And then it occurred to me
**warning: my space bar is reallyfeeling sticky and not cooperating. apologies.
Iwas putteringalong inthis newlife prettywell with a hefty doseof avoidance ofthe whole “relationship” challengesthatI face.Laughingly callingmyself a “trainwreck in relationships” (self-deprecating humor issuch a thin veilfor self-consciousnessorself-loathing). I wasenjoying my “single time” – afirst forme. I hadn’t joined a monestary and enjoyed eye candy as much asthenext girlbut I’djust put the wholethought ofdating onthe back burner.
Untilthis weekend.When Iwent tothe beachtovisit mychilhood bestfriend, her baby and her husband. She informed me that another girlfriend wouldbethere but I hadno idea untilI approachedherhusband atthebeachupon arrivalto give him a bighug that also joining us would be a guy thatIhave known through mutualfriends foreverandwho I hooked up with last December (J wasin the picture butwe hadn’teven kissedyet).So I almost swallowed my tongue whenC. turned aroundnext to my friend’s husband – shirtlessand holding a fishingpole. Gulp. “oh hey, what’s up?” That soundedcasual, right?
Fast forwardthrough aday of group activiteies and anevening of sexual tension and multiple drinksand finally some extendedalone time and conversationsaboutboth ofus having been engaged- and what thehellhappened last December (Imay have un-friended him on Facebook afterour encounter) (andavoided histexts)(andignoredhisphone call)- and where are you sleeping tonight and suddenly the bedroomdoor is closedandsex.sex happened.multipletimes. and itwas reallyquitegood.granted I’mout of practice and there’s always the initial awkwardnessandthe what do youlike andno, what do youlike and the getting usedto someone’s faces and noises.But Iwasbeaming whenIdrove away the next day afterasweetgoodbye kissandre-exchange ofnumbers (funny,I don’tremember deletinghimfrommy phone).
And the beaminglastedapproximately 3/4 of a mile of my 4 hour drive home. The rest was consumed withcrazy brain:
-would he make a good father
-whatifI got pregnant andwe had to get married
-howlong would Ihave to date him beforehe’d propose
-wouldI move to raleigh for thisguy?
-wouldhe move to charlotte?
-whatdoeshe do for christmas?
-whatwould meetinghisfamily be like?
-would my brother likehim?
-whatsortof house wouldwe live in together?
-whowouldgive me away at the wedding
And so on….soembarrassing toactuallytype those things ontothescreenasthey are indeed a reflection of how insanely obsessive and,well,crazy I get whena man enters mylife (even for 24 hours).
Ihad therapy on the phone withB. againtoday (didthatlast Tuesday as wellbecause I’veyetto find a therapisthere that willwork forme) and whilethe partsthatwe worked with are not theprimary players in this “anchoryourselfto a man asfast asyou can-craziness”, afterwordIhada moment ofrevelation. After spending the bulk of thesession working with a very young, very bruised andhurt andskittish childpartwho wants someonetocomfortherbut is terrified of it,I realizedhow fucking terrified I am of love. Loveisn’t something that canbetrusted.I loved my ownparentsandthey hurtthe fuck out of me.I often wonder now if I would bea happier healthier person if I hadn’t had my father in my life because of the boatload of hurt hegave me for years and years.So afterlookingat this partwhodesperately wants love butfeels that love is what hurther I wondered…
What ifallthe obsessive thoughts and the planning far far into the future and pushing things fasterthan they are ready to go…what if it’s a protective mechanism to avoid actually falling inlove. Love = hurt.Lonliness = hurt. Therefore,find a way to not be lonely while also not feeling real (dangerous, terrifying, powerful) love.
Just a thought. But it resonated.
Infinite satisfaction
It seems the snowy day rendered my few hours at work largely unproductive – not a single client. So I had more time on my hands – typically a difficult thing. Even when empty hours of the day are not difficult because of the demons of my eating disorder, they are difficult because I often struggle with regret and disappointment of how I spent those hours. I have such visions of creativity and connection and living the life I want. And, like I said in yesterday’s post, it all amounts to a pile of crap (judgemental part clearly decided to stick around for another night). BUT…but but but…today was different. In my empty hours at work I at least stayed focused on some tasks and avoided the hamster wheel effect of racing thoughts and physical restlessness. On the way home I stopped to paruse the shelves at Barnes and Noble – didn’t buy anything but thumbed through some beautiful art books. Once home, I shovelled the driveway while listening to a podcast. And then came the momentous moment deserving of a giant round of applause from the adoring fans in the orchestra section – I PLAYED MY BANJO.
