior.
I want to think that my personality is bigger then habitual patterns.
-
Recently I came across a new idea: There is such a thing as more than one voice!
I know it's sort of obvious but I have been thinking about my voice in terms of the voice that belongs to authentic (1) SELF......
What if my authentic SELF and even not so authentic self (ha ha whatever this means)......has more than one voice.
You know like a musician playing more than a single instrument. I don't mean two faceness here--I think what I mean is, um I'm not sure right now. Ha Ha HA
Maybe it's like the voice is a river and it could branch out into new streams to include areas outside of it's normal riverbanks.
Wow voice is completely conected with ME-ness. I do something new and I think that I have developed voice # 2 to go along with a new activity.
So now I think about mindfulness meditation--no thinking mind. Where does voicefulness come in here.
No thinking seems like it would = no voice.
Because having a voice is related to formulating thought and that is thinking (I think).
OR actualy we CAN formulate thought without thinking. It sounds really weird in words but makes sense in practice.
I had such a full day today (3) meetings nothing to do with the volunteering. So I can rest now, I can read for fun or take a break and not feel guilty. Yay for no guilt in relaxing.
-
OR actualy we CAN formulate thought without thinking. It sounds really weird in words but makes sense in practice.
I know what you mean. I called it "emotional thinking" and it doesn't have any words. That's a kind of voice, too.... on some vibrational wavelength that's outside normal human hearing (dogs CAN hear it, I know). I don't know that it's "more true" or "more real" or "more self"... I think it might be just more instinctive, an earlier form of "thought" in our genes left over from the evolutionary time before speech and language. There are times when I can sense communication at this level in people, F2F. The non-verbal cues and communication.
Ya know - there's something really significant and big about your observation that some people feel voiceless unless there's a whole bunch of people agreeing with them. I can't put it into words yet. There's some connection to what GS is learning about dismissiveness there... and I'm being too dense this morning to see it.
Japan - Hokusai's Wave block print...
while it's seemed for the past couple of years that opposing, confrontational "sides" were being drawn up between groups of people at so many levels and people were choosing which side they were on and beginning to fight and argue intensely... others despairing, grieving and afraid... some still trying to make things better...
along comes a giant reminder from Mother Nature and the universe that we are ALL little beings on the same planet and it can all change in seconds and all the things we - in our ego-vanity - think are so important we have to alienate those who disagree with us over those things... all that is an insignificant little blip on the scale of processes and timeframes of planetary change. ----- Universe time, so we've been told (but I think no one really knows) is infinite and while, to us, our existence seems long - in that time-model... you'd better not blink!
At first, I just felt so helpless in the face of the immensity - helpless and shocked and sad. I couldn't post from that place; I didn't want to voice that... it seems so "negative" and one should try not to spread that kind o' crap around... in some value-systems, anyway. Later, seeing the graphics that showed the formation and travel of the waves... I realized - HOLY CRAP - that wasn't just a negative emotion... it was a friggin' fact! This was a planetary event on such a cataclysmic scale... I even just saw that higher than normal waves are still occuring on the west coast and hubs was wondering how long it takes a whole ocean to settle back down and stop "sloshing". I'm reminded of the movie "Independence Day"... that's one of my fav movies, even tho it's cheesy and hokey and almost B movie sci-fi. But that was a movie - and this is "my god" real.
-
and travel of the waves... I realized - HOLY CRAP - that wasn't just a negative emotion... it was a friggin' fact! This was a planetary event on such a cataclysmic scale...
When I woke up yesterday I checked my email and the news in Japan was the first thing I saw, I was busy with my life, then that night after I came "home" I saw some images, I was watching with interest and amazement because it's so unusual. I watched the cars, boats, houses floating away and over bridges and a derailed train.
It looked like rubber ducky boats and cars in a bath tub. Usually with hurricanes and tornados and river floods there is warning and most of the houses and cars have been evacuated. But these people didn't have warning, and I realized that the cars and houses were not vacated, there were people in a lot of those houses and vehicles that got washed away.
The video clips that I have been able to see show things from a distance on a large scale and cut-out at the point where there are individual people actively trying to turn their cars around and get out of the way of the tsunami.
I started crying last night watching all of this. I asked myself is it ok that I'm crying? Am I being over emotional?
Then I realized some people don't even have to question their emotions like that.
Of course it's ok to get really upset about this, it's disturbing. It's overwhelming tragic devastation.
When I had nightmares this is the sort of scenes I saw. This is a living nightmare for Japanese people.
It's on a much larger scale than 911 was even if it's not man-made.
Here is a good photo of a ripple all the way into San Francisco! I hope this finally proves to some people that we all share one little fragile planet.
http://www.zimbio.com/Japan+Earthquake+2011/articles/Rg6dg0022py/San+Francisco+Tsunami+Picture
Pollution from China does reach the West Coast of the USA sometimes so I wonder if caesium can hit the US through weather streams?
-
Recently I came across a new idea: There is such a thing as more than one voice!
More than the sacred cow one? Thank you MB, I never thought on this until you posted about it. Then the first thing that popped into my mind was that even if I've found my voice, it is not beyond reproach and it only reflects my voice. It can express anything it wants to, right or wrong. The only difference is that I'm doing it with MY voice, not parroting through the veil of the person(s) who caused me to lose it. It's not a sacred cow and once our voices became full and mature, I think we have a greater responsibility to use it for good. Now the next question I should ponder is, Am I doing that?
You got me thinking!
tt
I personally didn't mean sacred cow voice or that which is beyond reproach.
I was referring to something along the lines of finding new modes of expression literally like learning how to play an instrument....but I think I'm grasping a little elusively because it's linked with (for me personally)--not self isolating and experiencing being a part of community in ways that I have not before and to do it without being fearful or something like that. Like reading books to kids as a volunteer-- is for me to find a "Second Voice"
That is more of what I meant. But if it spurs you on in your own direction that is ok also.
I'm not sure I have words to explain it because I'm not 100% sure what I am getting at.
There is voicelessness
There is voicefulness
There is inner child voice
There is the image of "idea of SELF" reflected back by others and the resulting voice that arises out of that
There is SELF that is not formed by others reflections and the voice from that
There is not accepting other's judgements about my SELF and at the same time figuring out how to not retreat or assimilate erroneous ideas about ME
There is the sad me--that is me interacting with my family
My mother wanted to meet me today, she will be here in 2 hours. I called her this morning and her husband answered--in a way that communicates he is dissappointed that I still exist on planet earth. Because my mother is part of his family now---and I am not welcome or accepted in that circle.
There is the voice of me that comes out of that reflection from his mind----"I am not worthy to be alive"
In his voice I hear a conviction of thought that limits who I am. I hear that his idea of me is the real ME. As if his belief has authority over my identity.
Of course this links back to my mother's sickness.
I think he makes a belief about (ME) based on my mother's back-stabbing comments about me to him.
The person that he reflects to me is degrading. (Low-Life)
Of course he also likes to watch Nazi Germany reruns over and over again. (No joke)
That voice. The image of my "not worthy to be alive" ---or "hasn't she commited suicide yet?"----That reflection has it's voice that is part of all my voices.
It's a real experience that feels bad but I hope it does not define all areas of my life. If my mother and her husband want me to kill myself----I don't want that feeling or experience to be what defines my whole being --hence the need for voices of other sorts.
It's weird to say it it and not a lot of people would believe it but I think my mother, her husband, my aunt want me to die.
Just like there is that part of SELF that can be cruel to the inner-child SELF----I think I receive that same role in my family of being the "Inner child self" for the relatives.
I think that is 50% what I mean about VOICE 1 VOICE 2 VOICE 3 Etc.
It's making more room/space in my life for parts of identity---the self isolating part--the community interaction part--the broken self part--the ruined part---the part that hasn't formed yet and can still exist part--
Writers literally use the term "finding your voice".
For people who grew up voiceless I think this is more complicated it's more like finding all the fragments and also learning that it's ok to branch out and have a new voice. There is something that branches out of the hurt child voice. Also, Maybe there are aspects of voice that do not have to originate from FOO wounds. That struggle.
Some voice comes out of struggle---maybe Voice # 32 comes from a place that does not have FOO struggle.
I do think in this case avoidance is ideal--but obviously I am meeting my mother today. I hate her. I don't want to meet her. I have mild anxiety the day before I know I am going to see her.
I will meet her for a short time and then I will cut it off--Ok bye you can go home now. She already told me she plans to call my aunt after she meets me. ----Meaning? She can act like she is normal or something???? She can tell my aunt lies about my life??
I'm going to stop believing that I have any control over my mother-aunt sicko duo.
They are INSANE---- if they were in a mental institute they would be working as a pair to abuse another lunatic.
Can I call them functioning lunatics? I don't want to see my mother today at all. I'm now realizing how long it has been....and I never want to see her. I don't want her to know anything about my life--I want privacy. She asks me lots of questions and if I don't answer she gets pissed off at me as if she has the right to do her reconnaissance mission --for the sake of reporting back to my aunt so that my mother can appear to me a saintly mother.
She is evil. And maybe there is incompetence and weakness to her evil.
-
In his voice I hear a conviction of thought that limits who I am. I hear that his idea of me is the real ME. As if his belief has authority over my identity.
Bravo, MB.
Did you do okay with the mother visit?
Hops
-
Wow Muffin...
the voice that is "working through" all this stuff, is making me go & ponder too!
One thing I see in your comments about mom & step-dad... only because I experience this too... is that it's helpful to have a boundary, even if it's only yours and something internal... sort of an emotional line in the sand that no matter what I perceive (or think I perceive) about someone else's judgement of me... within myself, I do not "grant" them the "authority of defining me". Their "judgement" then becomes their own un-informed opinion... and you know what they say about opinions!
This helps me just ignore them and not feed them... I don't get upset because of their lack of acknowledgement of boundaries and their wacked belief that just because we're related, they somehow "own" me... and that gives them the right to barge right over boundaries and the moral justification to INTEND to hurt or anger me - so that they themselves, can feel powerful.
Go smash ants, mom and leave me alone.
For people who grew up voiceless I think this is more complicated it's more like finding all the fragments and also learning that it's ok to branch out and have a new voice. There is something that branches out of the hurt child voice. Also, Maybe there are aspects of voice that do not have to originate from FOO wounds. That struggle.
Some voice comes out of struggle---maybe Voice # 32 comes from a place that does not have FOO struggle.
This is absolutely one of the most helpful (and comforting) things I've read recently, Muffin. And I do believe you're on to something - you're right - about this. And it's given me the idea, that perhaps I've not understood the connection between voice and boundaries and SELF - deeply enough.
Thanks - I'm going to go see what turns up as make "tea" out of these ideas.
As I'm sitting here on a boundary island on the east coast - and hearing the waves of the ocean a mile or more away from me - I too, am wondering how long it takes Ma Nature to distribute the bad things around... how much... how strong... or if she'll neutralize things much quicker than we can imagine? Like with volcanic ash clouds... a geologic event this huge will affect everyone, in some way. Ash clouds from volcanos halfway around the world, were responsible for triggering a mini-ice age... responsible again for the year without a "summer" season that severely affected food production... and wasn't the dust bowl preceded by widespread prarie fires (like in Oklahoma now?) Where's tt? She's our historian...
Like you, Muffin... my tears come knowing that some people didn't get the warning for tsunami. I don't try to stop the tears nor feel foolish anymore - and I don't have any fear either, oddly enough. All bets are off in the face of something this huge, for me. And in some odd way - it's shifting my perspective on my own struggles. Those are still important to me - but in the greater scheme of things - not nearly as important as the needs of all those people in Japan - so many different things going on at so many different levels!! I was happy to see that the Chinese are pledging assistance; their proximity means that food, shelter, and equipment and manpower is much closer. I'm glad they were able to set aside political disagreements to help.
Maybe Hokusai's wave, was a wave of tears?
-
Did you do okay with the mother visit?
Hops
Yep, Survived it. I was angry and I couldn't hide it, mostly I was sort of taciturn.
It does ruin my day though--I'm in a funk for at least 24 hrs.
But today I'm fine working on a writing assignment.
-
Throughout the day I think of things that I want to deposit here, some sort of little insights that came to me but tonight I seem to have forgotten whatever it was.
I question the usefulness of documenting such things because I never go back and read old posts that I have written, I never have time to, life continues to move forward like an assembly line in a factory plant where one piece has two pieces added and three pieces added and then four pieces, the parts are welded together and finished.
I mean when does something ever get removed in life in a GOOD way? I ask myself.
For me, this day, I feel very busy, Miss Do-Do list has taken control and that is good and bad. I need Miss Do-Do list to function and perform like a responsible adult that shows up at the right place at the right time. I also need to remind my SELF when to tell her to go on vacation.
She needs to take a vacation sometime this week.
Remember the Artist Way Dates?
I need a SELF date. Not just a "ME" date but some other version of self.
Today the director that I'm working with handed the grant back to me to show me her changes and she kept a lot of what I had written she seemed happy so I felt relieved about that. It didn't take her very much time to clean up my version.
A few times this week I have witnessed how people that I see as having some sort of important task such as the director still put their family first in a very BIG way. It's interesting interacting with these people because I don't relate with the world with the same priority set these people do because I don't have a "family first MO"
These people do things not to fill their lives up because they don't have family.
Maybe I am not doing these things to fill my life up. I mean I know that is not the whole motivation, yet there is a part of needing meaning that I don't have otherwise. (From other areas of my life)
When I have more time, I want to write about the "Insane" term in context of AA teachings.
I think this is applicable to Nar-people but I'm reluctant to use the term "insane" because it is a "judgment" and has clinical connotations at that.
-
Today, my energy level is low, I have been noticing this lately when I'm menstrating, this didn't use to happen or maybe I wasnt pushing myself all the time. Anyways today was a slow day, I met with the housing director and did laundry, printed some papers off on a public computer and that is about it, I feel like I didn't do enough and that I am being judged every day and every hour of my life to cram as much as I can in. There is some major flaw in this, I guess for one because no matter what is happening in my life this is still my life to live out. When I run out of time on this earth, I probably will regret having lived like I'm on the bosse's time clock 24-7.
So my first grant was turned in this week (I hope). I was being emailed up to the last minute even at times when I wasn't scheduled to volunteer.
I had to question how much dedication and extra work I should put in or I want to put in, and also the reason why there is all of a sudden a demand for my time. I figured it was because the other groups were doing things at the very last minute that they could have done earlier and due to lack of organization. So I let it go and I passed it back to the paid staff and the director to deal with it since I was no longer in the office.
