"It Doesn't Mean My Monkey Doesn't Love You"

I can't believe I'm going to use a song called "My Monkey" but damn does it stir up the feelings, so here goes. Please watch/listen to the video at the end. It's not country.

I just started in the DBT aftercare group last week. The regular DBT group is mostly educational, not process, and is much stricter about "therapy interfering behaviors," so no one else can intentionally or unintentionally sabotage other people in the group. Aftercare is more process and allows people who have been through the educational course several times to discuss how to further use the skills in specific ways in their lives. Of course, I can't divulge anything about what happens in group or even who is in it, but I found myself talking a bit about how I have dealt with anger differently in my relationship with the Professor than I did in previous relationships. In fact, every time I talk about getting angry or upset in this relationship with Moneypenny, he asks me why I couldn't have done that with him. The short answer would just be that I grew up. This post is the longer answer.

My monkey gets busy sometimes

My monkey's got a lot of stuff he's gotta think about

My monkey gets tired sometimes

My monkey wishes he was something you could live without

Cause every monkey needs alone time

To eat bananas in the sunshine

It's feast or famine it's a fine line

It doesn't mean my monkey doesn't love you

This in part Moneypenny actually taught me while we were dating. I can't say that he actually said these words, but the general picture was "You need to learn how to be on your own. I have friends of my own and things I like to do that don't interest you and I'm going to continue to do them just like I did before we got together and you have to learn to deal with that." Sometimes I think I might have learned that lesson a bit too well because I think it can hinder me in dating but that is a post for another day. 

I like my alone time. At least 25% of my decision to stop dating for the time being is so that I can spend time by myself. I like being able to do whatever it is that I want, at my own pace, or nothing at all. I like being able to choose the show or movie I watch, the food I eat, the music I listen to, or to read a book, without ever having to think about what someone else will want to do or what they will think of me. 

This makes it easier to give other people alone time when they need it. When I was with Moneypenny and we would fight, I couldn't do that. At all. When he'd say that he needed time, I'd give him an hour and I had a difficult time even doing that. I distinctly remember one fight where i kept texting and calling him after he said that he needed time and he told me that "time" at least 24 hours. Oh my gods, that was a fucking eternity at the time. I know that I probably still do not give people as much time as they might need or I have to say "Ok, just so you know, the ball is in your court here" before I wait, but I'm not like I was with Moneypenny. 

But it isn't just during fights that I know people need time and try to give it to them. Yes, when I'm visiting the Professor and I want attention, especially sex, or when I'm texting him to try to find out what is going on, I do bug him when he'd probably rather me not. On the other hand, I could, and still do, leave him to do his own thing. During the first bout of him falling in the hole last fall, he would apologize for not doing more with me and I would shrug it off. Yeah, I'd have been more than happy if he was jumping my bones that whole time or even just talking to me, but I was usually able to keep myself busy. I was an only child after all. I also knew that it had nothing to do with me, which I think is the real key. I knew that there were and are plenty of times when I'm happy to be by myself, which has nothing to do with how much I love the people I don't want to be around, so the same thing is probably at least partially true for the people I love who need alone time. 

My monkey gets frazzled sometimes

My monkey has an ulcer and a stressful time at work

My monkey gets bitter sometimes

My monkey's not the only one who's acting like a jerk

And while he doesn't like to name names

And he's not trying to assign blame

It's hard to focus on his own game

It doesn't mean my monkey doesn't love you

From the first time I heard this song, it just stuck with me. This guy I went on a few dates told me to check out his nerdcore and nerd comedy spotify playlist and most of the music can help put me in a better mood at work, on days when my music is pissing my off for some reason. I kinda think that it could be from the Professor to Ginger and/or me, from Ginger to the Professor and/or to me, and from me to ...well, lots of people. 

When I look back, I think that most of the moments in my life that really changed how I saw the world and how I thought involved it being pointed out how selfish I was being and had it demonstrated how different the other person in the situation experienced things. Couple this with my writer-ly desire to know what is going on in someone's head and I am often trying to see situations from the other viewpoint. It can get much harder when I am arguing with someone because my own anger can overpower my desire to give a shit about their view point or experience but sometimes I can still keep it in mind. 

Two things that men have said stick out in my head. Now, I can't remember what exactly we were talking about, but I remember a conversation a few years ago where Moneypenny told me that he just lets go of about 90% of things in relationships that bother him because to him they aren't a big enough deal to bring up or to fight about. Of course, that means the things he does bring up are actually the most egregious 10% of the things that bother him, so it kinda sucks if the other person does nothing about them or won't budge on any of them. From being the one sitting on the other side and not budging on most of those things, I can say that when he brought up the 10%, I thought they were everything he had a problem with so I wasn't going to give in on everything. The bigger point though was that he didn't bring up every little thing that bothered him and he asserted that this is what most men do.

Recently, I was listening to the afternoon radio djs where I live, both married men, and they were discussing the recent study from Rutgers and University of Michigan that said that a husband's general happiness was directly related to how happy their wife was in the marriage. While researchers said this might be in part because a wife happy in the marriage might do more for a husband, the quoted researcher said "Men tend to be less vocal about their relationships and their level of marital unhappiness might not be translated to their wives." The older of the two djs definitely agreed with this, talking about how rarely he brought up things about the relationship that upset him, while his wife generally will and it feels like to him it is almost always what she thinks he is doing wrong. And here's what he said that stuck with me the most: "Who wants to hear nothing but what they are doing wrong all the time?" That was another one of those slap in the face moments for me. I'm pretty aware of a good deal of my shortcomings and I sure as hell don't want to hear it. That really got me thinking about how the things I say when bringing up problems either are what's wrong with the other person or could be perceived as such and how often that is the conversation instead of something positive about them.

When I was with Moneypenny, we had several arguments that lasted until dawn. I couldn't sleep on my anger. I couldn't keep my mouth shut. Hell, with him, I often still can't. Early on, probably from observation and trying to do things differently this time, and in large part just because Ginger allowed me to benefit from her years of experience, I learned that attacking the Professor head on just made him retreat. He wouldn't fight you back but he also wouldn't come back for quite awhile. Now, I won't even claim to fully understand why this is, though I can guess that some of it has to do with how he was raised, but I knew that what I had done before wouldn't work. At first, it was the roles that kept me in check. And sometimes the desire to be able to discuss things without being so angry I would cry, since somehow me crying means that people tend not to listen to my words. Through trial and error, I've learned that sometimes I need to do a "reasonable mind" activity, dishes worked well when I lived with the Professor, to bring me out of emotional mind, or to just sleep on it. What these things really give me is enough space to calm down, let my mind process everything and figure out what was justified, and then find a better time to bring things up. After all that, usually I can say it in a better way, hopefully one that is about the situation or about how I feel and not about him. 

A few weeks ago, over text, the Professor and I got bitchy at each other about the weekend plans and how we were going to plan out things going forward. Finally, I said that I thought that at least one of us was cranky and needed a nap (he said probably both of us) so I was going to go and I would talk to him later. When we talked about it two or three days later, the discussion looked more like "I'm worried about how this is going to go. Knowing the things we know now, what can we do to make this work better for everyone going forward?" 

My monkey gets angry sometimes

My monkey says a lot of things he doesn't really mean

My monkey gets lucky sometimes

My monkey thinks that you're the bestest girl he's ever seen

He says he'll stay with you for always

It doesn't matter what the job pays

Cause everybody has their bad days

It doesn't mean my monkey doesn't love you

One day I came home from a short morning shift and Ginger said, "You should be really glad you had to work this morning and you weren't home because I thought the Professor and I were going to have it out." Apparently, the Professor got up, all grumpy and cranky, like he is when he first wakes up. When he went into the kitchen to get himself a cup of coffee, she heard him yell, "Goddamn it, who the fuck left the bag of coffee open?" [There are a few things that drive the Professor crazy and Ginger doing forgetful things is one of them. Ginger thinks, and not wrongly IMO, that she ignores alot from him so he can just deal. I'm sure you can guess who left the coffee bag open when she kindly made me coffee before i left for work.] Ginger was cranky and tired after working all night and her, quite uncharacteristic, response was to yell back "It's just the coffee. If you're going to be a dick today, I'm just going in my room to read." When the Professor's unreasonable anger is met with anger, he tends to be taken aback and reevaluate the situation. This was no different. After her response, it was no longer such a big deal. Sometimes we say stupid shit in the heat of the moment, not always even big stupid shit, but just little stupid shit.  

When sleeping on it doesn't work and I end up playing out all day in my head all the pieces of my mind I'm going to give the Professor when I see him next, I tend to have one final thing to help me not act like a complete bitch- seeing him. This probably sounds like sappy honeymoon phase shit, and maybe it is, but it still works. When I see him, it is much harder to be mad at him. Mostly because I'm trying to figure out how to maneuver things so that he'll be taking my clothes off and being a bitch can backfire spectacularly for getting me that goal. hehe. But seriously, it feels like the anger is a fog that is burned off by the appearance of the sun. 

