Tell Me Lies Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

It starts here.  

Lies 

I read this posting today and I was floored by the fact that something I've been so crushingly ashamed of actually has a reasonable basis in logic and reason.  If I look at it with some honesty (ironic?) I would say that my lying falls into two parts of the definition.  First, I am over honest.  I spill everything and anything about some of my more intimate details very easily.  This blog is somewhat an evidence of that, if I consider it fully.  It is certainly evidence of a lack of practice with boundaries and understanding what "normal" is.  The other area that strikes me is the grandiosity lies.  It strikes me very much as a need to prop myself up and be seen as more than I feel I am.  Which if I take a breath for two seconds and look at what I've accomplished in life, in terms of professional and personal, there is no need for a prop.  But I can't shake that sense of drowning in the juices of my own stew.  I have nothing to be ashamed of for who I am on the inside, and that's something I need to grasp with both hands.  Maybe I wasn't born this way, but I sure earned it.

I am very tired again.  Emotionally worn out, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  I am working hard with muscles that I've frankly never to very rarely used.  I want to keep going, to move forward, more and more, but I am tiring quickly.  I am still doing my three things every day, and it feels good.  Somewhere on my list of next baby steps is my physical fitness level, but I am only cautiously stepping towards that one.

Realizing that I am a normal product of the chaos I grew up in is a safe feeling.  I like safe.  

Take Me Higher! Higher!

I shall, by all intents, be brief in my ramblings this fine soiree.   I am still wiped out from not sleeping for a couple of days but I am pretty ok with that.  I know that so much of my not sleeping is due to the emotional over stimulation of the last week.  I really am ok with that, as I see it as the portal to growth.  And I feel, in some little, tiny, infinitesimal way I am growing.   That makes me feel so happy.  

In my weekly home group meeting of Al-Anon this evening, I related a story to a fellow member of having been challenged with the whole concept of a Higher Power.  I am struggling, and probably always will with the concept.  I also related how I am trying to take some advice I was given on living with depression, and that was to focus on only 2-3 little things that you can point to every day on which you've changed something, even tiny, that will move you closer to being where you want to be.  I related how I'd done a chore that I'd been procrastinating on, with my eldest daughter helping, and we had a cool talk while we were doing it.  I related that I had done some other things as well.  But then I told about having taken my daughters to the dog park with the two much loved canines.  It was a lot of fun, and right at the end, my oldest asked if we could also walk the trail that surrounds the park. My first instinct was the usual no, as I was growing a little weary.  But something made the words "Sure" pop out of my mouth before I could even let the negative thoughts finish and off we went, having a fun, but addingly exhaustive walk with the pups.  It was a wonderful experience and I am feeling very emotional thinking about having done that.  My Al-Anon friend looked at me earnestly and said something quite profound.  "Who do you think it was that said yes?  It was your Higher Power, of course".

Talk Among Yourselves, Here's a Topic...

This is probably my first post in 40 days where I truly feel like I've got nothing.  It has been a tumultuous 24 hours of stress and relief and self-awareness and emotional over stimulation.  The work thing that I had to do to serve the biggest cheeses was a raving success.  It went past the point of self-affirmation and drifted into adulation.  Not an exaggeration, it was a clear affirmation that I still have all the work related skills that I've always had in relation to building and creating.  People are fighting over themselves to tell me how awesome I am.  I am somewhat ambivalent but still very proud of what we've accomplished, my little team of skunks.   I'll leave the dilemma I am faced with as an outcome of this success for another day.


I had my T app't today and it went very well, I didn't walk out with my emotional being oozing and bleeding from being rubbed raw.  I am tired, and very emotionally drained from the last part of my day, but I am very pleased with how it went.  Suffice to say that I have some real work to do in the lines of Sir Oedipus, and some concepts to grasp and internalize there.  It rings very true, what we talked about there and I am grateful as hell for that.  We also talked about forgiving myself a bit.  Not a strength, and something I am also eager to learn more about and try to give myself a bit of a break on things, and see about healing. 


Last part of the day, the SO and I went to an Open Al-Anon meeting where a friend of the SO was giving her first talk.  It was emotionally wrenching.  Her story has a lot of the elements of mine, but also a lot of her own unique horror.  It hit me like a ton of bricks and I am feeling so over stimulated.  Adding to it is that this friend was also very cold to me afterward, in light of what's happened.  I am not upset at her, in fact I think it is pretty damn cool that she loves my SO so much as to take up for her, but it still stings me.  It'll be ok, I know she'll be ok with me, but at the time I was feeling a real connection, like only the horrifically abused can, and that hit me a bit.  


With that, I am souped out.  Nothing left in the cauldron.  Adieu. 

 

No More Puns, I'm Begging You

Part of my charm, if I do indeed have any, is my utter lack of self-awareness coupled with a deep-seeded self-consciousness.  That sounds like a contradiction, but I am only self-conscious about the parts that I have any awareness to.  Its a gift, I am sure.  Or something. 

