The Wrong Life

Sometimes in therapy I learn something about myself that seems so new, or I get a brilliant new perspective or I see something I hadn't seen clearly before. I guess that's why going to therapy remains worth it. (Besides that whole life ring while I'm drowning in depression thing, of course.) Moments like that bring into sharp focus how for quite a few years I learned nothing new in therapy.

In my mind, I sometimes try to "re-do" my past, think that I can somehow "fix" things. I know it isn't rational: I'm not going to be able to make my family be alive again or change any of a number of other past traumas. But emotionally I feel as if I can do so if only I do it right.

People define themselves differently. In many places in the world, people define themselves by their place within their community. The Navaho people define themselves by their family connections. LIke the Navaho, so did I. Without my family, I feel cut off, I feel like there are huge gaping holes inside me that nothing can fill.

This is not how my life should be. I wanted to marry and have children: I would have made a terrific wife and mother. I am nurturing and loving and giving. The fact that no one ever wanted to marry me has long made me feel there is something wrong with me. I see so many people who have lifelong relationships, people who don't seem to have the qualities I have, people who are takers or who are high-maintenance, and I have to wonder what is wrong with me that no one wanted what I have to give.

My brother was supposed to be my friend when we grew up. He was supposed to be here with me after our parents died. Our children would have been friends and we would have spent a lot of time together.

When I'm Stronger

NOTE: This is an extraordinarily long post and delves into more detail in ugly places than normal. Don't feel you have to read it.

My therapist and i talked about journaling at my last appointment, referring to my last blog post and the epiphanies that came to me while journaling early one morning. Michele suggested I continue to journal when I first wake up because your mind is still open then; it hasn't put up the usual barriers it does once you get up and start your day. That was Monday. (We had to meet out of order due to Xmas, and we'll meet on Tuesday next week due to New Year's.)

So I started on Tuesday, two days ago. In less than 2 pages, memories of Mom bubbled up in my mind. These memories promptly turned into ones that hurt and disturbed me, memories I have shunned and shunted away, memories I don't feel able to deal with. i want to be able to deal with all my memories of Mom during the few, short months leading to her death with acceptance and equanimity. The set of memories that came to me Tuesday morning hurt. They scared me the way the events I remembered scared me. My stomach is tight just remembering my reactions on Tuesday. I cried a little, but held myself back from full immersion into the emotions those memories contained. I was strong enough to hold myself back from that. I tell myself I'll deal with those memories when I'm stronger.

Today, after I'd been home for about an hour and a half (I spent Xmas with other friends), I took a nap. it was a wonderful nap: a gentle sinking into unconsciousness under a warm, fluffy cloud of a comforter with the sun shining through the window onto my face. Then lovely vague dreams, and waking up feeling soft, pliable, and happy.

Somehow, ideas relating to my past rose up inside my mind. I remembered a memory from when I had to be nine months old: I was lying in a cool, twilight-dim room and knew I shouldn't cry or make a fuss, just wait for someone to come get me out of bed. I know I was 9 months old because I knew who was my regular babysitter at the time (I checked with Mom). It was my Aunt Nita. She and her sons always seemed kind of tense and unhappy, for very good reason: Uncle Jack was a drunk. He wasn't just an alcoholic — he drank himself into a stupor, drank himself into the gutter, and, when brought home by my father and/or his other brothers and put to bed, would promptly climb out a window and go back to yet another bar. As an infant, I was completely aware that I shouldn't cry, shouldn't upset that household, should wait to be picked up from my nap.

That memory came to me as a corroboration of how I could remember that my cousin's molesting me started when I was two. How can a two-year-old remember anything? How can a nine-month-old? But traumatic events can set memories into stone.

Christmas Memories: Sadness and Joy

I always loved Christmas while growing up because it was a big deal to us as a family gathering, both immediate and extended. For the first 11 years of my life, we got together with my dad's family on Christmas Eve, even at immense inconvenience to other family members, to open presents after midnight when my grandfather arrived from closing up the movie theater he managed. After that, the younger siblings (my dad's generation) rose up in protest and we began having our gatherings at a more suitable day and time and took to drawing names instead of giving gifts to everyone, another hardship on the younger families. Even with all the craziness and sometimes 35-40 people in a small, three-bedroom house, I loved the holidays. And Christmas morning was always just about the four of us: Mom, Dad, my little brother Jim, and me.

