Time is never time at all.

Not a lyric that normally becomes background noise.

I am coming to terms with the reality of things.  Time, it took a lot of it.  I can be enough.  I can believe.


...

I am afraid of heights, again.

Fear is something to pay attention to.

My fear doesn't exist to make me weak;  it's teaching me to be strong.

This fear will teach me to rely on me; to depend on me.  It will teach me to be aware of my weakness and to realize that I am the only one who needs to take care of me.  I am the only person I need.

Wanting is irrelevant.  Need is what matters.

You don't have to understand this, world.  This is for me.

I got my own back.
Maya Angelou

Fall Back

Missing people isn't just about them; that doesn't make the feeling selfish.

If they hadn't been a significant part of my life, hadn't loved me and been loved then I wouldn't miss them.

Being missed shows us our presence was valued. Being missed helps us realize and believe we matter.   We make an impact.    We make a difference.   We are cared about.

When you leave people's lives by choice or by circumstance, but not because YOU didn't care, missing people is natural.

I have to stop wanting to stop missing the people no longer in my life.

They mattered.

I have to stop wanting to know I am missed.

Broken, Not Bent

I once told someone I love that people can't break each other.   People break themselves.   I was wrong, and I was right at the same time.

I am finding it impossible to NOT own the things that have been said about me,  to me,  by the people I love.

I am lonely.  I am scared.  And I am sad.  Every day.

Words can break people if they believe them.   If they are owned; if they fit.  If they are spoken by people you love and respect.  If they grow into your skin and tattoo themselves onto your cellular structure.

I just had surgery.  It was terrifying.  Still is,  really.   This hole in my figurative heart is even worse.  How can an inability to be worth loving,  narcissism, be cured?  Even after my chemical brain gets sorted I'm still left with my thinking brain.  Everything I read about being narcisistic indicates that it's a lifelong affliction.

I'm emotionally  poisonous and I will taint and twist love to bend it into something that breaks people.  I was told that about myself this year.

Having someone I love as well as I could love anyone show me how broken  I am cracked everything about me wide open and I saw it all spilled out in the light.

What I thought was the cruelest thing ever said to me is actually who I believe I am.   I was already broken.

People break each other every day.

Other People's Stories

Success stories.

What I read right now.

To those who share their struggles and stories I thank you.

Andrea L. In New York.  You made my day today.  I needed that.  Thank you.

Moving On

When you learn to love yourself, to actually appreciate who you are it does make it easier to see how your behaviour affects you and the people you care about.

I don't believe that you can't love other people before you love yourself.

I do believe that you can't fully understand that love until you do.

Whether or not I have been the recipient of unconditional love, I can't say right now.  I do not see that part of my past as clearly as I would like to.

I don't believe that I was a different person for different people.  I do think that I tried to fit myself around the people I loved, I tried to figure out the best person to be for each of the people in my life.  I realise that may seem like the same thing, and perhaps I am deluding myself, but there is a distinction in my opinion.  I will work on explaining the details of this in another post.

I used to believe, completely that I was narcissistic.  I have since been guided through re-examining that thought and now realise that I was not.  I certainly did some things that were self-indulgent and selfish.  At times I reacted and overreacted instead of responding.  I panicked when feeling like I was under attack and I lived in survivor mode for far too long.  I had triggers I didn't recognise; I had pain I hadn't let go of.  I was so scared for my future I forgot to live what was happening at the moment with grace and honesty.

I was a mess.

I place absolutely no conditions on caring about me right now.

I used to believe that kind of self-love was only self-serving, and I was wrong.

Lao Tzu said that being deeply loved gives you strength.  I must deeply love myself.  If I don't, then I can't let go of the woman I was and accept that I have to courage to be me, every day.

Labels

Recently I went searching for reasons why I was having trouble dealing with the world.

I had labels stuck on me.  I looked at those labels and thought they fit.  They explained things.  I understood what they meant and how they made other people feel about me.  They were informative and I thought that those labels would help me realize what I was doing wrong and how to fix myself.

I searched for some to stick on myself.  I wanted to have reasons Why; I wanted concrete already defined Labels to tell me what I was.  That way I would know what to expect.  With labels come experts and studies and data.  I would be able to pick that diagnosis apart so I could figure myself out and fix things.

I did research; I did homework with my therapist.  I madly pinned articles on Pinterest when I had a moment and then went back and read them later at night when I couldn't sleep.

