I'm trying to find my complete self - the combination of all the masks I choose. I want to say I have solid self-esteem, but I'm not sure I even have a solid self. I'm ready to find out.
Have we already talked about how unhelpful it is that I can only Like and Follow from this main blog? My deepest apologies for all the people who come here after I've flooded their ~themed~ blog with notifications and then this blog is uh, not on theme. Side blog problemz.
as you get older, you start realizing that you are not always right and there’s a lot of things you could have handled better and many situations where you could have been kinder and all you can really do is forgive yourself and let your mistakes make you a better person.
learning that addiction is a progressive narrowing of the range of things that make one happy was kinda life changing for me. i apply it to everything not even just addiction i am always checking to ask if i am narrowing my range of happiness or widening it
Laughing with delight and texting people at the three minute mark, slack jawed and re-texting at the 30 minute mark, then sobbing most of the way through soon after. Sober this time though. Remember Anyway in that cafe, after our first time in therapy together, our last time ever together? You sent me Orange Juice but I moved on, heard him in the Ozarks, wove him into my wallowing, and I'd forgotten. But then suddenly you were there, and it was my hometown, and a broken dad, and a broken body warring with a broken brain and all the broken open weeping that I've done so often in crowds, so often in this hammock, so often. Am I doing it right? Is this just how it is? All the mess and heartache and nostalgia and beauty and terror. All the missing, all the embarrassment, all the grief. The loss and the fear and the love and oh my God always the sobbing, damn. I've nearly bitten all my fingernails off again. I surmounted another hurdle at work. I traipsed home along curbs in the sun, listening to Jamil Zaki remind me how deeply I believe in kindness. The birds are singing. My fridge is full. My photos look like I'm happy. I can't imagine I am. Are you?
I needed a downtime evening so I randomly scrolled through Prime for a movie and chose Brittany Runs a Marathon for a silly comedy choice. Ended up full body heave-sobbing myself into a nosebleed at the end so that's interesting. To be fair I am halfway through a very large custom cocktail I made for myself so some of that's probably the alcohol, but also. I think I struck my own nerve with that one.
i went on a day trip with my grandma yesterday so obvs we broke into as many catholic churches as possible. One of them had a book shelf, some free and some donation based, and we know I love stealing from a church but I actually put a $10 in the suggested donation box because I'm trying to hashtag grow.
I thought of your promise again last night and Spotify DJ played me Testimony this morning and I know it's not your thing but I need it and this is one way I'm not needing to keep my promise so I accepted the nudge and got out the books and pamphlets this morning to read with my coffee
I immediately started craving a pencil, as I do, and realized I'd need a bookmark too so I grabbed one from my bundle on the bookshelf. IMMEDIATELY guffawed because it's one of your few Lemony Snicket ones I haven't tossed out of ache, and at first glance I thought it said "the newspaper story you're about to read is all lies" and that's hysterical to me and I can hear your laugh and I'm laughing through the tears
but then I realize it actually says "the newspaper story about you is all lies" and now I'm really bawling because I got my feelings hurt pretty bad last night with my family (it's easy to lacerate a bruised fruit - the nail slices right in and suddenly it's all disgust and rot amirite?) but I think even though we don't talk anymore you might still like me. I know you still love me, in the way we will always love each other and I almost take for granted except it keeps saving my life, but knowing you probably actually still like me and respect me, even when you hate me and are so angry with me that your bitch notes tear through to the next page, you still see me and like me and know my family doesn't see me clearly. and God I need that.
So I'm gonna keep reading my catholic propaganda because I need some Gregory Boyle and Pastor ... (oh no I don't remember your dad's pastors name and I deleted it from my phone and now I'm panicked I might not have kept his funeral bulletin I don't wanna forget I'm all clementine frantic I didn't mean to erase you) in my life
I did think about you on your half birthday. I did think about the promise you asked me to make, that I'd call you before doing anything permanent. I really really loved hearing from you for my birthday - thank you for the Meg and AG content.
I had a dream last night that you'd moved on. You were bed sharing with some girl named Chloe and y'all seemed close and solid and it was brutiful. Even in the dream, I knew I had no right to the pang in my chest because I'd rolled out of her bed and arms that very morning.
