3.22.10
I don't know where to begin. I don't know what to write. I don't know what is pertinent fact and what will become a dry wild goose chase for an end to my suffering. I guess I will start with the house; with my immediate experience.
I am flooded in the fetid waters of being a pariah in the halfway house I live in. I am being stung by the nest of bees gone wild with self-hatred.
I am positive no one likes me. I sat in the living room drinking my tea feeling K.'s disdain and repulsion envelop me as she worked at her computer. I don't work at anything. I just sit here and think. I don't try hard. I felt the house director's disdain hit me like a block of concrete because I did not ask her about her week-end. She will not help me, be kind to me, like me, give me extra consideration if I don't ask about her trip. I am angry to be put in such a position. She greets me good morning a second time and I weakly disguise my snarl, "good morning,again." I don't want her to mess with me. I end up asking her about her weekend, my face blank, my eyes bland with disinterest. Am I mad or do people hate me or both?
I was mad last night. I had a lovely morning comprised of a walk that slipped here and there into a meditative silence and a good sitting meditation (which I know is a much discouraged judgment) when I came back. I dressed in some more stylish clothes than I am used to and went to the movies with my friend S. Just as I was walking outside to wait for her my phone rang and it was my friend L. I did not pick up. That was the beginning of the end of my good day.
I worried during the movie. L.'s tone on her message was gruff and disappointed. We've been playing phone tag for a week. Mostly me escaping her as I escaped G. in the kitchen this morning. I walked back into the house after the movie and was assaulted with acute annoyance--I wanted to be alone. I didn't want to call L. I was tired. I was in emotional pain. I tried a cup of tea. B. came jumping up at me to tell me some random piece of data about god knows what. I weakly smiled, threw him a few bones "gee, wow, uh huh," and made my way upstairs. My roommate was there. No where to go! I should call Lauren. "Do you mind if I make a call?' No. I call Lauren, not home; call her cell and leave a message that I will be call again at seven and sit down to meditate. She calls. Fuck. I just want to mediate. I talk to her; I don't want to listen to her. I don't want to support her. I don't want to be there for her. I don't want to be empathetic. I try to tell her about me, but have to raise my voice to do so. It's not worth it. I don't want to be the bucket in which she puts her trust.
I hate being in that position. I told R. a few days ago that I don't want to be the person he says things to that he doesn't want other people to hear. Then he goes and announces he's going to steal some of one of the staff's wheat germ this morning right in front of me. He's doing it to goad me, he knows he's putting me in an awful position, he's testing me. He is a bad man. I am stuck. C. made it clear taking other people's food is equated with stealing. I don't want to be the conscience of the house. I have already been in that position too many times.
I feel like a dark specter in the house Nobody includes me in the fun and games. No, I should put it accurately, I don't include myself in the fun and games. I don't want to be in the fray. That way people won't entrust me with their needs, their secrets, their complaints and confidences. I don't want to be that person and it seems to me that is just who I am. Not even that so much even more. I am taking myself farther and farther from the center of the house. I am jealous of my roommate who explodes her distress all over the place and so people support her, bake her a cake, even me, I end up holding her and rubbing her back while she cries and while my skin crawls.
I am just not used to being in these human relationships. After reading and autobiography of an innocent man on death row who becomes a Buddhist, I recall how institutionalized I am. I have lived twelve of the last twenty one years in supported housing, in addition to the fifty--at least--inpatient hospitalizations I have had when I have literally been locked in. I spend my days now in a halfway house living with people I did not choose to be friends with following rules that make it hard to do all I want to do. I spend a good portion of my days in a clubhouse filled with people with whom it is hard to have a conversation. I sit there and stare out the window because I can't go back to my "home" before two in the afternoon.