When they got together, the Professor needed a place to stay and Ginger made him promise to stick around for a year, though she was somehow surprised several months later when he called him her boyfriend. She told me that at first they'd have blow-outs every couple of months, but that those had gotten farther and farther apart, until it's more like once a year. It was a release valve on the relationship and in the end, they would both say that they cared more about the relationship than about not being vulnerable. 

For both of them, being vulnerable is a much bigger deal that it is to me. Most days I still feel like I'm a walking open wound. Less than I used to, but more than most people, I think. While neither of them have said directly to me that our relationships, even the different ones we have now, are more important than being vulnerable, I think that they've shown it. Right about the time we started talking again, Ginger wrote a post on Fet about her shortcomings in relationships, that she wants a lot and thinks in the moment that it's possible but often has to retreat when it gets overwhelming, because she doesn't realize that things might not be working until it is already overwhelming. While she didn't write that post just for me, I know she laid bare things about herself that aren't pretty in a place where I would be sure to see, so that I might understand. She made herself vulnerable. Things with the Professor ended as a primary relationship when he flat out said "Yes, all the things you say you expect this to be are valid and justified and what I promised and what you deserve, but I can't give them to you." Just the fact that he said that outright was a big deal for him, given his history. That honestly could have been the end of it. But when I came to get my stuff, he cried with me, admitted that he didn't know what it would be possible for us to have but he didn't not want me in his life. Recently, as we tried to talk about what we wanted in this iteration of our relationship, we admitted that this 'breakup' was different because usually we kinda hate our partners by the time we decide to end it. Usually his relationships end with him being either mean or distant, "but I still have alot of love for you and I'm trying to do things differently this time." Once again, I can't judge things based on how vulnerable that would feel for me. Things work much better for me when I focus on what that feels like for them, where that comes from, how difficult that might be for them. 

Now, of course, all this about how well I deal with conflict with my partners is in comparison to a me that was 15-12 yrs younger, differently medicated, and much more still an impulsive teenager. This is also mostly a Moneypenny vs the Professor comparison as I am still rather clueless about handling conflict with Ginger and, oh man, don't even get me started on how poorly I handle conflict with TyRoy. I largely attempt to avoid conflict with both of them, though I think that method would still be preferable to Moneypenny. Sometimes, I think that I'm just too tired to fight anymore, at least like I did with Moneypenny. I have a long list of things I'm supposed to do, half of which I don't get to, and nowhere on it does it say "fight with the Professor." When I walk out of rooms instead of fight, it's not so someone will run after me, though I have to say checking on me after awhile is appreciated. No, it's because I don't want to have the fight right then and I need to get my shit together. It's about me acting right. Generally, I think the biggest difference in the fights are about me acting right, instead of just acting on how I feel at the moment. 

So here's the full song for Jonathan Coulton's "My Monkey"

Ok, and now for the funny geeky shit- For PAX, Jonathan Coulton changed "My Monkey" to "Wil Wheaton." This video has shots of Wil Wheaton cracking up too.

 

Epiphany : I Don't Want To Hear His Story

I'm not used to being done with someone before they are done with me. Because of the crazy they usually leave before I would want that. And if or when they do want to come back later I'm usually fine with that too because I never wanted them to leave.

I also try really hard to see where other people are coming from and, when needed, forgive them. Some of it just comes from an overabundance of empathy. The combination of the writer in me, the fuck-up in me, and the crazy working as a mirror all make me work really hard to see what might have been behind someone doing something. Also one of the few things I learned from Oprah and still keep with me is the idea that a person needs to forgive not because the other person deserves it but because the forgiver doesn't deserve to hold on to things, to carry those things around with them all the time.

There was quite awhile where I thought that I needed to forgive my biological father for not being in my life before I could work on myself. And I tried but I just never could get past it all. I was too angry and hurt. And I still had too many questions. At one point early in my therapy, I told my therapist "Well, if I need to do that, then I think that I'm just going to have to stay broken, because I don't think I'll ever be able to do that." Thankfully, she assured me that I didn't necessarily need to do that for this kind of therapy.

It's not as if I I hadn't wanted to understand and forgive. During my teen and college years, I started countless stories where he would show up at some important event in my life, my graduation, my wedding, and have a good explanation for why he had not been around in my childhood. One that did not involve demonizing my mother. And one that included a book with the times I'd shown up in the newspaper and pictures of me getting awards. (Not that those happened often, but this is my fantasy.) A few years ago, I had a some realizations about his absence, including that there would never be a good enough explanation for why he was voluntarily absent from my life for over 20 years.

Of course, just a few months after that, he started to initialize contact. The first thing I got was a Facebook friend request from his wife. There was no message with it. My response was less than cordial. In between, there were messages from a woman that he works with on Facebook, though I didn't find those until later, as they ended up in my "Other Messages" box. A little over a month ago, I received a letter from him. I had to go to the post office and sign for it, so he'd know for sure that I got it, though it was sent with a return address that wasn't his home or his name. Yes, with all my insistence on honesty from people in my life, my biological father chooses to try to contact me through all manner of subterfuge.

At the time I received the letter, I was not in a good place. I did not have a job. I did not have a place to live lined up for when my parents started renting out the house we were living in. And I had just found out that my relationship was not going to work out how we had wanted it to. After a night of freaking out and crying and freaking out some more and vomiting up my dinner because I was freaking out, with the advice of my therapist and the Professor, who reconnected with his father when he was 18, I decided that what was best for me was not dealing with it right then. I sent him a message telling him that I needed time and not to contact me, especially not through third parties.

Now things are somewhat better. I have been working steadily. I like the mindless data entry job, through a temp service, that I'm working and can imagine working there for quite a while. As long as I keep doing well there, even if the data entry job no longer needs me, the temp service will probably find me something else pretty quickly. I have an apartment lined up and I move in two weekends. Hell, I even have most of my stuff already packed up. I still don't know what is going to happen to my relationship with the Professor and Ginger, but I know that I can work against my worst and craziest impulses during a breakup or transition, so maybe we can come out of this in a healthy way. So every few days I think "Well, now I have to decide what to do about that fucking letter." But I have as yet been pretty baffled as to what I want to do. Usually, when I start fantasy-writing it, I end up going on an endless diatribe about all the ways that he wronged me and fucked me up. That seems less than helpful.

Then Friday while I was working and letting my mind wander, it hit me that I didn't want to hear his story. All I wanted was for him to hear just a little bit of mine, to know how hard it had been growing up feeling like one of the two people who should have loved me unconditionally felt there was something so wrong with me that he had to be completely absent from my life. I also realized that I did not want to give him my forgiveness. It might sound extremely petty, but I wanted him to know until his dying day that he would never have my love or forgiveness.

In DBT, we learn how to validate ourselves, to just say "yes, this emotion is here and I am feeling it." That includes emotions that we might have been told growing up are destructive or not ever appropriate, like anger. We're also taught that anger can be both justified by the situation and a very powerful motivator. I don't want to not be angry at him. I don't want to hear his side of the story. I don't want to forgive him. I don't want this to ever be okay. I don't want a relationship with him. And I want HIM to have to carry that around for the rest of his life, just like I have to.

I still don't know exactly what I want to say or in what medium I want to say it. I do know that I want it to be short and sweet. I don't want it to be about comparing him and my mother or my step-father as parents or people in my life. I don't want to allow him room to argue or debate. And I don't want it to be about anything other than him not being there, because that is the only thing that I actually experientially know he did TO me. In DBT, we have a skill called FAST, which creates a guideline for keeping our self-respect when dealing with another person: Be Fair, No Apologies. Stick to your values. Be Truthful. I want to be all of those things. But I don't want to hear his side. I don't want to forgive him. And I want that to haunt him as much as him not being in my life haunted me.

Loose Associative Links

"I've been thinking about a problem." Moneypenny and I are sitting in his living room, while I'm on my visit to larger Midwest City from Smaller Midwest City. "If you are working from a many worlds theory, where everyone's life is their own world, then you basically create your own world. What do you think people would do differently if they realized that they created their own world?"  I wasn't sure if this was a poke at how I had been feeling all weekend, so mired in the lack of a clearly, overwhelmingly good decision that I feel unable to make any, or was coming from his own place of wanting to make a better life for himself. Either way, it still put me on the defensive and I went on a five minute rant about how no matter what changes in life or attitude people may make there would still be things in their life that they couldn't change and that would still suck anyway. Then I felt guilty for not being able to add anything to his conversation. I ended up leaving an hour earlier than I might have originally because I couldn't stand to sit there anymore as I fought both being angry and wanting to cry.