However, the year I was 16, we moved 1100 miles away from the town, and everyone, I’d known my entire life. At least that Christmas, it was still the four of us. Unfortunately, Dad died of a heart attack the following May (or March, I'm not sure after 35 years) and Mom insisted we stay where we were. So the Christmas I was 17, there was just Mom, Jim, and me. Mom wanted to make it something to remember as being different, so that it wouldn’t be a memory of loss — any more than it already was — but a new memory. So the three of us talked about it and decided to have lobster tail for Christmas Eve dinner! Mom had never cooked lobster of any sort before, but she asked the man at the fish counter where she bought the lobster. Jim and I made the salad and melted the butter and set the breakfast bar for our feast. We even had little glasses of wine with Mom's regular-sized glass. And it was a very fine meal! It was a nice way to start a new memory.

In addition, my brother and I were panic-stricken that there was no one to fill Mom’s stocking or give her gifts from Santa that year, so we did it. We bought small gifts for her stocking, and we went in together on a single gift for her from Santa. On Christmas morning, Mom quickly figured out who the 'elves' were who had surprised her by filling her stocking, but the look on her face when she found a package to her from 'Santa' was one of shock. I think she believed in Santa for a moment, or that an angel had reached down and given her a gift. Then she saw the smug looks on our faces and realized that her 'angels' were the two teenagers who were her anchor in this world.

By then, our extended families no longer extended. Our family was just the three of us.

Death and Life

It is a matter worth noting that not once that I can remember this last week did I wish I were dead or dying. This fact is both happy and sad: happy because, hey, I didn't want to be dead, and sad because, wow, during enough other weeks I have?

Here's what I posted on the ReFab blog about this:

Some weeks, just getting through the week without having even random thoughts of how it would be easier if the Universe just casually bumped me off is a good thing. It’s not that things are rotten, just that they are hard and I’m still unemployed and I feel afraid about my future, never mind my present. So, I’m counting it as a win for this past week that I didn’t even wish I were dead, even for a moment.

Why have I felt different this past week? I have no idea. Could be we are getting somewhere in therapy (but I'm not aware of it; however, wouldn't be the first time). Could be due to the slight medication change (but we didn't start that until Wednesday and the past few days I've been kinda dizzy when I got up, so maybe the med isn't such a great thing for me). Could be the full moon (full moons make me happy). Could be, as was pointed out by responders to my comment, I know there are people who would miss me and be in pain if I died. I might as well flip a coin to decide what factor has made a change. Unless it's just a mental hiccup and I go back to occasionally thinking about how much it wouldn't hurt if I weren't alive. (Yeah, a bit of pessimism and wariness, plus discomfort about change even if it's for the better …)

Just FYI: NO! I am NOT thinking of hurting myself. Just want to be clear on that point so no one worries.

Misplaced Heart

I lost my heart years ago and have been trying to get it back again. My heart is never entirely with me, never completely where I am; it's usually looking out the window or over the wall or across the sea. For awhile, my heart may sit beside me, whether it's in a cottage outside of Seattle, a rehabilitated ranch house along the Pacific Ocean, or an apartment next to a lake northeast of Houston, loving the place where I am. But after a year or two or four, my heart sprouts wings once again and flies off, telling me I don't love where I am, I never loved where I am, and urging me to leave. My heart is always making me chase after it.

I loved where I grew up. I loved my small town as it grew to the size of a small city. I loved my family's house. Okay, I didn't love the pink all over my bedroom, but the rest of the room was fine. I even, when I was much younger, loved myself and was my own friend. My heart was inside of me and in my family and my home. I was content.

But we moved. Daddy died. We fell apart, my family and I. And I didn't love where I lived.

Life changed so much then. I graduated from high school. I went to college. I moved between college and my family's home — which I had come to dislike a great deal — for school year and summer until I graduated yet again and remained in Seattle. There was never time to love a place or to find my heart or my center. And then, for a few years, I moved every time my lease was up until I moved in with two friends. We shared a house, these two young men and I, for a year and a half. One of them moved across the country for a job and my best friend and I found a great apartment to share for the next two and a half years, until we were heartily sick of one another.

I enjoyed the apartment a great deal. I enjoyed my next, with another friend, also a great deal. A year after that move came more changes in where I lived and who I lived with and how happy — or rather, unhappy — I was.