You were in her dream the other week - you were touching me, pulling me, trying to lure me to you and she thought I was uncomfortable with it but wasn't stopping you and wasn't letting her step in to help. She told me you represent distance in her relationship with me and she's not wrong. Do I only miss you because you aren't here?
Bonus Dad was able to fix my hard drive and I'm so glad I didn't lose my pictures of BabyCat but I'm also so so so glad I didn't lose my pictures of you, our life, the few we took of us.
"I love you" is shorthand for a great deal of my thoughts, emotions, and actions. In no particular order other than what is falling out of my brain right now:
I feel your gravity in my chest.
I feel lighter when I'm around you, and I still stay when the space between us feels heavy.
I've added you to my starred contacts so that I can pick up the phone if you me call in the middle of the night.
I will drive you to and from the hospital for your colonoscopy.
When I see things that make me think of you, I take a picture of them and send them to you. If it is something that would make a good gift, I buy it and then save it for your birthday or an appropriate gift giving holiday.
When I'm near you, I allow myself to feel your emotions.
I accept you; all of you. Even the parts you don't think I can see.
I want to help you shoulder your burdens.
I celebrate your joys.
When I don't hear from you, I want to at least know that you are okay.
"if you are over 30 on Tumblr the mental illness won" "the aging fanbase of Tumblr" motherfucker if you are over 30 and have been here the entire time it means the mental illness didn't win we are still alive WE MADE IT
i already feel better and steady and had a very grounding meditation and lovely evening with the bossisters and this is why I try to not ~be honest about my feelings~ bc riding them out in white knuckled silence makes bouncing back so much easier. No need to bring hostages along for the whiplash. I'll catch y'all when I come back around for the upswings.
forgive the version of you that didn’t know what to do and could not have foreseen what the right choice was, if there even was one. forgive the version of you that made a choice and regretted it.
For anyone keeping track (me), I ruined another special event.
Just got home and I wanna rehash it because I'm stuck and I feel like I've had this conversation so many times and nothing has changed.
I told her I didn't want to do anything for Valentine's Day, I just wanted to keep it to our Galentine's Day plans where we were kidnapping the single straights, lavishing them with flowers, dinner, treats, a fun surprise activity, and gift date later in the month. She got me flowers anyway and I immediately crumpled in guilt, I hadn't gotten her anything, I thought we'd said we weren't going to do anything, but she told me it didn't mean anything because her family celebrates valentine's day platonically and she got her mom flowers, too.
St. Patrick's was coming up and that's our friendship anniversary where we have the tradition of going off to a bar for green beer and Irish car cocktails, and last year we made our drinks at home but this time I asked if we could do it downtown so we could feed two birds with one scone and she could show me a bar or two from her partying days that were on our "to check out" list. I didn't want to drink, but figured I could still hang out and DD. But then she got me a gift and it was the game we'd played at the board game cafe at our first St. Patrick's together, traveling just the two of us for a show, and we braved the bars and it was fun and overstimulating and silly. But the game was hard to find and she's ordered it on eBay and yet again I'm crumpled in guilt because I didn't get her anything and we'd never done gifts before but I also didn't do anything special and had barely gotten myself out of the apartment because I wanted to cancel and wallow, but then I got overstimulated at the bar and wasn't feeling good and had plunged myself into a shame cycle and then when she realized I wasn't drinking she said we could leave but I wanted to plan this and make decisions because she always does all the emotional labor and now I'm in emotional labor debt from not getting a gift or flowers or writing a card so we leave but then there's no good option so we go back and I order her drinks and get myself diet coke and it's awkward and awful and quiet and then we try to get her food afterward but I'm not eating because of the way I am but we stop by the place with good tacos that was also on the "to check out" list and she orders and I'm sitting there watching her eat and then we start our weird fight dance where she asks what expectations I'd had for St. Patrick's because I think she wants to prove the point that she hadn't expressed any demands or expectations and this whole thing is self-inflicted and unnecessary and it comes out that I'd been uncomfortable with the flowers and the game and didn't want to drink and didn't know what else to do and she says she doesn't have any expectations besides time with me but I deeply suspect that isn't true and the night ends awkwardly with me dying of shame and guilt uh-gain. I only vaguely remember talking in the car in the parking lot, and again in her driveway, me sobbing that I don't want to be like this and it's just always going to be like this and I DO remember sobbing out that I wouldn't even remember what I was saying but she would and she'd walk around my eggshells better and I'd forget and feel better until it happens all over again.