I thought a lot today, about where I am going, taking stock in where I've come from, how I am feeling and what I need to do to get better.  The immediate depth of depression has lifted, I am not despondent, and to that I credit attending Al-Anon meetings and T sessions.  I am still feeling the comforting normalness of dysthymia, but I hope that I can work on that a bit.  I also attribute the improvement to the commitment to change that I've made and the little victories I've won.  This blog is a big victory for me, in making. meeting and staying with a commitment, being accountable.  It has caused some friction with my wife, as she has expressed in moments where her anger about my actions has piqued her, that I am able to share and be open here, but not with her.   She reads some of what I write, I've not hidden what I am doing here, I've tried to overcome my shame/hiding instincts, but I can't speak what I can write.  I actually have hope, at least intellectually in both things, one that she wants that kind of relationship with me, that makes me feel valued and I would love that kind of relationship with her.  Second, I have been very focused on feeling what I write, something I know that if you've read some of my aborted posts, you can see.  

So, tonight, I hit an Al-Anon meeting in a blinding snowstorm.  The highway to get there was closed on the way home.  I arrived at the meeting and there were only 3 other people there. Turns out the only people stupid or desperate enough to hit an Al-Anon meeting in a blinding snowstorm are men.  No women.  Might be a first that I've ever heard of that.  

The Tide is Neigh And I'm Mooning On.

So much to say, so much to say, so much to say.  I am having that moment, where I have a million things to say, but no thread upon which to tug to find my voice.  So, I take the advice of an old writer friend of mine, and "sit your ass in the chair and write".   It was a better day than almost any I've had in the previous year, absent the 30 days or so I've been seeking help.  That said, it was a moderately mentally and emotionally challenging one, mainly as work has seen the tide rise and the demands on my time, effort and brain cycles rise to a higher ebb.  It is nothing in terms of the stress I would have taken on in my corporate salad days 5 years ago, but it is still fairly heady.  I am being asked to champion to some corporate masters the fruit of my work in the next two weeks.  The good news is that my corporate masters are generally very intelligent and very open to "big ideas" and as such my élan will sweep them away.  Or something like that.  Lots of hard work to get there, but I am feeling the righteousness of the cause and that is lightening the load.  

I reached out to a fellow member of Al-Anon this evening for a chat.  It was very nice, and very rewarding to hear so much, in so much detail all the things I do, I've done and the hope for the future.  I've known that my compulsions are the sign of a weakened psychological state, not some addiction, and it was heartening to hear so much of the same from my friend.  We spoke about being in touch with feelings and being there for our kids and our partners.  It felt and feels so good to be heard.  I am very grateful for both my friend and the courage it took for me to reach out, cause I don't need anyone.  Or something like that.

I finally spoke with the parental units last night.  I've not spoken with them since the balloon dropped.  They've been worried sick, as they've gotten word of the situation and I know they care deeply about all of us here.  My father, much more emotional than I've ever heard let me know that he loved me and that he knew exactly what I was going through.  I knew that he did, but it felt better to hear it directly.  I was ruing calling, because I felt so ashamed.  He just told me to do what I needed to do and make things right if that's what I needed to and that no matter what, they would support all of us.  I knew these things, but it broke my heart to hear my father tell me that he loved me, cause I don't think I've heard it before, to be totally honest.  My step-mom, a wonderful person, explained that she knew what we were going through, from both sides of the equation, and that she wanted me in particular to work on fixing me.  Nothing else.  They've known how deeply I've been suffering since the cancer, something my Dad has alluded to occasionally, but have felt powerless to help.   I am still swimming in emotions on this, and I feel that I just need to let it be, and to just let myself feel loved, like gentle waves crashing on the rocks.
 

Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour...

I had a day with some peace.  It doesn't say much more than my gratitude at that.  I was able to do more than a few things that might have been beyond me for the last few years.  I played hockey with my son in the driveway, not once but twice.  I paid attention to my very tried, sleepover at the neighbors exhausted daughters.  I was sweet and kind to my wife.  

I am grateful to no end for that.   

I attended a meeting tonight and I shared much more personally than I ever have.  I talked about growing up in the very center of chaos.  No parents, crazy and violent siblings and just the level of depravity and insanity.   Then, one day when I was 10, my mother just not being there ever again when I came home from school.  The splintering of my family, the isolation, the abandonment.   I shared some of that, of what made me who I am, this hot mess of dysfunction and depression.  I feel lost in self-pity at times, or maybe more than I'd ever like to think I do, OK, maybe all the time, but my story is one that denotes first a horror of the cumulative and immediate effects of trauma, but second and more so every day in this new chapter, a survival.   My T never ceases to express amazement that I am still standing.  I always look at her askew when she earnestly says that, as my last T did as well.  I know not the context of what they see, so I shrug it off.  

I am grateful for one day, one day of peace, or at least the first day of the ceasefire.

Feeling Like a Crustacean

I am a very selfish person.  I am very self-centered and self-absorbed.  I spend all of my time hovering inside the confines of my own head.  My recovery, as it is, is very self-focused, self-driven and decidedly narcissistic to date.  I go to meetings, and I write in a blog, I go to sessions with my T, I frequent forums online that allow me to express what I find so hard to express in any way other.  

