The more things change…

The mini-crisis mentioned below?

Same as always, though the places and people change over the years.

Willful and unintentionally idealistic, if I can’t have what I want the way I want it, I’d rather not have it or anything at all.

I’m thinking particularly about the world of people, and how often (like in Africa) I am tempted to withdraw from that world, keep to myself, avoid relationships entirely and minimize social interaction as much as possible. If you’re not going to be my friend on my terms (which feels like, ‘if I’m not that important to you’), I want nothing to do with you at all.

Except that reaction doesn’t really punish you. It hurts me instead, because as much as the world of people sucks, I need it. Like everyone else I’m made for community and relationship.

But can I just say it also hurts to suck up that reality and continue to engage in social stuff?

The unintended poem from my journal last night says continuing social engagement is like saying:

Yes — I’m worthless scum.
My feelings may be trampled
But I’ll still come lick your crumbs.

This post is much more light-hearted than it sounds. I am aware of my own ridiculousness as well as the validity of my feelings and needs, and am endeavoring to piece everything together with compassion and respect.

Red Flag

I tried to wear my prickles on the inside:
‘Cause maybe they’d dissolve and go away –
Or at least not ruin everybody’s day.

Those prickles always found their way back out, though;
There’s just no way a porcupine can hide –
So now I wear them properly outside.

Crying, “leper, leper” as a warning
To everyone who edges a little close;
Red flag waving: I’m a hefty dose.

He who made the porcupine designed her –
Loved each quill, each sharp-tipped hollow spike;
Amazes me what Jesus finds to like.

How long?

how long
until
you understand
that what you throw away
doesn’t come back?

what lies behind
this need
to relinquish
your most beloved
blanket
to the floor

do you have some
grieving to do
and you need
a trigger?

are you
acting out
a sense of loss
or abandonment?

or

is it just
an experiment
like Newton
to discover
gravity?

how much
grief
gravity
causes
both of us

Worth

Is it worth it
Is the wrong question
For those of us who can’t answer
Who are so hesitant
So ready to check our impulses
So unsure of what we want

What makes life worth living
Is not the question for us

Instead let us ask
Why not?
When?
How?

Let us taste and see
That the Lord is good

In everything

I exist and that’s okay

I exist and that’s okay;
I am meant to be.
I needn’t fight the universe –
It’s not fighting me.

Last night at DBT, we spent a good portion of the meeting discussing a list of questions and comments I’d emailed to the leader, Denise (not the Denise who does my psychiatric evaluations). She thought it would be more useful to open it up to the group instead of answering me privately.

This gets to my thing about wanting attention and not knowing how to handle it.

During the meeting I had this feeling of protruding, like a bump in a sidewalk, and that I needed to flatten out and become invisible. (Concrete items: talking too much, shifting position too much, reacting too much, making too much noise like when digging in my purse for my glasses case.) I often feel this way in groups, and sometimes even with just one other person. It may be one reason I am more comfortable playing background music at the farmers market than playing a solo concert to a paying audience.

I think it wasn’t until near the end of the meeting that I realized this is just another example of my central inner conflict — part of me is desperately fighting to become a self, to feel allowed to exist, but another part of me thinks it’s not allowed to stick out.

To the one part, everything is a threat, including the other part. (The other part really is a threat… and perhaps that’s what makes everything else seem threatening.)

Not everybody wants me to disappear. Not everyone wants me to be smoother and unobtrusive. Some people might… but not everyone.

Even the people who love me most will be annoyed at me sometimes (my reaction is to feel hard and sharp-edged), and will sometimes not be in a good mood themselves (my reaction is to feel it has something to do with me). That doesn’t devalue or negate their love.

It seems the biggest threat to my Self, my Life, is from inside; from the equal and opposite reaction to my fight to be, from my black-and-white interpretations of and reactions to other people and circumstances.

Critical self,
You who want to do what you think will
Make people like me,
Protect other people’s feelings,
Soothe the universe’s affront at my existence –
You would make me palatable
By making me nothing;
By making me move only
In ways that affect no one.

