Like a Dirty Sock, Dirty Sock, Dirty Sock

I am back.  Was a productive downtime.  I really had gone too far, too fast and was in danger of implosion.  Implosion for me is to begin to disassociate and to live outside myself, finding solace for my pain in everything and anything that resolves it, even if only for a second.  It does lend itself to some guilt that with an illness that takes all of the good from life for so many, that I have found a few little behavioral things that can offer a touch of relief.  That is completely said in an ironic voice, as those "things" are also incredibly self-destructive and self-mutilating.  

So what have I been doing?  Well, the depression that I woke up with on Saturday, the day after my self-imposed blogging exile, has passed.  I was doing too much and I am grateful being measure that I got a wake up call before I sunk deeper.  Chalk one up to my enthusiasm, and the good sense to surround myself with people who've got good sense, as I seem to lack it sometimes.  Since then, life has been ok.  Up and down with the SO, but that is a matter of a) my inlaws visiting, always a stressful experience and b) some of the anger she feels towards me bubbling to the surface.  I am ok with the anger, and I feel I deserve it, but it is very counter-productive to making things better.  I simply don't handle it very well, and shut down emotionally when she's on me.  And that is exactly a trigger for her to get angrier.  I feel as though her angry side just wants to hurt me, hurt me as I've hurt her, regardless of the consequences.  She's let it fly a few times and I feel like I've been in the ring for 30 seconds with a young Mike Tyson.  It leaves me dazed and confused and seriously riding my internal self-mutilation pony.  I get on that little horse and pound and beat on myself until I am thoroughly ass-kicked and bleeding for all orifices.  But while some shame and remorse in this situation is good and needed, it doesn't help that I don't have a healthy way of handling those feelings and only abuse myself with them.  

With that, I've exhausted myself again, but I'll be back for another episode of my valiant, vainglorious battle through the Noonday Demons....   

In the White Room With Black Curtains

I am under orders tonight.  Those orders come from my T, who I saw today.  Those orders are to take a break from all things emotional for a day or three.  She's concerned that circumstance and enthusiasm are going to leave the cupboard bare of cope and hope.  I am feeling good, but I am exhausted emotionally.  I don't have much left in the tank and need to take care of that.  I've not been work-functional for a couple of days, and it is obviously due to the heady number of emotion-driven events of the last week or so.  

So with that, I slumber and rest, and onto a new day.

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. 

 

Enter the Dragon

So much of today is about tests.  The truth of my reality right now is that my work is going swimmingly.  More than that in fact.  My corporate masters, at least those that interact with me, are falling over one another to praise themselves for hiring me and letting me do my thing.  There are two more corporate masters (of my corporate masters no less), are going to get the full Punch effect this week and while I admit to a little nervousness, for being the zoo animal on display, I am pretty confident in the equine power I bring and the stuff I know.  The dragon has entered. 

This is hard for me, as you can probably tell from my tone.  I am confident, but I can't take compliments.  In fact, I deflect most of the credit onto my team for their efforts, and struggle to take any on myself.  It is just something I don't do.  I focus more on what I haven't done, what depression has robbed me of, of certain skills and abilities that I don't know if I'll ever get back, and not on what I've done, through skill, guile and leadership to make revolutionary some basic concepts.  I am seen, for right or for wrong, as a thought leader on a space I honestly knew nothing about 6 months ago, and others have been working in for years.  In my blindness and self-deprecation, I feel like I could have done more, that I am in some way fraudulent, because I've coasted in relative terms, to what I consider I should be capable of.  I really need to stop that, because it gets me nowhere.  I've done this and I need to take credit for it.


Tonight, at dinner, between singing my praises, I was asked by the big boss what I want to be when I grow up.  Strange that at my 40+ years that I'd get that question, but he knows that I have the horsepower to do a hell of a lot more than I've done already.  I'm the poster child for the people they want to hire and he essentially told me that I can have whatever role I want.  I am trying to emotionalize that statement, and not see it as too much of a paternal validation (he's younger than me, so that's not hard).  But I also need to see the value of what others see in me.  I need to accept, emotionalize it and feel valued for what I've done.  I want that very desperately, to be happy for myself. 

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.  

Riding the Sweet Nutastic!

Cancer.  Cancer.  Cancer. I am aware that I said I would continue the painful description of my parental units, but I forgot the date and have been overtaken in the spirit of celebration.  Ok, celebration is an exaggeration, but I am pretty damn grateful on this day of days.  It is four years to the day that I lost my right testicle to cancer once and for all.  

In the end, it looks like it might turn out ok, but it has been a hard road.  Getting cancer changed me forever, and I don't think all has been for the good.  The Noonday Demons that I had been having some success keeping at bay through a myriad of soul-propping techniques and half-measures no longer will cut it in the face of your own mortality.  It started, the diagnosis and the treatment, the beginning or the long spiral that hopefully has bottomed out in the here and now.  I feel better, in personal and emotional terms, than I have in 20 years.  

So, while my gas tank is empty because of a temporary sleep deficit at the moment, I am feeling pretty upbeat and positive.  Had dinner with my family and a work colleague from overseas who is staying over the weekend.  My darling 5 year old, told him "I have two testicles, but my Daddy only has one, how many do you have?"  

 

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.

Don't Have to Live Like a Refugee

It's a bright day on a dark day.  I slept like I was hooked up to that machine again, waking every 30 mins or so and never really falling asleep.  Then I had to wake up extra early, which I am undyingly fond of ( I am super awesome functional before 10am and only 1 Jet Fuel K-Cup Coffee), to head out to work and pretend to be functional as a humanoid.  I was gassed at about 10am even with 4 cups of high octane java.  But I soldiered on and made the best, doing the odd thing or three to convince my corporate masters that I was indeed, their most worthy boy.

It is a weird sensation at work these days, something I haven't experienced since my early days at "that place".  I am the wunderkind again, the odd genius who challenges everything and seems to have some weird sentient ability to comprehend the systemically incomprehensible.  That I can understand extremely complex things across 4 dimensions isn't the part that makes me the deity that some mortals treat me like, it is the ability to distill those complexities down to simple principles, tweak the knobs and dials and then understand without even thinking what the implications will be and define in seconds how we can get there.  We are talking spaceships to the moon levels of systemic complexity, I kid you not.  This is a load of sarcasm, I understand, but it does explain some of my more unique corporate talents and why so many people have historically put up with my shenanigans and over-wrought emotionality.  I bring the intellectual pain, so to speak.  

I share this, with actually the opposite of intents than might be divined.  I am not seeking admiration or self-aggrandizement.  I am feeling this new feeling that I want to share.  I am grateful for something about myself.  I have never lost that intellectual high-order, most complex systems on the planet understanding.  I have lost most of my planning and bureaucratic skills, most of my ability to make things happen through sheer will power, but I've never lost that analytical package.  I've stayed gainfully employed at a somewhat ridiculous wage scale because I have that gift.  It is a gift, because I didn't do much to build it, its just always been there.  I am one lucky mofo on this day.  I am loved and admired for something that has never left me, and had it, I wouldn't be here, I'd be living on the street, begging for quarters.  Even thought depression has robbed me of every other meaningful employable skill, it never took my skillzzzzz...