Avoinding
I’m back to avoiding again. Some progress and then … plunk. That’s my pattern.
I’m feeling pretty defeated right now. I think it’s important to make note of this because I’m wondering if my moods have a pattern as well. Maybe I’ve been misdiagnosed with depression – I don’t know.
It’s weird, it’s not just my mood it’s how I feel about myself. Right now I feel like I can’t do anything. Really down, defeated, useless, incapable of anything at all. The reality is I know that’s not true – but that’s how I feel. I worry that this mood will show through at work again tomorrow. My last ‘down mood’ got me into a little trouble at work the last time. Not real trouble, it just made things kind of complicated and now I’m hoping to avoid any further “complications”. But when my mood is like this it’s hard for me to fake things. So, I hope I can fake things and be all “up” when I go in tomorrow.
Anyway, that’s it. I’m feeling down. Defeated. Bogged down in this chaos. I’ll have to take note of when it starts to change again. I started my period yesterday, perhaps that’s a factor as well – although I was starting to feel this way a few days ago. Now it feels pretty set-in.
When I avoid stuff it’s like I’m huddled inside of myself scared to death of something. It’s weird. So I just curl up on the couch and avoid. I don’t even go on line. I just get lost in my thoughts, fantasies or the TV. Sometimes I don’t even eat, which is really unusual for me. It can last for hours – just smothered in my mind. It can actually last for days, but the sitting and not moving – just kind of being like a zombie goes on for 8 to 12 hours at a time. It’s like I’m on my couch terrified to move.
Well, it’s all worth making note of. Not sure where it’s all going. Not sure if I get like this when I start to progress because there’s a part of me that’s afraid of moving forward in a positive way … don’t know if that’s it or not.
The weekend is over. I did nothing. I feel bad. Sad. Disappointed in myself. I’m not looking forward to the week ahead. Wish I could just stay inside my head forever. Well – that’s how I feel right now.
She’s All Me
It’s been a totally weird weekend. In an emotional way. I did manage to get some stuff re-packed and into my new storage space, which was nice. But I have a lot more to do. I probably could have done more, I think sometimes I’m lazy or just unmotivated … and then I think, well I don’t really have a time-line and I’m only answerable to me … and life’s short so I might as well take a few breaks to enjoy the weekend as well.
I don’t know which is the right attitude. All I know is I did quite a bit this weekend but not as much as I hoped … yet more than I thought I would. Round and round my mind goes.
I found a lot of stuff I’d forgotten about. Old photos, notebooks, memories. It was hard at times. I had a few little cries but to be honest nothing really overly emotional. I’d shed a few tears and then just keep on going, or go out for some fresh air. I think in retrospect I probably did everything at the right rate – because it was what I could handle. And really that’s all I can do.
I spent some time looking at old photos of me – from when I was married. Who was that woman? I also found a few from an office party. I can’t even remember who those people are – so odd because at the time they seemed so important to me. Most of them – well their faces were unknown to me.
I think I wanted to keep all that stuff in boxes and restart my life. I didn’t want to go back or even acknowledge that woman, or girl … depending on which box I opened. Some of the boxes were from before I was married and still living at home with my parents.
I unpacked some nic-nacs and other items that had memories attached. It wasn’t as devastating as I thought it would be and in a way I kind of like re-integrating all those parts of me that I severed. There’s the little girl who was just a child, the young woman who lived at home with her parents, the young woman who lived with her husband, the devastated woman left behind by her husband, the woman who went over the deep end and planned her suicide, the wounded woman who couldn’t hold a job and had to be rescued by family. She’s all me.
She is all me and she’s not that different from the me now.
I found a journal from June 1999. It took my breath away. It was only me answering 3 questions my therapist had for me. What do I want to have? What do I want to do? What do I want to be?
What shocked me was I could have written it yesterday. The first thing I wrote for What I Want to Have … “A clean apartment. No garbage. Sanitized bathroom and kitchen. No clothes around. Everything in its place.”
The second thing I wrote … “The energy to do this”.
My goodness. That’s pretty much what this blog is all about and here it is 10 years later.
It was a little upsetting because it brought into focus how these past 10 years have been so hard for me. How I’ve been side-lined by this hoarding obsession, along with a lot of other things, and it’s stopped me from living my life fully. Maybe unpacking and bringing all these things back into my life is a much more positive move than I had anticipated.
I do feel like I am integrating all those parts of me back together again. I don’t think I separated them on purpose, or maybe I did. I think a part of me was too wounded to think about who I used to be. And I used to be so optimistic that I couldn’t bear to acknowledge that I lived my life with rose coloured glasses on.