These kinds of thought experiments used to be fun for me. Even when I couldn't completely understand or envision them, the seemingly kooky ideas that pop up in quantum mechanics always blew me away and I loved thinking about the possibilities they presented. When I was studying Buddhism and how we create our own realities, I could easily get carried away in those possibilities as well, the ability to unravel so much of the suffering that we have created in our own lives. Stone-cold sober, he and I could have the kind of conversations that people are only supposed to be able to have when they are on some sort of mind-altering substance.

But in recent years, I've drifted further and further away from those kinds of discussions and, on the drive home, I was plagued by the question of why. I used to love those kinds of thought experiments, would come up with at least half of the places we would start on my own. Now it rubs me the wrong way to even things of them. I'm trying to work out why. I'm going to try to arrange my thoughts as best as I can, but I'm not sure how good of a job I'll do, so bare with me.

I think part of it is that with the stuff that has happened in my life, it has felt less important. Who cares about the possibilities of the multi-verse or unravelling the cycles of suffering in our lives when we're caring for ill and/or dying family members? Or even when we are just trying to get by, paycheck to paycheck? When you're spending all your time trying to figure out how to pay the next bills or how to afford to move out or you'd be able to someday go to school to be able to get a better job so you don't have to worry as much about paying the bills, you don't have as much, if any, room in your head for thinking about more esoteric things. Or at least I don't. We had all these conversations when I was 21 and in college. Yes, I only had a part-time job and I had to think about my schoolwork and being able to pay bills, but there were much fewer of them and I was convinced that soon I would have a decent enough job that I wouldn't have to worry as much about paying bills. I was convinced that my near future looked brighter so it wasn't as much of a chore to worry about the bills then. Now I'm 32 and I'm hitting this wall where my future doesn't look any brighter, where my best case scenario is having a future that is this same shade and not a shade darker. As much as I might want to, I just don't have it in me to give a shit about that stuff any more.

But I think that a big part of it is the crazy. I read this article last week from the Atlantic's website that was about the link between creativity and mental illness. Near the end of the article, she writes about talking to another colleague about creativity and schizophrenia (emphasis is mine): "Heston and I discussed whether some particularly creative people owe their gifts to a subclinical variant of schizophrenia that loosens their associative links sufficiently to enhance their creativity but not enough to make them mentally ill." Her end conclusion in the article is : "Some people see things others cannot, and they are right, and we call them creative geniuses. Some people see things others cannot, and they are wrong, and we call them mentally ill. And some people, like John Nash, are both." This really hit home with me. Now, I do not have schizophrenia, or a family history of it, nor have I ever been a creative genius, but I do think that the ways in which I think of things that many others might not come from a different way of associating things. But I think that that much of this is tied to letting the crazy drive the train more. Now that I am not letting her drive the train as much, the less I have that. It is not as bad as I had hoped that it would be when I first started down this road of improving my mental health, but it is there and it is enough of a difference that i notice it. I also have to deal with the long-term side effects of psychiatric medications. My memory has never been the same after I took lithium. Being on a mood-stabilizing medication that wards against the brain chemically induced suicidality as well as bringing up the low parts of the low side and down the up side of the ups means that I don't have those periods of creative hyper-energy anymore. (You know, mania.) As we speak, I'm also having weird things happen which I'm not sure are mental illness or medication related (or neither), like spacing out and losing time, and increased light sensitivity and black floating spots in my vision occasionally. But if you take this and add it up what you get is less memory to cull from, less energy to make associations, and a quieter and more orderly brain with less loose associations. And a woman who is very sad and more than a little angry that she has to make the decision between living life at all and having an interesting brain, though she is pretty sure what decision she will keep making day after day, even though it means she doesn't get to have those conversations anymore.

What I Wish I Could Tell Work

I really don't want to have to look for a job right now. What I want is to be looking for an apartment, to be applying for housing assistance on the off chance that I qualify, and/or to be looking for a roommate situation for awhile. What I want is to find a cheap but airy studio or one bedroom apartment that is just mine, where my cats and my stuff can live, where I can settle in, where I don't have to be anything to or for anyone.

But to keep my job, you want me to be able to tell you a designated person who I will be able to tell when I'm starting to not do very well, so that they can call you and tell you "Hey, she needs a bit of a break, even if she isn't in a place to ask for it herself." I get it. You want to make sure that the clients are taken care of, that I don't no-call no-show and leave everyone wondering what happened to me. And I even understand that you do care for me and you want me to take active steps in dealing with my mental illness, in making sure that I go through an easier time next time that I go through a difficult time.

Just two things.

One: You don't know what I already do for my mental illness and I don't really feel like it is any of your business. While the manager who has dealt with mental illness in her family is sympathetic, the boss ended up throwing out a bunch of the stigmas about mental illness in our conversation and I don't really feel like talking about it with her. Shit, sometimes I have a hard time talking about it with people I am close to, people I love, people I am living with. I sure as hell am not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you that I've been on medications for 13 years. I'm not going to tell you that I picked out my health insurance plan, which you contribute nothing to by the way, specificially so that I could go to the mental health in-patient hospital that I liked the best of the three I've been to. I'm not going to tell you that I go see a psychiatrist every couple of months to tweak my meds, except that until recently I couldn't afford to think about adding another one because I didn't have health insurance to help me afford anything other than barebones generic medications. I'm not going to tell you that I've been in a therapy program for over two years where I see my therapist once a week and go to an educational therapy group once a week. I'm not going to tell you that my girlfriend, who I live with, works in mental health, understands my illness, and I still couldn't tell her. I'm not going to tell you that I didn't tell my therapist how bad it was because I didn't realize it was that bad until everything blew up because I was trying so hard to keep everything under control that I almost thought I would be able to keep it all under control long enough for things to settle down again. I'm not going to tell you these things because I'm not sure that I think it's any of your fucking business. I'm also not going to tell you these things because I worry that you'll think "Well, damn, if she's this bad with all this help, how bad is she really?"

Two: It never works like what you are wanting. It is not like I don't know that this is a chronic illness I have. It's not like I don't say the same things to other people about mental illness, that it is like any other chronic illness, like say diabetes, that must be managed and evaluated in a realistic light. But when I am bad, I am lucky when I can express to someone else that I want to hurt myself, that I have hurt myself, when I'm starting to feel suicidal, when I'm feeling full on suicidal, when I've already attempted. Hell, I had one attempt that no one knew about at the time, that no one knew about until months or maybe a year later when I was joking about it. It doesn't work like that for me. You are right that maybe it should. But guess what? That's something I don't have the head space to change right now. Right now, all I can manage to do is to keep moving, to keep getting up each day, to keep doing chores around the house, to keep going to appointments, to keep taking my meds, to keep eating, to not just decide to fall into a bottle until the money runs out, to keep applying for jobs since it doesn't look like I'm going to be going back to this one. Right now, there are moments when it is all I can do not to harm myself or start drawing up plans, so I can't really promise that I'll  make this thing that I've never been able to do in the 13 years that I've been dealing with this mental illness happen.

I have until Friday to figure out if I'm gonna lie and say that I can do it and name a person or be unemployed.

Making it up as you go along

So I've been doing this DBT thing for well over two years now. For the past six months, I haven't been going to the weekly (more educational then process) group, mostly because of a lack of time, though my therapist was fine with it because I had been through the whole course several times. The skills that are taught in the group are to help guide you when your own coping skills and 'common sense' lead you astray. (I mean, you wouldn't be there if both of those things hadn't lead you significantly astray for a significant part of your life.) Just like anything, when you consciously use it enough, some of it will start to become second nature. 

I knew this week would be tough. When I moved in before Ginger, The Professor, and I had a new, bigger place that could accomodate the three of us and Ginger's son, I knew that it would be tough to stay at my parents' house again for a full week, especially during the holidays, which are already tough. It seems that when things are tough for me, I feel like they pile on and the list just gets longer and longer. Reasonable mind know that this is more how I see things than how things really are. As The Professor paraphrased yesterday, "Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike," and everyone has several shitty things going on in their life at any given time, just as they have several great things going in their life at any given time. But the point of dbt is to teach you skills you can draw from to get through those shitty things. 

 So this weekend I used some "pleasant experiences" to get me through this week. I have felt very distant from the Professor lately. He has been dealing with illness, the holidays, and just generally being "in the hole." It hasn't just been him, though. I also have had little energy or time for anything that wasn't necessary, usually plopping down in front of the tv when done. Having the weekend and the apartment all to ourselves, with the exception of some time Saturday when I had to work, we spent the whole weekend in rather intense play. I was happy to have the time to work on our Master/slave dynamic, which also helped to shore up our relationship all around. I believe that it helps everyone to feel like they belong and to have reasonable responsibilities appropriate to their abilities and place, whether that be in your employment or in your home. It might not be something we think about very often, but it is important all the same. I think these roles help give us both those things and this weekend reminded us of them. We also talked a little bit about how it would be more helpful for me to have a strong hand this week, for him to push me to be productive, rather than provide a sympathetic ear or leniency. I always do better when not home if I feel like I have to keep my shit together to help them out, like I try to do when they have a play weekend planned, when I want them to just enjoy themselves rather than have to worry about me. 

