I woke up scared today which was disappointing, considering yesterday I had felt so...so...calm and collected and in my own skin and assured of myself. So real. My first reaction to such shifts is to get mad at myself. Like high tide infusing the rivulets of a marshland, ill will, self-debasement, self-blame, press upon me in an amorphous kind of way. I can't pinpoint the cause, I can't think it away, even though I try like the devil. In just a moment upon waking I am caught up in a confusion of fear and anger and self-hatred, and am carried away on a hardened will to get myself back, somehow, to how "successful" I was yesterday.
I "hear" and "see"all these attempts in my head in conversations with my sisters, whom I had plans with today--the origin somehow of my fear. I had felt so good yesterday, I opened up my cell phone on a walk to the city center and a called my sister to invite myself to her house today. Well, quickly, my "safe" plan of lunch at her house with her kids and husband turned into a trip up to the seashore town we grew up in to see their new condo and perhaps hook up with my other sister and her kids. Pow! Confusion. Decisions to make. Uncertainty. Potential clashes of personalities. Yet I was riding high on my temporarily diminished symptoms so I stayed on the wild bucking horse and set up a call today, Sunday, to work out the details. And all last evening I saw all of us--sisters, brothers-in-law, nephews and niece--in embroidered green robes, faceless, swishing around my head in my mind's eyes. It was out of control! But still, I wanted a way to make it safe for me. I want so badly to be included. I fear my parents dying and losing touch with my sisters, falling out of the fold and being lost and alone. I need to be a part of my family, as imperfect as they are. So I e-mailed both sisters, giving them an idea of what I would like to do. It was dangerous, e-mailing them both. If I used this pronoun or that, would one sister get mad. If I said "love to see" regarding my niece, hurt my other sister regarding her sons. I deleted, rewrote, deleted, rewrote, and finally just sent. Then I went to bed.
So morning had no sunrise, instead of an affront of fear. No walk. Jump in the shower. Meditate--seeking the calm, impossible to stay in the moment, leave the breathing to feel what was rising up in me, to "get to know the feeling" as the latest Buddhist book I'm reading has said to do, I discover I feel guilty and am relieved. Guilt is my latest discovery. Guilt--as irrational as my fear--precedes my fear. I am often guilty for taking up space, for feeling good, for letting myself have my feelings. Guilt relieves me because it is often a marker to me that I matter--and I just feel psychotically guilty for it.
So I have a strangled meditation and go upstairs to make my breakfast. Ring, Ring, my cell phone goes and I am talking to my sister. The news is my other sister is out of the picture--stomach bug. I am honest, "This is better for me, it makes it less complicated and overwhelming," But this sister's son has a cold--do I really want to go up to meet them. I don't know. She gives me time to think about it and call back. I pore over my decision as I pore over my oatmeal. I ask my roommate for help. The conversation turns to her family. I think and think. I don't want my sister's to have a change of heart and get together without me. I don't want to be out of the loop. It becomes extremely important to be seen and heard and not let them forget about me. It would be a relief no to go. It is cold. I would have to get gas. Where? Down the road? Would I have to make a left turn into traffic? Then slowly I realize the only reason I would be going, the main one now, with all this sickness around, is to prove to myself that I am not fearful. To conquer my fear. That is how I make a lot of my decisions; if I am afraid, I will do it. Fear messes up my gauge of what makes the most sense. I get scared and I quit, say no, and feel guilty, sick, not normal, a disappointment. I feel fear and I say yes so I can be normal, do normal things, live up to expectations. It all rotates on fear. But today, today, I realized that by a stroke of luck and can then make my decision; I don't want to get sick. Physical illness messes with mental illness, even if it is just a cold. It saps you of energy that is better spent managing your mind. I make a human decision and call my sister, letting her know I decided not to come and she seems relieved. I am relieved.
Note to self: Look at me! Look at how I am staying true to myself and honest and managing my day, my illness, my relationships with my family members! (My sisters were shocked at my e-mail last night--"what are you doing drumming up [social] business?")Look at me! I am so proud of myself! I reached out yesterday even though it was a risk. I readied myself to go this morning even though I was scared. And I made my decision not to go, APART from my fear. I even had a conversation with my sister about our aging parents and spoke clearly and honestly, rather than just agreeing with everything she said. It's a beautiful thing, feeling human. I have seen and heard myself, I have not forgotten about myself.
Of course, this scares me the most.
Signing off.
