Who Am I?

Just got back from therapy a little while ago, a session that was basically a rambling, tangled talk about how I no longer feel as if I know who and what my authentic self even is, much less how to find her.

I articulated my ideas about self (well, at least I tried), and Michele provided some other ways to view self. I rambled over how much I hate that I am still in therapy, almost 30 years later; how I am afraid to "follow my dreams", not even being sure what they are anymore and being afraid of following them and being poor and insecure; about choices I've made in the way of relationships with men that where less than beneficial for me and why I might have made those choices; about feeling so many emotions and how they affect me physically and how I wonder if all my meds are messing me up and I wish I could go off them …. It was a turgid, tangled mess.

Sometimes I wonder if therapy is even helping me anymore, if I'm beyond the point where it could help. I wonder if I can every be functional again, or if I am now stuck in this mental and emotional tangle forever.

In therapy, I posited that we all have a basic (right now I'd say "essential') self — the person we are when we are born. The core of our personality, perhaps. And that we gain layers as we grow, and maybe we get twisted around our core self, or get too many layers between our authentic self and the self we have become, obscuring our authentic self. In this schema, I no longer know who I am when I'm authentic, what my core self is like. Is it the child I remember? The woman in her early 30s who went to Britain alone for a month, who published a story, who applied to and was accepted into a competitive six-week writing workshop?

Or am I the pleaser, the one who has a puppy-like need to make others like me, who makes herself as "normal" and non-threatening as possible, who doesn't make waves?

Michele's concept is that we have a central personality who is the kind of overseer of the sub-personalities. Our sub-personalities — the rebel, the responsible adult, whoever else one may have tucked in there — are kind of like board members of a corporation or organization. And that I, as the central personality, can have dialogues with the various sub-personalities of me. This concept has intriguing possibilities. However, it doesn't answer the questions of who am I? What is my authentic self like? And how do I know what my "dreams" are that I should follow?

I pointed out to her that she didn't give me what I wanted, which was a clear, pure answer. She was understandably amused.

Therapy Hangover

Sometimes, when going through therapy, a person can experience what some call a "therapy hangover." This feeling can occur from extreme emotions experienced during therapy, from reaching a deep place during therapy, and from intense realizations or epiphanies reached during therapy. Usually this feeling doesn't come during or right after the therapy session, but a little while later.

I think that today I experienced a therapy hangover.

Today's therapy was good. I was feeling disappointed with myself for not achieving the goals I set at last week's session. I've been feeling disappointed in myself for not putting more time toward my freelance job and being behind in reaching my deadline. Those were the feelings we started off the session discussing. Fairly simple and normal stuff.

I tend to approach my sessions in a freestyle, stream-of-conscious style. I lose track of original points as some new thought or memory comes to mind and I chase after that. I've told my previous therapist and my current therapist about this tendency and given them permission to control the session more, but both of them have basically let me follow my paths and tangents.

Today, in particular, I think this tactic was useful. I went from being disappointed in my not reaching my goal for the week to disappointment in myself regarding work to having developed the feeling over years that I'm going to disappoint my employer eventually, so I might as well get it over with right away. (I tend to feel this with friends, too, but forgot to bring this up during therapy.) So I tend to do something that will disappoint: I take a sick day early in my employment, I change plans suddenly (such as not coming in on a day I was scheduled to be in the office, saying I'll work at home instead), and I don't always work as hard as I feel I should and can. I'm not just in the process of disappointing others — I'm disappointing myself.

Ideas and memories and feelings kept coming to mind as I spoke, such as my parents' insistence on straight A's, even though they couldn't do the work I was doing in school and they had no understanding for how hard math was for me, for example. I told my therapist that I'd tried not to internalize that mindset, but that I had anyway. Perfection is hard to live up to.

Home

What and where is home? Much has been written about it: Home is where you hang your hat, home is that place where they have to take you in, home is where the heart is.

For me, I guess it was the last one. The problem being that my heart was with my mother. She was also my center and my anchor (this goes back to my lack of self-differentiation from her). So when she died, there went home, center, and anchor. 

I could pretend that I had a home when I went to visit the house and check it out. I called it "my house." But although I still felt very comfortable there, it was empty besides me.

What about Houston? you might ask. Well, I like it well enough (although the early high temperatures this year are not making me any happier than the flooding this winter). But I don't have friends to do things with much. I have some commitment issues, so my heart isn't really here.

A Sally Fields Moment

The past year-and-a-half has taken me places I've never imagined. I never imagined taking care of my cancer-stricken mother — or being able to for that matter. I never imagined moving back to Oregon then back to Houston, all in the space of six months. But more than that, I never imagined finding out that So Many People Like Me!  They really, really Like me! (And one or two have even said 'L-O-V-E'!)

Yeah, I have a strong Sally Fields side. That Oscars moment of hers was very painful to me, because I could (and still can) identify so strongly with her. 

It's such a wonder to me, to be liked, to be loved. My parents loved me, as did my brother. So did my grandparents. I imagine that while I was very young and very cute and had few significant opinions of my own that my aunts and uncles and some of my older cousins liked or loved me as well. I was 8 when I found out that not everyone loved, or even liked, me. It went downhill from there. Apparently I am one of those people who often causes others to form very strong opinions one way or another. 