I had to question this a bit because I do want the opportunity but at the same time I still have other things I need to do.
Probably every thing I have to write about today is mundane. I ask myself, if I was married would I just tell that person all the boring mundane parts of my life and I don't know what the answer is at all.
In the last two days I received 4 "rejection" letters in the mail that I completely forgot I even sent applications in for. Oh well.
Yesterday I had an interview and I have another in theory next week. I'm so burnt out that I don't really give a sh*t any longer.
I'm just exhausted, I think it all catches up with me when I am menstrating I don't think it is the menstration itself.
Debating if I should go listen to music tonight, work or sleep or fix my computer. Maybe I will try to talk someone into going with me to listen to music!
-
Heard roughly expressive Tom Waits like piano blues and singing the other night. I walked in with my pockets bulging with bulk chocolates, I adore the peanut butter cups & dark chocolate covered ginger chunks ummmm, I looked like I was pregnant with chocolates, I sat down by myself and it was 100% worth it even though I often feel like I am the only "only one". I could not have imagined more perfect music for that night, the only thing that would have made it better was if I could have sat in a dark little corner by myself.
Thinking about Miss Do-Do list and how she is not the doer.
Maybe "I" should not even be the doer--oh yeah that is right I have Mr. ( ) who is the doer, I for got about him.
Well thank god for Mr. blank because I did get something done-not perfected. But done.
Miss Do-Do list & Mrs. Perfect sometimes those two aspects get on my nerves.
Even if I don't make progress, I still have to get up and do.
There is the do-er the be-er the list-er the judg-er the distraction-er.
The distractionist is sometimes considered a huge seduction in Buddhist Phil. but I really love my distractioner because I think this is the most creative character and I think distractioner is close to the be-er. That is very circular.
I have to draw cut offs and lines with Buddhism I like distractioner. This is not the TV-watcher I call that the lazy-me. or something I can't remember it's name.
I'm not convinced that the distractioner is the same thing as the seduction away from mindfulness or that mindfulness is all that great.
Mindfulness is an option but I also think there should be a willful opt out of mindfulness in favor of the passion of distraction (wears a mascarade mask).
----
I forget how insecure my life is because it is too stressful to realize that every single day and pointless.
Thinking about how I practice voicefulness and how I shoot myself down for not being perfect in that practice.
-
For some reason I thought I was going to master voicefulness, now I have realized that I'm only lucky when I find myself able to practice voicefulness if at all and that I will probably be practicing it indefinitely.
Seeing it that way also changes the way I think about what end purpose my practice leads to.
Maybe voicefulness is a daily exercise just like working out physically- I rarely feel achievement when I work out if I expect to be a comic book heroine super-woman.
------
There are some classes I will be taking as a preliminary to MAYBE get back into school. I don't personally care for the instructors personallity very much, she told me I should be thankful for anything at all, she vocalized her concerns that people use school-loans for drug money. That is fine that she has that personal concern and it's interesting that addictive personalities are that tenacious--but I'm not a substance user. I don't even take anti-depressants any longer. I take nothing except for lots of coffee with cream and sugar.
SO, I don't like this person and I don't care for the way she talked to me when I told her that the reason why I didn't completely fill out her survey was because I thought many of the questions were not applicable to me. Then she got pissy with me. These are times when I feel a bit voiceless --because there is a demand made on me that doesnt make sense to me AND she gets funded for having students in her class.
So I see her as being someone who is rude, judgemental, her degree is in something that has nothing to do with education or therapy and somehow during the class she plans to use what I think is some version of cognitive feedback.
I just have to get through the stupid class and try particularly to take in what I need to know about re-entering school and drop the rest of HER judgements and generalized ideas and opinions.
I hate it when I feel obligated to say something positive so that I don't appear to be a rebel or have interpersonal problems.
I do have a problem when an instructor demands complete compliance from students. I never learned that way, it is not selecting the authentic answer, it means giving them the answer they want to get back----and that is not good for a class like this --the classes purpose is not about wrong and right answers it is about exploring options for going back to college--And there are numerous avenues and subjects to focus on.
There were all these stupid questions on the survey about "Are you willing to change"
All I could thing was, that is a personal question and what exactly am I suppose to CHANGE.
I told the woman that I didn't feel like there was any personal thing that I needed to change really instead I just wanted to look into going back to school again and that it's been a long time since I have been in school.
She said to me "Well you must be doing something wrong and there is something that you need to change"----
SO I DON"T LIKE HER.
I feel like this sort of thing is a challege for voicefulness and that if I don't like the class it reflects poorly on me.
WHAT IF I'm UNIQUE IN SOME WAY? That makes the class a little off-topic for me.
The class is advertised as a reintroduction to getting back into school instead of a group therapy session. Personally I'm not comfortable with that because that is not what I need nor is it what I'm signing up for.
I picture in my mind being targeted as the "bad student" If I say : "I'm not ready to share that yet" or "that is personal to me and I don't wish to discuss it". And then the teacher getting pissed off.
SO I can set a boundary with the teacher? For me to be a student in my own way? Politely but without being harranged into responding in a way that goes along with her concept of me?
I don't know. It's not a regular class. They think people who have been out of school need to be brainwashed and reformed or something.
My mistake was I told her too much about myself to start off with without knowing her at all. I told her that I was in a temporary living situation.
I don't like people liberally making poorly thought out suggestions to me.
Well I don't think I can fail the class---you know what I don't need the added distraction in my life though of a person who sees themselves as having some sort of authority and insight into my life when they don't. I didn't really want this class to be a lesson in me setting boundaries- because I needed it to be a get-back-into-school class.
I find myself seeking to modify my own behaviour in off-the-subject ways just to avoid their personal style and to preserve my sense of boundary.
I have a need for boundary in this situation because I really want to target my own thinking rather then having some other person tell me that my thinking and living is wrong.
Sometimes I wonder if school is what really messes up people socially every thing is either good or bad, wrong or right.
The good and bad and wrong and right is determined by some person who is basing those judements on their own personal concepts instead of the class being about ME-finding a program that I WANT to spend my financial aid money on. It is my alotted money--it doesnt belong to any education instution yet and it does not belong to this teacher. I know she is trying to recruit people into her school but the class is not advertised that way.
I don't find her communication style to be especially helpful for me. If I bring up some area that I would like to pursue for example she will bring up cliche statements about the drawbacks of that occupation. In all the occupations I have been in the little cliche statements about the drawbacks to them didn't mean cr*p because every situation is unique.
-
Problems just happen, sometimes a person (a self) has a hand in their own problems and sometimes not, sometimes problems are inherited or just stepped in unwittingly like a pile of dung, there it is on the shoe, tagging along stuck and stinking.
In between problems and solutions there is another space and I wish I could be in that space, sometimes I can get there easy and other times carving out that inbetween space is like carving my space out of granite rock with a very dull chisel and atrophied arms-- I'm tired and I want a break, an Alice in Wonderland mini-door to crawl through and out of a maze of concepts and people and words and advice. I just want to fish in a lake or some such activity where all a person does is chill out with no agenda and no problems and no solutions and no doing and no figuring and no working on it and no getting anywhere. Maybe just float over to the other side of the lake and back or not, it doesnt matter.
In my mind I have this green or yellow or blue house depending on my mood behind the house is a scary waterfall drop or sometimes the landscape is different, I think I would like a fishing lake somewhere near to the house but I don't design the house usually it designs it'self. My fishing lake is like a kid's lake, there are lilly pads that have little lighted lamps sitting on them for the frogs to play cardgames at night. There is my boat, a small wood canoe-ish boat thing that is directed by thought or will that way I don't have to row with my emotionally atrophied arms. There are cat-tails and maybe sometimes they are like night-lamps also because really the frog's lamps are quite small. There are fish that talk with be of course therefore the idea of proper fishing is out the window. It is more like here fishy fishy come have a chat with me for a while. There are happy fish and a big man-eatting catfish BUT maybe not a woman-eatting catfish- so I won't worry about it. There is a small fishing pond that continues on into a swamp with water growing trees and through the trees to the other side is the ocean and beyond that I don't know because I really don't feel that adventurous right now. In fact I might think my canoe ashore and drive it up to the house where the lights are on- the one that has a Mr. Badger for a butler or house keeper or house owner. I'm going to sit on Mr. Badger's sofa for a while in his house by the pond and listen to an opposum sing.
Hum-Very Wind in the Willow like night I guess. That is odd.
So back to what I was saying before Wind in the Willows hi-jacked by mind...
Some of the people around this place where I am wear me out no matter how nice they seem to be and struggling with their own stuff it's like every day I go to sleep and my mattress is some quicksand hole that sinks down to a place where maybe there are ladders out and maybe it just looks like ladders that maybe go nowhere in particular. That sounds dreary. Why shouldn't it?
I can authentically say that there is dreary here in my heart and in my life without it being self-pity. It's not feeling sorry for myself it's just a fact sometimes. Going to make a cup of fresh mint tea I think.
Night-Night
-
Senior males haven't captured the market on boorish behavior.
It has been my experience that males of any age do actually account for less than 100% of observed boorishness.
mud
-
Senior males haven't captured the market on boorish behavior.
It has been my experience that males of any age do actually account for less than 100% of observed boorishness.
mud
Yawn......
-
So, I have a "room-mate" who is a recovering alcoholic whose mind is full of AA slogans and concepts that come out when she is talking all the time. At first I thought I might get annoyed by it but I've decided it's working for her and that's a good thing and even if I don't agree with all of the AA dogma there is probably some value in there. Especially when she interprets my life situations into the "12-step" process--there is a lesson in there for me of how I deal with a senario. Oddly enough the situation I told her about has nothing to do with Alcoholism it has to do with boundaries of sorts.
So the term "Insane" comes up in AA. When a person is over-taken with alcoholism and the life tasks revolve around it the person is called "Insane". On one hand this doesn't go along with some things I've learned in other schools of thought but it's appealing to be able to say my brother and his substance use is "insanity" because it takes the burden off of me. If I said that my mother's relationship with her alcoholic husband is based on insanity--then it takes the burden off of me to try to find the "normal" in their lives. When my nar-mother and her alcoholic-co-nar husband--reflect something about me to my Self --it may be a relief for me to be able to say that it's coming from "Insanity"
Insane is a label but it's a label that states an acceptance of the knowledge that something is wrong and not ok--rather then trying to peel back onion layers of disfunction--the AA people have a way to just accept that something is crazy and there is an automatic psychological boundary there to be able to say it's "insane".
Somehow saying that alcoholism or nar-codependant and co-nar life styles and thinking and behaviors are insane takes some of the perceived power out of their opinions or actions.
Too bad there is not a narcissist-anon support group.
Something that I see and do myself (happens with children of nar-people or family members of nar-people) is time spent thinking and analyzing and figuring it out as if that is going to solve anything. I think it helps so when the next event occurs I can say "Oh, I know what this is" to myself--but it doesnt stop the nar-people. Just like thinking about alcoholism doesn't stop the drinking and even when people have stopped drinking there are dry drunks.
I wish my mother would pass out in her own vomit drunk on the floor BECAUSE that would be an obvoious problem but her nar-codependant behaviours are not that easy to identify for the outside world. It has taken me a long time to figure my family out.
I still probably haven't figured it out 100% and I ask myself do I really want a PhD in my family disfunction. NO I do not.
--Instead of why?
--Maybe I will just think "because they have reached the point of insanity".
It's worth a try.
~ I have to come back to what I wrote up above about "takes the burden off of me" because there is something huge there.
(I) or we depending on who you are---get left with a burden of making sense of it all. This is like a major life-long undertaking--as if we are emotional anthropologists and scientists dusting of the smallest shards and glueing them all back together just to get a possible hint at what the heck is/was going on. That is a big old compulsive burden. Sometimes I feel OCD about my personal emotional weaknesses or lacks or empty spots ---or maybe that is not the right words.
OCD--about trying to figure it out-- but I think that in part I'm moving away from that a little--but there is still a daily cope need.
How to cope with the end result of not learning certain skills or not getting positive emotional feedback as a child.
The end result = every day how I think about me and the situations I am in and my opinion about me and even today I had an interview and I assume all the time that people don't like me. I do walk into an interview with that little piece of expectation of being disliked and maybe it doesnt have anything to do with having nar-parents.
I think I'm hesitant to shake people's hands and to say it was nice to meet you or what-ever. I am a little mousy sometimes it's hesitation.
Always a hesitation in my mind --
I'm on the fence about attending any of the AA-related support groups--I have been a listener for a large portion of my life and I don't see myself wanting to sit and listen in AA groups and I don't really want to share either in that group setting. I guess I really don't want to do it. I just want to know what the possible benefit is and I want only that and not to waste my time with the rest of it. AA people always seem so down-and-out. Put principles before personalities is one of the concepts that they use in their groups.
I just don't want to waste my time hanging out with people who are alcoholics or love alcoholics because I'm sick of alcoholics and nar-people.
I feel like I have had plenty of alcoholism and nar-people----burnt out on them.
It is the duality of community the positive and negative of it. If there is anything useful in the AA or Al-anon or ACOA meetings it is via the group somehow even if the individual personalities are a drag. I guess I have to wonder how valuable it is to me and if it's worth my time and energy.
I don't know what I would get out of an ACOA group....I'm guessing nothing. Oh well I will let my room-mate continue to talk to me about all of it untill I make up my mind. When she talks about the concepts they "click" in a very big way for me the concepts make sense.
On some level it's hard for me to accept that my personality right now has been impacted by alcoholism/nar-people in my fam.
Maybe this is really a BIG key though. The personality as it is right now.
The other BIG reason why I don't want to go is because my "room-mate" is in this group--and even though she is "nice" I sense a problem there.
Maybe it is also just too far and too late at night.
I can still study the practice if I want to for now until I find a group that fits me.
Insanity or disfunction is contagious. I think that is part of what these AA groups do is isolate the contagion as a behavior pattern.
It's contagious because my reaction to my family is just as insane as my family members are.
Bad as it is to say, I am almost glad that I have alcoholics in my family that way it gives me an excuse to attend Al-Anon or ACOA meetings if I wanted but the main reason I would go would be the nar-people not so much the alcoholism that drives me.
I think nar-people are harder to deal with over alcoholics. I'm not sure why. It's easy to see that an alcoholic is sick, it is harder to see it with a nar-person so it takes longer to figure out. I knew my brother was alcoholic for years and could tell my mother's husband was also pretty fast but to identify nar-habits in my mother was a long long time to get at.
