November Blue

I know I’m sad about leaving therapy and group and my coworkers. I mean, I KNOW I’m sad – on a cognitive intellectual and analytical level. So denial isn’t the issue. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I feel sad. Perhaps a more apt description is that I am aware of a feeling called sadness which is at arm’s length. It feels like it’s somewhere deep in my belly. A sad part in a glass box. For some reason I imagine it to look like a Dr. Seuss character with a yellow tuft of hair on top of it’s over-sized oval green head. I can walk around the box, point out it’s features. I just haven’t been able to let it out. It wants to come out. Matter of fact, it looks pretty pathetic in there. Innocent enough. Some of my parts think it might be a sweet addition to the gang, this creature. But other parts have learned the dangerous lesson – that silly cartoonish imp wants nothing more than to squeeze the breath out of me. To take up residence in my throat and chest and suffocate me with panic.

So there it sits, fogging up a three inch circle of the glass box as it leans it’s dopey eyes closer toward me. Point taken – I can’t ignore or deny it. I fear I have to “let it out”‘ in order to have an authentic sad experience. But why does it always have to be “let out” in the form of tears and sobs and gasps and hot cheeks and stuffy nose and tremors and stomach convulsions?  I am envious of musicians who can express themselves in the whine of a high blues note on the guitar or the slam of discordant piano keys. I wish I were a poet who could string together a mere 17 words to perfectly release the feeling onto paper. Picasso painted a portrait of his dead best friend that makes your heart ache just looking at the blue edge of his cold profile. But what have I got? I’ve got a fucking ridiculous looking creature in a glass box who looks like the best he could do is a stupid tap dance and a 4 line rhyme.

I’m really really sad. I’m scared. I’m lonely. I’m anxious. I’m sad some more. That’s about all I’ve got, though. These words on a screen.

my parts are so polarized: black and white. needy and independent. terrified and numb. lost and confident. the hardest part is when the reality of the situation plants me firmly somewhere in the middle.

i was so fucking proud of myself for doing this alone. for picking a place to live – for ME. not based on a man. not based on a name-brand prestigious school. i was so determined not to let this become someone else’s life change. but i had unrealistic expectations of what the experience would be like – i imagined exhilerating and liberating. life-affirming and strengthening. but what it’s turning out to be is a little lonely and scary. yes, there is some pride mixed in. yes, it feels like growth and indpendence.  and no, i don’t think it was a bad idea to do something as important as this on my own. but as much as my expectations beforehand and my retrospective evaluation afterwards are cartoonishly simple, the actual experience I’m finding is just gray and confusing. it’s a mix. not an overwhelmingly pleasant one at the moment.

so here i sit, typing with my laptop balance on my middle dresser drawer because i sold my desk. surrounded by boxes with my ex-boyfriend’s name in all-caps because they are remnants of my move to Vermont with him. the professional movers felt the need to emblazen every box with his name – what i thought would be my name. and this wasn’t even J. i have discussed in therapy recently how strange it is that the relationship i’m pining for and grieving for right now isn’t the one with J – it’s the one before him. I’m sure i just never gave it the time or attention it needed at the end and the processing just happens to come about 18 months later. tonight i started feeling pathetic that i still lived in “our” apartment. that another man had lived here with me. and been engaged to me. and that ended. and here i am alone again in this apartment that “we” picked out. meanwhile the name on the boxes is still his…and his new wife’s. and i’m stuck with mine.

i only have 2 therapy sessions left with B. i have one group therapy session in addition. and she keeps mentioning that we should be talking out it – about what i’m feeling about our work together ending. i’m feeling a little abandoned. i didn’t feel anything until tonight. but part of me wishes that she would have expressed a desire for me to stay. i just feel awful about leaving therapy with her. it’s the one fucking place in the whole fucking world where i’ve felt safe feeling some of the yuck. it’s still the only place where my youngest most exiled parts surface. she’s the one i fucking called when i can’t stop purging every scrap of food i ate. the one i called in crisis with J. people are supposed to fucking leave ME. not me leaving them. i hate it. i don’t want to talk to her about it. i know i should. i hope i will.

I really really really have been excited about my new kayak – which is not so new as I bought it from my backdoor neighbors at their moving sale. I have spent weeks going through the process of buying a car roof rack, waiting for it to arrive in stock, getting it installed, finding the correct tie down strapping, getting a life jacket, and then waiting for it to stop snowing. But this morning, this glorious morning I arose to a sunny day. Cold, but sunny and a little chill in the air wasn’t going to stop my maiden voyage.