There's lots of history and tons of stories in there, but they aren't the point of this post. The point of this post is that, as a result of my difficult year-and-a-half, especially the last month or so, I have found out that many people I like and respect Feel The Same Way About Me! It matters because it hasn't always been so. It matters because it feeds the part of me that needs external validation and that has been feeling empty for too long. And it matters because I have lost the favor of several who cared, or said they cared, during that time. This is not a one-to-one correspondence in growth here folks. I believe that I have acquired approximately 5 to 10 times as many "likes" as I've lost.

I think I'm feeling a bit dizzy; perhaps I'm coming down with something. Oh yeah, I think it's that thing called a Sally Fields Moment. I think it's a crazy little thing called 'loved'.

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.

Post of some delicacy

So, back when I started all this, I began with a rather interesting little story of an event involving my mom, me, and a brown paper package from Babeland. Go check it out before you go any further so you will know what I am talking about.

I thought the story was hilarious. At least one other person did, also. My other readers/friends, not so much. It's rather adult, as well.

The thing is, I have a different readership now. Mostly. (There are a few others from before.)

So this post is a poll of sorts: do I repost the story for your entertainment, or should I not bother? Those who've seen it may chime in, especially as you have seen it and can comment on whether or not it's funny. It's not like I have an objective opinion on it or anything.

Besides, as Julie over in JulieLand and I have been discussing recently, I definitely have an askew take on the world. One that often leaves other people, friends included, shaking their head at me.

So what do we say, readers? Post or no post?

ps: Folks over at Lucy's are Betties. Folks at Jenny's are now Arghers. Readers of Julie's blog are JulieLanders. Should I call my admittedly few readers anything at all?  :)  Do let me know that as well.

Wanting to write

Hello all who visit, all 3 of you.

I have wanted to write, I think of writing often, but too often what is in my head lately is sad, dark, and dreary, and y'all don't need to  get it into your head. (Yes, Steve, I said "y'all. Deal with it.)

But, I do want you folks to know I've been thinking of you and of my blog.

Part of the reason I often hesitate to blog is that whole "potential employers looking for evidence of you online" thing. I mean, suppose I post something like being in therapy? If a potential employer found me,  they might think, "Gee, potentially crazy here, better not hire her."

Paranoid? Moi? Yup. And there are enough clues on this site that, even without my last name or pic, I'm findable.

So what do you readers think? Is it worth being quiet just on the off chance an employer decides to look for me? What do or would you do? If you are an employer, what would you do?

That's it for today. Oh, except that I found a therapist here in town. I like her a lot and even with just an introductory session have received an entirely new perspective on things. This is going to be difficult, but very, very good I think.

Deeper in the Heart of Texas

As someone who has lived all her life on the West Coast, I have shared my friends’ and neighbors’ opinion of “anywhere but Texas.” That’s where none of us wanted to live. Why? Because it was full of cowboys, which we all knew were uneducated rednecks, right? Bigots. Treated their women badly.

How terrible. To think that, to carry that opinion for all these years without ever checking it out. My aunt and uncle and cousins moved here and lived here the rest of their lives, and unfortunately they exhibited the behaviors and mindsets that I considered were Texan or Southern: teen pregnancies, never finishing high school, not marrying the other parent of their children, their own kids repeating this pattern.… But several of my cousins in California did that, too.

My grandmother lived in Texas for quite a while; she worked for a contractor to NASA. It is obvious that educated people live in Texas. And just because one wears jeans and boots and a cowboy hat doesn’t make one uneducated or a bigot or a wife beater. I think that is a conceit of early urbanites, of people who lived very far removed from animals and farming and dirt. Perhaps began as a way to distance oneself from rural areas, from tradition, from dirt and animals and subsistence. But I find I rather like cowboy boots and cowboy hats…I think I’d like some to wear for myself! (I already wear jeans—Levi’s 501s to be exact.)

What about racism? When I worked for a year at the City of Seattle, I worked with a group of analysts regarding the solid waste and recycling programs that were being initiated in Seattle that year. In a group of about ten people, two were Asian and one was African American. The latter analyst, Mozelle, had grown up in Seattle, but when she was sixteen she convinced her parents to let her go live with family in the South. She said that the big difference she noticed between the two regions was that in the South, you at least saw bigotry—where it exists—in the open, unlike in Seattle. One thing I’m finding about the Southwest is that there is far greater social integration among ethnic groups than I have generally seen in the PNW.

Sexist? I don’t know yet. But certainly I see gender issues everywhere. And while the US talks up greater rights for women more vocally than other countries, other countries were laughing at us during this last presidential election because we were making such a big deal over a potential woman presidential candidate and woman vice presidential candidate: even in countries where young girls are still sold into marriage, there have been women in leadership roles, including women leading those countries. I don’t see gender issues as being strictly tied to geography. Nor to education levels: there are plenty of people with recessive ideas of gender roles and capabilities in all levels of economic, social, and economic levels.

So here I am, in a state I never thought I would go to, challenging lifelong prejudices and thoughtless opinions, and I’m liking it—all of it. Suppose I decide to stay here? What will my family think? What will my friends think? ;) What will I think?