"Hellbent on reinvention"

i'm on meds. not a huge amount of meds anymore, i've struggled with my doctor to keep him from upping them, preferring bouts of irrationality to the stupefaction that college taught me to fear. Effexor and wellbutrin, every morning. If i'm good, i take my supplements as well, but i'm not good very often. the routine used to include Levora, my birthcontrol, but the IUD's taken that out of the roster.

i don't know what these drugs do. i don't know what i expect them to do. my fervent hope is that they stand between me and irrationality, the place where i get so miserable i forget that i'm not always that miserable. i think they give me just a little distance between my self and my self-image, so i can remember what i think about myself is neither objective or accurate.

a couple of months ago, out of the blue, my doctor asked me if i'd thought about harming myself. which scared me, not because i had been thinking about it, but because it meant that i'd lost track of what's considered a warning sign, and had accidentally said something to him that showed less self-possession than i strive to show him. i'd imagine with my history of self abuse, he's been paying attention, he's pretty wary of me, and hopefully all the new press won't make him warier. (i've been medicated since the winter of 1995, to varying degrees with varying levels of success)

he sees me one a month or every other month, depending on how i'm doing and whether or not there has been a change in medication. he's not smarter than i am, but he's not an idiot. and as i've said before, even were i to trust a doctor, i don't trust the culture within which the doctor operates, which makes every move on his part suspect.

it's been creeping up on me, i can sense it out of the corner of my eye, as can my therapist. (a brilliant woman who's actually been an amazing amount of help over the past year) i've been doing a pretty good job of avoiding, burying part under impending dooms and part under overwhelming happiness, and maybe it's the potential visit to my parents, or knowing that i have to call them to tell them that i'm not coming, but everything seems to be boiling down to the same thought.

i don't deserve this. i'm tricking someone, or something to be able to have this much happiness, and the fact that i'm about to get even more makes me feel like i'm passing through some acceptable margin of unearned happiness into the place where someone's going to notice i don't deserve to be this happy and take it away from me. (i don't know who this someone is, or why i fear them, some leftover god/father image, puritan genes manifesting)

in better lights, on better days, i can convince myself i'm not some giant black hole of need, that light gets something back from me, and i' working on it right now, but either the addition of money into the equation or the very realness of being with him daily in the not-to-distant future makes me think i'm overstepping myself. i don't think i deserve an easy life. and in the past, that made things easier, i could accept the crappy hands life dealt me because i didn't think i deserved any better and the point was to make the best out of what i was given and be glad it wasn't worse, because i knew it could be.

and now it's the perfect hand and i don't know what to do.

i'm not whining (or at least i'm trying not to), and i'm certainly not going to forfeit, and i'm guessing if i'm going to get rid of this, i either need to figure out where this bizarre belief in a sort of cosmic measuring of merit comes from, or figure out how to talk to light about it. and even that seems to feed back into the deserving thing. because there's part of me that keeps telling me i'm crazy and i shouldn't try to get happy endings, or even happy middles, because crazy always wins out. and i don't want it to be like that, and i refuse to accept that answer.

i'm holding onto this with both hands, and i'm not going to let myself fuck it up, and every scrap of energy i put into the project of not doing is more than worth it. it's just hard work to unravel so many years of belief in one thing over all others. if i was not worth more, it made perfect sense not to get more. things weren't supposed to be easy, that was why college hurt and my parents didn't love me, and why bourbon and razor blades were the perfect way to spend an evening. and i got through that, and worked my ass off and have a nice car and a nice apartment and a well paying job and a really comfortable mattress and bookcases, and i adopted the shell of functionality until it wasn't a shell anymore. i made it through, and if it wasn't hearts and flowers and looking forward to every day, it was a life i could continue indefinitely, hoping to watch Atlantic and Pacific grow up, maybe afford my own place someday so i could have a gazillion cats and a halfgazillion books. and if i wanted a half on my hair when i woke up from my nightmares, well, everyone wants something they can't have.

and now i'm here. i never even dreamed about here. here is for other people, here is for fairy tales. come hell or highwater, i'm staying here, all but cocooned in light's love for me and my love for him. i just still have some weeds to root out of my selfimage.