I haven’t picked up my banjo since last spring – probably 10 months ago. It sat idle initially because I had a wrist injury. And then it was neglected out of fear – fear that I’d lost all the progress I’d made and fear of frustration and fear of disappointment and just a whole boatload of fear to pick up the durn thing and start picking. And, truth be told, because I was up to my ears in a relationship. It really saddens me the more I realize how much I give up in relationships – not because anyone asks, rather because I’m so fucking absent. The phrase that keeps coming up when I think and talk about it is that I “vacate my body” when I enter a relationship. It is so contrary to everything I believe in. When not enmeshed with a man, I intend so firmly not to go down that path again. But it happens without me knowing it. I wish wish wish I knew how to do it right, because until then, I KNOW I cannot be a healthy partner in a loving relationship.
But I’m getting off track. Point being that I picked up the banjo, did some MAJOR tuning and set the picks flying. Turns out I hadn’t lost much ground. Strength in my hand muscles, yes. But the chords and rolls and my Gillian Welch impersonation were spot on – according to, well, me. So the moral of the story, class, is don’t let anything keep you from your creative outlets – not fear of failure, not a stack of red Netflix envelopes, and certainly not a relationship.
empty.
today was the day. 5 hours out of the house with Sam the dog so that J could move out. i was busy. socializing, driving, haircut, gym. upbeat and energized. and then i came home.
the apartment is empty. sad. quiet. dust bunnies rolling across the hardwood like fog blowing across a pond at dawn. so many things gone. things i’d forgotten the owner of, that had become “ours”. so many things i reach for and – poof – gone. “oh yeah – his,” I remember like a sharp smack across my cheek. it’s like turning on the coffemaker in a power outage – “oh yeah, that runs on electricity, too”. Instinctively flipping lightswitches upon entering a room, feeling more and more idiotic as the hours pass. When will I remember that he took the trashcan and so refuse now goes in the hanging plastic grocry bag on the doorknob. When will I stop looking for the TV. When will the rooms and the remaining furniture and the empty cupboards stop feeling all wrong.
I’ve wondered a few times over the past two weeks if I was ignoring sadness. If it was down there and I was just covering it up with a thick layer of “things will be better” and “this is good for me”. It’s here now. Maybe it just needed less furniture so it could spread out, take up space, spill out over the whole floor. I’m knee-deep trudging through it. slow. resistive. exhausting.
Dream analysis, the therapy rundown and general musings on an angry evening…
Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. I shouldn’t have to work so hard to assert some of them…they should be implied by my existence as an adult human being. But last night J called to discusst his grand idea to move back in for a few months since he’s not emotionally ready to start looking for a new apartment and his family’s house is cramped. Now, obviously some parts were triggered and my “make everyone else feel comfortable” and “caretaker” parts were the first to jump in to make this sound like a reasonable suggestion. But thank God for therapy because some little voice in the back of my head jumped in and ended the conversation with, “I’m going to need a few days to think about this and think about if it’s okay for me. I’ll call you on Saturday morning to talk about it.”
Enter J this evening coming by to “pick up some things” – a quick visit culminating with him at the door saying he really hoped we could talk. UGH. Why didn’t I just say, “I know you hoped that but we made plans to talk Saturday. I’m not ready to talk now.” ???? But I didn’t. So there were too many shifts in topic to even detail but the basics were – his attempts to reconcile and change my mind about my decision, his allegations that the whole thing are because I’m to “sick” to be in a relationship (ahem…Dec. 27 was the last time I purged. Fuck yeah!) and that I’m just not willing to do the hard work required to make any relationship work, his requesting some snuggling on the couch and expressions of frustration that he doesn’t “feel the love” right now from me. YEAH, cause we just broke up 3 days ago. So I got angry and standoffish and just generally feeling overwhelmed by him even being here. I shouldn’t have let that conversation even happen. Live and learn, I guess. The time it takes for me to realize that a part jumped in and made a decision has decreased (in many cases) from several years to several minutes or an hour. Progress, people, progress.
So enough of that balderdash – on to the juicy stuff – my dreams last night. I’ve had sleep problems for 2 nights (understandably) and wacky dreams.
(1) an orange cat stumbled towards me, twitching, moaning and foaming at the mouth. I knew what was about to unfold but as I turned away to run, it leapt onto my back. Claws firmly sunk into my flesh and teeth ripping at me, I was unable to reach around and remove the rabid beast. He was like a tweakin’ cat backpack sprawled between my shoulderblades.
(2) holidays at my family’s house. enter my dad with many fresh vegetables in tow, which he proceeded to hang around the coat closet where he appeared to be taking up residence for the short-term. (veggies as decor? subconscious, you baffle me). I got really mean and angry and demanded that he leave or I’d leave. I did indeed have to walk out and sleep somewhere else for a night, and upon my return he was gone. Taking rutabegas and radishes with him.
