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"random, white and slow"
Dec. 2nd, 2014 07:52 pmWell, then.
Therapy was rough in a different way than I'm used to. Instead of uncovering deep hurts and sobbing all the time, I completely failed to understand the thing she was trying to explain to me. I can't even put my finger on what it was I wasn't understanding, but it was something about how my feelings can matter to someone, but not change anything about their actions. And so I said that in that scenario, my feelings matter, but the other person has made the decision to prioritize something else above my feelings so even if my feelings matter, some other thing matters more.
And then there was something about impulsivity, where you make decisions without considering their impact. And I'm sure I do that, but it never looks like I'm doing that from the inside, from the inside it seems like I'm trying to calculate trajectories and then moving based on the calculation. And sometimes I lie to myself, or don't have all the information, or make strange bargains with myself about food or leaving the house or self-harm, and sometimes I'm flooded with inertia and hopelessness (seriously, how do people make themselves exercise.) And somehow, in one of my dazzling inversions of logic in the service of trying to think badly of myself, my takeaway was that I shouldn't let people know when they're doing something that affects me in some way. I acknowledged this was a bad takeaway, but it seemed better than knowing that I couldn't change anything (and maybe shouldn't? shoulds are tricky)
And here is the ugly truth, or one of the ugly truths: I don't know how to hear the word no. And maybe it's something I should practice, asking for small things so I can learn graceful handling of rejection through repetition, that I can hear it not as a rejection, but as something else. And I try to remember not to ask for much, because I know I can't hear the no gracefully, but that small hateful arbiter of fairness that lives somewhere in the pit of my throat thinks that maybe if I manage to only ask for the important things, I'll have built up some sort of credit where I'd be more likely to get a yes when I do ask. (trust me, the arbiter of fairness and I have many knockdown dragout fights. And then I tell it to its face that it doesn't exists)
And then she tried to explain that emotions and feelings are usually useful barometers, and I burst into tears, because that seems so deeply untrue, and on some level, unfair (see above arbiter's lies). And she and I end up at crosspurposes often on this topic, when I ask her things like "what's the point in getting angry? what use does it have?" And there's still a vanishingly small number of people that I'm not worried that any wrong move could be a firing offense, despite all reassurances to the contrary, and I wonder all the time how to change to be someone who doesn't get left, someone who isn't forced to leave, and I think these things are emotions, that my fear needle is always buried in the red (apparently I'm imagining my emotions as a dashboard).
This isn't an entry that makes much sense, this isn't a happy entry, this isn't a well considered entry. This isn't a lot of things.
But I have work to do, and cross-stitch, and then a skype date with Abundance where we will do the LDR thing of watching TV together in separate places, by the grace of an unholy combo of hulu, skype and viber. And tomorrow, I'll go swim and have lunch with Delight and then go home and do laundry, and then go get a massage and go to open press night and work on typesetting my final project, that Howard Nemerov poem I keep coming back to. And today I went to the gym, today I bought tickets to the Melissa Ferrick holiday concert, today I discovered that KIND bars now come in savory flavors.
When I'm happy, I might be happy because I am in deep, deep denial. But I'm still often quite happy with my life. And a brass band just invaded PSB and it was amazing.
Therapy was rough in a different way than I'm used to. Instead of uncovering deep hurts and sobbing all the time, I completely failed to understand the thing she was trying to explain to me. I can't even put my finger on what it was I wasn't understanding, but it was something about how my feelings can matter to someone, but not change anything about their actions. And so I said that in that scenario, my feelings matter, but the other person has made the decision to prioritize something else above my feelings so even if my feelings matter, some other thing matters more.
And then there was something about impulsivity, where you make decisions without considering their impact. And I'm sure I do that, but it never looks like I'm doing that from the inside, from the inside it seems like I'm trying to calculate trajectories and then moving based on the calculation. And sometimes I lie to myself, or don't have all the information, or make strange bargains with myself about food or leaving the house or self-harm, and sometimes I'm flooded with inertia and hopelessness (seriously, how do people make themselves exercise.) And somehow, in one of my dazzling inversions of logic in the service of trying to think badly of myself, my takeaway was that I shouldn't let people know when they're doing something that affects me in some way. I acknowledged this was a bad takeaway, but it seemed better than knowing that I couldn't change anything (and maybe shouldn't? shoulds are tricky)
And here is the ugly truth, or one of the ugly truths: I don't know how to hear the word no. And maybe it's something I should practice, asking for small things so I can learn graceful handling of rejection through repetition, that I can hear it not as a rejection, but as something else. And I try to remember not to ask for much, because I know I can't hear the no gracefully, but that small hateful arbiter of fairness that lives somewhere in the pit of my throat thinks that maybe if I manage to only ask for the important things, I'll have built up some sort of credit where I'd be more likely to get a yes when I do ask. (trust me, the arbiter of fairness and I have many knockdown dragout fights. And then I tell it to its face that it doesn't exists)
And then she tried to explain that emotions and feelings are usually useful barometers, and I burst into tears, because that seems so deeply untrue, and on some level, unfair (see above arbiter's lies). And she and I end up at crosspurposes often on this topic, when I ask her things like "what's the point in getting angry? what use does it have?" And there's still a vanishingly small number of people that I'm not worried that any wrong move could be a firing offense, despite all reassurances to the contrary, and I wonder all the time how to change to be someone who doesn't get left, someone who isn't forced to leave, and I think these things are emotions, that my fear needle is always buried in the red (apparently I'm imagining my emotions as a dashboard).
This isn't an entry that makes much sense, this isn't a happy entry, this isn't a well considered entry. This isn't a lot of things.
But I have work to do, and cross-stitch, and then a skype date with Abundance where we will do the LDR thing of watching TV together in separate places, by the grace of an unholy combo of hulu, skype and viber. And tomorrow, I'll go swim and have lunch with Delight and then go home and do laundry, and then go get a massage and go to open press night and work on typesetting my final project, that Howard Nemerov poem I keep coming back to. And today I went to the gym, today I bought tickets to the Melissa Ferrick holiday concert, today I discovered that KIND bars now come in savory flavors.
When I'm happy, I might be happy because I am in deep, deep denial. But I'm still often quite happy with my life. And a brass band just invaded PSB and it was amazing.