But she'd communicated that St. Patrick's wasn't nearly as important as our Jeremy Bearimy anniversary, our reunion after my "sabbatical" last year, all saturated with longing and romance and confidence and disclosure and steamy attraction and songs of soul and heartbreak and fate and that cursed fucking reunion doc and so I've been trying to make a list of things we could do (couples therapy with her family's therapist that she's always wanted to try out, go back to the reunion restaurant, paddle board together, write a love letter, get her flowers, compile the quote book and blog posts and memories and photos and RADARs, sex toys we've always talked about) but the date is approaching and I'm burning myself out with resentment and hostage exhaustion trying to help her with her move, and her sister with all the stuff that threatens to distract from the move, and so I secretly decide that if the move goes well that weekend, I'll take her to the restaurant and maybe weather will be good for paddle boarding and that will be enough for this year but I'm also secretly pleased with myself because I painted her a little stupid something at the ceramics studio but otherwise the timing sucks and I'm poor and I'm doing a ton of acts of service and trying to throw my body into plans for quality time when I can.
So Saturday night I say yes to sleepover even though I don't want to and I say yes to groceries last night even though I want to die and I say yes to going with her to her tailor appointment today even though I'm behind at work. and it's fine. But on the way there she's talking about this weekend and the move and the anniversary and shit starts falling apart. She tells me she wants to get me flowers and I cringe. She asks if she can write me a card and I start chewing my lip. I don't want this I don't want this I don't want this.
So I try to explain to her, try to articulate the flinch in my bones, even though we already had that awful conversation about a month ago about how she can't initiate sex with physical touch (because it was our last night in her house and she tried and I wanted to want to because there were so many fun things we'd wanted to do in her house and hadn't and it's my fault because she initiates and I freeze and distract or make excuses but we've run out of time but I'm panicking and I actually say no and physically get away from her to stop it but then I'm sobbing and guilty and unable to backtrack), how I don't want to take it off the table temporarily because I know I'll never put it back on, the horrible dramatic upstaging of her big life power moves where I kept crying and tried to filter my shame scripts and proposed a no-sex touch era and it was fine but we haven't done it and I don't want to and it's all awful and I'm gross and my ED is killing me and all I want to do is drink but I'm too poor and disordered for booze, so I start this conversation anyway.
I tell her it goes back to fearing demotion, about how the role of girlfriend is unique only in sex and romance and I can't do those things on command, can barely show up period, and struggle so hard to show up a certain way: attentive, positive, generous, loving, thoughtful, prepared. Let alone authentic and spontaneous and integrated. I articulate that I don't struggle with friends and family because no one expects those things from friends and family, and even if they do, there are other friends and family to fall back on if one person can't do it that time. But with girlfriend, it's just me. And not only is it just me, but it's not a side-by-side hobby activity anymore like paddle boarding or going out for drinks or getting dinner to catch up - suddenly WE are the subject, we're face-to-face, I have to show up and be emotionally present and attuned and available because we're the focus, us and her and our relationship and *I* have to be there as a subject, seen and perceived, not a tool for doing a fun little activity. I filter out my recent panic spiral about doing things with her family as a girlfriend/expected +1, where I was given gifts and fed free food for Easter when no one even asked me to contribute (because of previous meltdowns I've had about being judged, not being able to keep up with the high standards they have) and I didn't have any gifts to give in return and I think she intentionally didn't tell me about the Easter basket tradition until the last minute and I'd already agreed to attend (but also wtf it was all just hygiene things and snacks and it's so weird for people to buy my groceries and personal care items for me I don't want this I don't want food I don't want alcohol I don't want I can't I don't have I can't I can't), all makes me want to never do holidays with them again because I can't keep up, it's all score keeping and I have nothing to give back, I can't cook or clean well enough for her mom's standards and I'm poor and stingy and forgetful and I hate this, I feel like a charity case. The only thing I have to give is my attention, my good listening skills, my therapeutic presence, and I'm drained drained drained drained fake fake fake.
But I do share that money IS a relevant layer and leave it at that. (I tuck away my resentment that she makes $25k more than me and we split everything 50/50, that she tells stories of growing up poor when she means she remembers having bologna sandwiches as a toddler and leaves out the narrative arc where after age 5 her parents became wealthy enough to buy a farm and build a pool and pay for her undergrad. I see myself planting landmines in the vineyard of our relationships. She thinks we're growing something sweet and I am sabotaging the very soil she takes for granted. I am not a weed, easily plucked and managed. I am the fundamental toxin.)