But let me not misrepresent myself. I choose this life. I choose this life. Goddamnit, I chose this life and I am so mad at myself. Infuriated. I'm the one who does not play pool with the crowd at my halfway house. I am the one who does not get down the task of really writing my book. I am the one who is isolating myself further and further and further from people everywhere in my life. Housemates, clubhouse members, family, friends. I guess I am just used to the hospital/halfway house model: premade social structures supervised by professionals where you really don't have to become real friends with anyone. I've left a trail of acquaintances who want to get to know me better in my wake, but I just can't handle the responsiblity of being a friend. You know, I don't even really know what that means. I chastise myself for not being willing to do for others, but I do for others out of spite all the time. What if I were to operate out of love?
I don't know why I can't be friends. I don't know why I sulk on the sidelines in the living room or at the dinner table ashamed, angry, and awed by how well others get along and interact and form bonds. I've always had trouble, right from kindergarten, even nursery school. I found a couple of girls I liked but with whom I could not really keep up with. I would circle their bond, their energy but never fully commit myself to all the playground drama and the bullying and the overnights. Soon I fell into a pattern of having one best friend a year, and it would switch like clock work each year. Even as an adult I have abruptly ended two friendships and romantic relationship. Simply severed each with a phone call or a letter. Each was around feeling like I was in the position of therapist, helplessly pinned by their needs with no courage to lay down my own boundaries. It is nothing new in my halfway house or clubhouse or my friendships so now I just refuse to play. I won't have friends. I won't have family. I will die alone.
Dramatic, but those are the thoughts chasing me around on my walk this morning. I wish I had some answers here. Illness. Not illness. Environment. Family dynamics. I don't know. The feeling of being emotionally raped comes through though. As if I am used by everyone, like I'm being fucked against my will by everyone else. And I just have to grin and bear it. Smile and offer sympathy. And then get angry at myself for not being able to protect myself better, or more so, angry at myself for not being able to be like them. People who know how to relate.
I don't know if the any of this is rational. But it makes me very, very sad. I wonder how much I can chalk up to my illness. I know there is great fear at my back pushing me away from relationships and endeavors, not so much because I can't do what it takes but because I am afraid of asserting myself in this world--of being the authority in my life. I worry making friends will take me away from my mother--ugh, such distortions. I know my illness limits how many times I can do something social a week, how adventurous I can be in trying new things, but that is not the same as the distortions. Can I change? Do I want to? I am so very, very, lonely.
Later Today:
I just have to add that the whole thing came together for me as I walked out of the library (or stepped away from the computer, I do not remember.) The not wanting people to trust me with their secrets, their feelings, opinions, complaints, their life stories, and, the intense feeling of hatred and anger when they do--the feeling used and abused, only good for people dumping their shit on me, an interpersonal rape over and over again. And then it hit me. I do not want people's trust, because I don't feel good enough to be anybody's friend. I do not feel like I am worth their trust. I don't feel adequate enough. I hate myself too much to think that anybody would want me for anything else other than to cheer on and/or repair their own lives. I am not adequate for friendship, so I get mad at everyone else for the lacking I feel in myself. It is their fault I am not friends with them--they are too young, too old, too skanky, too self-centered, too invasive, too dangerous to my fragile mind. Ya' I got a bad illness, but I got a bad sense of self, too, and maybe that I can repair.
It will not be repaired in a doctor's office. It will not be repaired by medication, will, or thought. It will only be repaired by making friends with someone.
Dr. M says I do have normal relationships and that all of this here is in my head, one distortion piled up over another. And maybe he is right. All the way home from my clubhouse I kept getting mental wafts of how things really are. Meaning, maybe people are not out to get me, to use me selfishly; that it is not all about me but mostly about them. Most significantly I got fleeting senses that anger is just anger and not the kryptonite to my fragile sense of being, based as it is on fulfilling people's needs in hopes that they will return the favor--a clearly distorted sense of relating. Maybe anger is just anger. How can I express to you how that one thought feels like the first spring breeze of the year floating through the screen of a window just lifted after a long winter.
I guess that's all I have to say for now without getting boring. All I know is maybe it is not just a feeling of being safe or not safe with others, but even more deeply of feeling inadequate and not valuable and how hateful of myself and others I living life in a perceived mental deficit all the time--I am not good enough to be anyone's friend.