I went through many moments where I thought I had figured out which label, besides the two I was already wearing that had I had bought from someone else, fit me.

Borderline Personality Disorder

Depression

Avoidant Personality Disorder

Anxiety Disorder

Pretty much everything in Cluster C...


It took me a while to puzzle out that I didn't need a Label because I didn't merit one.

I thought having a diagnosis would make things make sense.  I thought that it would be a magical relief, a reason for my inability to handle everything that was happening on my own.

What I really needed to do is stop defining myelf by how other people see me.  I needed to become someone I loved, someone I liked, even.  I needed to be supported in that and to support myself with that.

Moving on.

Some Days Suck

I feel the voids today; I haven't turned them into spaces.  The vacuum sucks some of what I have been sweeping out back in again; self-doubt, insecurity, fear.

Blown. Wide. Open.

I needed people today.  I needed reassurance.  I have been wanting it lately but haven't felt an absolute NEED.  Today it felt like something that I had to have.

I feel hollow.  I feel unworthy.  I feel incapable.

I feel alone.

I was told recently by someone I love that I pretended to be someone worth loving, but I wasn't that.

I will own that for a long time.  That will hurt for a long time.

How awful do you have to be to have someone say that to you?  Someone who once told you that you were better at being human than anyone else that person knew or had known.

Fear.  Anxiety.  Self doubt.  Self-hate.  Insecurity.  Trust issues.

Right now all of that screams at me every day; some days the cacophony of collective darkness runs quietly in the background, some days it is all I hear.

I never wanted it this way.

Today I hate the world, and I am not so fond of myself, but I know I am in there somewhere.

Today I can say I am not a terrible human being.  Today I can say that I love people.  Today I can say that I am moving forwards and that I know it will take time.

I Am Human, And...

Three days ago I felt like I was balancing between crazy and crazier.

Today I realized I was dancing to angry music in my kitchen while making popcorn for myself.

Sleep, something positive to reflect on and balanced meds.

I feel like I can breathe.

Hello, Human.

I am Eeyore

Round one of treatment for depression found me fluctuating between feeling stoned at night and hungover in the morning, to being okay at lunchtime up until dinner and then without warning flipped rapidly to me wanting to harm myself.

And so I did.  And I felt better.  It scared the crap out of me.  I wanted to keep doing it, and then my logical brain re-emerged and reminded me that is isn't me, it's the meds.  Call for help.  I did.  I waited.  I got scared.  I called someone else.  That person did not help; I started to spiral further down. 

Help has to be able to come to you, if necessary.   Help has to care.  Help can reject you.  Help may not be able to or want to listen.  I needed to know I mattered.  If I can't get the help, I am supposed to call for lights and sirens.  Nobody in that position wants lights and sirens.  It wasn't that bad.  Not comparatively.  The tricky thing in that situation is figuring out which brain is making a comparative judgement.

While sitting on the bend in the stairs, I realized something.  I didn't want to continue to cause myself harm, but I couldn't stop thinking about doing it.  There is a significant difference.  As long as it remained a thought, I was winning.  Moments at a time.  I could manage moments at a time.

And then help arrived, bringing the matches for my candle. 

I know the desire to cause myself pain stems from my brain wanting to order endorphins for supper, hoping for an opioid release desert.

I have been here before, too, a long time ago in a place that seems far, far away.  I was stronger then.
Kicks ass takes names strong.   Even then I still felt the pull to self-destruct.  I didn't though.  I also didn't deal with the underlying issues.  I was on my way, and then life happened.   I mean that literally.

Depression is isolating.  It's frightening; it makes you believe that you suck.  It makes you suck, often actually draining the people around you to the point of exhaustion. I steal their matches, and they don't have any for themselves.  I want to share my own, but I can't find them.  I can see the harm I am causing, and that makes it all worse.  This has spiralled so far out of control so quickly that I can still clearly see what is behind the clouds, what I have lost, what I have ruined for myself.  The sunshine does not inspire me to improve; it reminds me of what I have unwillingly pushed away.  I need to channel my inner Buddhist.  I need to bathe in the Ganges.  I need to forgive myself.  Weak doesn't have to be my address.

