i wasn’t going to blog today, because i was pretty busy today and then it was night. and i decided not to blog at night anymore after what happened last night.
i wonder what it was yesterday that led me to end up writing the saddest, most pathetic self-hating blog. i had actually felt pretty good most of the day, well off and on. but then i blogged and it turned into a self-indulgent befuddled mess of negativity that i couldn’t fix, so i just logged out and followed thru with my normal bedtime ritual. which includes the standard brushing of the teeth — and flossing! and also, sadly a round of pocket camp on my phone. someday soon i hope to be the saint who puts her phone on the desk in the corner to charge overnight while sleeping soundly at a decent hour.
but not yet. so i took my night pills (glycine, magnesium, 2 5htp & 1/2 mg ativan), did the phone game thing, and turned off the light nice and early at 12am. i’ve been on a 2-10 sleeping schedule lately, but i would like to get back to 12-8. but no, instead i had…idk…maybe a panic attack? more like a grief attack? i was just overwhelmed with sorrow and anger and fear and confusion. so intense like suffocating at the bottom of the ocean. my chest started hurting, my whole body. i tried not to cry, but i thought, shit maybe i should just stop pretending this isn’t happening and just cry. but i didnt want to go full wailing & gnashing of teeth because my head would hurt so bad the next day. so i just kind of broke down for a few minutes, pulled it together for a few minutes, on and on for about an hour. it was that state where you don’t/can’t think, you’re just stuck in the grip of something.
then i started to get panicky because i remembered an article about how chronic lack of sleep will kill you fast. just so bad for you etc. so my normal would be to take just a little bit extra ativan. but i truly want to get off the poison, and im never going to if i keep doing that. i took a mastic gum capsule instead, because my stomach was burning with acid. then i dug around and found my gran’s locket and tried to find comfort there. it has given me courage to go to the dentist before, and to do other things im afraid of like the stupid senior night where parents have to walk out on the football field to be announced and celebrated for their athletic kid.
for probably 45 more minutes i suffered in such despair and confusion. i couldn’t think of what else to do. i couldn’t think rationally of like, “this is good. face your emotions” or ” hey get that list of self-soothing shit to do”, or anything helpful. i was like all lizard-brain. (altho i am really proud of myself for not taking the extra pill.) but i was so desperate, i held the locket to my chest and called out to my gran (whispered) to help me and i just cried and cried, repeating help me gran.
this is not my thing, i dont ask for help, even/especially from ghosts in the middle of a miserable night. but, like i said, weird head space. out of nowhere i got this very strong feeling/impression. it was like a voice in my head, strong and sure, said, “do not use this locket. there is too much grief there.” i obeyed and put the locket on the bedside table, pushed it as far as i could away from me, rolled over and passed out.
so this morning i woke at like 950 and turned on the SAD light and lay there remembering the pain and drama of the night before. all of the emotion was gone or shuttered. i had breakfast and called mollie. i told her that i had a miserable night and was unsure if it was “just” depression, cPTSD, or maybe plain old grief that i can and should work thru. she said i should have called her then & that her service to others, she’s decided, is to be available 24/7, which is pretty phenomenal. and the conversation was good. she said so many really inspiring thing. very helpful!
but i wanted to make a note of at least one thing she said cuz it was great. i told her about the locket and the strong feeling that came over me like a voice. i said i dont believe in ghosts, but maybe it was some energy telling me to stop. and that made no sense because i thought my gran used the locket for comfort. it holds the pictures of her husband on one side & her only child (my dad) on the other. i suggested maybe she was wearing it when she died, i really started going out there. she stopped me and said maybe there is a wisdom within you that knows there is too much of your own grief tied to the locket.
dang. she knows nothing of the tragedy of my paternal family. but this hit me as absolute truth. yes. this is exactly what it was. my own intuition, and of COURSE the locket symbolizes immense grief, wtf was i thinking? i never knew my gran. her life was so so very sad. nor did i know my father, his life was even sadder. and he died at age 30, before i was old enough to remember him. that locket is a gd icon of sadness for me!
so– good for courage. not good for comfort. check.