I share that I imagine her talking to her friends and having to say "oh no Bethany and I don't celebrate our anniversary, or Valentine's Day, or Christmas together because she can't/isn't comfortable with it/we agreed not to." She quickly reassures me that that isn't how she talks about me. She asks me how it is for other people, for other birthdays or friendship anniversaries, and I tell her I don't usually do anything, at least not consistently. She asks why her birthday is different, because I always do something for her birthday, and I first respond "because I know you're a birthday person" and she immediately interjects "I'm an anniversary and holiday person too." I think I just nod, I know I needed a moment to take a breath after that, and she clarifies "I don't say that to be mean, it's just true - why my birthday?" and I articulate that maybe it's because that's the only one that friends are kinda expected to do, especially since she didn't have a partner and I was her best friend so I just got grandfathered in to being her birthday coordinator for the past several years, but now I have that AND anniversaries and valentine's day and I'm expected to be girlfriend +1 for all the holidays and work activities and special events and she doesn't have six other girlfriends that I can tap in if I can't rally. It's just me. And that shit with Wilson and me cancelling and NIB and me crying on his birthdays and I'm haunted, haunted, haunted. And she tries to tell me that she doesn't have expectations, that her brain doesn't score keep, but I ask to clarify if there would ever be a year or event where she wouldn't want to do something, get me flowers, buy me a card, etc. and she says no. I don't respond to that, letting my shame silently gloat, savoring the sick festering win. A ha, see, I caught you, proof: you're naturally and spontaneously good, and I'm not. Checkmate.
I tell her I feel like a deadbeat boyfriend. I tell her I cannot consistently rely on myself to be able to show up any specific way, and that forcing myself in the past has gone terribly. She acknowledged this. She got quiet. It was almost time for her tailoring appointment. I ask how she feels, and she said "Honestly? Deflated."
We go into the appointment, it's quiet and weird and she keeps giving me her sad smiles that I think are supposed to be reassuring but just stab me in the gut. We leave afterward and the car is silent besides her giving me directions on how to get home. So much silence. Once on the highway, I ask what she's up to over there in the silence of the passenger seat and she said just letting her mind wander. More silence.
I eventually ask permission to ask a question about our Jeremy Bearimy anniversary this weekend, and acknowledge that there are three ways for her to answer: this year with the logistical constraints of the house move, in general, and in light of my expressed feelings and boundaries. I tell her she can answer however she wants, but what would SHE want for our anniversary?
She says, outside of my feelings: flowers, her to write a card telling me why she loves me and us and expressing hope and excitement for our future together, a nice dinner somewhere that's an excuse to dress up a bit, words of affirmation, maybe a walk afterward somewhere for dessert, going back to someplace private to maybe watch a thing or play an intimacy card game like WNRS or Esther's. She paused and then acknowledged she would want to have sex, but at least something physical like a massage or a shower together if I wasn't up for it, and all of our favorite songs. I breathed and listened. She lapsed into silence. I softly thanked her for answering and we went back to the silence. She dozed off for the rest of the drive. I parked at my studio, she hugged and kissed me goodbye and gave me a sad smile, we said I love you, she left with a sad wave.
I can't promise you a rose garden. She had asked if I wanted to go back to just-friends activities and I blanched at her suggesting breaking up and she said no not breaking up, just taking those things off the table. But what's left, without the sex and romance? We're back to my demotion. I know she wants the fantasy romance. I know she wants what I can give her, sometimes, when I'm manic or drunk or rebounding off a long avoidant wallowing streak. I was mentally trying to remind myself that she fell in love with me before the sex, before the romance, but even then NIB clocked it as wrong, something more: I think she fell in love with me because I knew she was lonely, wanted the attention, wanted the story, and I gave it to her because it also helped me escape and practice the skills I wasn't getting in my broken relationship with NIB: the travel, the attention, the affirmation, the specialness, the conversations, the work. I'm still not convinced she loves me. It would be fucking disastrous for her to know that I think that, about our origins, about her feelings. But I think I've kept her on the hook with the intermittent reinforcement of my occasional ability to act the way she wants, the way I want to be, and she endures the rest of it with the grace of someone married to a mentally ill partner and wow isn't she so mature and secure and generous. God it makes me so sick to think of her ever reading that but I know part of me believes that, sees us that way. Part of me does worry that I'm being fetishized as a war story, a firsthand source of the intrigue and badness and alt trauma reality she didn't have growing up, the transcendent overcoming recovery romance arc of the power of our love to cure me. Ugh I'm a fucking monster. She asked if I wanted the sex and romance and I told her I wanted to want it.