-
I go to Buddhist classes then I come back and talk with an alcoholic and we trade ideas between us from AA/ACOA/Buddhism.
She brought up this idea that she has some sort of natural contentment. I say that there is that idea in Buddhism also called basic goodness.
Buddhism focuses on mindfulness. There is some part of that....well I want to draw some sort of association between that and narcissism.
There is almost a forgetting or laziness in unmindfulness....and I wonder how much of narcissism is a cope device or personality deformity instead of say a laziness of the spirit.
There is a concept of too much effort and the flip side of not enough effort. I can look at the nar-family and identify very obviously the behavior of not enough effort from a Buddhism observation viewpoint...and I have never looked at it that way before.
AND maybe that is where I have to leave them and draw the line in the sand is they are content with very little effort made and I should not over compensate on my end with more effort of sorts in relation to them.
I could say that as a child I needed them to make more effort and they never stepped up.
Can also look at my own life and ask deeply in ways that I don't want to see myself: "where am I not making enough effort in my life towards my Self".....Because there are areas of my life that are covered in emotions -shame and fear - that leave those issues still neglected and unresolved.
Of course I'm not sure this is the best time for me to look at them and especially I doubt the clarity of my own thinking when I am surrounded by people with poor instints I don't have healthy reflections back onto me.
Of course I can always look at my life as if I was a different person from the outside seeing me and at that point I don't think I would want to give my issues much significance.
In Buddhism the absence of struggle = happiness ?
Trying to make sense of someone that has come to the point of insanity = unhappiness... because it is an ongoing struggle with no end.
I was so resistant to use the word insane to describe family but I think it really works for me. If I call them insane I can start to let go of my responsibility to figure out why I'm so bad. Calling them insane puts the ownership back on them. I don't have to own their Narcissism or alcoholism.
I don't really get that last sentence 100% but I know it's important.
Looking at above statement I think about being an individual and individuation and the fallacy of such a thing in context of ACOA behaviors.
I feel sorry for myself as a young person trying to get therapy. There are all these new little distinctions I am all of a sudden making that I never had before.
Funny the lines that therapists try to make sometimes the areas of definition and where does one person start and another person end.
Alone in community. A community disconnected.
It's so ironic that a recovering alcoholic is the person who helped me understand the insanity of my own nar-alcoholic-family.
I feel really grateful for this recovering alcoholic. Very weird but I don't often meet people that are generous with helpful insight, I meet a lot of people that want to impose values or judgements or poor advice. I never know who I'm going to meet or even who I'm going to be on the path of life.
"The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well. The truth is, many things are worth doing only in the most slovenly, halfhearted fashion possible, and many other things are not worth doing at all." ~ Barbara Ehrenreich
http://awads.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/notmyjob.jpg
-
Enough effort:
Not too little, not too much.
So I think of looking at the experience of struggle more closely, when I struggle with something I feel a deep frustration that there are obstacles to something I wish to accomplish. So I guess to look at it more closely I would consider the obstacles and maybe try to partially get around them even a little bit if not hurtle them like a jumping horse. I can just maybe attempt to nudge them and I could fail--that might be ok. Failing at getting beyond certain obstacles. Part of the obstacles maybe my mind's insistence that there is a form or vision (thought form) that I must create to accomplish a goal. Even when a goal can be accomplished in maybe numerous ways.
Gonna check with my alcoholic oracle
Seeing that struggle and frustration (mild anger) and powerlessness and complacency and one other thing________
may be all part of a little habit of non-completion.
powerlessness and voicelessness
And powerlessness as a faulty approach to accomplishment.
-
A finer line between complacency, denial, avoidance, acceptance, appeasement, enabling, co-dependency.
It's like all of a sudden there are more rooms in the house-story of my family's alcoholism. Certainly my mother is not the person to reflect the whole story of that house nor is she the owner of that house. No body owns the house of family disfunction, it just has a life of it's own and each member of the family understands the problems based on their own vantage point.
Co-dependency--(needing another to be sick) --This reminds me of that movie Stephen King movie "Misery"....isnt that like an extreme theatrical symbol of co-dependancy. A need for the other to be sick or powerless and stuck and needy.
Sometimes I wonder why I was being alienated or on the "other side" why my mother would side with the alcoholics. I can say it's insanity when I don't want to think about it but it's also her appeasing the alcoholic that she is co-dependent with. That explanation still bothers me though because I think she makes a choice when she appeases the alcoholic.
I'm tired of focusing on them. Why do I do it? Because family is that powerful and a sick family will always be un-nerving?
So I don't have to focus on my own life? Or when I try to focus on me a thought comes up that leads back to them?
Or in order to heal me I have to understand them. OR NOT. Because understanding is only a thought.
In the end maybe I will just go for a jog, in a moment, I'm really going.
Narcissism and Alcoholism are very close together I think. In Narcissism and Alcoholism the Adult children miss out on developing certain skills that adults should have learned when they were children--no matter what the family issue is. There is a power problem, there is violence, voicelessness etc.
Narcissim and Substance abuse share a similarity of (selfishness) my mother was selfish in her ways with Narcissism and my brother selfish in his substance abuse focused life.
-
Today was the first day of volunteering with kids and lucky for me it wasn't super busy, so it was sort of fun, besides the moments when children look like they are going to jump off of an object onto the ground and hurt themselves even though I gently say that it might not be the best thing BUT they survive. I'm not a big authoritarian even though I have been called "School-teacher-lady" before by adults for some reason--I'm sure I will get better at it--and maybe it will be good for me. It was good I think. I just didn't know I was getting so deep into commitment with these programs. Then I felt exhausted when I got "home" layed down for about 6 minutes then decided to go hear some live music, woke me up.
I'm content relatively speaking. Just glad that I DID something.
Boys are really kind of scary at that age, seems like they do every thing possible to try to break their arms, everything they make and build has to be exploded and destroyed in the grandest ACDC-stuntman-volcanic explosion like way possible. I guess I didn't notice any destructive girls today, they were quietly doing projects and then not blowing them up afterwards.
So we built these "electricity machines" that hooked up to each other with tubes to electrocute people (I was not the one who made this up) and it burns your skin if you don't have special skin--but we have special skin that doesnt get burned so it was ok for us to build the machines and there is hot lava that comes out of the machines......etc. etc.
That was my day pretty much.
-
Last night someone was driven down to the emergency-room at the hospital due to her feeling numbness/tingles in her arm, she thought it was heart problems, it turned out to be a migrane symptom according to the doctor. The doctor told her that we/people try so hard to suppress their anxiety/worry/stress or what have you that it starts to manifest in our bodies in these very stange ways such as this migrane she had that was impacting her back and her arms.
I write this down to acknowledge my own stress, even if I fill my life up with other things there is still stressfulness that is not going to go away easily or immediately. It's not caused by my own thoughts, it just is what it is for now.
What to do with a stress that I can not address right now, can not avoid, can not solve? How do I manage that?
I guess every day I just check in a little bit, is there an emergency right here right now? NO. and YES.
Technically I am still in a "personal crisis" BUT I can't go around freaking out all the time!!!!
Problem is I always feel like there is impending doom. That is ongoing anxiety.
Stress has got to be related to a lack of power of certain life situations. The key is within that range of stress, to continue to attempt to survive and have some form of little solution or work around or adaptation even if it's not the whole solution to the stress and it doesnt go away 100%. At least this is what I'm telling myself.
Today I was laughing with one of the directors I was working with because she takes things so light-hearted and I get super-dooper serious. We made an initiative today. We had to address a policy or an initive specifically and since there wasnt one exactly we just made one up. I have never made an initive before I assumed that it was a serious rule that I had to follow that was listed in some long document inside a boring book somewhere written by some important person. So we started giggling while we were making up our new initiative.
-
Very tired right now. Today, I worked on some paper-mache props for a kids play-set. I haven't done anything like that since I can't remember when, and it's a lot of work. Mind is rather blank-ness at the moment even with two cups of coffee. So maybe it's nap time for me. I know that I shouldnt be playing with paper mache instead I should be doing serious job search activity I think about this and then I just say "who cares" to myself. I went to an interview on Monday and didn't hear anything back so---whatever.
I wish I could go on a little weekend trip to get away from where I am. Just for a few days. Maybe in the future that will happen and then again maybe it won't.
I remember one of my therapists from a long time ago was telling me how important play was for children and she assumed that I was not a kid that played very much, maybe she was right--so I watch the kids trying to figure out what the heck I should have learned from it all and I can't figure it out really. They spill water and then I clean it up while they are crying their eyes out like it's the end of the world. Then two seconds later they have stopped crying and are back to playing again.
So far it's pretty good, I forget to be stressed out there, the new stress is making sure the kids don't choke on something.
There is always something that could be stressful.
At least at the end of the day I feel like I did something and for right now that is good even if my imaginary judges in my mind tell me I am wasting my time and should be more serious. I need to not be serious for a while. Maybe at some point I will get to paint a whole back-drop for a stage set--that would be fun. Unfortunately I don't meet any single people there- because they are all parents. Another oh-well.
-
Filling their lives up with play-dates, yoga sessions, hair-cuts, oil changes, house remodel appointments, taking dog to the vet, trendy mood enhancing psychotropic pharmaceuticals. . I say it's easy because these people can still laugh and stop the worry when it's time to fall asleep at night, they don't really need the pills, they read about it in a magazine article so that is why they need it. They are self-important or something so that is why they go to a therapist--they are not going through a divorce or job-loss or life-loss or illness. Sometimes I wonder if these are the people that came up with that social voice of "I don't have enough time, I'm so busy, my life is crazy".
I look at daily routine lifestyles and they seem normal to me, normal and easy.
I'm not saying this very well right now, I'm wondering why some accept a simple life with emotional simplicity and other's----believe that life is very complex and always there is an emotional battle field inside. Some people face life with tremendous strain or reckless abandon--its that space between individual and the greater world that moment or space of interfacing with life. I think about some of the people around me, there is a damaging carelessness that some of them have, not so much a happy ease--but something else. Then there is my brother's emotional world--that is deeply toxic in some way. I don't know maybe people who have toxic inner-worlds can't interface with the outerworld with ease or light-heartedness.
I guess I've always wondered what was the difference between people who can feel basically safe and good vs. those who don't feel basically safe or well. Then there are people who appear to have an emotional framework that is basically happy but there is an obvious problem such as bulimia/anorexia.
I believe there are social voices---like a phrase/tag line that is said so often it becomes part of a collective mental-formation.
-
Nothing big to write about today. I'm looking forward to listening to live Jazz this week. That is pretty much it.
I now have access to a piano but I never had lessons. I have to say the individual notes out loud while I plunk.
EABCBABBBAGAAEAB ----Yeah, so what, I can't play BUT I still plunk.
I don't know, I wish I could play an instrument or at least lived with people that were a little more playful. I sing in the shower and I know that I'm stretching my "room-mates" ability to cope with my singing Ha-Ha-Ha HA. Oh, well------these people here are like pale drug-zombies half the time--OH WELL if they don't sing. I love to sing because its fun. BECAUSE ITS FUN. I have to capitalize that. It's good to do stuff just for the sake of fun. I'm allowed to have fun....that is why I sing in the shower. Smile.
Yep, thats just about it, not much to say and time to sleep.
Sometimes I wish I could just drown in music, not listen to people coughing. Hech Ech Ack Ack
Remember this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKs6Yy847nw
-
Tired, tired, tired.
Did my little music listening thing tonight, there is someone who likes the same music I guess from my Buddhist group. He said hello in the past but in a very pleasant way he asked me about me sitting alone and what I was doing--like why was I just sitting alone listening to music. I guess I could say to him that I'm trying not to kill myself. But he wouldn't really get that any more then he could get why I sit alone.
So tonight I was thinking about the idea of pushing oneself to do things like get out of the comfort zone or whatever.
Then there was a part of me that said "maybe this is just who I am, maybe it's not a concept like comfort zone".
Why shouldn't I sit alone and listen to music? Maybe I just need to look stranger odder with dark glasses like roy orbison or something and then maybe I can sit alone??
He said I should go sit closer to the muscians I said "In the mosh pit?"
I was trying to make a joke because it's jazzy music. Then he asked me if I had ever been in a mosh pit and I said yes.
Then he pointed out that for me it feels like being in a mosh pit to socialize. So much for my joke. Usually jokes are a good defense.
I smiled and shook my head yes that he had nailed the tail on the donkey/jack-ass. He said well we will have to work on that--and maybe my aversion to social groups could have been averted at a younger age but why can't I just cope with my life.
He's in my Buddhist groups. The truth is nobody can Do anything about it. I don't want to Do.
ughhhhh.....and maybe that is the point.....like in a Buddhist sort of way. For him it's not a doing its being but for me it's doing with a lot of struggle.
Socializing is a kind of play a play that gives me terror. I don't want to play with adults! Ha-Ha Ohhhh-gosh.
It's beyond me. My coping skills are strained and limited.
Stress=tired.
Not wanting to do=tired.
I don't want to try or do life anymore. I just want life to click and iif it's too hard then for me to do something-well why hasn't therapy helped. So I hate it when people say stuff like that to me except for the part that he is just really nice and he is very social so I can't be pissed at him.
Going to drink my licorice yucky tea and go to sleep.
There is someone where I live "the recovering alcoholic"-there are numerous of these but I call this one THE.
So the recovering alcoholic is very self-isolating and I was thinking something about how I thought that was annoying BUT then I experience this and then I think well am I any better or different? And yeah I'm different in someways but maybe not so many ways.
BUT still different because every person is different and really shouldnt be compared to others etc.
This is a tired ramble. Night.
tomorrow I wake up and drink black coffee--grrrrrr-- and work on stuff----grrr---------grrrrr----snore.
-
This life I'm living has changed in strange ways.
"My" "bed" is covered with "vegetables".
I was asked to sew some potatoes for a children's playset. So I have been sewing lots of potatoes out of women's nylons and stuffing with puff because that was the project. So I'm tired now, and looking inside a plastic produce bag from the grocery store that I'm using to store my organic "potatoes". They don't look like potatoes....they look like something else....you guess what....
I have worked hard all day long sewing these creative master pieces and they look worse than #2.
I'm joking, my #2's look mighty fine.
For all the time that went into making these 'erds.....they should be worth about $200.00. Maybe I should take them to the grocery store and weigh them on the fruit scale just in case.
-
Tonight, I'm too tired. Thats all there is to say.
-
Maybe choosing not to use the voice is a form of voicefulness.