Mollie had to get off the phone but reminded me of the cd she had lent me. so i listened to it while i knit the everlasting 1×1 ribbed scarf. it was this chic, rhonda B. she said some great stuff. im going to listen to it again and take notes. something about giving up food plans and focusing on just going to meetings and going easy on ourselves. and that she felt she always had to do everything 10x harder to be half as good as anyone else. so, like, when it came to exercise, she was always insane and it was unhealthy. i could relate to that so much. im so ‘all or nothing’. she said, instead she has learned to just follow directions. if the phys therapist tells her to lift her leg 10 times, she’s just going to lift her leg 10 times and not think, “oh this isnt going to do anything!”. yep! i. have. been. there.
so then i did my 20 minute low-impact aerobic dvd and didnt tell myself what a waste and how pathetic and this is nothing why not kick it up a notch. i didnt do the yoga video after like i planned. because logically, i know that i need to ease back into it. because im not 17 anymore and my back is so damaged. so im just going to write a conservative exercise plan with careful increases and Follow Directions. i think that’s great.
my ex tried to engage me in text tonight, but i withstood the allure. and by allure i mean guilt (or fear?) i stayed generic and made sure to wait a while before responding. i dont want to just straight up ignore (why? fuck him!), but i want to shut it down. dumbass must have been drunk because he was imperviously cheerful. finally he said, hey do you mind if i share with you a song ive been really into this week?
hahahahaha “are you nuts!?” i wanted to respond. i mean, really?????????? you self-centered POS. i…i just…i can’t even, there are no words. well there are a lot of words, but its almost impossible for me to be calm and express how “wtf” this is for him to ask. because, no. no, i do not want to know what he’s been grooving to all week. he has always used music to dominate the atmosphere, and he seems to think he still can. i do not want to listen to his song, and have it affect me. because it will. he knows it will. im fucking impressionable as hell (especially rn), of which i am not proud. it is such a weakness. it has made me weak and vulnerable to the likes of him. to normal ppl it might be a positive, and maybe someday, i’ll be able to embrace it and share it with a normal person who is not trying to get inside my head and suck out my brain for breakfast.
and also. we are not friends! i wanted to say that, like, “um no thanks why dont you share it with a friend?” instead i said, “probably better not to”, then he begged and sent emojis as only the drunken can, and i said “im sorry im very busy rn” (which was true! i was working on a complicated crochet pattern!). and he was like oh ok i’ll just send it and you can listen to it later. rude: i had said NO but sure enough he sent it. i deleted it really fast before i could read the name.
FUCK THIS GUY!!!!!
anyway, im feeling much more calm and sane tonight. i only decided to blog so i could remember what mollie said. i am not going to blog at night anymore tho, because i dont want to take a chance of weird nasty emotions instigated right before bed, like last night. but i have a lot of positive things to focus on. i withstood another attempt by him. and i got a lot done today. and my food is in check. and i did just the right amount of exercise for me right now. and i had great conversations with my wonderful kids. and yeah. it’ll be OK. soon. probably.
Life brings only good experiences. I am open to new and wonderful changes.
Before he even left, I started to prepare myself for what might happen. i realize now that i had been preparing for years, but this extra care did help. i bought books, a new yoga DVD, new underwear that he’d never seen or touched. and i bought a panda planner. seems overkill for someone who doesn’t work, but i wanted to plan the shit out of my breakdown/breakthru, whichever came. one of the sections in my daily pages is for an affirmation. the above is my affirmation for today.
