Sing a Song of Sweetness

There is no specific thought or theme in my mind as I sit down to wordvomit.  I am cognizant of the fact that there is peace in simply exercising the disciplines of writing of my inner sanctum.  The day, in and of itself, was not remarkable, though my grumpiness at work was noticeable, it didn't translate to the homespace, as I spent the evening nurturing the kiddies and playing games and sports.  It seems a little strange to have that paradigm inverted, but I'll take it 100 fold.   

Tomorrow is the counseling with the SO.  I am a little nervous, as I am sure I have to tell the "story".  It makes me feel great shame to tell where I ended up, and more than a little denuding to tell wherein I came from.  I guess from my last T session I feel a little better as she asked me what percentage of survivors of childhood abuses like I suffered truly survive to have "successful" lives.  I hemmed and hawed, and she talked about massive longitudinal research studies, murders, suicides, incarcerations, institutionalization and told me that only 12% of people who've lived my life have survived.  1 in 8.33 I whipped back at her.  It floored me more than a little, and still to this moment fills my heart with some emotion that I can't shake.  Maybe pride, maybe guilt, maybe doubt?  I don't know.  But while I have wallowed greatly in my ocean of self-pity, hanging on by a thread, I have in fact, hung in there.  I guess, even at the weakest correlation, that is somewhat amazing.  

The fact is, that I know that 1 in 8 all too well and can simply expand my personal horizon to my own wider family and see that that ratio holds true, and then some.  It is sad, sad, sad.  I am not crazy, as we talked about with my T, and the most probable conclusion we could draw is that I've never stopped fighting back.  As I said in the concussion post, I will brawl until the death, just give me a chance.  I know others who've fought, but mostly with themselves.  I fought my torment, my tormentors and never stopped.  Maybe that's the deal, but I don't know.  But I'll take it for now, and sleep soundly.   

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".

Called in Sick

So, it happened, but it wasn't a bad thing.  I missed a blogging day.  Net-net?   Was out late at a little get together up the street and was just too damn tired to do anything when I got home.  The get together was with the same person who asked me about the lack of positive male role models in my life, and we hung out with some couples.   Had some snackies, beverages, and watched a marriage video.  I was really skeptical, as I was kinda expecting a Jesus-loves-you kinda thing, but it was a suprisingly good video and I enjoyed it, as did the SO.  It was nice.

I am out of emotional gas and haven't really slept for a couple of days what with all the new stuff I've been working through, so with that, I am out, but will do my regular post later.   

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. 

 

Cooking Sous Vide

Feeling the pressure.  On all fronts.  In some ways, I feel like I've entered the kill zone and am being subtly threatened from the front and my flanks.  Not in some paranoid way of others seeking to harm, just the realization that I've got some stuff coming at me that is taking a great gulp of my psychic energies. 

Work is stressful, as I am dealing with an influx of corporate masters all eager to look at the new toy.  I am, as I've said, that new toy.  They're eager as beans to talk with the big brain who has a knack for making all the other big brains do big brain things like come up with revolutionary ideas to retool the whole place on the same scale as the original business retooled the industry we live in.  We'll see, but tomorrow is a presentation to all the biggest poobaahs and poobettes about the "thing".   Nervous, but confident all at the same time.

Got an email from an old friend outlining a betrayal that rocked their world and that they never have overcome.  It killed me in light of my betrayal and the impact of that on my SO.  I am feeling, maybe a good thing, the impact of her hurt and I am in a bit of self-loathing around it.  I feel like I am at risk, if not now, but later, of losing her and it scares me.  I told her that today, and it scared me to even tell her.  

A couple of days ago, I asked the SO about marriage counselling and if she'd call a friend we have who's in the business and see if she'd make a recommendation.  The response was a recommendation and a request that I call said friend.  I called her this afternoon, from a conference room at work, and she asked me to outline what has been going on with me.  I told her and she asked me a bunch more questions.  Then she started pushing me a bit to see if I understood that I was dealing with deep-seeded stuff, not just the present.  I told her that I was entirely aware of the psychodynamic nature of my issues and that I was in deep.  We talked some more, and she was really supportive, cautioning to take things slow.  Then she dropped a bomb on me. 

I will leave this post with the question she asked that rocked me back into my seat and slammed my heart into my spine.  She asked me.  "Who in your life is a positive male role model that you want to be like, that you aspire to be like and who you'd take positive feedback from?"   

I Wanteth but Can Not Yet Haveth

I mean it.  I am not kidding, nor am I playing.  I am serious, and I wish I could make that unequivocally clear.  My wonderful and talented wife is struggling with my betrayal, and I wish I had a magic wand to fix it.  I believe she wants to make it work, I do, but I also know she is hurt by my actions.  I can't say more than I am sorry and that I will do anything I need to, in order to make it right.  That is not out of some preservatory instinct of saving my home and hearth, but a simple truth of my realization that it is what I want.  

I never meant for it to get like this, to be so low in my flow as to seek shelter in puddles of acid.  I never meant for that.  But my head hasn't been right for a long time, 7.5 years, like I said yesterday.  My depression, a wicked, wicked beast, put me in a place where I made all the wrong choices.  But therein lies the rub, it was a choice, or repeated choices, and for that I am, and I am alone responsible.  I need to own my choices and be accountable.  I didn't cheat because she is a bad person, I did so to play out a drama to soothe my inner torment.  I didn't have to do that, but I did.  It cannot be differently said.  I could have done a thousand things, but I chose to do something that would hurt someone I hold very dear the most.  

You might ask if it is because she is some wallflower that she is seeking to make this work.  It is in no way true, and in fact is diametrically the opposite from my perspective.  She's gotten so much better in the last few years, and is so much more aware, and has grown as I have shrunk.  She can care about me, even in this state, and even in this place, becuase she is strong.  But she feels de-valued, and I can't fix that with a bon mot or two.  I wish, and want nothing more than to ease her burden.  This isn't about her, it is about me and my failings, my going untreated for a brain ravaging disease, choosing the safety of a replay of my causal pschyo-dramas over being a grown man and asking for, and getting help.  I am not self-flagellating, I am speaking my truth in the hope that I can be better for accepting it.  

I want what I can not have, some sanity and safe harbor for her.  At least not yet.   But I want it more than anything I have ever wanted.  

Bang Your Head! Metal Health Will Drive You Mad....

This scares the hell out of me.  It almost scares me to death, to be frank.  I played a lot of competitive sports as a kid, through my twenties and early thirties.  Sports for me inevitably involved me being knocked out cold.  No joke.  In some sort of macho, testosterone-induced masochism, I would partake in only sports that were violent (hockey, football) or sports I could make violent (soccer, baseball).  I led with my thick skull and initiated more than a few fights which involved knuckles bouncing off my pretty face and granite-lick cranium.  I feel for Mr. Duerson and his family. 

I wish I knew if there was some causality to the depression I've faced.  I certainly haven't had the sheer quantity or intensity of the collisions that a pro athlete faced, I still know that there if they took a slice of my brain, there are significant Tau proteins gumming up the works.  It scares me in light of my inability to complete rid myself of depression.  I've been depressed, as far as I can tell, for the last 7.5 years.  There've been no real non-depressed moments in that time.  There's been an ebb and flow in the severity, like now where it is more dysthymic than major depression, but it never leaves totally.  I worry, worry, worry, that I am never going to feel normal again.  I saw this cartoon today, it spoke volumes.   I can't shake the sense that it just isn't ever going to be right, what with the abuse, neglect, self-mutilation, shame & even the physiological effects working against my, like the tide rolling in and me with a bucket with a hole in it.