I had a pretty good day, something pleasantly unexpected occured that felt like a mini-vacation.
It's really windy here (real sound) and someone has a movie on that has windy noises in it (fake wind). A little weird but it is Extra Windy here.
G Night.
-
Uh, tired again. Came here out of habit, sometimes it's just a familiar place to come back to. I have had some minor recent changes in my life that I think I am going to come here and write about but I find myself stopping short of putting it down for some reason so for now I will just leave it at that.
Made an eggplant, an (almost) asparagus and a pickle and some flowers, got some more fabric to make daffodils. Sigh....I don't know what for...just because.
I feel a bit sad today, for reasons that I don't wish to explain too much. It's like sometimes I can fool myself into believing that I can be happy but days like this a little sadness creeps in and it's more like reality is catching up with me. So I just tell myself to get through the next few days and see what happens.
I have a new roommate that has bone cancer (my feelings are not related to that).
Why does it matter that I have a room mate that has bone cancer, well, I don't know. I suppose it just goes to show that things can be going pretty well and something beyond one's control can change that. We don't have ultimate control over everything.
-
I come here again and all I feel like writing is that I'm tired & dissappointed.
It's beyond me for the moment.
I'm thinking that maybe in the future I will be able to write retroactively backwards about what is happening now or maybe not.
I look at these statements and I wonder if this is enough to be voicefulness.
Lately I have had to endure my own fakeness to others and other's blah-blah-blah and poor advice towards me. On top of that I sense that I simply don't want to explain or talk or output anything.
I've had to smile at people giving me bad input and I have had to generate BS output in these fleeting relationships that compose my so called safety network.
something is needed to avoid a complete soul implosion
but I'm taking on the alcoholic's mantra of "one day at a time" it's a pretty good idea for anyone really. Usually 50% of stuff changes by the next day anyways.
-
Had a particularly satisfying day because I discovered a hiking trail that I can get to. Yay! Crouched down on the edge of a big rock cliff and looked down and felt like a little kid. Would have been nice to have a picnic of sorts.
Got a short term job gig that allowed me enough dough to get my hair cut. It came out really different and I think I like it.
I'm tempted to say I'm tired but I think lonely and bored and discouraged and not exercising enough and doing underwhelming tasks to make some money would be a more specific description. Those things all just add up to tired though.
Walked to a stone sculpture that had some little stalactite or stalagmites forming on it from the minerals coming out of the stone.
Thought about frustrating things today, especially the conversations I have to have with people and how other people have goals for my life that are not the goals I wish to have for myself. There is discouragement communicated to someone who is in my position. I also remember that others are always in their own worlds. Then I remind myself to be true to my world-my sphere of survival-in my own orbit and on my rotation and tilt.
I discovered this today:
If thou of fortune be bereft, And in thy store there be but left Two loaves — sell one, and with the dole Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul. — James T. White
It was a very good day but hard, I envisioned my heart being propped with toothpicks in the same way a person props up an avocado seed to get it to grow. Its pretty much emotional control and I know the consequences are there in the future. I propped myself up against that stone sculpture thing and looked around at some beautiful scenery and I know I need to cry, that I just need to be allowed to feel the way I do.
I fake it really hard. Cheerful like a Brady bunch marionette. I have to fake it the alternative maybe is death?
I have roommates that stay in slippers all day long and don't brush their greasy cow-licked hair and it gets to me. I think I use to be like that sort of.
-
So tired, spent wkend planting beans and squash and sunflowers and peas and smooshing garden grubs into a gross mess.
-
Awkward communication about not meeting my mother on Easter. I'm so tired the last email I almost sent her and didn't actually send sounds like a "breakup" note from people who date each other.
It's not really that pleasant any more.....we don't really want to see each other.....it has become an obligation....
I'm drinking chamomile tea and trying to mentally process the day, I feel like I need to follow up with stuff and people and situations but I'm getting so overwhelmed that I'm starting to ask myself what if I don't do it right now, what will happen if I don't get involved in that situation and converse etc. Things kind of work themselves out sometimes. There are just so many changes happening and so many personalities that I can't possibly manage or controll it all. It's out of control.
I have been practicing more "nos".
Nos to others and nos to myself.
-
I got in a fight today, only a verbal confrontation. It was interesting there was a witness and a mediator that stepped in.
The other person approached me and is a self appointed coordinator of sorts. I did not know this, I had been told that the coordinator was a different person (the person I was working with).
Apparently the person who got in the verbal fight with me doesn't get along with the other coordinator either.
Anyways. It was interesting and arresting the rest of my day I didn't feel like doing the busy-bee check list thing after the fight.
The fight felt a little good and a little bad. And maybe it's good to be bad sometimes.
I'm very thankful I had a witness.
There was a previous strained relationship history going on between the coordinators that I didn't know anything about but it set one of them off.
-
So, in my unchosen circle of acquaintances there is an alcoholic woman who has talked to me quite a bit about her personal issues.
Her explanation of her personal issues included the fact that she wanted to leave her FOO so bad that she went right into another relationship with a man that took care of her but was abusive and she QUOTE "had a family to get away from her parents".
She had children because it was a device for her own survival. Her husband was then somehow obligated to support her because of the children.
In this conversation something solidified even more for me about my own mother and me. I was one of these types of children who are a device for the mother's survival. An old friend of mine whose parents were heroine addicts called herself a meal-ticket baby.
Somehow hearing it described from a person outside of my FOO made it more real. In the bigger world that breathes and exists despite my N-mother and FOO--there are other people who have had similar experiences.
It took me a very long time to figure this out. Maybe I feel stupid (hard on myself) or deeply betrayed that I lived for so long not knowing what her intentions were.
In a very deep way I don't think it's just chance that now my mother is remarried she is treating me much worse then she did in the past I think the remarriage signifies to her the stage of her life where I was a meal ticket has gone by and now she doesn't perceive me as useful any longer.
I am very worthless to her. And I can write that and think that without feeling my heart crunch in for once in my life, she is also mattering less and less to me.
-
I need to vent a little.
I'm around a lot of recovering and slipping alcoholics and histrionics and adult women who are parents and whine and cry and ohhhhh I can't, ohhhhhh my knee hurts, ohhhhhh...
I can't hear myself think sometimes because one woman talks incessantly and I'm not exaggerating.
I'm I instigating voicelessness for wishing she would SHUT UP!!!
OR am I a little voiceless because I have a desire for some peace but choose not to say so because she will get upset.
I mean there is only so much an assertiveness class can do for a person.
It's just rude for people to share too much to bystanders just because they are there.
There was also someone who passed out in the kitchen today with her pants on backwards and then an empty Vodka bottle was found in the bathroom garbage. So.....I'm just venting that is all.
I guess the relevant part related to Voicefullness or Voicelessness is I don't want to have a conflict by pointing out that it would be nice to have a little more quiet after 5 continuous hours of her blabbing--could she take a break? Sounds reasonable.
I was here because I decided to try making some homemade chili--not one of my best dishes it comes out bland.
I don't know, I put fresh roasted peppers and roasted tomatoes and cumin and chili and cinnamon and chocolate, black beans onion, little garlic.
The only thing I can really do is avoidance right now. I wanted to sit down with all my paperwork and get some stuff straightened out but I just couldn't concentrate. Of course I could haul all of my papers somewhere else. That is probably what I will end up doing I guess. Problem solved.
Great the drunk just walked by mumbling at the other one who found her Vodka bottle.
I feel like a little quiet mouse just wanting off of the ship of fools.
Too much TOO much community!!!!!! I want to be alone!!! OR just away from certain people.
Ha
-
I'm tired.
Last night histrionic or compulsively manipulative air-talker. What ever she is....was up at midnightish crying and babbling incoherent nonsense to herself. "recovering" in theory drug addict and alcoholic--GO FIGURE--they always find a way of manipulating the people around them.
She talks so much that she can't even stop talking in the middle of the night she has to talk to herself. Plus she is talking about wanting to kill people in the middle of the night. --How is that not disruptive to the peace of everyone around her?
Somehow this personality type has an impact on all those around her. I cant stand the cr@zy B*tch.
I think 75% of these people are still on drugs even though the ones that are here are suppose to be in recovery.
So I'm reminded that some of the people I have to share time and space with have psychiatric problems that are more severe then seems at first sight. Since there is nobody here who is actually a psychiatrist to evaluate these people better it's rather volatile.
I don't really care if they pass out in their own little corner or cry, the thing is I just don't want to be wrangled into it and simple because I exist I do get wrangled into it as soon as people start talking to me even if I don't respond. That is enough to constitute a conversation and a "relationship" of strange sorts.
I wish I could aim an African safari animal style tranquiler dart at them.
Someone told me I would be a good social worker the other day....Ha...There is no way in heck I would EVER want to do that.
I can't stand how needy and immature some people are and they just piss me off.
"Child protective services hates you? Oh really....um and maybe I do too!!"
Ok, so I'm looking forward to a better week next week or a better month next month or maybe a better year next year.
Maybe I will write down some goals you know.
I feel out of place. About 80% or more of the people who end up where I am are substance abuse users with associated psychiatric illnesses....in some ways that is the worst company I could have because that is pretty much my FOO that I'm overtime distancing myself from.
Maybe it's therapeutic, maybe it's god's way of making sure I understand what it means for me to (FOCUS ON ME & TAKE CARE OF ME & PUT ME FIRST). That is a pretty good place for me to start with my goals that I'm reluctant to write down because its only words...but I will work on it.
Off do to something constructive for me and LIMIT the time I spend focused on others who are inconsiderate enough to let their crazy loose for everyone else to deal with.
-
I'm looking at my last post and how pissed I was getting.
I feel much calmer at the moment though--but looking at the last post I can see this person was really pushing my buttons.
I think it's because she literally talked nonstop for at least 6 hours+.
I should have been paid a therapists wage just for being in ear shot of this person. I won't repeat it here I can't even stand it.
Looking back at my last post it seems sort of harsh maybe. There is some sort of steel armor I have been building up against alcoholics my whole life.
I shouldn't write this is sounds "immature"
The thing is life has taught me that I am not very valuable to any body in the end when things shake out.
So I figure in a callus way I don't owe compassion to any person (some days)
Isn't that a dark place.
But looking at my last prior post it kind of looks like I wasn't in my right mind either.
That's some really toxic toxic stuff.
Geeze I'm reading my lasts posts and I'm seeing how emotionally hard I have become as a person.
I don't know that I want to be perceived that way by others or that I want to live in the world that way IF I was living in the world with people that I cared about I might be a difficult person for them. That is a what if.
Emotional survival is hard and weird whatever that is. I do believe that me being an emotionally hardened person is also what saves me from drowning in this world.
I feel like being a callus person relates to me being focused rather then distracted. ???
Of course it's my mother who has told me I'm cold and callus. There are people I just can't tolerate being soft around...because maybe its an affront against my soul?
Anyways I'm tired this is a pointless ramble. I was just surprised at how irritable I became and its reflected in what I wrote.
I really am an irritable person right now. How weird is that?
-
Today, I got three things done that I really needed to do. yay. Miss Do-Do list is still not content. That is why there is Miss Give Her Credit.
I feel worried.
I feel like cooking stuff.
I probably need Mr. Chop Wood Carry Water right now.
And Mr & Miss Executive Director Decision Makers.
-
Right now, I have change and transition and instability fatigue.
Unless I'm coming down with an illness.
It could be anything really.
All I know is that I'm depleted.
When I get this way I also get negative tend to focus on what is wrong with everything.
Good news is that the woman who passed out in the kitchen was kicked out. yay
She also threw her cigarette stubs on the carpet and left behind rotten food for someone else to clean up.
It's true, the stereotype about trashy people not taking care of anything, it's not just because they are poor and cant afford to, it's because they are trash and the world is just a big piece of cr@p to them.
I'm not allowed to say it but there, I did!
-
Yay!!!!!!
The stuff I was writing, well, guess what---It has been funded for both projects. Yay!!!!!!!! Yay!!!!!
I ate three pieces of pizza too many (don't think I've ever eatten that much pizza in my life) and a beer.
Chatted with a handfull of people behind the scenes that I have been volunteering with and it felt really really really good.
Tonight I have a feeling of satisfaction.
-
Somebody wants sugar. There is no sugar. The person is looking in cupboards climbing on chairs on top of refrigerators to find sugar to put in their coffee.
I think to myself well, I have a lot of too-sweet granola bars. I think about offering one to the person to eat with their coffee.
I think about it multiple times and I have to stop myself from the compulsion to help.
I realize that the sugar seeker is not helping me in little ways like this. I realize that I actually went through a considerable amount of effort to acquire the granola bar resource...ha..ha.
It's an insignificant example with no consequences either way if I choose to share or not to share. But my point is I'm so compelled to do this sort of thing for other people that it's like a knee jerk reaction. I feel responsible somehow. And I'm just not. And it's appeasing to. Feel responsible for making the people around me happy. When if they had planned a little better themselves they would have some granola bars to eat with their coffee. Or maybe they have some but it never occurred to them to use it in place of puting sugar in the liquid...eating something sweet is just as good as puting into the coffee itself.
Little things that I know that help me get along in life without feeling deprived. It's not my responsibility to figure out stuff like this for other people. Stupid simple stuff. Like the people who complain there is no room in the refrigerator are the same people that have three half used milk cartons in there and big bottles of unopened stuff that doesn't need to be refrigerated.
No, I'm not rescuing others in big ways or little ways from their own ignorance especially since the ignorance also takes the form of inconsideration.
Leting it go.
Only point is I noticed my IMPULSE to appease and make things better for those around me even when they do nothing to contribute to my well-being and are not even friends. This is a very good place for me to practice NOT doing these things.
-
Not so much a need for emotional caring because I DID survive without that and I think maybe in the long run it made me stronger but her neglectful decision making style had results that lived on with me still to this day.
The things she was doing for me was a "show of interest" not authentic interest.
My mother has a consciousness style of "Is anybody there" "yoo-hoo anybody home"
Disassociation where her body is there but she doesn't ever connect even if she is talking and doing stuff she is out of reach.
She is not very self-reflective and her motivations for any "positive" relations comes from other people's prompting rather then her own desire to have a good relationship with family.
Her husband is a resource for her. She is a female who lives like a leach off of men to have a better lifestyle but she doesn't seem to grow a deeper relationship...but maybe that's just my imagination making stuff up. Maybe that is all any male and female does. The men that she ends up with seem pretty one-dimensional as well.