I also had a bit of anxiety thinking that by bringing these things back into my life I was moving backwards. As if by packing up my life I was leaving it behind and moving forward. Of course I haven’t moved forward at all. But when I was putting out certain items I had this thought – what if my Ex showed up (that’s not going to happen) and saw all this old stuff – it would be as if I hadn’t moved forward. Of course by opening up these boxes and using the things in them doesn’t mean I want my husband back nor does it mean I want that old life back. It’s a bit confusing, to be honest.
But this weekend has been insightful. I’ve had lots of emotions but none of them over-took me. I’d be sad, angry, happy, content, frustrated, tired, anxious … you name it I felt it. But at least I felt it.
I hung a sun catcher on my door that I found. I don’t really remember when I bought it but I remember it was in several of my homes. I’ve been looking at it off and on all weekend. My first thought was to hang it right away. Not sure why, it’s nothing special and I don’t have any emotions attached to it. Then I thought, no don’t hang it – don’t bring “her” into here. Then I washed it off and hung it in the window in my door.
I like it.
And I like that I’m bringing little bits of “her” back into my life. She’s not so bad. She’s kind of nice actually. And … she’s me. All those women, girls, I packed up in those boxes … they’re all me. And I’m feeling ready to have all of her back into my life now.
Feeling Paralyzed
I’m feeling kinda paralyzed this weekend. I know it’s Monday but I never work on Monday’s so this is the last day of my weekend.
I did nothing for 3 days.
I feel like I’ve been psychologically turned-off.
In retrospect I think I may do that, without realizing it, whenever I make a breakthrough. I did feel like I was making sense of stuff in my last few posts and then it’s followed up by me zoning out. Weird. Maybe it’s some kind of self-recovery or something. Maybe I’m just lazy. I don’t know. I did have my period this week and over the weekend it was really bad, so in a way I do feel like I’m recovering.
My results from my blood work and other tests came back, nothing serious. I am anemic … which is in part why I’m tired. I need to get some iron pills. My period doesn’t help with that problem either. So maybe I should just give myself a break over having done nothing this weekend. I am feeling like I’m getting over the flu even though I wasn’t sick. Oh well.
I have to add that I also felt very lonely this weekend. Lonely and restless. Well, restless maybe isn’t the right word because I didn’t move much … but kind of anxious about being alone and not having anyone to interact with. That made me spend a lot of time online interacting, and trying to interact, with people on various social networks. In one way I feel that’s kind of pathetic and in another I think it’s healthy to reach out. I dunno. In the end a lot of those friendships are just hollow. They do fill a void for a few minutes though, which is nice. But ultimately, do they really know or care about the real me? Nope. And that just leaves me feeling sad.
So that was my weekend. I’m now not looking forward to work starting tomorrow. It just seems like a never ending cycle that I don’t want to be in and I don’t know how I even got here.
Clearly the Problem is Me
I still can’t turn my thoughts off today. One thing is for sure is that clearly the real problem here is me. If I had a life, friends, etc., then I wouldn’t be feeling this way – or if I did feel this way I’d have other things going on in my life to distract me and I’d have people in my life to give me support. But the way it is now all I have is work and I pretty much hate that.
I signed up for facebook under my real name and it’s so sad because really, I don’t have any friends. I used to have a fb account under my fake name from a previous blog I used to have and I had 100s of friends, but I didn’t know any of them – just knew them through my blog, which was a fun blog and I did meet a lot of great people online but how real is that. It was real in the sense that they were great people and we did have fun at times, but after a while it left me feeling hollow.
In many ways having friends online suits my personality because I’m very internal and don’t really like social gatherings – so I, like many, do find online social networking to be enjoyable and at times fulfilling.
But having my real name on facebook and only a few relatives as friends it really hit me that I don’t make friends. I don’t have friends. Not that I didn’t know that but it’s just really hitting home with me.
I always thought I could manage just fine on my own because that’s how I’ve gone through my life. I moved a lot as kid so was never in one place for long and making and keeping friends was just something I never learned to do. Now moving closer to 50 I can see that my life is pretty empty.
The thing is if I want to change any of this then I need to look at myself in an honest way. I’m not just rambling here online for no reason – I’m actually doing it to try and change me. To propel me to make changes. Sometimes it’s worked but obviously not enough and I’ve taken steps backwards over the past month.
I had wanted this holiday to be my free day. I figured that last weekend I’d have everything done in my apartment and today’s holiday would be my day to relax and enjoy. But that’s not happened. Just like any other goal I’ve set in my life I had no real plan and had no direction and ultimately nothing happened.