I attended, with the very lovely and very talented one, an anniversary open meeting for a local Al-Anon group.  The speakers were a couple who'd had 80 years in program between them.  Firstly, it was wonderful to go out with my wife, even under the current strains, but mostly I knew that I wouldn't feel uncomfortable in that setting, short of the uneasiness I feel that I know that there are people there that she has told about my idiocy and my hurtful behaviors.  But even in that, I knew, and know, that they are not there to judge me, and that as long as I continue to try to reach out, that I will even feel comfortable with that.  But the speak said something, and I heard him loud and clear.  He spoke about always having felt different, always having felt uncomfortable in his skin.  I heard that loud and clear.  But then he said something I really heard, and that was that he was an entirely selfish person.  Totally self-absorbed in the context of his own pain.  It felt like an arrow in my heart, because I heard my own feelings being expressed out loud.  That is me, and who I've been for my adult life.  Wrapped up in the real agony I've been feeling and gradually having everything else obscured to it.  I don't see anything or anyone else, for the thundering sound of my unresolved fears.  

I am trying, in the moment, to slow down and sit with my feelings, so to speak, because I feel a great deal of guilt around this realization.  I am struggling to do the one thing I really need, and that is to comfort myself with the realization that I can do a million little cumulative things to change myself and my actions.  It is pretty hard to even contemplate forgiving myself, frankly because I don't know how to do that.  But that is what I need.  

I Know All There is to Know. About the Crying Game

Here's why I cry.  I cry at movies with dogs or kids who are in trouble or die and I cry when my pets die, but not every time.  I cry when a sibling or a sibling's spouse dies.  That is the extent of my tears.  It has been the extent of my tears for 20 years, at least until today.  It reminds me of the old joke where the army sergeant tells his assembled troops "everyone who's mother is still alive, take one step forward - not so fast there Jones...".  

So, what in tarnation made me cry you may ask with sincere and genuine concern?  Ah yes.  Well, it was as simple as having had my efforts at starting down this road to recovery questioned.  I've been trying like nothing I've ever tried before.  I've reached out and asked for help, I've cut off unhealthy things, I've tried to do a bunch of little improvements in my life every single day, I've journaled (blogging here), I've gone to therapy, I've talked as much as I know how to about my feelings, I've gone to Al-Anon meetings regularly and worked on as much as I can honestly handle and I've tried to do everything to show to myself first and foremost that I am not going to live under the bridge with depression anymore.  

I am not sitting here asking for a prize.  I am not really looking for validation for trying to undo some of what I've done to her.  I don't deserve that, and I am not asking for it.  My committment to getting better is as much about me getting better as it could ever be about making it so that she wants me to stay here.  I mean that, and I hope it stays true.  I need to be better because I am exhausted at feeling so bad.  I've had enough and hit the floor, hard.  She was feeling a pique of anger, anger that I rightfully expect her to have, and then she laid into me for doing something that I thought was innocuous.  It escalated and then she laid into me some more for not doing enough to make it better.  I was distraught and just started wailing.  I mean, losing it.  I literally ran out of the room, and locked myself in a dark closet.  I lost all hope.  I really did.  I bawled for what was minutes, but felt like epochs.   She came and soothed me, not so much as I was expecting her to, becuase I didn't really know if she would or not, nor was I trying to manipulate her, I just felt hopeless.  

I went to a meeting tonight, and I sat at a table that was about having the courage to change.  I am trying, and I am committed. I really am, just feeling a little adrift at the moment.

Holding Ace, Jack Showing

So, first and foremost, I did it.  I did it, I did it, I did it.  This is post 21.  Some surely intelligent person decided that 21 days was the required number of consecutive days you need to do something in order for it to be a habit.  So I did it.  21 days, of which at least 10 I didn't feel like doing it at all.  But, at the outset of the culmination of the debacle I've caused, I promised I would do little things to change my actions and behaviors.  Committing to something and actually sticking with it, through the pain of whatever I am feeling, not accepting an excuse to let myself down, being accountable to the one person I've consistently cheated out of decency (that would be me), well, I was earnest in my promise to myself.  So, that's pretty good, I think.  :)

I am sick today, picked up some kinda bug that's really taken a toll on my body and respiratory system.  I'll make it, just highlights that I have tried to keep going, unlike other setbacks where I'd lie in bed, figuratively and literally and wallow in my own emotional filth.  I still feel awful, just don't feel nearly as awful as I've felt before, where I pile on the physical with the emotional beating.  Better days.  

I am really feeling the whole having grown up in a crazy, dysfunctional home and having become somewhat crazy and pretty dysfunction.  Read a good blog post on the general topic that made me stop and think.  I am enjoying the whole stop and think thing.  Had a great argument with a more junior colleague at work today about hockey and I found myself applying many of the things I've learned going to Al-Anon, about listening and validating others, not having the goal be that we agreed, or better yet that he agreed with my viewpoint.  It was good practice for the real world.