The inability to have an honest conversation because her DENIAL is HUGE.
My mother was never able to be a protector as a parent.
My mother was never able to be a friend.
My mother was never able to put in thoughtfulness when it was imperative like in medical decisions when I was a kid.
My mother reflected back to me that I was not valuable.
When my mother was married to my father I was just a bargaining token.
I didn't have proper shoes in winter, I wore sandals sometimes and lightweight clothes even when it was too cold.
I never had nice things but I didn't know any better, AND we always had cable television.
She likes to watch a lot of TV.
She was never proud of me, she never once said that she was.
She likes to start verbal arguments--and they are not rational arguments so there is no way to resolve them.
Disruption Chaos
One time I didn't talk to her for about six months or so, then she went to a counselor, she was nice to me for about 2.5 weeks that was interesting and strange....it only proves that she is capable of being nicer. Then she just lapsed back to her regular psycho-b!tch self. She only went to the couselor because my grandmother no doubt asked her why we aren't speaking. I didn't trust it, but it felt a lot better for that 2.5 weeks.
My mother has never had a real discussion with me that goes back and forth. She can only manage stupid questions that usually involve how much did you pay for that piece of tissue paper?
I'm at the point personally though that I'm uncovering so many personal challenges for myself related to voicelessness that have nothing to do with my mother's current actions. So I'm focusing more and more on me and trying to work on myself, and that feels like the right place to be.
I just don't give a cr@p anymore about her because she never gave a cr@p about me.
Sabotage....
She wasn't capable of teaching me how to ride a bike...that one really sticks out to me it's the example of everything else.
I felt like a failure.
Someone else taught me how to ride a bike, a friend of the family woman, took her about 10 minutes and she purchased a used bike from a garage sale. Just a different energy allowed me to be successful.
To put it very simply, the woman who taught me how to ride a bike LIKED me.
My mother does not like me. Plain and simple. I don't feel the need anymore to figure out the reason why. I just accept it on some level.
It's an imperfect world with a lot of screwed up people...some of them have children....and some of those children are us.
-
Please god just help me to LET MYSELF BE today.
-
Where is the DO KNOW?
The do know is like the difference between taking care of an injury or pushing forward when unnecessary.
The DO KNOW is the taking care........THE MIND overtaking and over running is the rushing onward in spite of the SELF.
-
communication style write more here about this later.
-
In one of the classes I take there is an old guy (old enough to be a grandparent) and I believe he is a psychiatrist by profession.
The same person that pointed out that I sit by myself at musical performances.
Last week when we were simultaneously at a music performance that we both frequent, he sat next to me and pointed out to me that I was sitting closer to the band this night. I replied something about how it was because there were fewer people there and it was easier to get a close seat because people are not scouting for empty chairs constantly.
He said something like ..."so you feel more comfortable when there is more space around you".. So he verbally doing some sort of cognitive feedback to me even though I'm not one of his clients.
To me this is a little weird and sort of even feels like a boundary violation because the therapist/patient relationship as far as I see it is one where there is clear authority and lack of authority. The psychiatrist is the expert who is going to "fix or change" the client and is giving that service in exchange for money. The patient has decided to go make themselves more vulnerable or impressionable than usual and pay for a service in exchange for an enhanced quality of life...all this in theory is how I see it.
So when this person who really is quite pleasant not exactly unpleasant....is talking to me in a way that is like therapy....I feel strange.
The excuse I would make up for him is that he is so use to therapazing people that when he sees an opportunity to therapize outside of his office he absent-mindedly is still in the therapist role instead of changing into a civilian role? I don't know. But if I looked for the DO KNOW that doesn't sound quite right to me.
Further more when we were at the concert he kept on touching my leg to get my attention when he would want to say something to me about the musicians. I mean it's loud there....but I still think it's sort of....like he shouldn't be doing that unless he's picking up on someone.
I don't know, last thing I wanted was for a psychiatrist to try to pick up on me if that is it......I mean I could try to talk myself out of that. And you all allready know how I feel about old men.
So the last time I had a class, he sat next to me in the class because it was the only empty chair left, and he leaned over and said hello to me and I thought it was just a little too friendly the way he said hello.
So I just introverted for the rest of the class.
I'm a little perturbed by the whole thing because I'm not signed up for therapy and my social skills or self-isolating is a sore-area for me sometimes.
Yes, It's a character flaw I have....I'm a social isolater....and he has made a point of pointing it out...and I'm not sure that is fair game to do so.
I am at a stage in life where there are some things I will work on personally and some things that I have accepted about by so-called weaknesses or flaws or whatever. I'm not a social mosh-pit person where there are a lot of loud chatting voices that is not a place where I'm going to run towards just to me in the fray. THATS me....and that is a DO KNOW.....I'm decided on keeping some of my flaws because I have used them and have a whole system of coping styles all related to the fact that I am NOT a PEOPLE person and do not wish to be. I only decide to take in community in small amounts and I'm currently taking in much more togetherness and collaboration and contribution and working with others than I have in a very long time and that is my baby step.
Yeah, I'm a party hater. I feel uncomfortable when I'm suppose to make up small talk with people I don't know. A partier WOULD NEVER GET IT.
....AND SO WHAT......this is the DO KNOW of who I AM....I'm not a big party person.....I'm SOOO not a social butterfly....
I feel uncomfortable when someone points out my aloneness. I struggle with coping with my aloneness without having someone put a spotlight onto it.
BUT he is a good example why I prefer keeping to myself....interactions with humans are just plain weird and often uncomfortable for me.
I don't want men doing pick-up techniques on me. I don't want them giving verbal cues to me, don't want them touching me.
Maybe I should call him on it. Just to be the difficult non-patient that I am.
Maybe he is trying to drum-up business for himself -getting new clients to pay mo'money.
Does it even matter?
Okay, I vented.
-
I don't think there is innocent touching ever between men and women. EVER.
I think men are ALWAYS accutely aware of if they can touch a female or if there is another man that is going to bash their head in if they do so.
-
I already had a guy-"friend" who wanted to mix-up his psychology skills gleaned from his college career as a psychology major and his pick up artists skills on me....just so I could be some sort of social experiment for him...
Needless to say he didn't get too far with me.
From my perspective these people are moral-less to the extreme.
-
I would say denial but that's not accurate A LOT of people DO denial.
Maybe DENIAL is the most irritating thing that really confused me as a child. The authority figure would say that my perceptions were wrong or that something never happened when it did. Topsy turvy....hard to grasp a reality....and that would be another defining point of instability not just the instability of place...but he instability of mind not in an unsane way...but in the way of a CONFLICTED MIND with issues trusting one's own perceptions IN RELATIONSHIP to other people....but not to the world as a whole (hopefully).
Nar-mother chooses unkindness, she is capable of "empathy" not something I value all that much but she is just mean... and the world has these people, there is an evil villain in every kid's story.....and some would say we should not "evil-villian-ize" people...but why not if the shoe fits...
-
The right to do less than I am capable of.
Today I practiced exercising this right. As I was walking in the rain with a broken toe, I decided to complete that one errand and blow-off another task I had committed myself to doing that isn't even something that I'm fully invested in.
(The person who generated the project won't even be participating in it.....Uh-huh that's right)
Sometimes it's not good to give others 200-300% while giving ourselves 30%.
This day will pass and it will be a day where I did some things but not every single thing. AND I can live with that.
-
Remembering the wrongs and the reminding to self of the harms. Not even about holding bitterness.
To take everyday afresh is to not be reliving. To forget essential lessons like don't cross the street in front of a speeding truck is stupid. Forgetting and forgiving is also stupid.
-
Too much thinking happens sometimes. Too much process not even just what I write on the board, although I think it's constructive at times. Sometimes I need a rest from the whole world. Most of the conversations that I have, maybe not at all moments, but most have motives, and that is just the truth of life, we all have motives, the thing is I'm tired of emotionally accommodating other's conversations to me, about me. Like when I have to check in with a counselor type person.
I think the big thing for me the past few days is that I haven't been scurrying around like I usually do, and it's hard for me not to do this, I guess I believe that my scurry-ability is a strength of mine.
I feel like as long as I keep going, I'm going to outrun life before it catches up with me, like running from a tidal wave or something, just on the edge, but it's an activity that doesn't always have the results I would like it to have.....and I'm grasping for something here about the planning of life.
I'm facing this idea that is put on me that if only I had a good enough plan and enough talent and tried hard enough....that would be the solution.....but I've been around long enough to know that trying hard is not always the solution, and failure is not always due to lack of responsibility or effort.
This is part of the question of the DO KNOW....sometimes the answers are radically different for each person probably.
Every day I am facing more than one question and looking at/playing with or hating the answers I come up with to those questions.
The main big question I continue to be pressured to answer is how am I going to make a success of myself and with no nurturing of this process, no watering, no proper soil.
I've been looking into classes as an option in theory and all I feel is stressed out and PRESSURED to make decisions that are commitments of my TIME and MONEY.
Just the other day a student counselor for a dental hygienist program pretty much said that people have to have their life in order before they can get through that program.
The stupid counselor I'm talking to says I should take class to get my life in order.
--these types of conflicting statements make me feel uncomfortable and stressed out.
I just feel squeezed and like somehow I fall through the cracks......I just am not sure where is the right time and place and activity for me. I feel like I'm a different type of plant in the wrong green house, like a strawberry on a corn field, like an orchid under the wrong kind of light, I will keep on exploring.
Maybe the decisions one makes in life don't often feel 100% right. I'm just tired of making choices based on crisis or pressure or...I don't know I would like to make some choices that feel really good to me, like I can be fully invested in what I'm doing and believe in it.
--Back to I will keep exploring and maybe give the above a break, there is a certain feeling tone to this particular struggle I have, I have had this struggle before and I think it would be best if I just look at the whole thing from a very different perspective for once.
"THIS IS NOT FOR ME"
This is a message I may get. I have had at times the message "THIS IS WHERE I BELONG"....but haven't always been able to act on that.
Can I make the kind of decisions I need to make for myself based on this sort of gut -feeling or reasoning....
I've been a student before it's not like it's anything new, I just don't feel RIGHT about trying to do this right now.
There has never been a RIGHT time for me though.
The right time for me would be in theory a time where there is not a GREAT RISK...
Or that there is a greater chance of success than failure...having to stop in mid-process and change direction again and again....
-
I said yes to a volunteer event that I should have said NO for, I didn't think it through, and when I say Yes usually more interesting things end up happening, this time though I'm annoyed that the originator of the idea is going to devote no time working on this project ( an idea that I think has a pointless outcome ).....Whatever.
It's going to be another one of those "Doing less than I am Capable Of" Experiences....the flip side is I could be capable of more....but again where are the other people who all want to take credit for this project....where are their capable hands? So I just do my little part---as befits me and not make my part larger then life....I'm just one working for nothing volunteer...on a project that my heart is not into....well actually it pisses me off a little. Geesh....just another thing to get through. I can DO IT.
I burden myself with believing I have a lot of responsibility even when I don't. The other areas of my life need to be nurtured also.
Really I should look at it this way, this is a lame gig, the director should be happy to have anyone doing it because she really just needs it to happen, and I'm going to be there all night interfacing with people in theory.....that in its self is a big STRETCH for my personality.
I have blue ink under my nails. I seem like a flake (I think). And I'm distracted.
The Do- Know is telling me to keep doing constructive things even if I don't get paid for them or the outcome is yet to be seen or if I am cynical...the Do-Know tells me to keep on....communicating and living the best I can.
The Do-know....
Oh hey, My beans "for the community"....so one bean per person....get yer knife and fork....well they popped up this morning!!!!!
YAY.....
The most blessed event that happened to me all day was seeing the little bean plants coming up through the dirt.
Then I got to tell a bible thumper who was trying to start a conversation with me while I was having a conversation with my N-mother via my phone--- to sort of tell her what I thought.
(Gosh that's a big toss up....who do I talk with... Nar-mother or Religious Fanatic :))
I had to tell her three times "I'm on the phone and having a conversation".. then I said "Good bye" to her face.....before she would go away and she was trying to shove literature into my hand but I wouldn't grab it....then when I got off the phone she came up to me again and was still trying to give me the religious brochures.... I told her that I thought she was being rude, I told her that I was having an important conversation...
She told me that her brochure was very important too.....I said "it's not important to me, maybe it is to you".... I got that last part from a therapist I'm certain somehow that last bit came from therapy somehow.
I would describe these people as having an internal dialogue about their religious beliefs that is so pervasive and overpowering that they can not hear other people at all. I could see it in her face that no matter what I said she had an internal come-back to my every NO. Oh well.
NO, NO, No, NO, NO....IS a GREAT word .
Anyways, it was my weird moment of the day of practicing voicefulness, I told her how I felt, that it was rude for her to interupt me and try to stick stuff in my hands. I still felt uncomfortable having that conversation....I started to feel like the people around us were starting to pay attention even though both of our voices were still normal talking voice I guess I was obviously uncomfortable with her...because she wasn't going to take "NO to her religious group" for an answer. But I still said NO and I didn't take her paper.
It's really little things that are assertiveness experiences...weird but telling an aggressive bible thumping woman "NO" is enough to make my heart race..and that's a pretty mild "conflict" really.
Think the hard thing about the assertiveness is not just the words that are spoken but it's the physical sensations that go along with having to say NO or to express displeasure to someone. Because no-one is ever going to be receptive to negative feedback...or displeasure...
-
Last evening I was thinking something about Voicelessness & Emotional Survival and what these things even mean to me if anything.
Voicelessness as a concept is easier for me to grasp in a functional way compared to Emotional Survival, the Emotional survival part is something that sounds more like nonsense in a way. Maybe because there is nobody really that I share my emotions with in 3-D that cares about my life.
I can be an active listener to some strangers story and every thing they want to tell me about something, when they in turn ask me a question they listen for about two seconds to me and then they get distracted doing something else.
Obviously these people want to talk and be heard but rarely does anyone really want to know about other's or care. Only to the degree that it's self-serving are humans interested in other humans.
Doesn't that leave me with my own emotions being a private and internal affair with myself....that is how I have always seen it.
Today, I don't even know what my emotions are, my back is sore I know that, my neck is stiff....
I'm worried....it's a kind of anxiety that I sort of suppress because I would be flipping out if I was to be fully into my emotions.
Survival sometimes depends on not acting on emotions. Survival also isn't enough.
I'm tired of just surviving. I could be in a car-crash-induced coma and that is technically surviving if my heart is still beating, but who is going to pay attention to my beating heart if my complaining mouth is paralyzed and can't speak and even if it could who would care.