Therapy this morning was great. I have a 2 week hiatus while Bree is out of town and it’s making me a little nervous. I’m hardly in the best place for that but I am feeling pretty strong right now, so who knows what I’m capable of. Group was a little business-y for the bulk of it and then the focus turned to the member who is moving away and leaving group this week. It was really nice and the group felt really supportive and cohesive.
Off to lay in bed and will sleep to come (minus the frothy felines).
A threesome with ED
As most ED-ed people probably know, it’s very very very difficult to maintain a relationship while in the throes of disorderliness. Even our queen-size bed is a tight squeeze when it’s me, J and the thirty-three thousand voices in my head. Most days we get by without a whole lot of drama but yesterday apparently someone added baking soda to the vinegar .
How did it start? Well, not to put J in a bad light or anything but I gotta vent…and hopefully to my friends in blogland who likely have had similar struggles..it won’t sound as crazy as it does to him. J is more playful than he is sexual. He touches me and looks at me but it’s more in a “hee hee, you’re naked” way than a “come hither my vixen” way. Okay, so he does this thing where he grabs me in various areas and… well.. jiggles. It’s loving, it’s not meant to tease…there are no accompanying “hey fatty fatty” comments (other than those produced between my own two ears). I know he loves my ass. Men love asses. Fine. Slap it when we walk up the stairs – that feels okay with me. He slaps it and it sounds – tight and firm. But when he grabs and jiggles – ugh I just want to lop off my derriere with a kitchen knife. Okay, so there was much much much jiggling yesterday morning for some reason (in my head coinciding with the fact that eating monstrous amounts more successfully for a few days has added a few pounds. At one point he had both hands jiggling while he sang the Sir Mix-A-Lot favorite “I like big butts”. Okay – I have to say that any female probably wouldn’t relish this little display of, ahem, affection. So I raised my point. “It makes me feel really disgusting when you do that jiggle thing to me and grab my flabby parts.”
J is sensitive. I love him for it. It makes him a wonderfully compassionate partner and just generally insightful to talk to and observent of the world in a way that I admire. But he doesn’t take comments that begin with “I don’t like it when you….” or “I feel ____ when you….” very well. I am advocating for myself with an “I” statement and he hears, “you are a disgusting pig of a man. I am so disappointed in you that you would even consider doing something as offensive and abusive as that to me.” It seems we both have our own disordered filters for incoming information.
So that started the day off pretty strained. I also got skeevy about him watching me change in the bedroom. Usually this doesn’t bother me but with the jiggling and the weight gain and just general volume and intensity of ED voices in my head – it was uncomfortable. All this me feeling yucky about myself got to be too much for him and we plummetted into the conversation of medication again. He is a long-time dysthymic who depends on anti-depressants to function and has for decades. He’s in therapy but more for maintenance as far as I can tell.
His points:
-you are depressed. it feels like you are getting more depressed. it hurts me to see that.
-anti-depressants help people feel better.
-you were on anti-depressants when we met and you were happier.
-therefore, you need anti-depressants again.
My points:
-i hated being on meds and was “fake” happy.
-i have horrible starting and stopping side effects that render me unable to function and then continue to have such glorious side effects as insomnia, no sex drive, weight gain, tremors and panic attacks while on meds.
-meds dampen my emotions and will make the therapeutic process that I’m working on now and which I trust damn near impossible.
-I may seem more depressed but I’m making some progress (at least in my own view and according to my therapist).
-depression is not my primary issue. my sadness is not the same as your dysthymia.
Bonus Zingers he threw into the conversation:
-You’re just being stubborn and willful
-I was willing to take meds for you, why aren’t you willing to do the same for me?
-You can’t do this on your own. I know you’re trying your hardest but it’s not working.
-I want to be able to say what I want, touch you however I want and look at you whenever I want.
My points were not made until hours later when we revisited the topic. The initial interaction involved me laying on the bed face-down in a pillow while he went on and on, each sentence seeming to contain something more stinging and accusatory than the last. I went into shut-down mode where the sounds of my own self-hatred and desperation rendered my own speech paralyzed. When I shut-down like this (a sign that I am feeling extremely hurt), he gets very insulted that I’m not talking – deems it rude and hurtful. There is nothing quite like feeling like the powerless victim of hurtful comments for half an hour, not being able to speak to comment or defend myself and then being accused myself of being hurtful.
By bedtime we had at least come to a place of less tension, maybe a touch more understanding from both of us. I think he understands that I don’t want him to stop touching me or looking at me but that I need the space to speak up if, on a particular day, Sir Mix-A-Lot serenades aren’t feeling okay.
But it’s hard. Being in a relationship when an ED is in the mix is fucking tough – on him and on me. The “poor, pitiful him” part has to be tempered with the “have a little sympathy for yourself too” part. I’m sure I’m not the only one with these challenges.
Any suggestions or thoughts from either experience or merely from viewing things (told completely subjectively by me) from a different vantage point?