I have a hard time with things like this. i am, like most people are im sure, of two minds. the skeptic and the believer. throughout my life i have veered between the two. in my childhood, very young, i remember thinking about this and deciding that i would be a believer, a daydreamer, and a romantic. or that i would fake it as much as possible. that’s pretty gross, really. one of my earliest memories is being 4 years old with my sister and a neighbor girl named Sandy. we were romping in our backyard with our dog, a boistrous yellow lab who had an irrepressible taste for stuffed animal guts, when I got it into my mind to climb to the top of the shed. i convinced sandy to join me, but my sister chose to stay on the ground reminding us every few minutes how stupid we were and how much trouble we were gonna get in. it was central california, it was twilight, and the sky was the palest blue with streaks of faint salmon pink on the horizon. from our roost on the shed we could see over the fence for the first time, and the neighbor’s yard was beyond disappointing. but i spied a streak of vapor in the sky from a plane — early chem trails no doubt 😀 — and i decided to have fun. i pretended it was an alien ship coming for us, coming for all of mankind. i remember deciding to act this out. i really got myself worked up. my sister was used to my nonsense, i believe she was an early prototype for squidward, but i got sandy really riled. we screamed and spazzed out on the top of the shed, and i grabbed sandy and told her, “this is it sandy, we’re going to have to jump we have to it’s the only way!” she said “you first.” and so i jumped. and sprained my ankle pretty bad. had to go to the hospital, etc. that’s why i remember it, i think. the pain. pain really seers things into our memories. at least some version of the experience.
I was a lonely, self-aware, observant child with a precocious streak that i had trouble controlling, even in dangerous times. i decided in high school to go along with the christian god thing. especially the exorcisms and demons and eternal torment. i was terrified a lot, and had some very weird experiences that i really can’t explain except to assume the power of imagination of a very troubled kid. once i was kicked out of my home and exposed to different types of families and people, i was graced with the distance i needed to look at my childhood objectively and see it for the balogna it was. and everything fell away. all the lies. not just the ones others told, but the ones i told myself. and i shed those lies only to live within the confines of new, deeper, subtler ones.
Cold Son* sings:
you will have your freedom then, and a brand new cage for you to be in.
I still lie to myself all the time. i keep realizing it anew. it’s so crazy. because i work on myself constantly. it’s a personality tick– i notice a problem or a weird thing, and i can’t stop picking at it until I’ve got a huge painful mess. i have been told by more than one therapist that i am “remarkably self-aware”. and yet i constantly deceive myself. and the strange part is, i somehow know it at the time. its like a shadow knowledge. later, once something is fully revealed, i see that shadow very clearly and know that i always knew. i see the mechinations of my duplicity, but at the time im oblivious. this way i can partake in my bullshit wide-eyed and innocent.
this is the two selves. the conscious and unconscious? i started by talking about how skeptical i am of affirmations, but how i also think, “fuck it, why not? brainwash myself? im in! if it’s not me, it’ll just be somebody else, right?” but ended up talking about the see-saw dynamic of the conscious/unconscious. i guess the correlation is that i felt like an idiot while repeating my affirmation today in the car, like a real robot dumbass. “life only brings good experiences” is some seriously twisted philosophical shit. and you have to truly believe in life to believe that.
but the truth is, im of the mind that life isn’t all that. like, take it or leave it. am i glad i was born? meh. am i afraid to die? well, sort of, the pain part, the horror, that effect on my fam, but being dead? fuck it, i don’t care. people die in so many jacked up ways. i hate knowing how people die, because it colors their whole life, this morbid wash just seeps into everything. all my memories of them have that gory factoid shitting on the whole scene. i hate that. and death is so unfair — diseases, car accidents, random crime, purposeful crime, stupid decisions that everyone makes, but for some ppl? bam they’re dead — that’s some bs! some ppl get taken out young, some die at the worst times and other people just go on and on with no explanation. to me all this says is that death is a joke. i don’t believe in an afterlife. but when death is such bs like that, makes you not even believe in life. what’s the point? why try? there’s nothing to hold on to. ephemera, man. energy candy.