"Who Cares".....is a comment that I heard a lot from one of my old co-workers and is sort of stuck with me.
If some people have a space that is filled with love by other's....there are some people like myself who have a space that has to be filled with "love" for myself---by ME.
So I think some people fill this space with television and food and stuff.
I fill my space with writing, and crafty stuff sometimes and food sometimes and maybe thinking that results in nothing.
What if I only allowed myself to think about essential things for one day or one week or one hour.
Back to the question "Where is the Do Know".......always taking the mystical route...asking self questions.
The Do Know is related to a confidence that the SELF has or does not have. A confidence about being OK in the world, have space and a place even if the scenery in the window passes by. The DO-KNOW is not the scenery. Its in the car passing through the scenery.
I've had way too much scenery lately.
-
I was doing very good with acting like I was not-depressed. Keeping myself busy with all sorts of stuff.
Now that I have been reeling myself back in a little bit and doing less because of my foot...I have been sleeping more...and I don't want this to be the start of another depression-episode thing.
Sometimes I just don't know what to focus on in life anymore. I'm sort of dumbfounded with where life has taken me....and the things that went wrong along the way were not all a result of me just deciding to walk down the wrong road.
The whole FOO problems is a wrong road to start out on.
The other day I was volunteering with the kid's program and I watched a father playing with his two kids, he was shaking a wet tree so the water would fall on the kids as if it was raining....and I guess this was great fun for them, he was walking down an alley with the kids between puddles and showing his son some weird way of walking sideways....and I guess this was great fun also.
I have a hard time watching these things a little, I guess they make me sad, it's not only a sadness for an event or a loss of the past but it's present also. I think that's something that some people don't get the past is not always the past. Sometimes the present is the past as much as it always has been.
-
So, again I am suppose to meet with my mother (missed/avoided her on Easter).
Maybe I should ask her if one hour is enough time. Make it short. Well, I don't have to ask her I can just have that as my personal goal. AND then afterwards to celebrate that she is gone I will go get one of the very best cupcakes that ever existed on the face of the planet all by myself. AND since it's her stupid Birthday, I found a used scarf that I will offer to her, that is the best I can do, afterall I'm busy and poor person eh hem sound familiar ma? She has given me broken used junk for my birthday before so I can do the same for her...problem solved. Life is so much easier for Narcissists since they never really work too hard to make other people happy....if I work as least as little as she does it helps me out a lot.
On a totally different note I'm starting to wonder to myself if volunteer has really filled any gap in my life.
I can honestly say that IT IS NOT ENOUGH.
That would be the DO KNOW speaking a little the DO KNOW says NO it's not enough it is just another branch on the tree but not the trunk of the tree.
I like volunteering sometimes but I'm not fullfilling the important things in my life that are MY LIFE by doing it. That's just the truth of the matter.
I don't know if I can really DO more though. I just don't know how much I can push myself to do, I think I will make myself miserable in failed attempts to fix me. HOW CAN I BE ME PERFECTLY JUST THE way I am, if I am living such so far off course from who and what I wanted to be?
Cup of tea, take a breather and pray again. ? Futile
-
Not optomistic tonight. Dark and horrible really is what I see as clear-seeing of life.
Sometimes I wonder if I might be finished with writing about Narcissism or whatever my mother's un-love stems from.
Also wonder if I have done all the introspecting and research paper reading I can stand to do on that subject.
No matter how well I think I could understand one problem in my life I can't change it so why bother understanding it I don't care. I care more about "healing" any damage if that is at all possible and tonight at least I believe that I can not.
Plus Nar-mom is only the tip of the iceberg that is chunking off ice cube trails through life.
I was reading some advice a writing teacher gives to student writers and it was to "Stay with the Difficult".
But for how long, and why not "Break off from the difficult" if there will never ever be any resolution there is only the possibility of rekindling greif, stoking the flames of self-punishment like cutting oneself or picking the same scab, I mean other's will pick our scabs no? So why do it to one's self sometimes I ask. Somehow "staying with the difficult" is voyeuristically fine for the reader but NOT GREAT in just trying to get through one day to the next.
My fear is I spend my whole life trying to get through one day to the next until all my days are used up...then some cruel fairy comes down on a spider web and says I didn't use my days wisely....there is just absolutely NO WISDOM for some problems.
Anyways this is the funk I'm in tonight.
I would like to find something to dissappear into. A job a task that I can close the door behind me for years and years and never "interact" or whatever (THIS) is called.
I don't even know if the concept of voice matters to me anymore. I just don't know tonight.
What I do know. Is that when I ask real questions like "Where is the DO-KNOW"? I do get answers and they are very very hard to hear and see. I don't want to look at the real answers because they sometimes are not warm and freindly and optomistic.
I think I have been in self deception with false optimisim sometimes.
-
Came across a story yesterday about a woman with some social acceptance struggles etc. I was researching a personal issue of mine and then happened along this, I thought okay maybe I identify with her a bit. Then when I tried to find out more information I discovered that she died of a drug overdose. Go figure. So that added a little bit to the funk that I'm in today.
There are some things I have figured out/decided that will never be whole or healed about myself, typically I don't focus on them, maybe that is denial or avoidance but it's also just trying to exist on planet earth.....well....some times this stuff gets scratched up out of the dirt I tried to bury myself into...and there it is...and then my emotional state is like the sky has turned black from volcanic ash for days, there is a haze in my personal internal landscape even if I don't try to expose it too much to the world. I got up and went to get some coffee this morning to get away from chronic-crisis-creators, I knitted some, made a too-do list for the priorities to work on this afternoon. Got some packaged food that I don't have to cook, and decided why I don't I try to make life easier on myself sometimes, ate it and felt like crying a little bit but also knowing that sometimes extended life long grieving is just a huge burden, or thinking a few weeks from now this will have passed and I will have sent the problem back down into the lava pit from whence it came to be covered again with more layers of dirt.
Some times can one do more than to hide certain issues to oneself, painful, singularly personal issues?
I'm tired of pretending to be strong sometimes. Sometimes I just want to be flawed and hurt and broken because it's a lot of work to pretend like I am not a broken person sometimes.
I have support group class thingy that I'm suppose to go to about getting back into school or something-where I fill out endless interest surveys etc. I'm thinking about ditching the next class because I just don't feel up to it emotionally AND the instructor is not careful sometimes to gracefully just sit on the sidelines and half participate.
Sometimes I feel like my comfort level/energy level is half-participation. The instructor is not a therapist and doesn't really have the right to persist past peoples comfort levels with her proding. Thats it I'm not going. My little heart of dark-sky horizon wants a quiet place and a private place to live out it's grieving moments......AND maybe it is self-care to say NO sometimes to others, and NO to social groups. I don't like social grieving and patting on the back in public...there is nothing healing about that as far as I'm concerned. I'm allowed to be a dark horse on a black ash volcanic island far-way sometimes. I don't have to let ignorant classmates say dumb stuff to me if I'm having a bad day.
I feel so much better that I decided that I don't have to interact with them today, the dumb survey assignment stuff and "Self-Esteem" cr@p is just so off the mark with me, on another planet.
And that's okay, I'm okay to be on my own unique path in life, I don't have to make it fit anybody elses....today.
Okay so now back to my personal to-do list.
-
Layed down for a moment just to catch my breath and ended up falling asleep, a nice nap in the sunshine. For a moment as I woke fully my mind had stopped thinking, stopped worring, it was a quiet mind moment with sunlight on my cheek on some pink cloth and I was cozy and wondered if I could decide at that momet to do EVERYTHING DIFFERENTLY as new-agers suggest it's all a matter of what (I) think. Didn't last very long though.
I did a small amount of organizing.
I thought about what I am suppose to give my mother for her birthday about 3-4 times today.
I thought about how my truth is that right now I feel valueless to others. I mean I somewhat believe in me just for ME's sake. Like art just for art's sake.
Me just for ME's sake is very very different than the self-esteem exercizes related to career and education choice that they are trying to get me to do in that stupid class that I ditched.
-
Me just for Me's Sake /You just for you's Sake /Art just for Art's Sake
If you are a work of art with a value that is extraordinarily impossible to estimate because of your intrinsic uniqueness...what would you say about yourself? What would your artists statement (The informative text next to an art piece) say? What would the highlights and the shadows and the out-of-focus areas, the muted tones and the bold shapes all together in composition say about you?
Certainly no person is a blank canvas or an uncarved totem pole.
If I was a piece of art...
I think I would have a lot of little unfinished sections, some areas with ZIG ZAGS for stress.
I would want to have a light effect with shadows that move like the way a shadow gets tall or short while the sun is moving across the sky.
But honestly I just see a heap of junk-sculpture thing with random stuff sticking out of it.
It's pretty hard to sum up the whole of a peson's life experience or personality, I don't think I like the idea of me being summarized or symbolized, I want to always have an unknown part of my life for possibility-whatever shape that takes, even if it's not the possibility that I would hope for. I think I depend on the unknowns- believing that somewhere in the unknown in still something that will redeem me.
I'm a white earthen clay junk sculpture with random stuff sticking out of it with unfinished sectioned areas, I sit in a sandy area maybe a desert. Some areas with doors and keys and windows. There are some overlaying metallic ZIG ZAGS for stress and the sharp angles of life. There is some water symbol in there also for the few graceful moments there have been if any. I would want to have a light effect with dark shadows that move like the way a shadow gets tall or short while the sun is moving across the sky.
-
Well I got through the day with my mother.
A point of maturity maybe is that it dawned on me to say to myself "Don't expect any resolution to happen, nothing will be resolved today and there is no point in trying to resolve any disfunction just BE CHILL".
So when I was younger I would try to force resolution and bring up stuff that was hurtful and try to talk about it but I gave it up.
Still all the processing that I have done here has been valuable because I pick up on the subtle things that have impacted me. I can sort of deal with it consciously if I notice the slight of hand happening now it's no longer like a subliminal message of how terrible I am. I can see how I am devalued and that it's part of the family script.
-
Today is just a day by myself. I'm back with the previous self-advice I applied to interacting with my mother and now I'm trying to apply the same logic on being with mySELF, (Don't expect any resolutions).
I can make decisions A or B WITHOUT expecting any big resolutions to occur as a result of those decisions. That's smart actually. Thinking about it that way lightens some of the pressure of decision making.
(I believe that I am) overwhelmed with decisions to consider and figure out and I have been feeling guilty for not working harder on it.
I feel bad and stupid about this.
I'm agonizing or punishing myself for it.
Random thought: Boredom can be a luxury. One time I was bored on an island in a little make-shift library and every single book was interesting enough to hold my attention and was worthy of my interest.
I felt guilty because I had an important thing to do and I missed part of it. But the previous night there was a Mexican party that was working on my eardrums with high-energy Mexican music chi-ca-bink-a-ahh-a--ahhhh--boom--chi-boom-chi-ca-bink-a--ahhhh-boom. There was music flooding at least a two block radius around the party and my earplugs that I do have because I'm a prepared person half way at least--they were out of my reach that night. Whatever I didn't wake up at 6:30 AM on the weekend to get somewhere in the rain.
Without (Miss bored) there are too many competing things to do like eating. I can make food my whole priority for a day's events although I need to do other things I zero in on food probably because I have been telling myself the mantra "food is one of the only pleasures I get out of life". Or maybe the eating came before the mantra and the mantra is a description not an incantation for stuffing my face. Doesn't matter I had great Ethiopian food today, it's enough to make me feel like I have died and gone to heaven..because some days I have literally been eating moldy bread. Gross just thinking about it.
So good food is a luxury and when I manage to make somethin really good out of foodbank stuff I feel like I have triumphed. I know I need to think about more serious stuff BUT these little things help me to not be totally despaired--because the "serious stuff" does nothing to uplift my spirit and keep me afloat.
I ate Ethiopian food by my self, alone just to be nice to my-SELF.
I put on a thin cotton summer dress today and I have been gaining weight. Not going to go crazy over it or anything.
Just wish I had more muscle tone and was taking care of myself better.
I have been meaning to write down goals but in my head maybe I make it too complicated.
I think the goals have to NOT be place-dependent.
So for exercise if I at least stretch for 15-20 minutes a day that is a start and I can do that a lot of places it must not be restricted to a gym.
I didn't so much as stretch today but I wiggled for 10 minutes, sort of random stretching with a little made up dancing and that was enough to make me feel a little better for a few minutes. So even just that remembering of my body for a few minutes is better than nothing. YES it is much better than nothing at all.
I feel guilty for not taking better care of myself. I feel guilty for not getting to where I (should) have been earlier. But did I NEED to be there- was it the right place for me? Am I trying to conform myself to fit a box that I don't fit? A square peg into a star shaped hole?
Positive things are:
I ate yummy food.
I pulled out some weeds.
I did make it to where I needed to go even if I was late I didn't miss out completely.
I read a part of a "self-helpish" type book.
I thought about goals even if I didn't write them down contract style.
God, you are within me right now and you are helping me through my job search and helping me find the perfect job for me.
I took a shower (I'm at the point where I don't really care if I brush my hair in the morning, I don't wear make up and I don't style my hair so the next step down is not even brushing it at all, or not looking at it to see if it needs to be brushed or to even contemplate that.
I know that the things I did were some what mindless but I was aware of it at least a little bit. It was sort of mindful-mindlessness.
What could I write here that would matter? Sometimes I wonder what all these words are worth. I wonder if writing here is part of healing voicelessness, I think sometimes it is but other times I come here and I don't feel anything powerful in the putting down of my daily minutia. But my daily minutia is important to recognize because it's normal human stuff that I'm doing but I believe or think or say to myself that I can't afford to be doing minutia at all really. Pressure.
Where is the Do KNOW?
-
I woke up to the sound of someone passing out and having a seizure. Sounds like thud and then some sputtering noise out of her moulth. I could here it and I thought, oh geeze, can I just stay over here in bed and ignore it, I did for a short moment and then I ended up calling security to alert them to call 911. Of course there were three other women standing around.
Thing is I've seen paramedics show up for seizures before and they don't do anything, just take vitals then person comes out of the seizure slowly, is disoriented at first.
Stuff like this puts me a little bit off for the day, the proximity to troubled and sick people who are not Loved-Ones and all the extra (stuff)--such as disruptive events that go along with having to share space with troubled people. This is not the first seizure I have come across since I have been "in the slums". This is the 3rd seizure, very common I guess. The three were all drug users also.
Oh well, I am on to the rest of my day now.