But this morning it just wasn't enough. I couldn't stop crying, could barely drag myself out of bed to go to the funeral, couldn't bear to look at myself in the mirror while brushing my teeth before my shower. My therapist likes to promote the IMPROVE skill for distress tolerance- Imagery, (find) Meaning, Prayer, Relaxation, One thing at a time, Vacation, Encouragement. In the book, they talk about Imagery as being daydreams or remembering nice places, those kinds of things. But I had developed something else that I use as Imagery, though it might sound weird. I would imagine another me. She was the embodiment of all my reasonableness, calmness, and ability to comfort. She would talk down my panic and distress and anxiety. She would even stroke my face and my hair. When no one else knew the right thing to say, she did, because she was me and deep down I knew what I wanted to hear. 

But sometimes it needs to be someone else that helps you. Or that part of someone else that lives inside you. Like when I needed the part of my uncle that lives inside me to tell me that I needed to get over the fears about being with Ginger and the Professor because they were causing me to suffer when deep down I had already made the decision to be with them. 

Today it was the part of the Professor, the part of my Master, that lives in me that I needed. I'd spent so much of this weekend with his words in my ear that conjuring up his voice wasn't difficult. He wrapped a hand around my wrist and held it to my heart. He told me that being a good girl was more than just what I did at home but it was doing what I needed to do out there in the world, but that he knew I was a good girl and he wouldn't ask me to do something that he didn't think I could do, so I needed to get cleaned up and go. I could cry as much as I needed to while there, because that was ok, but I needed to go. That is when my tears stopped. No not for the day, but until I got to the funeral, when I got to have a good and proper cry, because I was good and properly sad, over the loss of my client and all the losses it reminded me of. 

But, as I told the Professor later, it reminds me that I need to keep in mind that being a submissive, being a slave, doesn't mean I am not strong. It is a controlled (by me) giving up of control, not a giving up of strength and I am stronger because of it, that sometimes I must be stronger just to do it. As much as anything else, the roles that he and I have developed and are developing are coping mechanisms that I do truly believe help me (and I hope help him) to deal better with our lives, our sexualities, our demons, and our love. But just as the dbt skills work to point me in a better direction than I had before, there is trial and error, adaptions for each situation and individual, and no one right answer. 

I did go to the funeral. I cried shamelessly. I saw the casket to the gravesite. I ate lunch and reminisced and laughed with the family. The struggle never ends. The important part is that you are still struggling. 

Unresolved Grief

I've been thinking about and talking about the last blog post, about how getting what I want doesn't feel how I thought it would feel like it would. When talking to my therapist, she asked me what I thought it would feel like. I guess 12 year old and 14 year old me thought it would fix everything. But, of course, it doesn't. Like I told The Professor, there's still this hole. Don't get me wrong, I'm way to old to really think that finding love would do that, but there's still that part of me...Sigh. Even though this makes me feel amazing, I feel like I should feel better, like I have felt better during the honeymoon phase of previous relationships.

I heard this song driving home from work last week and it grabbed me right away, made me cry before I could ever even pinpoint why I was crying. (Yes, I heard it on country radio but I think it would be just as comfortable on Alice or one of those stations. Go ahead and listen to it.)

I put that record on. 
Girl you know what song
and I let it play again and again
you're in every line
takes me back in time....

 I hadn't heard it since so I found it on youtube and listened to it just now. Even as the tears dropped, I thought, "Why the fuck am I crying to a break-up song? I feel completely resolved about my past relationships. There isn't a single ex that I feel like this about or that I'd leave what I have now for what I might have with them. What is this about?"

And it hits me. It's about him. About them. About the ones I've really lost. That it'll never feel like it used to because all those times where before. I tell other people that sometimes you never really get over it, sometimes it never gets better, but that you just adjust to what is now your new normal. And I firmly believe that, but sometimes it hurts like hell when it slaps you in the face again. Two and a half years on and it still seems to color everything.

Last week, in my CNA class, the teacher was giving us definitions of terms for the chapter and one of the terms was unresolved grief, grief that a person doesn't get through within a normal amount of time. I wanted to get up and ask what a normal amount of time is and basically just throw a fucking fit. Yeah, obviously, no issues there. We also learned complicated grief, which is grief that is complicated by some other mental health condition or substance abuse problem. Yeah, don't know anything about that either.

Last year, I read this blog post, which I can't find right now, about trigger warnings (completely unrelated to grief) with a quote that really stuck with me: "It's untenable to go through life an open wound."  I do believe that this is true. Sometimes my life feels pretty untenable. What I actually feel like I'm living is more like this quote from Being Human: "People love that cliche, time heals all wounds. But live long enough and you'll realize that most cliches are true. It's amazing what even the smallest passage of time can accomplish, the cuts it can close, the imperfections it can smooth over. But in the end, it comes down to the size of the wound, doesn't it? If the wound is deep enough , there might be no way to keep it from festering, even if you have all the time in the world." For right now, I'm gonna go back to my song....

I like to believe 
That you're just like me
Trying to figure out how a good thing goes bad

I don't know 
And I can't let it go
Yeah it's about to drive me mad

What are you listening to
Is it a cover band in some college town bar
Where it's na-na-na's and air guitars
And is it something to get you through
Just a sad song playing on the radio station
Tears still fall and hearts still breakin'
Cause you're hanging on
Or is it a love song about someone new
What are you listening to

Is it a feel good song gets you driving too fast
The one that gets you moving on pass to pass
Or the kind you can’t help singing along 
Singing woh-oh-oh-oh-woh

Is it headphones on on a downtown train
Or a window seat on an outbound plane
Is it LA sunny and Memphis blue
I wish I knew I wish I knew

Remodeling

People love that cliche, time heals all wounds. But live long enough and you'll realize that most cliches are true. It's amazing what even the smallest passage of time can accomplish, the cuts it can close, the imperfections it can smooth over. But in the end, it comes down to the size of the wound, doesn't it? If the wound is deep enough , there might be no way to keep it from festering, even if you have all the time in the world. -Being Human, US

The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. -A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway



Several times, he's said that he's broken. On good days, he says he feels like he may be healing, or that he may only be bent, not broken. When I ask him how or why he thinks this, what it is that he finds wrong with himself now, I never really know what to do with his answers. What he describes sounds rather normal for the people I've known in my life, nothing too extreme, especially considering what he's been through in the last year or so. Some of the things, like not really being able to tell when someone is being genuine or when they are actually trying to get something out of you, are how I feel all the time. Hell, they're how I feel about him sometimes. This is not to say that I don't support him being whoever or however he wants to be. I wholeheartedly do. It's just very far from my lived reality and that of most people I know. It also makes me wonder if we would be suited to each other, long-term, if what he thinks of as broken is what I consider normal.

And while I understand how it might feel like being broken for someone in his position, with his life experience, that terminology really gets under my skin. Just like "broken home" or "broken family." While talking to my therapist a few weeks ago, I put the word in air quotes and she insisted "But we are from broken homes." (She's a child of divorce too.) I didn't have words to express how and why I thought she was wrong, why calling my family broken made me angry, but I did and still do.

So I've been thinking quite a bit about being broken the last few days. As is usually the case, I couldn't think of a good response in the moment, but I am trying to develop one now. Maybe he is right that those things he describes are broken-ness and that my therapist is right about me being from a broken home. For the sake of the rest of this post, let's just assume that they are. It's not the kind of broken that occurs when a plate slips through your fingers and shatters on the floor, where no amount of gluing will restore it to it's previous usefulness again. It feels more like a broken bone, where your body can heal it naturally, with time and proper care, though how close it functions to it's previous state will also depend on how well it is re-set.

I looked up bone fractures on Wikipedia. If I'm reading it right, first, you get a blood clot between the fragments, then new blood vessels grow around the clot. The blood vessels bring the collagen which stiffens and becomes the bone matrix. Then a process called remodeling replaces the initial bone matrix with more mature bone. It usually takes about 18 months but is 80% of normal within 3 months in most adults. I can almost picture the blood then collagen then bone filling up the small space of the fracture, making what was a gap now whole again.

So, yes, I've been broken in many places, many times. I will be again. But when my family "broke" under the strain of a cheating and abusive spouse, my grandparents, my uncle, and, a little while later, my step-dad wove the broken places back together. I would not trade the closeness we shared as an extended family for a unbroken nuclear family. The rest of the broken-ness, well, sometimes you don't expect anything to every bridge that gap, to ever bind the pieces back together. Sometimes it doesn't for years and years. And then one day you realize that you can use that arm or leg again, just like a normal person, That years after a traumatizing robbery, you can walk alone to your car or down the street, without your heart racing. That after months of forcing yourself to hang out with friends, you find that you like doing it, that you miss seeing those people when you don't get the chance to for awhile. (Ok, so that comes and goes. The remodeling may have made the bone as strong, but the bone was never really a people person.) That two years after your last big loss, you can sometimes talk about it without even tearing up. Maybe you also find that the bones didn't heal exactly how they used to be, but that you are alright with that. Maybe you even like it better that way, because it reminds you that you'll never be the person you started out as, for better and for worse, though hopefully more for the better than for the worse.