"Hellbent on reinvention"

i'm on meds. not a huge amount of meds anymore, i've struggled with my doctor to keep him from upping them, preferring bouts of irrationality to the stupefaction that college taught me to fear. Effexor and wellbutrin, every morning. If i'm good, i take my supplements as well, but i'm not good very often. the routine used to include Levora, my birthcontrol, but the IUD's taken that out of the roster.

i don't know what these drugs do. i don't know what i expect them to do. my fervent hope is that they stand between me and irrationality, the place where i get so miserable i forget that i'm not always that miserable. i think they give me just a little distance between my self and my self-image, so i can remember what i think about myself is neither objective or accurate.

a couple of months ago, out of the blue, my doctor asked me if i'd thought about harming myself. which scared me, not because i had been thinking about it, but because it meant that i'd lost track of what's considered a warning sign, and had accidentally said something to him that showed less self-possession than i strive to show him. i'd imagine with my history of self abuse, he's been paying attention, he's pretty wary of me, and hopefully all the new press won't make him warier. (i've been medicated since the winter of 1995, to varying degrees with varying levels of success)

he sees me one a month or every other month, depending on how i'm doing and whether or not there has been a change in medication. he's not smarter than i am, but he's not an idiot. and as i've said before, even were i to trust a doctor, i don't trust the culture within which the doctor operates, which makes every move on his part suspect.

it's been creeping up on me, i can sense it out of the corner of my eye, as can my therapist. (a brilliant woman who's actually been an amazing amount of help over the past year) i've been doing a pretty good job of avoiding, burying part under impending dooms and part under overwhelming happiness, and maybe it's the potential visit to my parents, or knowing that i have to call them to tell them that i'm not coming, but everything seems to be boiling down to the same thought.

i don't deserve this. i'm tricking someone, or something to be able to have this much happiness, and the fact that i'm about to get even more makes me feel like i'm passing through some acceptable margin of unearned happiness into the place where someone's going to notice i don't deserve to be this happy and take it away from me. (i don't know who this someone is, or why i fear them, some leftover god/father image, puritan genes manifesting)

in better lights, on better days, i can convince myself i'm not some giant black hole of need, that light gets something back from me, and i' working on it right now, but either the addition of money into the equation or the very realness of being with him daily in the not-to-distant future makes me think i'm overstepping myself. i don't think i deserve an easy life. and in the past, that made things easier, i could accept the crappy hands life dealt me because i didn't think i deserved any better and the point was to make the best out of what i was given and be glad it wasn't worse, because i knew it could be.

and now it's the perfect hand and i don't know what to do.

i'm not whining (or at least i'm trying not to), and i'm certainly not going to forfeit, and i'm guessing if i'm going to get rid of this, i either need to figure out where this bizarre belief in a sort of cosmic measuring of merit comes from, or figure out how to talk to light about it. and even that seems to feed back into the deserving thing. because there's part of me that keeps telling me i'm crazy and i shouldn't try to get happy endings, or even happy middles, because crazy always wins out. and i don't want it to be like that, and i refuse to accept that answer.

i'm holding onto this with both hands, and i'm not going to let myself fuck it up, and every scrap of energy i put into the project of not doing is more than worth it. it's just hard work to unravel so many years of belief in one thing over all others. if i was not worth more, it made perfect sense not to get more. things weren't supposed to be easy, that was why college hurt and my parents didn't love me, and why bourbon and razor blades were the perfect way to spend an evening. and i got through that, and worked my ass off and have a nice car and a nice apartment and a well paying job and a really comfortable mattress and bookcases, and i adopted the shell of functionality until it wasn't a shell anymore. i made it through, and if it wasn't hearts and flowers and looking forward to every day, it was a life i could continue indefinitely, hoping to watch Atlantic and Pacific grow up, maybe afford my own place someday so i could have a gazillion cats and a halfgazillion books. and if i wanted a half on my hair when i woke up from my nightmares, well, everyone wants something they can't have.

and now i'm here. i never even dreamed about here. here is for other people, here is for fairy tales. come hell or highwater, i'm staying here, all but cocooned in light's love for me and my love for him. i just still have some weeds to root out of my selfimage.