-
I volunteered all day. Played with a little boy putting foam alphabet letters into the corresponding alphabet letter holes.
I love the way it's so easy to encourage little kids that age! All I have to do is say YAY! and smile and it makes him smile. Sooo cute.
-
Standing on the corner, contemplating the always fresh spray of clouds and birds and air streams that make up a new evenings sunset, ignoring all the passersby, breathing taking in singularly the world but not the people in it, in a mood of uncertainty and newness of unknowing what my path was-- I observed.
As a young woman walked by she was a blur to my unfocused eyes, I was looking distantly at three birds moving easterly together, I was looking at a flaming copper area of the sky, not a cloud but a pouf of invisible moisture that caught the sunset glaringly like one of nature's magic tricks, the feel of me trading stale lung air out for some new outdoors air into my lungs,....apparently the young woman just couldn't stand the fact that I didn't make eye contact with her, heaven forbid that I don't want to enter every little twitch of the human animal empire. She asked me: "Are you okay?" I said: "Why wouldn't I be?" She said: "because you're standing on the corner looking confused". To that I did not reply. Then a look of "I don't get it" came over her face as she walked away.
What practical use is there in asking if someone is okay? What is she going to do about my so called beyond- existential-dark night of the soul wearing a summer dress after months of no skin. I have flesh! And it's breezy! And I'm contemplating something spiritual that is slow to sink in!
I'm alone! I'm without family! I'm unwanted! I'm living a self-convinced life! I'm without a path! I'm interrupted from my peace!
She is just as odd to me as I am to her!
Humans distress me, I don't feel peaceful when I look at another human I feel drawn into a vortex of their face, their needs, their stories, their desire to talk about their future's brightness, their plans, their family, their friends, their pedicure, their dog's pedicure, their dog's family of origin.
I no longer feel myself, my bruises, my toes, my soreness, my chest expand, my back ache, my scrubbed fresh skin, I don't notice myself when I look at other people, I see a face vortex and my mind being trapped into a tunnel of death. The moment that I look at their votex face their moving lips, the sunset is shuttered, the birds are obscured, my skin dissapears, I am a mind in a dark tunnel of someone else's talking at me. I lose track of me.
There is no pleasure in humanity.
If I can't have a family or a life than at the very VERY minimum I want to have my SELF, I want to feel myself fill with oxygen, and my barefeet on flip-flops on the sun's warmth radiating from cement. I want to know that the breeze is delicately blowing my hair and know that my skin that has been covered all winter is delightfully naked in a summer dress. I want to look at a huge sky full of variety-pack clouds.....without being interupted.
I want to be with my SENSES and with my own PLAN even if it's a stunted plan, even if I am all wrong, the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time "looking confused" on the street corner --blissing out as much as I can in new skin absorbing the pink and orange and turquoise and blue and copper-golden light rays coming into my amazing eyes. I deeply wish to just be.
Who are they to judge if I am incongruent to the world? Why can I not just stand peacefully on the sidewalk looking at the sunset? Why must I be pestered. Sure I'm in a mental state that is all my own--my own particularly lonely naked contemplation about spiritual materialism while grieving basic things such as no family. I am odd indeed to a person who has never experienced family-less-ness, odd to someone not trying to grasp nuances of spiritual materialism, odd to someone who has pimples on their young face, odd to someone who doesn't get high from looking at a sunset. My brain gets stunned by colors. Little construction workers in my brain partician new rooms with light collection vessels for my memory.
"Coppery poufs are enough to make me want to get through one more day of living hell so leave me the F-alone"
I live for ephemeral coppery poufs and live music dying moments after it has been created---what other medicine for the spirit is there?
I'm an invisible person and I gravitate to the fleeting!
Now don't I sound crazy y'all?
I wonder if I may have lost my sanity. When I dress up to go to an esteemed position job, following the dress code, adhering slightly to the preferred colors of death-black, gray, and beige, going up into a high rise building, working efficiently and accurately for years....no person would stop to ask if I was okay--they would think "she is someone and she is doing something".
Why can't I be a nobody doing nothing logical-- is that so wrong?
Can I be a b@tch in the same way people have been b@tches to me? Can I just say "I'm looking at the sunset idiot!"
I wish I had an inner new-yorker. What's it to you! Can't a grown woman stand on a hill over looking a beautiful view without being interupted by a dim-wit such as yourself!!
my defeat is a personal matter, it means nothing to the world
My survival is MY SURVIVAL
-
Today, instead of making coffee in the morning I decided to use the single crunched dollar I found that was dropped in front of the door to get some coffee in a cafe circumventing the epileptic "recovering" alcoholic blabber whose emergency of course turned out to be a non-emergency.
In the cafe I opened the book I bought at a used book store about untraditional family, a children's book. I covered a few of the story titles because I felt ashamed for being an adult reading a kids book. I believe I have to have an excuse to read a childs book, like I must be reading it to a kid to justify it. So I read my kid's book all by my adult self and almost cried three times but since I was in a public place I didn't. I'm not sure what about reading the book made me tear up but there it is- oh yah I remember, one of the sayings was about how a person is wonderful if they are loved by at least one other person.
The book also made me laugh out loud at least two times.
-
Independence & Belonging.
In both of these areas I was developmentally delayed or challenged or something. I did not get the independence right or the belonging right as a child and it's even harder getting it right as an adult "grown-up".
There was a coupon for scoops of gourmet icecream so that was my hightlight for the day.
Mainly my day was unremarkable.
-
Tonight listened to live music, now sleepy, walked in the night rain, saw a bright blue light like a transformer and a noise and then guys laughing, winding down for sleep and wondering what I feel.
Checking in with my SELF there is business. Busy bee.
Back is sore that is mainly what I noticed today in meditation.
Awkward and shame.
Tried a new kind of meditation practice, it was boring and I will probably do it again because I have an affinity for boring at times, thousands of people have done it for hundreds or thousands of years....sheesh I don't know. The do know says just don't worry about it and continue.
I shouldn't write this at all but I will, it crossed my mind what it would be like living from one place to the next place and so on as a way of life and existence on this earth. I think it's dangerous and I have fear and it's not my plan but my plans don't always work out and maybe some combination of things in my life has "snapped" so to speak. Partially me partially sick of a crap economy and a crap looking future. There is part of me that wants to "give up" on trying to be more normal and the main motivator that opposes me giving up is sheer fear.
I plan to wake up and read a few more stories out of my children's book while I have coffee till it's read through every single story. I even shared one of the poems with one of the sorority sisters here.
What was rich and fullfilling today? The music and the night rain the odd offer to take a cooking class that I turned down because I ran out of time to do it. The odd offer a young lady in beauty school made to me to give me a manicure and pedicure so she could practice!
Me observing life in it's strange moments- my psychologist "acquaintance" behaving badly.
And when I was purchasing a plant start that is an Asian herb not typically found here in the US for growing. The woman who works at the plant nursery that ordered it didn't even know what it was and she asked me since I was going to buy it and then I started telling her what it tastes like and how it is cooked and how it's used raw and even that I have read research articles about the health benefits of it and it is being researched for disease treatments.....it felt so good being knowledgeable about something, I've been feeling like I am not an expert on anything with all of this interest and skill assessment stuff.
I wanted to be an herbalist of sorts since I was a little girl and a teenager. I feel like my aura changes when I'm around plants a complete shift. So I was thinking how much I love plants but then the relationship ends in me munching on them. :( :lol:
I apologized to my Asian herb today while walking saying "I love you but I have to eat you" after I tickled my face with it's leaves.
Talking to the community about the strange smell in the air the past couple of days, speculation and then getting an answer from someone on the third ask. The joy of other people noticing the change in the environment also. I planted some dill plants. I decided that I will drink more water, it's the laziest health-positive step I could take. I did drink more water today.
-
When is learning or confirming with other people's story useful or not useful.
Is something useful even if it's painful. Is it closer to truth to stay with the pain.
I've been considering reading a book that I figure I'm going to relate to but I'm doubting it also, I may be torturing myself my reading it, it no doubt will have another's persons oppinion about this type of suffering and it will not be kind in light...it would be "gritty" as they like to say and it's fine for the author to write gritty stuff about another's life but what about the author writing their own grit and judging their own suffering?
The judgement of suffering......and identification with the sufferer.....and then the sufferer's suicide...
Do I really need to fill my mind with this stuff...well maybe not.
Maybe it's healthy to cover wounds with scabs and avoidance and that is what a healthy person would do I think actually.
-
So today someone was semi-passed out on the floor, I saw her, another woman motioned to me to come over like "Hey shouldn't we do something"...or rather....." hey look at this...are you going to do something about it"....
I didn't walk over to the women I made a hand motion of "screw that".
So I went off on my way to leave and go find a musical instrument to make some noise on, exactly what I did- made some music.
The wonderful part of it now is the next time there is a problem belonging to someone else maybe they won't be looking at me to respond to it.
I guess when there is a problem I FEEL like it's my problems sometimes. Even when the problem is not mine.
I wonder if walking away from other people's chronic crisis is a form of Voicefulness. Clearly other's were waiting on me to do something before they themselves did anything about it. WHY SHOULD I have to be that person, IF I don't wish to be involved. There is some sort of social ettiquette that I have been unlearning. The social ettiquette that says I always have to do the "good" thing for other people EVEN when they are not doing the "good" thing for themselves.... I don't know.
There are so many times my brother almost "did himself in"...and yet he still remainds in this world of his own accord as much as he is willing to be in this world as an alcoholic who doesn't give a F about anybody else but himself.
So yeah, I don't want to give a F about all those people who don't give a flyin F about anyone else.
By the time I got back someone else had delt with the situation, paramedics showed up yada yada....woman pissed on the floor....yada...yada...
I decided that I don't have to be the responsible tattle tale all the time.
Felt good to walk away frankly from someone who is not my friend.
That's not the whole of my day...there are lots of mundane bits in there. Contemplated not doing one of my volunteer gigs in exchange for a more fun activity. Very unlike me to not show up, to be irresponsible yet I think I shall skip the volunteer gig with the unappreciative person. Heck, there are plenty other volunteers who don't make their volunteering a priority.
Well, I guess it all depends on the weather.
I guess the question statement to self is : TO BE RESPONSIBLE TO MY OWN GREATER WELLBEING.
If I walk away from what I think is Bull-cr@p enough times will I eventually find the non-Bull Cr@p.
Certainly my DO-KNOW is firmly planted in the area of non-Bull-poopy.
I don't want to be the hall monitor. I don't want to be the crossing guard. I don't want to be anybody's mommy except for me.
That last bit feels like a powerful statement to me.
I want to be the person who is not stuck with something that is just happening right there. I want to be biking with a friend, dancing, playing music, pic-nicing, working a job that is worth doing, I want to be moving my body and not get fat, I want to go to a class where I learn something. Learn almost anything. Feel a little bit unenriched right now. You can throw some seeds in there but if the soil is bad all that will grow are weeds.
There is a good survival strategy in being like a weed. There is also a down side to becoming like a weed.
Be like a weed, indiscriminately grow where you don't belong and are unwanted, choke out other plants and proliferate as much as you possibly can, be very difficult to get rid of, survive in poor soil, display unremarkable flowers, produce no sweet fruit, be inedible.
-
Last night was the night from HELL. I didn't get any sleep and my anxiety level is pretty much through the roof.
There was a woman who looks like a zombie with a gigantic bruise or something on her face? Talking incoherently and slurred to herself. Tried to get at me last night 2:30 AM but no way in heck was I asleep I was ready for her.
The lame security person thought she would sleep it off but she is on some serious toxic substance. She is figeting around 24 hours a day, exposing herself.
So this is just a three day survival weekend. Luckily numerous people have been complaining about her. I just happened to notice the impending problem weeks ago.
Stupid director is no where to be found on the three day weekend while I spent the night with Zombie. YEAH I've seen real zombies.
She urinated on the carpet. Sorry, I'm just so tired and fearful and angry right now.
Finially as predicted she nearly started a fire because she can't be unsupervised. So someone complained about that.
She turned on a sink and let the water over flow and flood the floor. Duh.
I just hate when I wonder "how bad does it have to get"
Thats it for now.
As it turns out I didn't volunteer at all as scheduled I didn't even contact them yet. I spent the day trying to come up with a plan for a safe place to get some sleep.
-
Zombie woman is kicked out. I used some voicefulness with that.
Today I watched a thunder storm while sitting under an awning just giving myself time to reach equilibrium after the nightmare weekend. Couple of days ago I broke down crying outside of a grocery store and at least a couple people were turning their heads in their cars as they were driving through the parking lot to look at me, I must have looked pretty distressed. It came from the stress of being around sick and unsafe people.
Tired now.
Tomorrow has to be 100% chop wood and carry water, no nonsense.
-
Finding Voicefulness: I have not been actively searching for it recently or aware of it too much.
Losing: I don't think that I have been losing more than typical. I have not been regularly exercising it. I admit in this area I feel a loss for simply not having someone close to me that I speak to. I don't share personal stuff with the people around me, the dumb details of my day or just my thoughts really. The very little things that people who know each other well talk about.
Practicing: Not so much.
I haven't been thinking about Narcissism very much- hey but now that I'm on the board:
Recently I watched a movie with a young woman that is severely bulemic or something. I think she eats but throws it up. I cooked her a meal the other day and then we watched a movie. I've met her mother who doesnt seem overly concerned with her daughter's illness and somehow I see that as being bad but I'm likely to sometimes glaze over in my mind how my own mother has also been a bad mother to me. It's just weird seeing into another disfunctional mother-daughter relationship. My mother always talks to me as if all the BS in my life is normal and sometimes I begin to think that it is.
It's strange listening to the young woman, she has counselors and she has social workers around her who can visually see her physical situation but none of them seems able to really help her. I guess she can't afford to go to a treatment center or something like that.
She expressed to me that the women in her church group don't include her very much and she feels like an outsider, she also mentioned that she feels like she can't identify with the frivolity of the young church women.
I would say that no matter what life changing and grief-full issue a family faces, whatever hardship that a family is up against, if it is poverty or illness in the family,it is maybe tolerable to live through it as a "part of life". Yet when a family is full of disfunction these things are intolerable because there is already existing a deep ground work of emotional betrayal, abuse and neglect.
For a while I struggled with why it's difficult to take in some family's stories of hardship and it's because they are functional and the hardship they have is normal. Then there are some families whose hardship is in a whole other realm such as the young woman's.
It's really not what I need to be focused on though.
Nothing bad occured and nothing good occured today. That is fine.