Then again, I've also done some breaking on purpose. Tattoos, piercings, and scars are not how our bodies were originally, but I'm happy with them. In fact, I want more. I don't date how people are supposed to and I disclose too much too soon to everyone. There are a bunch of other things that society at large says that a healthy person doesn't do, but that I do openly and gladly. So I guess I also accepted a long time ago that I am broken, at least by most standards out there. Many times, I heal. I can bring those broken pieces back together and I find the remodeling to be sorta amazing. The rest of the times, I just develop new strategies for dealing with things while broken. Even if that means I'm too broken for most people, once they aren't broken anymore.

Gary Allan- Pieces

I've been broken, torn and scattered
I've loved holy, I've loved sin
I was rolling on the wind
It didn't matter

I was so sure of who I didn't want to be
Every smile and every fear
Every laugh and every tear
It was all mine, it was all me

Chorus:
Pieces of my heart
Pieces of my soul
Pieces that I'm gonna be
I don't even know
I gave a lot to lovers
Gave a lot to friends
Everything I took from them
Made me who I am
Pieces

We've all been lied to
We've all been liars
Nothing's perfect in this world
Everybody's been burned by the fire
Guess I'm learning
That what breaks you, makes you grow
But I'm not hiding where I've been
Gonna let the light shine in
What I don't need
Gonna let that, let that, let that go

Chorus:
Pieces of my heart
Pieces of my soul
Pieces that I'm gonna be
I don't even know
I gave a lot to lovers
Gave a lot to friends
Everything I took from them
Made me who I am
Pieces

Pieces, the good and the bad
Pieces, the happy and sad
Pieces, the wrong and the right
Pieces, that's my, that's my, that's my life

Chorus:
Pieces of my heart
Pieces of my soul
Pieces that I'm gonna be
I don't even know
I gave a lot to lovers
Gave a lot to friends
Everything I took from them
Made me who I am
Pieces

Gotta Be Crazy

In DBT, one of the first concepts you learn about is reasonable, emotional, and wise mind, in the form of this great Venn diagram.

Here is one which explains each state of mind and how they work together. In group, we usually start by talking about what ideas, emotions, and actions we associate with each, the ways that reasonable and emotional mind can be helpful, as ways to demonstrate what is in the diagram below.

Most of us in DBT suffer from being too much in emotional mind. Many of the skills we learn in DBT try to add more reasonable mind skills to the mix, to get us to wise mind. Note that reasonable mind is not the goal. If you ask anybody on the street what state of mind you should be in, almost all of them would tell you "reasonable." Society by and large does not look favorably on the emotional state of mind or those living in it. But being too much in reasonable mind is not good either. It just doesn't cause the same amount of trouble in one's life that being too much in emotional mind does. There are times when you need emotional mind. Like for sex, romance, and falling in love. 

So I haven't really done well in the romance department for quite awhile. I guess we could say ever, but let's just go back the last couple of years. While my uncle was sick, TyRoy was my unboyfriend. We did lots of the stuff you do with a significant other  whenever I wasn't at my uncle's, but he knew that my family came first and I knew he was leaving soon. After my uncle passed, well, I was a wreck. Therapy helped. I feel like I've really gotten my life back, and back on a track. I feel like I'm doing better with my relationships in general. but the only real romances I've had were ones that were established before the therapy. Basically, it's easy to have romance with exes. 

All attempts with new people have not gone great. Knowing that sexual compatibility is really important to me, I searched for that first, hoping the rest would follow, like it did with TyRoy. (Well...That was my thought at least. Now that I think about it, how things started weren't nearly that simple with TyRoy. But I digress.) I didn't really feel much of a spark with any of them though and usually they weren't someone I would want to hang out with either. I had a few dates, but I was so sexually charged that I would rush in to get my rocks off only to realize as soon as I came that I really didn't like them. I've never really dated, don't know how to do that like people do on tv or in Cosmo. I don't have rules about holding back the sexual part of the relationship, but I know that I would like a long-term primary romantic relationship. I miss that. I love getting to have a faux version of that with TyRoy or Moneypenny when I get the chance to visit with them, but they aren't my man and I'm not their woman. I want that and I thought I was ready to test out my wings, my new skills from dbt for a new romantic relationship. 

I thought I was ready. Now I'm not so sure. 

There aren't many people in any of my circles of acquaintanceship that I find attractive. I wasn't really thinking about finding someone to date within those circles. But recent events had me interacting more with one guy, who I'd known for several months and that I did find attractive. For most of the time I'd known him, he'd had a girlfriend, but I picked up in conversation that they were no longer together. I found out more and more things that we had in common. Because of weather, we haven't had a 'real' date yet, but we have hung out twice in the afternoons. It's been great. I like him. We have a great deal in common that I didn't have with previous people I've dated- weird movies, politics, life experiences. Though we don't have the same or complimentary kinks, we are both open to the other's kinks and sexuality in general. Everything seems great. But very little has happened physically and all of it has been at my initiation, which does the opposite of turn me on. I'm disappointed and worried.  

I'm starting to think that maybe you have to be a little crazy to have romance or to fall in love. All I've been trying to do for so long is to steer myself away from the emotional mind, towards the reasonable mind, hoping that I'd land in the center, in wise mind. I can make all the lists of qualities I'd like and turn down the people who are completely out of bounds. I can use reason to decide whether or not someone I'm dating is someone I might want to have a deeper commitment with. But you can't have romance and sex without heart and genitals. And I'm not sure how to get mine back without being like I was. What if I can't? 

Or what if my pussy doesn't respond to what my brain does? 

Is it the meds?

"I'm not a 'good man.' But I'm prepared to be an honorable one."

No I can't change my mind. I knew all the time that she'd go. That's a choice that I made long ago.*

Peeking through the blinds, I just wished he would drive away already so I could start my crying. I'm not sure if it's harder on me when he or I leave after we've had a good visit or when we part after we've been fighting. No, actually, I'm sure that it's harder when we've had a good visit, because I'm sad that we can't have that whenever we want. 

In the last two weeks, I had to say goodbye to my two bestfriends after our official holiday visits. It sucks. Of course, anytime I get to see Moneypenny or TyRoy I know that I'm going to going to have to say goodbye to them, not just "see ya later" to your friend who lives across town, but "goodbye" to someone who is hours or half a country away, who you won't see for a month or several months. Yeah, I know that this is part of the package. And, yes, I'd rather have them in my life in some capacity than not at all. But it sucks. 

It sucks especially when there was a time that you spent all your free time with this person. Because they were your significant other. But you fucked it up. There is nothing you can do about that now. No amount of acceptance makes that sting less. Especially when you're finally back in a place where you would like to be in a romantic relationship again. 

I gave in to the loneliness, but I didn't give up nothing else.**

With every step of the therapy process, I have a little mini-meltdown about the changes I'm about to make, what they might mean for me. I always started questioning if I would still be "me" if I changed this thing or if I will be becoming someone I never wanted to be. My latest meltdown was about how uncomfortable I am with each step I take closer to being an adult. I'm finally at a place where I feel I'm ready to start working a full 40 hour work week at this job and I want to so I can start saving up to get a bit more education and so I can get my car repaired or get a new-to-me car when the time comes. But I never wanted to be an adult, at least not like the adults around me, who were all trapped by the things that they did to be adults. Of course, it's silly. Just because many (most, all) adults I've known have been like that doesn't mean I will be. More importantly, my experience has been that, despite my anxiety to the contrary, I always feel better when I make these positive changes and feel like I've become more myself, with fewer encumbrances and obstacles. 

Another thing I'm working on, after months (years?) of letting my actively ignoring how unhappy I was with it or making rationalizations for why I shouldn't even try, it getting my weight and body under more of my control. I've started off by setting a small goal, hoping that when I achieve it, I'll feel more motivated to keep going and set another goal. But that is life, right? You keep setting new goal posts. With any luck, the goal posts are achievable and you are motivated to keep working. Sometimes the area the goal post is in will change. Maybe at first your goal posts will be in your career, then it will be in your personal life. But when you stop having goal posts, I would think life would become really shitty really fast because all you're doing is struggling with no light at the end of the tunnel, even if the thought of working towards something more or changing your current situation scares the crap out of you. 

