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.

Feeling, Detaching, Continuing

I haven't written in wow — 10 days! I know I usually write about my therapy, but last week, I just couldn't.

Last week's therapy ended up being very emotional and very raw. We started talking about what I wrote about in my last post and pursued it far into my mind and my feelings to see what is behind this desire to reconnect with my past. At the very base of the vortex, we found abandonment and being completely alone. Intellectually, I know that my family did not abandon me and I am not completely alone (besides that fact that we are all basically one on one level). I have people who love me, both locally and scattered across the country. But, at the heart of the matter, those are what I feel.

I cried some. Not as bad as most of the times I cried in Karen's office, but the first time I've cried in Michele's, and the first time I've cried in a while. I really don't like to cry, for numerous reasons. Even more, I don't like to cry in front of someone else. It exhausts me. And when I experience a strong emotion, afterward I detach from emotion for some amount of time.

We ended the hour with a long imaging session. Imaging, visualization, creative imaging: whatever you want to call it. Michele led me and helped me find my way through it and discover things. I'm not going to describe it because it's intensely personal and there are very few people I would be comfortable sharing it with. Hell, I'm barely comfortable sharing it with myself!

Thus, whenever I thought about writing for the blog, I kept thinking about writing about the session, then about how I didn't want to write about the session. So I didn't write, and I didn't write.

I had therapy again today, and after I finished chattering, I told Michele about how I didn't write about last week's session and why. Which in turn led to my emotion/detachment pattern.

I don't want to have this pattern. Last week, on the way home, I left the radio off so I could stay with the feelings from the session and the imaging work. I wanted to ride that emotional wave to the end, the way Michele encouraged me to do. And I did ride it, all the way home. Then, exhausted, I took a long nap. Afterward, I didn't return to thinking about the therapy session or my feelings or the work we'd done and ended with. I didn't do so again until today's therapy.

On A Philosophical Note

One thing I used to do, for several years, was read part of one of a set of philosophical books at bedtime, the way some people read from their religious books, just a little bit of reminding me how to live well before I went to sleep. The three books are It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness by Sylvia Boorstein, The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh, and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Zen Buddhism and Stoic Philosophy readings on a regular basis somehow helped me feel calmer and more centered. 

Then, for some unknown reason, I stopped reading them. Either I let the books be packed and so didn't have them at hand after I moved to Oregon, or I just got out of the habit, but somehow I stopped. And I think that stopping that bedtime habit left a little hole in my calmness and my center.

When I remember to think about being mindful, or when I remember something I read and try to apply it to whatever I'm going through, I feel a little better. But because I don't read these books regularly anymore, I don't remember to apply them to my life very often.

For example, the Buddha taught that struggling causes suffering. If you struggle against something that you cannot change, you will feel added pain — the pain of suffering. If you struggle against something you can change but you don't try to change it or accept it, you will suffer. I spent the better part of two years struggling against the fact that my mother died and that she died at a time when she was finally free to do things that she wanted to do. Telling myself it wasn't fair is struggling. Not accepting the fact that she was dead is struggling. It is partly grief, too, but I think I made it worse by clinging to these struggles and clinging to my grief. When I began to read the Boorstein book again this summer, I was reminded not to cling. I was reminded not to struggle against what I cannot change. Those struggles have nearly disappeared now, partly from time and cognitive therapy and partly from reading one of my books and being reminded.

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.

Irrational Thinking, the Scarcity Mindset, and Cognitive Therapy

I am afraid. I'm afraid of many things, few of them rational. Some of them even have names. One of the things that most occupies my fear at the moment is that I'm going to run out of money and have no options. This is called a Scarcity Mindset. It's a little rational to think that I'll run out of money because I'm not working and the inheritance will last for only so long. But it's not rational to the extent that I fear it. I'm almost paralyzed with it.

It doesn't help that, for almost two years, I've been almost incapable of holding down a job. I worked at that contract job and called in sick way too often, just out of the stress of working and commuting when I was still recovering from my grief.

I'm capable of working a regular job now. I'd rather work freelance, but I think I can work something more normal. It would be best if it could be on a contract so I could get paid by the hour and extra for more than 40 hours a week; I don't want to work all those extra hours without extra pay anymore. I'm too old for that shit.

So here I am, looking for work on craigslist and the freelancer's association job list and LinkedIn and not finding anything or at least not getting even any messages back and I'm thinking maybe I need to find an office job (not like there aren't already enough office workers looking for work out there) or a retail job or something just so I can earn some money. I need to find work. I need an income. And I'm terrified that I won't find work and that I'll end up stone-broke. 

But this is something that cognitive therapy is designed to work with.

Authentic Joy

Joy is always worth it.  – The Bloggess

Those of you who follow this blog, those who know me, you know what I've gone through in the past few years. Long unemployment, underemployment (still goes on), financial worries, and the biggest: losing Mom and having major difficulties coping with that and the grief and depression that come with that loss. I have been stuck and spend far too much time hanging out in my cluttered and chaotic apartment.