OK, i’m ranting and not saying anything. basically, the affirmation annoyed me, but i did it anyway. i’m doing all this “stupid” stuff anyway. i’m torn because i believe both– nay, i believe neither. yeah, i’m just going thru the motions pretending that something’s happening. or will happen. or whatever. same thing as me on the shed trying to make things matter. same thing as all the roles i inhabited with passion and the games i willing played with my ex. thinking it was going to make a difference. were those “all good experiences”, Louise Hay? she would say yes, i know. but i feel like i’m just killing time, waiting for what? idk
wish i could express myself better today. on a positive note — no contact with him in two days so !
*this is a goddamn beautiful song:
Pro-Tip: best way to listen to it: earbuds, swings, twist around the chain as much as possible, close your eyes and lean back as you untwist and retwist and untwist again and again. open your eyes if the sky is beautiful…sighhhh so good
I feel different today. Not sure what it is. I said before that i finally saw a light at the end of a tunnel — to realize this is a tunnel and not an abyss was huge — but maybe now i feel that light. idk. one thing im doing is trying to remember, really get in touch with the person i was before him. i look at pictures and think, i don’t know her. or i think worse things, awful hateful things that come from the regret and pain of right now. but if i step out of all that and just think. try to get back in that head space. no, it wont be exactly the same. but she is me, one of the hundreds of iterations of me, and i can remember. and actually this is practice for when my kids leave in september. if i can do this, my next challenge is to find a way to remember who i was before i had them. so daunting. especially since i was a disaster.
one of the ways I am getting in touch with pre-him me is with music, of course, right? it’s very complicated tho because music is HIS. i think this is a good time to record how we met and a little bit about him and the relationship. we met on myspace! in august of 2006. we were both in a literature forum and started communicating about tolstoy, my fave. it was strictly a non-personal thing for a few weeks, but then his writing started to get to me. he has a way with words. he’s actually brilliant, in a way. he thinks very deeply in these beautiful and unique strands of mind. communing with that part of him is euphoric. it’s the best ive ever had. the deepest. those strands tho are so narrow and are totally disconnected. his mind is so rigidly compartmentalized, and his walls are reinforced a thousand times over. you can ride the bliss train down one of those trails and find yourself trapped in a nightmare of ambiguous hate and fear. brush one of the thorns, and the whole thing wakes up and starts to constrict. its horrible.
one of the areas in which he excels is art. he is not a creative person, altho I believe he once was very much so, but he has a true gift for recognizing art. what i brought into the situation was long years of studying, and a passion for, literature and film. i have limited experience with visual arts overall, but threw myself into film, first in film school and it blossomed from there. i have experienced real escape and transcendence through literature and film. and in these areas, he and i were quick to find connection.
in many ways tho we are different. where he is rigid, I am fluid. he is closed, i am open. in the very beginning he explained to me that he knew good art, and his opinion on that was unequivocal. that art is a real thing and “good” can be objectified and qualified. i felt that this was ridiculous, because art is an individual expressing an inner state, therefore it is inevitably subjective. a piece of art can do nothing for one person but then explode the mind of another person. maybe they can relate to something in it that the first person can’t. i felt, and still feel, that one person can never determine what will speak to the entire species. i mean wtf? that bothered me from day 1. but, i couldn’t argue with his taste. he did discount some amazing films, and i think this is where i first started doubting myself and feeling inferior. i was resentful, but didn’t know how to articulate myself. partly because he was triggering old feelings of insecurity, and altho i am a sharp debater, he was as cold and slippery as a fish. manipulative af. i can’t count how many times ive legitimately wondered whether he is a complete idiot or devious as hell. i still wonder. irregardless, he introduced me to a hundred films that expanded my world immensely.