My reflection, in the window when I ride, could not save us, but I swear to god I tried.**

In my DBT notebook, at the very beginning of the book, which gives the newbie an outline of what the therapy is trying to do, it lists "Assumptions about Clients with BPD and Therapy." Number 1 is that clients are doing the best they can. Number 3 is that clients need to do better, try harder, and be more motivated to change. That these things are both true at the same time, that we are doing the best we can and we need to try harder, exemplifies what this therapy is all about. With each marker I hit, I still have more to go. 

The real thing behind my mini-meltdowns is that the resulting change is in direct conflict with the story I've told myself my whole life about who I am, what I want, what I can do. Though it's getting better daily, I've always believed that I was this really shitty person, so of course I'd do really shitty things. But reading this quote below by Ta-Nehisi Coates really flipped the script for me. Though it is in a follow-up post to one about guns, it is really about who we are versus what we do (emphasis mine): 

I've been with my spouse for almost 15 years. In those years, I've never been with anyone but the mother of my son. But that's not because I am an especially good and true person. In fact, I am wholly in possession of an unimaginably filthy and mongrel mind. But I am also a dude who believes in guard-rails, as a buddy of mine once put it. I don't believe in getting "in the moment" and then exercising will-power. I believe in avoiding "the moment." I believe in being absolutely clear with myself about why I am having a second drink, and why I am not; why I am going to a party, and why I am not. I believe that the battle is lost at Happy Hour, not at the hotel. I am not a "good man." But I am prepared to be an honorable one.
This is not just true of infidelity, it's true of virtually anything I've ever done in my life. I did not lose 70 pounds through strength of character, goodness or willpower. My character and will angles toward cheesecake, fried chicken and beer -- in no particular order. I lost that weight by not fighting the battle on desire's terms, but fighting before desire can take effect.
These are compacts I have made with myself and with my family. There are other compact we make with our country and society. I tend to think those compacts work best when we do not flatter ourselves, when we are fully aware of the animal in us. 

That one line just kills me: "I am not a "good man." But I am prepared to be an honorable one." For a long time, I've told myself that who we are is what we do, that I can ignore or work past my own feeling that I'm a shitty person if I just do good things. I suppose this is in that same vein except that it doesn't say that doing good makes you good. It seems to imply that being good is not the point, in fact we aren't good, but that we rise above not being good by being aware of what we are doing and truthful with ourselves about why we are doing it. 

Of course, that means trying. Maybe I'm not prepared to be honorable quite yet, but I am prepared to keep trying. 

Where there is desire there is gonna be a flame. Where there is a flame someone's bound to get burned, but just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die. You've gotta get up and try, try, try***

*Mandolin Rain, Bruce Hornsby and the Range

**Almost Honest, Josh Kelley

***Try, Pink

What Christmas Means to Me

My therapist wanted me to write what Christmas means to me, but she wanted me to do it after the holiday. I see her Thursday, so I thought I had better get on it. Of course, I don't really know how to put it in "what Christmas means to me terms," so I'll be doing it my own way. 

First off, fuck this. I fucking hate this because every time I've tried to think about what I might write, since before Christmas and then very much so tonight, I've cried. Quite a bit. Especially tonight. So, just so everyone knows, I fucking hate this. 

Christmas was a lot of fucking work. It was putting up Christmas decorations with my mom, with no help from my step-dad because he's a Scrooge. It was making cookies and food. It was cleaning like crazy because we were having family over and you can't have the least little bit of dirt if family is coming over. It was shopping and wrapping presents and never having enough money. It was final papers and final tests. It was a week of crazy, rapid cycling mood changes. Of having to take breaks from my studying so I could cry for no reason I knew and then of being so hyped up that I couldn't sleep, even when I was done cleaning and studying.

Christmas was always sad. I always felt this sadness, this incompleteness. Even before I had a context, I always knew that "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" was a really sad fucking song. At least half of Christmas tv episodes made me cry. Still do. Christmas is the end, the last holiday of the year. Your last chance to get it right, which I never felt like I did. I got to see so much of my family but it only highlighted that I didn't live with them anymore. But it wasn't all bad.

Christmas was stolen moments. Stealing moments with friends and boyfriends, whenever the two of you could get away from family. It was trying to hang out with my uncle as much as I could. Cold car rides. "We're going out for a soda. Be back in a few minutes," only we were never back in a few minutes because it took us 20 just to find a store that was open. That one year it was searching everywhere for Crystal Pepsi. It was the Saturday Night Live Christmas Special on Comedy Central. It was sneaking a daiquiri or margarita in the kitchen with my grandmas while my mom was in the other room. It was spending the week between Christmas and New Years back in [the suburb of the Moderately Sized Midwestern City] with my grandparents. After Christmas shopping with Grandma. Getting to visit with the other kids I was in daycare with. Staying up until midnight with my grandpa every New Year's Eve. The neighbors shooting off fireworks or just banging pots and pans around in their front yard at midnight.

Now Christmas is, well, shit, I don't really know what it is anymore. It's still decorating, how the lights outside and the tree still make me feel, even if I have to do it alone. It's still making food. It's still buying presents, how it makes me feel when someone opens their presents. It's still Christmas music, even though I tend towards the newer and alternative, instead of the traditional. It's still about the Christmas movies and the Christmas tv shows- Scrooged, Gremlins, Rare Exports, Buffy's "Amends," the House show with "a Jew with antlers," Dr Who's "Christmas Invasion" and each year's new Dr Who Christmas Special. Oh, and the Grinch. It's still a sadness. It's still working over the holiday, this time because we aren't leaving town and Dad is on call, so I might as well. In years to come, it will probably be required of the job.

I don't really know what it means. To me, it is certainly not the celebration of the birth of my Lord and Savior, as I have none. While I try to believe as my uncle did, that it's time off from work to spend with your family and friends, a time to come together and celebrate, even if you're only celebrating for the sake of celebrating, it sometimes seems to fall short of that when I feel like half that family is missing, when the family that remains is so small. I try to keep how he felt about it alive in my heart, however, so it remains something more than just a way to mark the year as it slips by.

Crossed Wires

I'm not exactly a stranger to my emotional reaction being completely inappropriate or not what one would expect, but it often still surprises me. I'm getting a better handle on it, but nothing exemplifies it like the last couple of days.

I guess I should go back and first talk about what my DBT educational group is working on right now is Wise Mind (a place that is not ruled by your emotional mind or your reasonable mind, but uses both sides) and the how and what skills. The How Skills are Observe, Describe, and Participate and the What Skills are One-Mindfully, Non-judgmentally, and Effectively. Last week, our homework for group was to observe what frame of mind you were in. This week, it's to observe and describe how you are feeling and to participate as fully as possible in your daily life. Though this can be a problem for anyone, BPD people, who have a particularly difficult time with emotional regulation, often just get taken on a ride by our emotions without ever observing exactly what those emotions are or what spurred it. Sometimes you are feeling what is actually a secondary emotion, without ever realizing the primary emotion behind it or the instigating incident. (For example: you might be feeling and expressing extreme anger but it might actually be propelled by a deep fear.) I'll come back to how this is applicable in a minute.

So you all know that I love my job, right? I have complaints, like everyone does, but I really do find it rewarding and I feel like I'm good at it. I have some evidence to back that up as well. But sometimes I still dread going to work. I have a main client and then one that I help out with. With the other client, at least half of my shifts are 5pm to 8pm, most often on Sundays. Usually I putter around the house all day and I feel generally Sunday-y. By the time 3pm rolls around and I have to start getting ready, I am filled with dread about the coming shift, sure that something will go wrong, wanting more than anything to go back to bed. Until recently, I often had the same feelings about hanging out with friends most of the time, which is why most of my friends have been cancelled on multiple times. But with work, as with hanging out with my friends, it was never as bad as I had made it out to be in my head. If I just did it, I usually had a good time. While I think that working evening shifts when I've been up all day and just want to relax makes it more difficult to get going, I have no idea where all that dread comes from. Maybe I need to start observing it more or better, so that I can describe it more fully.

So back in November, I agreed to fill in for that client's regular caregiver over the holiday, starting today (Saturday) til Wednesday morning. It is split shifts, 8am-11am and then 5pm-8pm. My parents can't leave town because my step-dad is on call at his job, so it wasn't like we were going out of town. They agreed to work our festivities around when I was working. Then, Friday the regular caregiver called me around 2pm, just as I was going to settle in at home to do nothing for the rest of the day, and asked if I'd work his evening shift. He sounded really upset about something that he was going through and I wasn't really doing anything, so I agreed. As soon as I hung up, I regretted it. I just wanted to lay down and veg out. Then I just wanted to cry. But I sucked it up, listened to some funny Christmas songs on the way there, and it was fine. Not just "fine, I made it through the shift" but I actually enjoyed it.