In the beginning
There are so many potential beginnings to my story that I will only attend to one at this moment--the creation of this blog. It was advertised to take only 5 minutes to create; I have been sitting here on this couch for at least an hour (and I really have to go to the bathroom!)
You see, I was promised by my therapist, one of the behavioral sorts, that this could be an anonymous, comment free venture, yet he wasn't quite sure how to go about it so the complete creation has landed in my lap. To do this, I have to have it be completely anonymous, otherwise my words will never make it "out there" at all; I have too many fears of being completely abandoned and ostracized by family and friends and even an entire hospital staff should my true thoughts be known. This has been what has kept me drowning in thirty years of handwritten journals and file after file on my computer of journals and some fictions and scads of polished memories I call "moments." You see, a lot of this stuff is incinderary. Angry. Critical. Even hateful. Often hateful.
So here comes one beginning. As I was sitting in an aqua pleather reclininer one late afternoon in the admitting unit of my local psychiatric hospital a couple months ago, it struck me "I have had a rich life." Rich? Rich? What word choice to have come bubbling up from the netherlands of my soul. I've identified with "horrible," "lonely," "devestated," "full of suffering," "lost," and the list goes on. But "rich?" How wonderful! And really, how true.
But how to write about it. How to shove the needle of my emotional compass so very slightly to the East where the sun rises. How to get the whole picture. I just can't seem to do it on paper that will just end up stuck in a Whole Foods bag with all my other journals (aside from the cases in storage miles away) under my decreptit bed. This has to go somewhere. To someone. To you who is reading this. A chronicle of my life as it truely is. Down's. Up's. Days when it takes me four tries to park my car at my psyhiatrists office because each space seems a really dangerous place to leave my car. Moments when I feel strong and proud. My morning walks that are filled, in my minds eye, with police bearing down on my, questioning me hard, arresting me, because I stepped off the curb a moment before the white man appeared in the traffic light. The sadness and isolation of living in a mind that is almost completely deluded as to the intentions and meaning of other peoples words or gestures or silences. Living a life that is bent on protecting myself from all these dangers, whether real or imagined. The frustration of understanding it all but not being able to escape it. And so on.
Each day, I've said lately, is a work of art. I will be sharing my art with you.
And so I have begun. The intention is set. The blog is anonymous ( I really hope.) And you are welcomed on board.
You see, I was promised by my therapist, one of the behavioral sorts, that this could be an anonymous, comment free venture, yet he wasn't quite sure how to go about it so the complete creation has landed in my lap. To do this, I have to have it be completely anonymous, otherwise my words will never make it "out there" at all; I have too many fears of being completely abandoned and ostracized by family and friends and even an entire hospital staff should my true thoughts be known. This has been what has kept me drowning in thirty years of handwritten journals and file after file on my computer of journals and some fictions and scads of polished memories I call "moments." You see, a lot of this stuff is incinderary. Angry. Critical. Even hateful. Often hateful.
So here comes one beginning. As I was sitting in an aqua pleather reclininer one late afternoon in the admitting unit of my local psychiatric hospital a couple months ago, it struck me "I have had a rich life." Rich? Rich? What word choice to have come bubbling up from the netherlands of my soul. I've identified with "horrible," "lonely," "devestated," "full of suffering," "lost," and the list goes on. But "rich?" How wonderful! And really, how true.
But how to write about it. How to shove the needle of my emotional compass so very slightly to the East where the sun rises. How to get the whole picture. I just can't seem to do it on paper that will just end up stuck in a Whole Foods bag with all my other journals (aside from the cases in storage miles away) under my decreptit bed. This has to go somewhere. To someone. To you who is reading this. A chronicle of my life as it truely is. Down's. Up's. Days when it takes me four tries to park my car at my psyhiatrists office because each space seems a really dangerous place to leave my car. Moments when I feel strong and proud. My morning walks that are filled, in my minds eye, with police bearing down on my, questioning me hard, arresting me, because I stepped off the curb a moment before the white man appeared in the traffic light. The sadness and isolation of living in a mind that is almost completely deluded as to the intentions and meaning of other peoples words or gestures or silences. Living a life that is bent on protecting myself from all these dangers, whether real or imagined. The frustration of understanding it all but not being able to escape it. And so on.
Each day, I've said lately, is a work of art. I will be sharing my art with you.
And so I have begun. The intention is set. The blog is anonymous ( I really hope.) And you are welcomed on board.
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