while I was somewhat new to film, i was not new to literature. i have been escaping into books since i was 9. when i was 9 my mom left her abusive 2nd husband in the middle of the night with her 4 kids in tow. my sister and i were older and, since she could only choose 2 kids to take to the small apartment with her, she dropped us off at my grandparents, where we lived for the next 18 months. those months were traumatic for me, because my grandmother openly despised me. she was later diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder among other things. the family was well aware of her ways: she would pick a couple of favorites and terrorize everyone else. my grandfather was too afraid of her to intervene, so her house was a hellpit. her house was a meticulously clean hellpit, and children were not to touch anything or even sit on the couch. we were contained, along with her animals, in the back yard or garage during the day and straight to the guest bed at night. we were allowed no belongings, and our few clothes were kept in a box in the closet. my mother was too busy to visit more than once a month for a few minutes, dropping off money i think. most of my memories of that time were of hiding under furniture. if i did interact with her, generally i was being screamed at, hit, or called names. however, the boredom under the table was a massive problem for my always too curious mind, and i started sneaking books from her bookcases. mostly westerns and dirty romance novels.
I was a sheltered child and learned a lot from those books. but escapism was the dominant lesson. it never ended. as a goth teen i became obsessed with the romantic writers. as a young adult, i delved into non-fiction works of eastern religion, 19th and early 20th century american authors, and eventually Tolstoy. his fiction stole my heart. his non-fiction woke me up to what one man could offer. he was the ideal version of myself, and i loved him. i felt a strong sense of self in this area. one that took my ex many years to dismantle. i eventually came to feel separated from literature, and i no longer read. his dominant superiority claimed literature as his. aside from a handful of authors, any book i liked, he knew more about, critiqued harshly, confused me. i started doubting myself. if i read a book, he’d ask to see it and dismiss it, he’d already read it.
it’s very hard to explain this. it seems like, “Who cares?”, but it was a constant subtle undermining of my connection to things i loved. if he didn’t know more, like with the aforementioned handful, he would insert himself there. he’d study the author, he’d get into forums, he’d research the history. so if i ever mentioned it, he’d correct me. and i would be taken off guard and not know how to react. if that happened once in a while, it would be fine, that’s just life and learning and that’s great. but it was everything. it was constant. it was like a thousand tiny tentacles ever so lightly and innocently severing every last ligature of my body until i was floating lost in a sea of confusion and an inability to claim a self or reality. i recognize there is a sublime opportunity in this, and i have managed to seize it in many ways. unfortunately, the destruction of my frail self-esteem has made it incredibly difficult.
music…is a whole other thing. sighhhhh. i think i have to explain a little more: my mother was a fundamentalist christian who had worked tirelessly to keep her children safe from the secular world. nice and cloistered in the twisted, perverted molester world of the pentecostal churches. the most succinct description I can give is one she repeatedly told me, somehow unaware of how nuts it proved her to be: when i was 2 she discovered my father had been cheating on her. when confronted he silently packed one bag and left. she scooped up my 4-year-old sister and i and went to live with people from her church. they counseled her to burn all of my fathers things, which she did. every last picture. (might not have been that big of a deal if he hadn’t been killed 3 years later, leaving us nothing of him. but that’s another story.) these church people told her she was still too attached to things and instructed her to kill her beloved cat. when she couldn’t, they killed the cat in front of her, and she lost her mind and went wandering. when she was picked up, she was covered with sores and all her hair and nails had fallen out. she was admitted to the hospital, a mental institution, where she recovered for 6 months. during this time, she allowed my sister and i to be kept by the church people. i have had dark wonderings about what happened to us there. if nothing else it is a fundamental layer to the pattern of my life of being abandoned and unprotected.
she was released to my grandparents care. they took the three of us in. she was constantly in and out of fugue states and often wandered for days with bleeding feet. she told everyone that she was in the hospital because my dad had been poisoning her with arsenic. i believed this as a child. as an adult, i realize that if there was arsnic in her blood, it would have been more likely the work of the insane cult she was involved with. and i think its fair to assume that my dad left the way he did because he was afraid of her volatile emotional reaction, the same fear that came to rule my life for many decades.