My doctor says I have to stop expecting my brain to override the estrogen, cortisol and various other hormones that are discordant, clashing with my thinking brain.  He says that I have to accept that I am like everyone else in this basic way, my brain listens to chemical input above all else.  Medical issues have been and still are, at play.  My body and brain can't ignore that it's been under physical attack for a while.  My cortisol levels are ridiculously high; short-staffed air traffic controller with an ulcer and a bad marriage and a chronically ill child high.  It feeds itself.  I am unable to stick a spike in the generating wheel. 

I can use my will, my knowledge and my strength to dissipate the force of the attack messages the neurotransmitters are firing out, but they make it to the stream.   They get caught downstream on old branches and the next thing you know, there is a dam.  I need to block the transmission.

I am pushing people away, and I have lost myself.  I am adrift.

Depression stole my map.  I was not reading my compass correctly; perhaps I was too close to a Pole.  Maybe I did not adjust for magnetic declination.   I need to navigate on my own.  Until I find my map again, it is helpful when the stars occasionally emerge to help me find my way.

To those of you who are reading this and know me, a word of caution.  This is not an invitation to make a fuss.  This is not a general plea for help.  I will not appreciate being fawned over or fussed about.  I may seem quite pathetic, yes, but I am not, actually.    I will not know how to brush you off, and I will not want to hurt your feelings, and I will not know how not to do that.  I don't need it.  I am not going to make the papers.  It's not going to go there.  Don't bring your pity to my door.  You will not help me with it.

I'll find my own damned tail.  I may want some suggestions on how to attach it; I'm not made of sawdust.  A pin isn't going to work.

Emotional Habits and the Prefrontal Cortex

Knowing about the brain does not prevent me from making mistakes; nor does it prevent me from making the same mistake repeatedly.

If I have learned anything at all this past half year, it is that I am in need of a good therapist.  Seriously.  I am aware of what I am doing wrong.  I can even see it quite clearly after I do it.  I retreat to emotional regulation patterns formed in childhood and, when stressed, can't see where I am going off the rails.  

I am never going to be able to remove the stress from my life.  Reduce, yes.  Remove, no.  I have felt stress over the past six months.  It built up and then exploded.  I have not been coping with that in a particularly productive manner.

When we are under a lot of stress, habits rule.  Our prefrontal cortexes, which regulate our behaviours, become over taxed and kick in our automatic brains.  My automatic brain needs retuning.  I need to be able to manage the vicissitudes of reality.  I am capable of getting to a place where I can not just manage but rock these changes that define life.

I should not keep trying to retune my brain on my own.  Doing so will take far too long and require far too much emotional understanding from the people around me.  I can't keep throwing things around and seeing what happens.  I am not a two-year-old.  These emotional tantrums must stop.

I am an intelligent, loveable person who knows that the choices she is making right now are not the best for her, for her family or for the people she chooses to love.  I can't keep asking for support from other people, for love from other people, for help from anyone at all without finding that support, love and help from myself.  If what other people give me is going to have value, I need to be able to accept it and give it to myself as well.

I need to stop apologizing for who I am and move to where I do not have to keep issuing apologies because I can't see past what I feel at the moment.  I need to stop blaming who I am for all of this and realize that it's who I am that will fix this.  It's not my fault; I don't need to throw things and scream to prove it.  I don't need to be forgiven for being me.  I don't need to be told by others that it's okay that I am not doing my best right now.  It's not.  I am selfish and obdurate.  

I refuse to be ashamed of the fact that I need help overcoming these issues I am having.  I need help.  I want to navigate the world and my emotions in a way that does not require me to apologize because my attempts at changing perspective and becoming more supportive are nugatory; I need them not to be. I need to stop being so dominated by feeling that I trigger alarm bells and give my amygdala fuel.  Fuck my amygdala; it's for emergencies, not for long term living.  I have got what dime store psychologists call "Toddler Brain."  Fuck that, too.

My brain has needed to grow up for a while.  Now it wants to; I shall find it help.

Together, on our own

This week the kids spent their first week at "The house with Mum."

We survived.  We had some fun.  We worked a few things out and there were bumps.  Overall it was a decent beginning.

Their dad and I are still working out important details, but we'll get there.

This house is a step along the way.  I want to be able to keep things as stable as possible for the kids, and for me.

I would us all to remember what matters.

Moving forward I need to find us a permanent home.  I need to figure out how to make that happen.

I need to throw away the Might Have and the Wanted To and deal with the What Is.

I am doing this.  I can do it better.

Who am I? Who I am.