Today I read something special on the Internet and was inspired. I read about the adventures of the Traveling Red Dress over at The Bloggess's blog. Go there, read the whole story, then come back. I think it's necessary backstory.

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. 

Absolutely Exhausted

'Absolutely Exhausted' is a phrase used by my mother since I can remember. Of course, I picked up this phrase from hearing it all my life. Most of the time, it's simply an example of hyperbole or poetic license, but there are occasions when it was ... or is ... a completely concrete description of my condition.

For example, there was the time I went to Knott's Berry Farm with my youth group when I was 15. My best friend, two boys we barely knew, and I spent the day and evening wandering around the theme park, riding on roller coasters and eating whenever we felt tired. The next day, not only could I barely move, I couldn't stand. I was absolutely exhausted. And my feet hurt.

When I was in my mid-20s, my doctor informally diagnosed me with fibromyalgia. At the time, few doctors had even heard of the condition, much less gave it legitimacy. But fibro (as my friends and I call it) gives concreteness to 'absolute exhaustion.' In fact, when the fibro is flaring up it makes me feel a lot like a block of concrete. Tired concrete.

Know what else causes 'absolute exhaustion'? Depression. Grief.  Eating poorly (too many simple carbs). Too little exercise. Poor sleep: too little, too much, not staying asleep, and so on. Basically, I have an absolute exhaustion trifecta, or quadrafecta, or whatever. And I am absolutely exhausted. And I have a plane to catch.

Okay, so I don't have to catch the plane for another 59 hours (is that all?!), but considering that I am almost welded to the couch I'm so tired and immobile, 59 hours — including time for sleeping eating commuting working errands laundry dishes packing reading email and picking up my new iPhone on Thursday — isn't much more than a blink. A slow blink. And slow is all I can do right now.

Fibro and fatigue have been teaching me about essentials over the years, and I am getting better at pushing aside the little errands and activities and things that are nonessential for travel (I almost don't overpack anymore!). But I still have a helluva lot of essentials to handle before Thursday night. And I am Exhausted — Absolutely.

How about you? Is 'absolute exhaustion' a poetic notion or a concrete adjective in your life? Do you have any family sayings that are truer now than they once were?

Where Was I?

So much has happened since my last post, written that innocent day in mid-August when life seemed so much simpler. Full of work to do, yes, but not as complicated as it was to become. I'm very glad I didn't know the future!

Where do I start? I added a week to my two-week stay so I could finish all the tasks I needed to finish. Two days before I was due to fly back to Houston, I had an emergency appendectomy. Luckily for me, I finished all the main things I needed to finish and had sequestered my own things in one place. Sure, a few small things went missing after that, but I hadn't gotten around to sequestering them, and who needs more than one copy of the key to the lock on the storage unit? Only those of us with OCD issues about losing the remaining key.

So I had surgery. And no home to return to: it was being readied for the estate sale. But people offered to let me stay with them, and I was and remain grateful to them for this. My realtor/friend was more nurturing than my mom's friend, so it's good I stayed with my realtor first. Plus, she had no animals, which made my time there very peaceful. I entertained her and her husband, even when I wasn't looped out on Percocet; later on she told me that, during a rather uneventful visit by her nephew, she and her husband looked at each other and said, "I miss Skye!" Aww. They want me to stay with them the next time I visit.

But there went another week and a couple of days before my doctor said I could travel.

Then my friend Steve from Seattle drove down and took me back to Seattle for a much-needed visit. Not only was I not entirely recuperated enough to be sent home, I needed to be with my friends there to distract me from the anniversary of my mother's death. (Actually, I think I did my grieving as I lay in pre-op, realizing that my mom couldn't be there for me then and wouldn't be there for me afterward.)

Finally, five weeks and two days after I left Houston, I returned home. My car, parked under cover at the Park n Fly lot, started right off. For only the second time since surgery, I drove; I got home fine, but I was exhausted and my tummy was sore. And the apartment was just as messy as it was when I left it, unfortunately. Where are those house-elves when you need them?

I've rested a lot since I got home — I can only go so long before I simply fall over, and so long isn't that long. I gave myself the first three days to lie around in my pjs and do nothing. 

I've accomplished things, I've left the apartment, and yet the place is still virtually as messy as before. Tomorrow, my mom's — now my — RAV4 arrives in Houston, driven by a couple of very generous friends. Soon thereafter, they drive away in my Subaru, taking it to its new home. Change, change, change, change. Dammit.

I have projects promised, I have been offered an insane work proposition, and I have a lot of people to reconnect with. But I'm taking it slowly, because my tummy still hurts and my mind is still swirling from the point when everything flew apart and I just haven't landed yet.

I have some posts started when I was still in Oregon that I'll finish and post, later. But I wanted to catch up to the present, before reaching back into the past. I have so much to do, and so much I want to do, that I wanted to at least settle onto the hard-packed earth of right now. I lost my footing. I need to ground myself so I can go on.