back to the topic: I was raised for most of my childhood in an extreme fundamentalist home. one of the things we were not allowed was music. when i was 10, my grandfather bought me a small radio. i got a taste then. when i was 11, i was taken back to live with my mother and brothers, and the radio was confiscated. we were only allowed christian music, went to school at the church — if you could call it a school — and attended religious services 4 times per week in addition. she remarried a real sicko from the church. he abused us terribly with her as witness. when i went to the school for help, i was kicked out of the home: i came home, terrified of what they would do to me for telling, only to find two black bags with my things on the front porch. this is when life began for me.
I lived with friends until i finished high school. i stayed out all night, i met interesting people, i lived in clubs and bars and coffee shops that had all night music. i went homeless after graduating. i lived in flop houses and in cars. i fell in love with music; it was a huge part of the real world. it was a huge part of me, i realized. i listened to goth music, 80s darkwave, industrial, 60s and 70s psychodelic (mainstream), and some punk. when i got pregnant, i had to pull it together. i found a job, an apartment. i didn’t go out anymore. but, music was still so important to me. we were dirt poor, but my kids were raised with books and music.
when I met my ex, i had my little soundtrack of loved music, only about a dozen were obscure bands, something that didn’t mean a lot to me at the time. but music is his deepest calling. i think in another dimension he could be some creative genius musician. in yet another, he’s a world-famous producer. the man has an uncanny ability to find amazing music. he has a relentless drive to search it out. and his dominance is most thoroughly presented in this world by “his” music. he collects it, like badges of his own worth, and plays it constantly. he wakes up: he puts on music. he drives: music. he goes to the lake: bluetooth playing music. he sleeps: music. our home became his domain because he always dictated the music. it was like living inside of his mind. or his mind expanding and encasing the home. “well, just change the music!”, you say! “put something else on!” and i did that! at first a lot. i said, hey its my turn. but when my music was on, he would pout and pace. he would never say anything outright– he’s too polite– but his body language and energy would be super negative, making things uncomfortable. so instead of being able to relax and enjoy the music, it became like a stand-off. playing my music became a rebellious act. a fight. and i hated that.
and so I would fight less and less. I would go thru phases where I’d get some energy, and I’d kick up some dust, make a big deal. but mostly, i was so tired. and his music was really good. i loved it. within the first year, he copied all my old beat-up discs to an external hard drive. made sense. easy access. i gave my brother a garbage bag full of them. (he sold them for heroine, incidentally.) then the hard drive fell off the desk, and i couldn’t get it to work. it was going to cost almost $300 to have a computer guy pull the music off. money i didn’t have. i tried to list everything on there, but couldn’t remember over half of it. eventually, i never listened to music that wasn’t his. presented to me with his domineering stamp of approval. “this is good. listen to this”
and eventually, I just disconnected from it all. it was too hard. i was too drained with the other stuff going on, the sex stuff and the emotional roller-coaster. he constantly pushed his choice of books and movies and music on me. i was choked with it. i stopped liking movies, i stopped reading. i started driving in silence and tuning out his music when my home felt like a trap. and now i have an iPod full of his music. not a single song unconnected to him. we use google music on our phones, and it’s so hard to remember who i was before, and what i listened to. when i try, i hear him in my head, telling me whats good and what’s shit.
so its been pretty silent around here. im afraid to play anything, because I don’t want to think about him. i have played a little reggae, because reggae is so positive and powerful it escapes him. and the ramones were always mine. he tried, but he could never get inside that. and I’ve been digging around online finding old favorites that he trashed, and i gave up on.
I think its one of those things that time will heal. i have to believe I’ll come back to it. i’ll be able to read and watch and listen all by myself again. i’ll be able to say, “this is what i think.” full stop.
Station H 