One of the only things I can cook well is lasagna. Originally this client and his wife were going to have Christmas together, not with the rest of their larger family, who they spent Thanksgiving with. I decided I'd make them a lasagna on my own time, as a little Christmas gift, so they'd have food and leftovers. Of course, their plans changed and they'll be having their traditional family Christmas dinner. Of course, I'd already promised them a lasagna. We decided that they'd have it tonight. Their son and his wife came in town today and had dinner with them, my lasagna. Despite my worries that they might not think I'm doing a good job or that they wouldn't like my lasagna, everything went well. Actually, it went great. They are so nice and they really seemed to appreciate what I was doing, thought I was doing a good job at it. Even better, they really liked my lasagna.

Because dinner lasted longer than usual, I was there an hour later than normal, getting him into bed. His daughter-in-law hugged me before I left, thanking me so much. I got in my car smiling. Then, thinking about how thankful they seemed and about how good of a job I'd obviously done, I felt the tears welling up in my eyes.

What the fuck is going on? Why am I crying? I'm happy. Not just I should be happy, but I actually am happy. I not only do I have a job that I'm good at, but I have one that matters, that adds a great deal to these people's lives, lets my clients live with as much dignity and comfort as possible. And it's not just that I feel like I am doing a good job, but they think I'm doing a good job. I am happy. Why the fuck am I crying?!?

These are happy tears.

I know that I'm supposed to be observing and describing, but this all feels so weird and not like it is what is supposed to be happening at all that I am just throwing up my hands at the moment. Plus, if I'm actually sad about something, I don't actually want to participate in that sadness at all right now. I just want to try to enjoy my holiday. Fuck sadness, fuck crying. I'm going to be happy this year. Or at least tonight. 

So My Therapist Says, Vol. 4, Very Special "Thank You" Edition

As you might know from the last post, a young woman that I met last year in hospital killed herself the Saturday before last. When I talked to my therapist the day after I wrote the post, we talked a good deal about suicide and about how other people, often people who have never had mental health issues much less ever felt suicidal, feel obligated to offer their opinions about suicide. (And, oh man, did that problem with people's opinions about suicide not get better after the events of this weekend.) We talked about how I feel that it's not my place to say that someone must suffer for the sake of others, even if that suffering is psychological. Yes, I am pro-choice, even to the point of being pro-abortion if that is the woman's choice. I am pro-euthanasia, pro-assisted suicide. I'm thankful for the time that I got with grandfather and with my uncle, but I would like to think that I would have abided by their wishes if they wanted less medical intervention or decided to end their life rather than suffer, especially once they knew they were going to die. On the other hand, as I said in the last post, I am eternally grateful my attempts were not successful. My therapist offered some of her opinions as well, including that she understands that some people might be suffering so much that they feel that is their only choice. As a therapist, she feels it's her duty to never say that a person is beyond treatment. In fact, many of us BPD people have been told that we are beyond treatment before we find DBT. She talked about having the conversation with suicidal people or self-harming people where they push back against her assertions that they shouldn't do it, that they assert that it's their life and they have a right to do what they want with it, even if it's a negative thing. She said that she can't say that they don't have that right, just that everyone's life is worth trying to make it worth living in as skillful of a way as possible.

As for everyone expressing their opinions, particularly those who say things like "How could s/he do this to his/her family/friends/loved ones?" or that suicide is cowardly or whatever other bullshit people say, she gave me a great comeback,"You just say to them,'I'm glad that you are fortunate enough to have never felt like that, but we can't know how this person was feeling. Let's just mourn for the loss and the loss of the family." Then she shared something extremely personal experience with suicide and dealing with those kinds of opinions. She told me that very few people there knew about this. But obviously she felt both that I could benefit from what she shared and that she could trust me enough to tell me.

And I wanted to write this post to express how grateful I am that she told me. Overall, I'm always thankful just to have a caring therapist who is always available, but I'm thankful that I have her as my therapist as well. This, however, was such a special experience. Many mental health professionals don't share anything about their own personal lives. Some don't even have pictures of their loved ones on their desk or any personal touches in their office. I really like that the people at the place where I receive therapy feel that sharing some personal info and experiences creates more of a connection with their clients as well as allows them to use their own lives to draw examples from. Even so, my therapist didn't have to do what she did. She didn't have to show an open-mindedness about how suicidal and self-injuring people feel. She didn't have to trust that I would not twist it. And she definitely didn't have to tell me the specifics of her own experiences. She didn't have to trust me with her personal knowledge. But I am so grateful that she did.

I realize that it must be a really hard job to do. There are so many fine lines to walk, especially when it comes to discussing suicide with someone you know has had multiple suicide attempts in their past. For example, on the one hand, you don't want to discourage our bodily autonomy, a feeling that this body we live in is ours. Many people getting treatment where I do, at the level that I am, have felt like we were forced into taking medications or forced into a "voluntary" hospitalization. We have hostility towards medical professionals who tell us that we have to do, or not do, something, so you're not going to help our therapeutic relationship by telling us that we can't do what we want with our body. I think this probably goes doubly for those of us with BPD. Another thing that BPD people deal with more often than the general population is trauma and abuse. When you've experienced a traumatic event or lived in an abusive situation, you start to internalize that your body is not your own, that it exists to serve others' prerogatives. Many of us disassociate from our bodies, our feelings, or both so we don't have to deal with this problem. The last thing we need is another person, specifically the person who is supposed to be helping us heal, telling us that our body is for someone else.

On the other hand, you're not going to tell us that self-harm or suicide is ok. You're the person trying to find the best way to get us to stop doing that shit. Even if I'm in a place where I'm not self-harming, haven't thought of self-harming or suicide for quite a while, you don't want to leave me with an idea that I might later use to rationalize self-harm or suicide. You do want us to leave continuing to feel that those are not positive, helpful coping mechanisms. You want us to feel like our bodies and our selves should not be hurt, that we have value and worth.

So I wanted to give a very public "thank you" to my amazing therapist. I'm so grateful for all your help and for this specifically.

Where I'm The Doctor & you're Amy, get it?

When your best hopes and desires are scattered to the winds

I want to write. I've had a post on alcohol rattling around in my head for two weeks and another about leaving my hometown for a week. But all I can think about is you.

You as Lisbeth, girl with the Dragon Tattoo

You were found dead on Saturday, of an apparent suicide. The "life celebration" is Thursday. Your Facebook page is full of people talking about how much they loved you and how much they'll miss you.

I didn't actually know you very well. About this time last year, I attempted suicide. Like most people in that situation, I absolutely did not want to be hospitalized afterwards. And there you were. This cute little baby-dyke ball of love and energy and acceptance and welcome. And all at once you look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl. You made me smile, just to look at you, so young and fresh and pretty. You got me to play that stupid Settlers of Catan game. You and the big guy were spots of promise at a really desperate time, when I felt like I'd fucked up the couple months of therapy that I'd been working on, felt like I'd always just end up back in the same place. Afterwards, you created a secret FB page for those of us who were in the hospital at the same time. The group even met for a few dinners, though I was only there for one. I have ended up becoming real friends with another member of the group. Though ze's moved several hours away, I still see zir whenever ze comes back to visit other friends.

Our dinners stopped when you went into an intensive in-patient program in the Large Midwestern City. You stayed there after the program was over. Through the summer, I'd see pics of you at famous locations all around the city, particularly the baseball stadium. You seemed happy. Then again, you always seemed happy, which must not have been the case, considering how we met.

But I hoped that all of us were doing better. Through FB I knew that another person had dealt with medication abuse issues and was back on zir feet. The person that I'd become friends with has found a job ze loves and likes the new city ze is living in. Though it took me until August, and two failed jobs, I finally found a job that I think I can stick with, that I really find rewarding. I finally feel like the skills from therapy are becoming second nature, not "ok, what skill should I use here?" I'm really feeling good.

I'd seen that you'd been back in the hospital a few weeks ago but you said that you were fine, no worries. But sometimes the toughest part is when we get out of the hospital. And holidays. And fall/winter.

I don't presume to tell people that they should stick it out, no matter how much they are suffering, because life is sacred, because it might get better, because of their family and loved ones. I don't know their pain and only they can say if it is bearable. I've read that 10% of major depressive disorder is treatment resistant. I have no idea what the stats are on bipolar, mood disorders, or schizophrenia. Even when medication works to treat the mental disorder, the side effects can make it difficult to continue. These are diseases. Like diabetes. Sometimes you just take some meds and are more mindful of things in your life. Sometimes they take whole parts of you.

Last June, you turned 20 days after I turned 30. Time doesn't always bring wisdom though it does bring experience. It might not have changed your mind, but I wish I could have told you a few things before you were gone. I would have told you that you might not be able to change who you are, but you can find ways to manage bad behavior. I wish I could have told you that life is both longer and shorter than you could ever imagine. It is long enough not to spend it miserable. It is long enough that you'll get more chances than you'd think. It is long enough to find and lose love over and over and over. That it feels neverending when you're watching someone go, but like the time with them went in the blink of an eye once they're gone. That hard times come and hard times go, hard times come and hard times go...just to come again. That they do go. That so much of this will pass, yes the good, but also the bad.