So here I am: crazy and tired and swirly and wanting to work and so much less sure of things than I expected to be at this point. I keep reminding myself: this is not my true natural state; this is an artifact of the way my life has been for over a year. Slowly perhaps, I will make my way back to the focused, fun, highly capable, and cheerful person that is me. My current state is transitional and temporary and I'll sweep it out the door just as quickly as I can.

With that, I bid you good night.

The Estate Saga

Finally, I am near the end of my time as Executor of the Estate. It hasn't been fun and I haven't been great at it, but nothing's blown up and I made it through alive. (I was going to say "no one died" but that isn't quite accurate.)

I've got many tasks to accomplish in less than two weeks and I'm hoping for help that may not manifest for my hardest task. I thought to myself, what else can I do to make my life easier? That thought ran away as fast as it could, so I then decided I should blog about these next two weeks. Because it will all be so fun!

I flew into Portland Airport on Wednesday at about 11 am, but had to wait until 2 for the shuttle to the coast. A friend picked me up and took me to the store so I could buy some basic groceries, then brought me home. I ate ice cream for dinner; it just seemed the thing to do.

Thursday almost killed me: I spent the day and much of the night fearing and feeling as if I was going to barf. I stayed very still on the couch and I slept as much as I could. I did manage to get up long enough to see my realtor and sign a couple of things and talk. She rocks. She even volunteered to be "my place to stay" so I'm not losing the beach after all. 

My friend Sierra spent a few hours texting me amusing thoughts and pictures, and sent me a truly bad joke, just to amuse me and make me feel better. Sierra rocks, too.

Now it's Friday. I don't feel like barfing, but I'm being careful, which means I've accomplished nothing on my planned tasks. Nor did I walk on the beach. But I haven't moved backwards, so that's something. And the appraiser came by: they had better say that not only is this house worth what the buyers are paying for it but that they are getting a damned good deal! (Click through to see the interior shots, especially the living room and kitchen!)

As much as I hate giving up this house, both as my mom's home for 20 years and as my place to stay at the beach, I realized that I really couldn't live here on my own or keep it comfortably. It's my mom's home. Well, even tho' her second husband shared this home with her for more than half of that time, she re-did it after he died and it really is her house. I don't think I could ever make it my house, and it isn't exactly the house I'd buy if I were just out here picking out my own place. So it is okay that someone else will own it.

I also need to get over my anger and resentment over having to split the estate equally with the Steps. Here's why I'm angry and resentful: nothing in this house came from their father. When he and my mom got married, he had virtually nothing. My mom had a nice house and nice furniture that she bought with my dad. Second husband retired a year or two after marrying Mom and pretty much brought nothing money-wise to the marriage. Proceeds of the house my mom and dad bought allowed Mom and Second Husband to buy this house outright. And yet my mom, from some misguided feelings of being "fair," left equal shares of this house and its furnishings to her second husband's two daughters. And while they have both said a few times "let me know how I can help," they were empty offers because we all live in separate states and they weren't around or able to help me at all. Once the shares are distributed, they will add to the lives or retirements of the Steps, who have homes and jobs. My share will keep me from having to live in my car. In trying to be whatever her mind was thinking of as "fair," my mom practically left me hanging out to dry and was exceptionally unfair to her own daughter. Yeah, I really need to get over it. I just haven't figured out how yet.

I do love this house for many reasons, but not for the design or layout — it is pretty dark inside and completely misses most opportunities to bring light into the interior. (It truly is beautiful, it's just not my style.) I would happily take the kitchen and dining nook and place it into any house I ever live in again. It's within four or five blocks from the bluff overlooking the beach and out onto the ocean — with a several-story set of stairs down to the beach. And it's within walking distance of a grocery store and the main downtown strip, including my bank.

I'll continue the story of my love-hate affair with Lincoln City in another post. 

It's Friday night, and I'm signing off for the day.

Getting Un-Lost

Previously I wrote about how I lost my way and wandered away from the philosophies, beliefs, and practices that gave me balance and a center and serenity.

Since I wrote that, I bought a couple books on simplicity by the writer I most like. And at night before I go to bed, I use one of them plus the Boorstein and Aurelius books as inspiration books. I flip the pages back and forth and open them randomly to some page and section, then read it and ponder how they relate to my life right now and how I can use them to live better and more true to myself. 

I think they've been helping. Aurelius reminds me that the past is the past and that we choose our responses. Boorstein reminds me how to have an expansive mind that encompasses all of life and living. St. James reminds me to remember that I need less than I think I do, that what I have is enough. They feel like family who are reminding me of who I am and what I know.

I feel lighter. Yes, I got weepy about Mom a couple of times this past week, but that's okay. Grief takes time. What I'm finding is that some of the anger and resentment (mostly toward the Universe) is leaching away. And I found something I'd missed: Hatred. A shocking depth of hatred toward the Universe for taking my mom away from me and leaving me alone.That's definitely an issue to work on because I believe that hatred poisons the hater, and I don't need that.

I think I'm finding my way again. I feel more centered and more grounded. I look forward to when I look in the mirror at some point and say "Ah. There you are!"