I was so determined that I carried the 12.5 foot boat up from the basement myself and hoisted it up onto the hood of my car. After some careful strapping and much checking, I embarked on my drive to the reservoir. The road to the boat launch area being closed didn’t even elicit a moment’s hesitation – “I’ll just carry the boat down the road” I thought. Holy cow that boat gets heavy after about 50 feet! And I passed several people on the path who raised an eyebrow and made comments:

“wow you’re strong”

“don’t fall in! it’s chilly!”

And I responded with a lighthearted – “It’d sure be nice if this road wasn’t closed, right?”

Ha ha heh heh hmmm…I exerted enough effort just getting my dang vessel to the water that I could have packed it up and called that a workout! But I made it to the icy edge of the water, straddled the stern, wobbled and wiped out – palms in the gravel – luckily no spillage into the water. I glanced frantically around – good – no one was around to witness this. No one besides me would be seriously worried about the intelligence of this undertaking. I was shaking. I successfully landed my bum on the seat and the thing was teetering like a four year old on a two wheeler. I had some MAJOR self-doubting parts and cautious parts warning me to just go home. Give up and try again when I’m in nice warm water in a bathing suit. But NO! The parts of me that really wanted to do this – to have an adventure with myself today pushed ahead. And I pushed away from the shore. Quiet after the sound of plastic on gravel. Smooth after the precarious rocking. Relief after the rapid heartbeat.

It was a marvelous twenty minute paddle – just me. And the turtles sunning on a log. And the ducks silently gliding by on the surface.

A girl alone on a thirty five degree morning carrying a kayak a quarter mile down a dirt road – I either must have looked like I really knew what I was doing or like I was completely clueless. But I knew that I wasn’t clueless. Just a little adventurous.

I finished that last post and realize that there’s something else I need to process and now I’m remembering how great it is to process here in blogland.

Anger.

I don’t usually feel it towards other people. It gets flipped around and redirected internally. Blaming parts jump in. I hate me for getting me into these situation parts jump in. Life is hopeless parts jump in.

But this week I really felt it toward someone else. Who deserved it. And even if part of it flipped inwards, some of it remain directed towards that person. J. I emailed J. weeks ago to let him know I was moving. I didn’t want him to hear through Facebook (groan – I’ve since “un-friended” him for privacy’s sake) or call me in a few months and feel like I kept it a secret. So he asked if I wanted to see him before I leave. For fuck’s sake why don’t you just say “I want to see YOU before you leave” rather than putting it all on me. (breathe)

So I’ve been stalling and saying I need time to think about that. And finally he responded with something along the lines of ’since i haven’t heard from you in a few weeks I assume you don’t want to see me. i had hoped we could be friends. ‘. So I replied very honestly that friendship would be too hard and that i had decided that we shouldn’t see each other. Which was responded to with several emails of increasing insulting and condescending tone. The last of which was a lengthy analysis of how I have Borderline Personality Disorder and how sad it is and how my therapist is lying to me by not telling me my real diagnosis and how he wants to help me by making sure i’ve told my friends and family.

(breathe again)

I was FURIOUS. And not in an ‘I have BPD and so I’m irrationally furious’ but more in a ” you ignorant FUCK. i don’t have a personality disorder, i just didn’t want to be married to a lame-ass loser who couldn’t pay his rent and was insecure as hell and didn’t have any friends and was apathetic towards his health, had resigned himself to be perpetually depressed, was enmeshed with his crazy family and was pathologically unable to discuss any issues in his relationship without threatening abandonment” sort of way. So I fumed about it, my cheeks flushed and my hands shaking from adrenaline. And then I stalled sending a response. After 12 hours or so I sent one that merely said to leave me alone and leave my stuff on the porch and to cease and desist before it got ugly. Well he indeed left my stuff on the porch the next day and, And, AND the complete first season of IN TREATMENT. Which for those that don’t know is an HBO drama that is about therapy. I literally laughed on my porch when I saw it. It just reminded me that he doesn’t know shit and that he’s hiding behind some make-believe diagnosis based on a TV show in order to not face the fact that a woman chose not to spend the rest of her life with him.

And I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m still angry about it. And that is a sign of my PROGRESS and not an imaginary BPD.