But I'm sure people had told you all those things before. You decided to do this. It's not my place to say you didn't do the best thing for you. Even if I did, it wouldn't change anything. So I'll put these thoughts out there, with hopes that you'll hear them and hopes that they might help someone else. Maybe me on a day when I really need them. And I'll mourn, for my loss, for your family's loss, for your friends' and lovers' loss, that half the world don't even know what they could have had. Whatever comes after this, I hope you find peace or at least reprieve.

Reframing and Building New Boxes

After the uprising of my LTRR feelings last weekend, my therapist had me create a list of boundaries that might assist me in staying in wise mind, instead of falling over that crazy cliff. Like a good girl, I did make a list of all the things that we do that "just friends" don't do. (Or at least that I don't think "just friends" do, but I'll get to that later.) Of course, even though I was at work, I almost broke down crying. I had planned on writing more about how I felt about stopping each behavior, but it was too much. I spent the rest of the week depressed and couch-bound. 

I guess I might as well share my list, huh? Ok. In no particular order:

• My friend paying for stuff
• Seeing each other dress and undress
• Asking the other person what they would prefer we wear
• Being sexual
• Cuddling
• Sharing the same bed
• Touching in everyday situation (for example: holding hands to get through a crowd, put your hands on the other person's hips to move them out of your way, walking arm in arm when I am wearing heels and need some stabilization)
• Sharing food and drink

After the general sadness and depression, my first feeling was willfulness. "I might make this list, but I'm not stopping this shit." *pout* 

Then, I tried to think through why I am so resistant. (Yes, I know that, on the one hand, that helps me to justify it. But I also thought that a better understanding of why I was resistant might help me stop. I'm sure you can guess which it did.) In general, all of the above behaviors are ones that I also engage in with other people who I am friends with and don't want to push for any kind of long-term situation with, so it seems counter-intuitive to me that I should stop doing any of them with my bestfriend. During therapy today, my therapist called me on how limiting the definition in my head of "just friends" was. I brought up that these were things that we would probably stop doing if/when my friend gets into a LTRMR (long-term romantic monogamous relationship.) For all her vanilla-ness, she said that things like one person paying for things if they make more money and feel comfortable with it as well as the touching in everyday situations are not outside of the boundaries for most "just friends." She said that she does that kind of stuff with her husband's best friend, holding hands to get through crowds and the like. It's about intention and how everyone feels. 

The next reason I felt resistant to stopping the above behavior is because those physical things are such tangible, immediate ways to feel cared for. Despite all of my friend's reassurances, I still feel very unsure of this relationship and how they feel for me. Though I don't feel this with everyone, when we are sexual or physical in any way, I do feel cared for. I also hope that my friend realizes that I don't sleep in the same bed with very many people, so that is something special for me, a way to show how much I care and how much I do trust (or try to.) Also, though I know everyone else things I'm deluding myself and using this as a way to justify continuing the physical relationship, I don't think that it was the physical that pushed my feelings from "we're friends with benefits right now while we're single" to "we should be in a LTRR." I think that it was the way that our attempts to rebuild the trust in the relationship triggered my long-time prejudices about friendships and romantic relationships. 

Let me try to explain. Growing up, I didn't have very good close friendships with other girls. It took me a long time to develop any friendships after I moved from the suburbs of the mid-sized Midwestern city to just outside of the large Midwestern city. It took years for me to make more than one female friend at any one time. Even when I did, whenever I would have an argument with a female friend, she'd use something that I told her in confidence against me. To be honest, I'm sure I did the same thing too. My friendships with guys, while complicated by possible romantic feelings, were more solid, more loyal, simpler. As I became a teenager, with one exception, all my close friends were male, and, with one exception to that, all my close male friends were my boyfriends. I always felt like your romantic relationships were supposed to be deep and trusting, more so than I felt most of my "just friend"ships could be. 

So when my friend and I, who are already each other's closest relationship, started to do all these things to deepen the trust, which eliminated things that had always bugged me, from the time we were dating on, all my previous attempts to "get over" my friend seemed to evaporate. We'll never be "just friends" even if we're monogamous with other people for decades. But making the relationship more trusting and deeper and closer and then getting along for two weekends in a row... well, it was to much for the 18 year old in me who had planned our wedding. She still believes that things will work out if you just love someone enough and do whatever you think they need to be happy with you. She is stupid. 

When my meltdown happened, weekend before last, my friend asked me how what we had been doing was different from what TyRoy and I do, thinking that we'd just change that, since I don't have these problems with my feeling for TyRoy. At this time what's different is being sexual and sleeping together, but it hasn't always been that way and I don't ..... FUCK....as I'm writing I realized something... Ok. So that weekend, I said that there wasn't much difference. As I was about to write, at this time, because of what TyRoy feels comfortable with while he's with the lady he loves, we aren't sexual, cuddly, or sleepy, but that hasn't always been the case. There was a period of time before he fell for his lady love where we did all that and more but it wasn't a big issue. I didn't feel like we should be working towards a LTRR, while I will always be open to that if things change for him. What I realized while writing this is that the difference is in the people. I already knew that it probably had a great deal to do with how our relationships started and the person that I was when the relationship started. But what hadn't hit me until I was typing this was something very different about them. Way back, when my friend and I were dating, his feelings on things would change and he wouldn't tell me, he'd just start acting weird. We were together for years after he knew he wasn't going to take the relationship further. He'd changed his mind, but he never told me. On the other hand, I remember during an argument with TyRoy where I was questioning if he still felt the same way about something. "Did I tell you that it had changed? Well if I didn't, then it hasn't." I feel really comfortable in the knowledge that, unless he's single and he has expressed that he'd like to give it a chance again because the previous impediments are no longer there, that TyRoy still doesn't want to pursue a LTRR with me. Things are the same, status quo. In a good way. Though my friend has recently said, "I'm a guy. We can go a week, a month, a year, and then pick things back up like it was yesterday," I have a hard time believing that. Can I be sure he hasn't changed his mind? If there isn't something physical to show me that he cares, how do I know he still does? If we don't talk for several days, maybe he doesn't want to be friends anymore and he's gone again? On the other hand, if we're getting along and things have been going well, how do I know that he hasn't changed his mind and wants to give it another go? That maybe he's just waiting for me to express my feeling, say that I'll take that leap with him first. (Yes, I know it seems ridiculous, but I'm sure that inside of your head would seem ridiculous to me. Let's try not to judge.)

So where does this leave me and those pesky boundaries?

Yesterday, it occurred to me that it would be easier if I assumed the same things about my relationship with my friend as I do about my relationship with TyRoy: It's ok if it's romantic or date-like when we are together. Whether anything physical or sexual happens will be gauged by our respective primary romantic relationship, if we have one, and what that partner is ok with. Nothing happens that we couldn't bluntly tell that primary partner about, kinda like a secondary or tertiary romantic relationship for open or poly couples. I will assume that my friend does not want to pursue a LTRR with me for the reasons previously stated and that those haven't changed as it hasn't been stated. I will work on radically accepting that we won't pursue a LTRR. But I also need to radically accept that I'm not going to put those boundaries up, at least not right, especially as we aren't seeing other people. Trying to force myself to do something that my heart isn't in won't work. I'll just end up breaking the resolutions that I've made and feeling bad about it. This is who we are. This is how we interact, especially when we don't have someone else who will get hurt by our actions. It might not fit into the "just friends" box that I envision other people have with their friends, but, as my therapist pointed out and my own friendships attest to, that box probably doesn't exist anyway. The more important boundaries I need to work on are internal. Between the girl I was who thought that a relationship would work if I just loved someone enough and the woman I am who knows that I love several people who it won't work with, not now, probably not ever. Between the failed romance we had and the deep, increasing-in-trust, not "just friend"ship but friendship we have now.  

I'm reminded of a scene on the tv show Bones. 

Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan: I'm... quite strong.
Special Agent Seeley Booth: Yeah, well, you've always been strong.
Bones: You know the difference between stength and imperviousness, right? 
Booth: Well, not if you're going to get all scientific on me.
Bones: Well, a substance that is impervious to damage doesn't need to be strong. 
Booth: Hmm.
Bones: When you and I met. I was an impervious substance. Now I'm a strong substance. 
Booth: I think I know what you mean.
Bones: A time could come when you aren't angry any more and I'm strong enough to risk losing the last of my imperviosness. Maybe then we could try to be together.

Though I have never been impervious, I'm not sure I've ever been very strong, at least not in this respect. But I'm trying. Not so we can be together romantically. Not really for the sole purpose of me being with anyone. But as a side effect, me being strong might make it possible to stick with this friendship, help make us strong as well. I just need to reframe the question and make a new box to fit what we already have.