I thought by putting my real name on facebook and classmates that maybe former friends/co-workers/classmates would contact me but that hasn’t happened. I contacted a few but not much came of it and one even denied ever knowing me. Mostly the ones that did make a connection are avoiding me. Makes me wonder exactly what kind of person I am according to these people. Obviously not a very good one.
I know there’s people out there who like me, I have a few friends but none are on any online social networks. They are like me in many ways, for one thing, they don’t like a lot of social interaction so basically we don’t get together a lot. I thought they’d enjoy fb but 2 people I’m thinking of never got the hang of it and closed their accounts.
Whatever.
I get the feeling people just feel sorry for me. People will say what a nice person I am but when I think about it none of those people have ever tried to get to know me. Not sure why that is. I wonder what kind of vibe I’m giving out. Who knows. But based on people’s reactions to me the vibe I’m giving isn’t a positive one. Which I guess, given how I feel about myself and my life, pretty much makes sense.
Calmer … but Still Pissed
I’m feeling a bit calmer than I was in my previous post, but I’m still mad.
Well I’m a lot of thngs .. mad, angry, pissed, sad, alone, fed-up, broken-down, defeated. Pissed.
My boss … let me try to sort this out in my own mind. The reality is she is like 2 differnt people. She’s either extremely empathtic – to the point where she’d make a great therapist. Or she’s callous – to the point that she scares me.
The 2nd personality doesn’t show itself very often but the more I get to know her the more I can see she’s battling it. I can understand that. I get it. I admit I have a similar side to my personality. She’d never admit that.
We’ve had some very serious conversations about mental health and our backgrounds, but she really doesn’t see that side of her – or she doesn’t admit it. I saw her one time freak out at her husband to the point that I was nervous and embarassed. It really unnerved me and left me feeling scared.
Scared. That’s a weird word that I keep using when I describe that nasty side of her. It kind of reminds me of how my mother would freak out when I was a kid. But she didn’t behave that way when we got older. When we were kids I’m sure lots of times she was overwhelmed and when she was it came out as this really scary woman! But also, I was a kid, and she was my otherwise nice mother, so it all seemed even that more scary.
It’s weird how this woman can remind me a bit of my mother in that context. I think it does make me revert to that child … feeling scared. So is it my boss or is it me who’s the problem here?
The thing is – my mother never behaved like that in public and never behaved like that when we got older. So I don’t get why this woman would be like that in the workplace. Thank god she doesn’t have kids. The other thing is, ultimately I ended up having a good relationship with my mother … so I don’t think it’s weird left-over feelings for her that’s making me react this way. I think that the boss is just a really troubled person and a very manipulative one as well. She’s the type that has to be a martyr. I hate that. My mother was never that so there’s no comparison to be made there.
The boss is also extremely religious to the point that it can become obnoxious, especially for someone like me who doesn’t believe in any of that crap – with all due respect to those who do believe. I get fed-up with people who act all high & mighty and then behave horribly. And again, it’s the martyr thing that always comes up with her. It gets mighty boring mighty fast, I gotta say.
Anyway, regardless of all the psycho drama in my head – she’s got enough psycho drama for the 2 of us. I never behave like that in public. Rarely do in private. It’s just too bad that none of her bosses ever really see the full extent of her behaviour. They’d be concerned I’m sure. She wasn’t at all stable today.
As for family, they’re always telling me how I’m not alone, yada, yada. That’s only true when it’s convenient for them. I mean, what am I doing tomorrow – it’s Canada Day, a holiday, and since most of them are out of town on vacation or home and have decided not to do anything – then I’m going to be alone. No one ever includes me in their activities unless they’re having a family get-together, and then I’m part of the family. They don’t get it.
You know, when I had a husband and a house and a nice yard with a pool I always invited everyone – not that they came. My parents stayed at another siblings home – one where they didn’t have a guest room, like my house did. So why was that? Basically it was because they’d rather not spend time with me given the choice. Pretty simple to see that.
So it’s like the chicken and the egg. Which comes first – do people not want to be around me because I they don’t like me or am I not enjoyable to be around because I know people don’t want to be around me. Whatever. Who cares at this point in my life.
And sure, it’s not like I can’t go out and do something on my own, but to be honest – after 15 years of doing that, I’m sick of it. I’m sick of being the one who can live on her own, be independent, go out to events or whatever alone because that’s just what I did.
I’m sick of it.
I also know I’ll never meet someone, not at my of stage life. I’m almost 50 and look at all the fucking bagage I have. There’s no way I can get my shit together at this point in my life to find someone. And if I did get my shit together … like I’m going to be able to find some shit-free man who also has his life together. Highly unlikely.