I don't know what's true. I don't know what to do. I know I'm scared of what's true. I know I'm constantly in despair over how stuck I feel. I often fall off abrupt cliffs in my thinking and find myself dangling from that final necklace that I crave nearly daily. I want out. I don't want to be me. I don't want to be here now. I don't want to "this too" while I hurt her and hold her back and teach her how to accommodate my shame. I tell myself I just need to hang on long enough for her to find someone in law school, realize I'm not it, realize I'm just the starter kit that you date when you're young or inexperienced and still think the manic pixie dream girl fantasy is real. But then I hurt you, and I lie, and I over-promise, and I cycle, and eventually it has to end. I'm only comfortable when I'm alone and know I'm not hurting anyone and I'm free to fall apart, but I also know my death would be painful so I stay as a form of harm reduction, try to do what I can to love others well and leave this place better than I found it. But I think the trying confuses her. I know my good moods confuse me. I have no idea what's true. but I know that I just celebrated my ten years of being "in recovery" and not much has changed at all. I know more slogans, can quote more interventions, maybe have more capacity to hold space for others... but my behavior and beliefs are relatively unchanged. My internal scripts fall into the same deep ruts. I've lost my hope for meaningful change, for real steady goodness. I think I've just gotten better at filtering out the visibly bad shit with the worst consequences. Not even fully, though.
I'll keep going. We'll bounce back. It'll come back around. I'll keep trying, and meditating, and journaling, and reading. I'll keep redirecting my self talk, plastering my life with mantras and positivity and compassion and faith. Maybe I'll be willing to pay for a therapist again. Maybe I'll find a way to share something honest and actionable with them. Maybe I'll just pay off my student loans.
But I'll stay. I won't leave her. I won't make decisions for her. I don't know what I want but I know what hasn't worked and I can at least keep fucking up in brave new ways. I'll keep filtering the toxic shame, and giving what I can, and living.
it's hard not to end with "but I wouldn't hate a bus." I know that's dark, and immature, and unhelpful. I know I shouldn't be seeking hedonic comfort and despairing when it's hard. I know I'm supposed to have higher, guiding, organizing principles and the ability to be with all my feelings and hear my thoughts but not believe them and choose to hold dialectics and do the next right thing and know I belong to humanity and there's nothing wrong with me blah blah blah. I know. I'll keep doing it. but I thought I'd feel better, or more secure, or more steady by now. But I still feel fourteen, and destructive, and as hopeless as I've ever been. I'm wasting time. This isn't the life I thought I could build for myself. I thought I'd be free(r) by now. I thought I'd be better at loving, and choosing, and feeling. I assumed that if I still had dark days, I'd be able to hold them with care and wisdom and leverage them as a source of deeper connection with others. But I still feel broken, different, out of control and at the mercy of... whatever this is that haunts me. I still feel the need to hide this until it's manageable, until revealing it doesn't hurt people. I want to sand the edges off just enough to not cause immediate lacerations. I can be rough but I hate that I still sting and break on impact. I can handle being heavy but I can't handle all the harm I cause, not even by asking, but merely by revealing.
I don't want to radically accept this grief. I don't want to keep hurting people. I don't want to be stuck in self-hatred when I know it's illogical and counterproductive and totally improveable and it's not even unique to me.
I'm embarrassed to still be here. I'm ashamed by how stuck I still feel, all the time. I will never be okay with the effects I have on the people I claim to love. Ugh. Ok ok ok I'm done I'm done I'm gonna go... eat? Work? Fuck I have family dinner tonight. Fake stability and give away the energy and privilege and time I do have to hopefully make my family's life a smidge better with my half-faked, half-forced actions while bracing my whole body against the flimsy barricade holding back the torrential flood of shame and despair I carry? That's about all I can do today. Ever. Ugh.