I'm reading a good book, the kind of book that makes me feel smarter afterwards for having had read it.
Earlier there was a fuzzy crecent moon behind some sky moisture.
Night.
-
The last couple of days I have had a few little stupid things happen that has been equivalent to someone dropping stones into my typically quite, bottomless pit of growing anger.
I have that road rage feeling where I want to flip people off, about every third person.
Someone asked my how I was a couple days ago, I answered "bitchy". She said okay I'll leave you alone. I said "Okay".
She asked me if I was any less bitchy today, I said: Today I'm psychotically bitchy.
Thing is I feel psychotically bitchy but I've never been great at being mean.
I'm going to give myself a little time to figure out what to do with my psychotic bitchiness. Okay screen is cutting me off. I will start another.
-
When I'm this angry, I think I almost start to hallucinate. It's like blind rage, I start to not make sense anymore.
I know exactly what is making me flip out. It's not one little thing, it's numerous unresolved things.
I got some kung fu movies from the library, maybe if I watch them it will somehow be a psychological outlet for my pissyness.
Unfortunately for me when I get to this point I throw around these looks of disgust and hate to just about everybody indiscriminately.
So since there is no real processing for me to do since I have processed every little pathetic aspect of my life into a fine powder.....uh...maybe I just need to go on that picnic. There is a park by a lake that I can get to that I have been wanting to explore. I have a picnic blanket and a picnic book and a picnic bag. And a picnic outfit.
Just a new little place is a good way to get some perspective. It's summer so I'm going on a big F-ing picnic.
-
Tempted to write "nothing important to say".
Feeling a little mellow, not so much relaxed just mellow. Walked down a quiet country road this evening and enjoyed it. Saw a deer and decided not to get too close, been told they have sharp claws.
I think I should enjoy life in private, seems like whenever I do something good for myself there is someone who wants to distract me from doing it, or thinks "there is a person who has too much time on their hands, or there is a person who isn't working hard enough".
anyways that might be it for my writing
maybe my voice is tired
Yes, my voice is tired of being voiced, I don't feel like I have energy to tell the details any longer or at this moment.
-
Came here to write then erased. Just don't feel like it. All just little bits and pieces, snippits.
Things that do and don't matter. Looking down at baby fish shadows under a bridge. Neighbor who is afraid of chemotherapy.
The To-Do's that got done and the To-Do's that didn't get done.
I'm uncertain about everything. My stuff is a mess, I have cinnamon graham crackers crushed into my church made quilt. I have wilted sweetpea and nasturtium flowers flopping in a found vase. Cut out paper silhouettes and random paper snips mixed in with a cookbook from the 70's, a rolling pin used for dubious purposes, stinky black socks, fumigated toiletries, a bowl of kale greens dehydrating, hot sauce, a set of business slacks and top and floral silk scarf crumpled up in a ball in the corner on top of a stained yoga mat. Cans of beans. A towel that will not get clean no matter how many times I wash it. Hand me down disposable wall hooks that stick on with adhesive. Stuff.
Tomorrow is one massive To-Do. I better sleep.
-
Coming here to vent.
I feel so angry when I have explained and described something to my mother about 10 times, things that are important to me.
She will look like she is listening sort of but in a distracted detached way, it's like it doesn't go through or she just doesn't get it, or is in denial or something, she just doesn't give a sh*t.
Then at a later time she will say something to me that demonstrated that what ever I said to her 10 times went through one ear and out the other something that sounds idiotic to me.
And maybe that is part of her not seeing me or acknowledging that I'm a separate real entity because she reflects back some warped version. It just feels sick and never ends.
She pisses me off. There is no solution except for zero contact even limited contact becomes problematic.
There is a horrendous abundance of terrible advice and all I can think is I can hear it but I don't have to take it. .....
You Can Lead A Horse To Poison But You Can't Make It Drink
-
At the grocery store this was on the speaker system, this poem.
I like this poem. Going to stick it here for the moment. Charles Bukowski. Reminds me of attempting a version of voicefulness. Different versions of the experience of voicefulness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5GXCwjIuwc Tom Waits reads it
The Laughing Heart
your life is your life
don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can't beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
A few more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai_bGyLOspw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80Rwq3swNAU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPzWLPAxn1o&feature=related
I found this also...one poem in the grocery store leads me to more Bukowski stuff:
ON PSYCHIATRY:
"What do psychiatric patients get? They get a bill.
I think the problem between the psychiatrist and the patient is that the psychiatrist goes by the book, while the patient arrives because of what life has done to him or her. And even though the book may have certain insights, the pages are always the same in the book, and, each patient is a little bit different. There are many more individual problems than pages. Get it? There are too many mad people to do it by saying, "dollars per hour, when this bell rings, you're finished." That alone will drive any near-mad person to madness. They've just started to open up and feel good, when the shrink says, "Nurse, make the next appointment," and they've lost track of the price, which is also abnormal. It's all too stinking worldly. The guy is out to take your ass. He's not out to cure you. He wants his money. When the bell rings, bring in the next "nut." Now the sensitive "nut" will realize when that bell rings, he's being fucked. There's no time limit to curing madness, and there's no bills for it either. Most psychiatrists I've seen look a little close to the edge themselves. But they're too comfortable...I think they're all too comfortable. I think a patient wants to see a little madness, not too much. Ahhhh! (bored) PSYCHIATRISTS ARE TOTALLY USELESS! Next question? "
-
Thought I would come here and write a little. A couple of nights ago I had a telephone conversation with my mother one of the topics being that she wanted to tell me to go see a psychiatrist.
This isn't anything new. My mother and my aunt (her sister) jointly managed to get my brother committed into a psychiatric ward a few years ago. Surprise! That didn't really help him any, hasn't changed anything in his life for the better. Surprise!
My aunt and uncle would never have their daughter put into a psychiatric ward, it would never happen because they are *too good for that*.
So since my mother periodically tells me to go see a psychiatrist I'm not surprised by it because she has done it before.
I've seen a lot of counselors and yes even a psychiatrist years back who didn't diagnose me with anything like what my mother seems to want me to be diagnosed with (terminal badness and unlovableness).
I'm almost too tired to even bother to write for whatever reason. Because it's the same story and the same conversation but still I feel like I still need to write it out. debrief.
So when she started the topic again of me going to go see a psychiatrist I stood up to her pretty well. It didn't break down into an all out argument which is typically what she is trying to start with me is arguments. Then at one point in the conversation she started telling me about her seeing a counselor and she said that she had to go see a counselor twice in one week as if it's my fault. She said it was because she was stressed out over my situation but then I pointed out to her that nothing has changed with my situation to make her stressed out. She just got back from visiting my brother though in another state. So I said to her "maybe this has more to do with you visiting him then it does with me, he is pretty disturbed".
I think she has the hope that one day she will find a counselor who will tell her to set me on fire.
Between my freaky mother and my alcoholic freaky brother I somehow become the scape goat for them (or they try). But this time she admitted "yes he is really disturbed". Of course it doesn't ever sink into her idiot brain that it has a lot to do with her abuse.
So when she started to launch into telling me about her counseling session :roll: I told her I didn't want to know what she discusses with her counselor. I said thats between you and your counselor and I don't need to know that. She kept on talking so I reiterated and then she finally stopped telling me.
The whole conversation was a bullshit conversation. A crazy making bullshit conversation. Even though I didn't let it get to me because it's become so predictable it's easy to maneaver around her now.
-
Voicelessness appears to be a trend in my life not just a dynamic from my childhood but a repeating pattern in the same way that patterns of abuse are repeating.
-
I have some awareness of an internal voicefulness even when I am in the midst of a powerless voiceless situation where I am being abused. If that is possible. To me that internal voicefulness seems to be along the same lines as a personal sense of morality and I even attribute it to certain types of educational experiences.
I want to write more about this how it's possible to have voicefulness in my mind? if not in an interaction with certain other people.
Does voicefulness always have to be verbalized or is it a state of mind as much as it's literally a voice acknowledged...
Is there such thing as a personal internal voicefulness
Is there such thing as a personal internal voicefulness even in a losing battle, a bad hand of cards, amidst an overpowering hostility. In these situations even when there is not an externally expressed voicefulness and voicelessness appears to be beaten down and in...is their still a personal voice...an internal dialogue...that is voiceful and is that enough?
-
Responding to the it's okay to be needy in the Bukowsky on Psychiatry thread
I wish I could say it better, just want to say that this reminds me of my "neighbor"- "room-mate" who is the anorexic/bulemic. She has said to me casually a few times blurting out in the middle of conversations while I'm cooking in the kitchen about her being raped. And she sort of looks at me a little pleading so I listen to her and I try to be nice but being that she is not a friend of my choosing I don't give her a hug or anything because I just don't want to go there, I try to be nice but I don't feel like I can give her the kind of emotional support she needs. I don't want to be in that role. I guess it's just sort of a heavy thing to be in proximity to that is all. I don't blame her for her being 'needy' at all it's just that it's awkward. It's really sad. Truth is I'm a little afraid of what kind of emotional stuff she has in there. Or I guess what it really is maybe I don't want to go to her painful emotional places with her. She isn't a friend that I 'picked' she just kind of hovers around me when I cook and confides in me. I guess on some level I wish I could do more to help her out but I'm in such an F'ed up situation myself that I just want to deflect everybody else. I don't know, maybe I didn't say that well but just wanted to write it out there because it's been on my mind. Anyways that came up because a couple of days ago she was telling me that "people" blame her for the problems that she has. The best I could do was share with her my understandings from my own life as much as I have managed to understand and I told her that I believe that we aren't personally at fault for everything that happens to us in life. That there is a popular concept of self responsibility that is misused and people fall back on it too often without thinking before they talk. Self responsibility cant possibly mean that we have OMNIPOTENCE. It would be crazy making to be told that you are omnipotent.
Honestly sometimes there are just no words. I'm probably emotionally shut down and shuttered-up. I just haven't been around any 'normies' lately. In fact I was crying in the bathroom while I was brushing my teeth not sure if for myself or if for the "neighbor" or just in general and then someone came in and asked me if I was okay because I was sighing heavily. I don't think her inquiry was earnest I get the feeling like that person is looking for the cue to call the lunatic-wagon if such a thing even exists.
Anyways it's sort of off topic but I don't care I know that I am sensitive to this stuff I have learned from 'processing"in the past these kinds of experiences get to me and they lodge into my emotional warehouse.
Why on earth do people even have emotional warehouses? That weird mysterious place where we hold all of these memories and emotions.
I figure strangers shouldn't take up space in my emotional warehouse but they do. I figure I should have more control over my emotional warehouse by now what goes in there and what comes out but I don't! I don't even know why I am writing this I shouldn't be focusing on this at all is what I tell myself. I guess I am shocked at how horrible things can be and I feel like I have a darkness that is just growing in me like something that is a general hatred towards humanity. As immature as it is to think this way, seeing her situation just adds to me wanting to hate the world. It just makes the world look like a horrible place. I personally want to blame her step father and her mother for what they did to her but the lack of a "cure" for her situation makes me want to blame the whole freaking world in general. I guess this is what they call being "Mad At The World".
When she is making herself throw up in one of the stalls in the shared bathroom and I can hear her and I walk out of the room I feel like I am not properly being a witness to her situation. A few times I have imagined what it might be like if I said something to her about it but I don't because I know her emotional wounds are so deep and that I really don't want to take that on. I know this, I made my mind up about this sort of thing a long time ago to stay focused on my own sh*t but I still stuggle with it. I guess it's a confusing thing to witness.
I feel angry for what has been done to her, I feel frightened of being drawn into her emotional climate and I feel weary and tired of the energy expended to keep my walls up and keep people away and just trying to maintain a fake calm just to get by. There has got to be something better then this in life. I can't think about it anymore.
Can I just say that sometimes life freaks the sh*t out of me.
-
I just realized that my brother is on a medication that is an anti-psychotic/depression medication adjunct. I don't even know what that means right now. I get a really snarky attitude knowing that...and I say to myself that my mother has literally driven him insane. I don't really know if that is true if a psychiatrist would piece it together that way or not but it makes sense to me.
My mother had been saying that it was an antidepressant and it is but it's also an antipsychotic whatever that means. She also was suggesting that I get on it also of course. So basically my mother would like both of us to be on anti-psychotic medication! Why doesnt her warped world contain aliens and ufos and the star ship enterprise so she can zip around at warp speed in her warped universe! Why doesnt she look crazy to anybody? Why is her form of crazy so insidiously nuanced that no body recognizes it. Venting here.
Really my main task at hand is to stay safe and stay sane.
-
Turns out bulimic girl has stolen something insignificant from me, something that I would have given her if I knew she has wanted it. This stupid little event did piss me off enough though, just the lack of having some courtesy towards me, the same courtesy that I give her. To bring up the word boundary into it. I suppose it's an additional reason not to be especially friendly with her.
-
contemplating if voicelessness is exactly the same as powerlessness
certainly one is powerless with voicelessness
the question that i ask for some reason is if in a powerless situation a person can still be voiceful whatever that means
overall i am struggling with a great sense of powerlessness even if I have looked at the situation quite a bit
whatever makes it easy, that part i am just in lack of
at about 1:00 AM I was playing a solitare game on my breaking computer something I have never done before because of the waste of it all. There is a feeling though, when I start to remember how to play it or figure it out, I have a vague rememberance of the rules from being a kid that after playing it a few times I get more points and I remember how to "win" at the game.
In life though it's as if the tricks and rules to "win" at the game are always elusive, always being wieled by the hands of others, not my own hands.
As with the game, that is easier along with knowing the rules, I have always imagined for the longest time that there were rules and tricks to being well, being okay, being safe, being fine, making a plan that works, ways to live without a lot of suffering. Then more recently I came to the mental state of no tricks or secret rules for to win only that some are "lucky" and some are "unlucky". It still doesnt help to think in luck or no luck terms either, then it come back around to the struggle with futile effort or give-up and do nothing. Then there is the embracing the do-nothing.
Sometimes I don't feel like myself anylonger. Like I look in the mirror and I remember the face I see and yes that is me, it's familiar. But my name, who I am, how I fill up my days build a person that isn't at all the person I intended to be, or the person I saw myself as.
Sometimes I have a hard time writing clearly what I even mean, the more stressed out I am the less sense my words make even in conversation.
I guess that is the absolute literal voicelessness when I go to speak and I choke on my own words unable to even say. It does happen sometimes.
I just wish that whatever period and phase of life I'm enduring would pass.