You can’t escape the fact that I exist,
That I am indeed a self,
And that I therefore protrude
As much as all the other selves,
And that that’s okay.

Let me learn how to protrude
More gracefully,
More beautifully,
More truly;
To take down the fences and barbed wire and cut glass –
The deliberate sharp-edged awareness of sticking out –
Without taking down the rest of me.

I am especially grateful to the young woman who encouraged me to trust my instincts when I feel the need to fight or when I sense hostility or at least unlovingness from someone; that sometimes it is good and necessary to fight, and to recognize real threats. I don’t have to believe that everyone is dedicated to my wellbeing any more than I have to believe that everyone is out to get me. I don’t have to believe all fights are wasted energy any more than I have to believe that all fights must be continued.

PPD update

Good things:

• Enjoying Amy’s smiles and generally being able to be with her
• No out of control emotional episodes
• A job offer for Mark from the place in Indiana… and two weeks to decide

Not so good things:

• Not sleeping well for a few weeks. Maybe it’s the Zoloft.
• Some intense emotional episodes along with self-condemnation for them
• Wanting more me time, but feeling I haven’t done everything else sufficiently

I wrote this poem last week:

Sometimes I rebel:

I stand.
I walk — run — even skip and leap.
Sometimes (whispering) I dance.

But it doesn’t take much to put me back in my place:

Cowed.
Silenced.
Attenuated.
Compressed.
Ashamed and hidden.

Am I Prince Rilian? Which is the spell and which the reality?
Cringing evokes hitting, but so does hope and confidence.

The Voice of Depression

The voice of depression is a very ugly voice.

It says things like
I hate my life
And
I don’t want this baby anymore
Even when the day goes well and the baby is fine.

It is an insistent, insidious voice.
It calls out loudly and suddenly.
It creeps around in the background.

It carries anxiety with it
And makes everything fearfully intense.

It weeps, keening –
Long, drawn-out low wail-moans
Between quick intakes of breath

Like the moans of unmedicated labor
Like the yells of a fussy baby

Wail-moans that replicate themselves
Reinforcing one another
So that the one who cries
Fears and hates the crying,
Cries more, because she is crying.

In praise of my husband

• Who gave me a dozen roses on the day we brought Amy home.
• Who so tenderly holds and feeds and bathes our little girl
• Who tells me every day how good it is to see me
• Who understands and respects this current affliction
• Who loves me — and our baby

Tell me you love me

Tell me you love me:

Listen to me. And when you listen, pay attention! Listen carefully, seriously, thoughtfully. Listen with compassion and sympathy and interest. And, please, respond. Even if it’s just “I understand,” but even better if you share your thoughts and ideas. I’m not sure there’s really such a thing as “I have nothing to say.” It may be hard to articulate, but I think you probably have some kind of response.

(I know I talk a lot. So I know it’s easy to listen with just half an ear, and to just listen, without thought, without response. But talking is a form of thinking for me, and it’s also a form of intimacy; I’m either communicating things I care about, or I’m caring about our relationship by making conversation. Sometimes it may be hard to tell the difference, or, perhaps more likely, it may be easy to think most of my talking is just making conversation. But sometimes even when I’m talking about apparent trifles, it’s because there’s something interesting to me about them. I get interested in words, and so signs and advertisements and catchphrases and such can be interesting to me. I like to draw connections between things that aren’t usually associated. And of course I get interested in musical things. But I can’t expect you to be interested in everything I talk about. It would be fabulous, but it’s not very realistic. Because unless you’re me, you’re different. So I need to understand that. Hmmm.)

Hugs are necessary to an unshriveled life. That kind of touch is like food and water, and like music. Without it my temptation to withdraw, to feel isolated and defensive, is that much stronger. And that’s like nearly starving.

Make me laugh. And laugh at my jokes. Light-heartedness, fun, and joking are like sunlight and flying, and like music. Without it life seems all darkness and tiredness, and our relationship seems like I just get the dregs — like your best energy has been spent somewhere else.

Give me some of your best energy. Come to me first sometimes. And share with me who you are, what you think and feel, your dreams and fears.

And I’ll know that you love me.