I knew this when I was in my 30s and everyone told me I was wrong. But I was right. I’m not the kind of woman men want – regardless of all the kind things people say to me or about me. The reality is I’m fat and men don’t want fat women – I’m not saying all men are shallow and I’m not saying men don’t have fat wives that they love, but the majority of them loved them before they became fat. I’m not in that situation. There’s no way a man would chose me over a thin woman given that we have the same personality traits. No way.
I’m completely and totally damaged goods in that department and I know it. It’s hard to deal with but the reality is I’m alone now, have been for 15 years and will be for the rest of my life and whatever I say to make myself feel better about that – it just isn’t easy. It’s not easy being alone.
Having said all that – I do remember being married and being in a relationship and I know that’s not all it’s cracked up to be either. But considering all the factors one thing is for sure – it’s really nice to have someone on your side. Someone who understand you after a bad day. Having no one day after day after day after day … it’s really, really hard.
It wears ya down after a while. It’s been 15 years. That’s a long time to have to keep lifting up my spirits on my own. That’s a long time to be my own cheerleader. I’ve been doing it but the past few years I’ve become so beaten down.
And yes, I did have a few sexual relationships in the past 15 years, but that’s all they were – not emotional relationships. The men didn’t even really know me. The last man I was involved with – it was just sex. So yes, there are men who do find me attractive or who will have sex with me, whatever. Sex is easy to get – real connection like an emotional connection, damn – that’s so rare and much harder to find so I’ve given up. It’s just not going to happen. So day by day I fade away.
Last year was like a fucking fog. I hibernated in this fucking apartment and just kinda died a little. It’s days like this that remind me how exhausted I really am. To the outside world I’m more together – but I have to say over the past few years it’s been harder to keep up that veneer. Even I can see that it’s cracking. I fear soon everyone will be able to see what’s really inside – god help me. Not that I believe in god – but whatever. When that day comes they’ll be loading me in to a looney van.
I really am finding it hard to keep up appearances. I’ve been worn down. Worn down. A lifetime of missed opportunities and regrets. A life that’s been passed by. I can’t seem to grab hold of life to live it again. It’s pretty terrifying, actually.
Anyway – all just my thoughts … trying to get them out of my fucking head. All in the hopes that I’ll have some peace tonight – but I doubt it. I hate my life.
I don’t know what’s worse. Knowing and admitting that I hate my life. Or living like I have been for the past few years where I just ignore those thoughts.
I’m really not sure at this point which is worse.
Shit On Me Day
Seriously, it’s like the universe just took a huge dump on me today. Sounds funny but it’s not really, especially since I’m sitting here crying.
I’m so fucking pissed off.
First, my boss is an absolute fucking psycho. I know I’ve said positive things about her before but it’s like some weird Stockholm syndrome or something.
When I first started working for her I had serous concerns about her mental health – as did others who worked with her. I was even warned about it in a round about way by her boss. Also, no one else seemed to be able to work with her. But I did. Why? Because I’m easy to get along with, good at my job, desperate for a job? All of those, and add in I don’t think I’m worthy of anything else.
She comes from a very abusive background, one of her parents also had schizophrenia and I’m seriously thinking this woman also has mental health issues.
She was just downright rude to me today – and it’s not like I have thin skin or anything, I can take it. But today she was vile. Rude I can take, vile is a bit much.
Someone who used to work with us – who quit because of the boss’ psycho behaviour, actually said she thought she had a split personality. She took her concerns to the higher-ups. Not sure what ever came of that but I do know they were keeping an eye on the situation. The thing is, I do think there’s some truth to the split personality thing. It’s like she has 2 distinct personalities and the one that was out today is actually scary. It really does make me feel afraid. I just shut down – it’s that bad.
Add to all that – my car died again and I had to pay for a taxi to get to work, which I can’t afford. Then when a relative gave me a ride home he acted like it was a huge inconvenience, which it wasn’t. Like I have to get a ride from people all the time, sure my car has broken down in the past but not all the time. I think it happened twice this year. And how many times have I given them a ride when they needed one? Are we suppose to start counting now? And when I do give someone a lift I never, ever, make them feel guilty about it because I know how it feels to have to fucking ask for help. It’s not fucking easy.
I’d love to be able to not have to worry about money, cars, bosses, etc. And I know lots of people have these problems, but christ. For the most part I go through my fucking life trying to make others feel better and what’s it get me. I don’t go out of my way to make me feel better and neither does any one else.
Fuck ‘em.