Two Years

Yesterday was the two-year anniversary of my mom's death. I didn't cry or get horribly depressed, although I think my being slightly less functional this week may be related to it. My organizer came for three hours (our final three hours, it turns out ... we're done! Now it's all up to me ...) and I had an hour-long conference call meeting later on. I went to the grocery story and the library (finally able to get out of the house). But while I felt some sadness, it was mild and easy to handle.

I did feel on the edge of some major crying a few times, and on the edge of feeling very sad, trauma-sad, but it didn't come, even when I allowed myself to think about my mom and about losing her, oh so much too early.

My friend Deb chatted with me on IM for awhile to make sure I was okay. My BFF and I texted and he wanted to make sure I was alright, too. I still feel on the edge of great sadness, but I know I'm okay, as well.

For most of this year, I've been highly medicated, to get me to a place where the therapy could work. I've also felt rather emotionless, other than anxious. Numb. In the last couple of weeks, I changed some of my medications around and I have started feeling again. This is a good thing because if you numb your feelings for too long, they just build up rather than going away. Then, when you start to feel again, you have a flood coming out rather than a stream.

So I'm glad I could feel sad about my mom, and glad that I didn't fall over the edge into trauma-sadness. I feel like I am finally getting better, which will spread out into all of my life. I may have other times where I feel sadder — it's not at all predictable — but I feel I can handle it. And I can always get in contact with one of my friends if I need help handling how I feel. I know and trust that now.

Two years. It still doesn't seem real or right, but I am fine.

January Sucks

My boy, HS senior photo

As I wrote yesterday, my brother killed himself 29 years ago,  just days before my birthday. I always get depressed in January. I was also always used to having my family making a big deal out of my birthday, even as an adult. Mom called me every year on my birthday ever since I went away to college and sang Happy Birthday to me on the phone, even when I lived in the same city as she did. She called me with my brother, then with her second husband, then with my grandmother, then just her. But she always called and sang. So I'm feeling quite unhappy about January these days, even more than before.

My mom, HS senior photo

Because of my brother's suicide, every January hurts, but at least every year prior to last year I had my mom — whose own loss of a child was greater than I could imagine — for comfort and to take my mind off my birthday loss and pin it on birthday gains (such as all those additional years that are better than the alternative). I miss her voice.

Missing My Boy

He was born three years and almost nine months after me and he was always "my boy." He was my treasure and my gift and I'd have given my life for him. For a long time, I wished that our parents had died and at least left me him. 

But he died when he was 18; this coming week it will be 29 years since he killed himself, just days before my birthday. I always get depressed in January. 

The thing about suicide (which I conveniently chose to ignore when I was thinking hard about it, some time ago) is that you never get over that grief. It remains sharp, like a deep cut from a sharp knife. It gets better, but never entirely heals. Everyone I've ever talked to who survived a loved one's suicide tells me that. Even people who were friends, not even close, remain affected for years and years.

So every January I bleed inside. 

Rejoicing in a Death

It makes sense, of course, to rejoice when a boogeyman has been destroyed, and Osama bin Laden has been the worst boogeyman in contemporary American memory. A feeling of relief and catharsis has brought a nation to its feet, cheering with joy. Perhaps tomorrow many will feel sorrow over being so pleased that someone, even someone so evil, has been murdered.

That his murder was necessary is not in question. Neither is the goodness of those who stalked and killed him: what they did was as necessary as building latrines for the health of those they serve with and building relationships with those they strive to serve.

And for many in our nation, this death may be the beginning of a healing. As the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001 and the word was passed through the airwaves that a terrorist cell was responsible, the worldview of many, many people bent and broke. Because Americans have long believed that we are "safe" and that no harm could come to us on our earth.

The events on 9/11 catapulted the U.S. into a state that most of the world's countries have existed in for decades — the sure knowledge that terror and violence can occur anywhere and anytime. That knowledge was a breaking point for belief systems that relied on safety as its anchor point. For many people, this knowledge created a free-floating anxiety that they didn't understand or even perceive except as a new distrust and a new uncertainty about everything.

I have a good friend who is an example of this. Not only did 9/11 overturn his feelings of sure safety, but it was sharply followed by a moderate collapse of our economy: a double dose of fear to digest.

While I feel sorrow that we rejoice in a death — and even I do to some extent — I hope it helps my friend heal. I hope it helps all of us heal.