When you define yourself by your relationships to other people and to your job or your possessions, it sets you up for failure.  If the relationship alters, if the job alters, if what you owned is no longer yours or no longer matters to you, then how you see yourself has to change, too.

I am no longer a wife.
I am no longer a full time mother.

I could go on.

So much has changed for me; about me.

I need to define who I am in terms of me.  Not in terms of anyone or anything else.

I don't know what happens next.  I don't know where I am going from here.

I get to figure that out.  While I am doing that, I get to figure out me.

It's terrifying.  It's also something I need to do and should have done already.

It's there.  I am capable of seeing it, I just need to look.  Who I am is not complicated.  I don't need to make it that way.  I don't need to bury it deep.  I can take me out and own ME, and love me and realize that not showing all of me to everyone doesn't mean I have to hide the pieces all over the place for fear of exposing the whole.

I can be loved, I know this is true.  I am loved.  I am worth loving.

Who I am is worth loving.

It's a good start.

I am worth loving.  I can be loved.  It's terrifying; it's wonderful; it's something I need to respect.

It's something I believe.  I am letting this be true.

Where do we go from here?

"You Must Love Me"

Where do we go from here?
This isn't where we intended to be
We had it all, you believed in me
I believed in you

Certainties disappear
What do we do for our dream to survive?
How do we keep all our passions alive,
As we used to do?

[Bridge:]

Deep in my heart I'm concealing
Things that I'm longing to say
Scared to confess what I'm feeling
Frightened you'll slip away

[Chorus:]

You must love me
You must love me

Why are you at my side?
How can I be any use to you now?
Give me a chance and I'll let you see how
Nothing has changed

[bridge]
[chorus]

You must love me


"You Must Love Me is a song recorded by American singer and songwriter Madonna. It was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, for the 1996 film adaptation of the musical, Evita, based on the life of Argentinian leader Eva Perón.

Me

A long, long time ago I used to buy tea for a guy I liked.  I would make a joke of using the marker to label the cups "You" and "Me." 

He asked me why I would write "Me" on my cup.  I said that there may be other Fionas, but there is only one me.

At the time he thought I was being cute.

I was completely sincere.  It also had strong implications about "You."

I still sign myself as Me on occasion.

Love song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvJA7XKGfPs



Not the best video of this, having trouble with the links.  You get the idea.

Core v. Base

Core wins.

My core is decent, loveable and worth discovering.  When I am your good friend and I love you I will give you all I have.  Perhaps even more than you will see.  I  will give all of it willingly and without regret and sometimes it will happen without you noticing.

It's not all joy and rainbows.  Sometimes I give too much, and that can be difficult.  I am complicated.  I have layers and layers and there are splinters in some of them.  I don't make it easy to love me sometimes.  I think I am worth it, though.  At least most of the time I do.  I will get there.

When my security and trust are threatened, that is when I will make it difficult.  I can read when things are shaky, even if I don't recognize it fully and I am not consciously aware of the dissonance.  When there is uncertainty and discord under the surface it eats at me in the background and my automatic brain starts to move into defensive mode.

I need to feel secure.   I need to know who I can trust.  When my security and trust are threatened I find myself spiralling down.  I can feel how you feel.  If you and I are close, if we share penetralia this will wear at me until I am thin and before I have realized it my amygdala is kicking in.  As is true with anyone, the more you mean to me, the more I will feel the joy or the pain.  It's where I live, there is very little balance with things like this and me.  I do, or I do not.

If I think you are not there for me and don't want to be I will start to push at the corners and see how you react.  I didn't really know this about me before.  I wasn't fully aware of it.

I need to be held on to.  I want to be told that I am important.   The wanting to be told I am important, that I matter is not new; nor have I ever, ever hidden that.  I hate asking for it, but I will if it isn't given freely.  I will stop asking though, if you don't answer.  And I will hurt because of it.

I want to be chased, rightly or wrongly I want to know that I am worth chasing.  If you don't chase me or reassure me I will choose for you.   Chasing doesn't mean running after me, but it does mean noticing if I am trying to go.  Noticing when I am scared and feeling unloved, unworthy.  I wish this wasn't true.  I really do.  I am working on this as well.  I am.  If I don't think you believe I am worth loving I distance myself.  I give up.  I don't want to impose or to chase after you if you aren't interested.  If you go through the motions and tick the boxes, but don't pay attention to the details and to the things I am saying are important to me, I see that clearly and it shouts at me.  I see if even if you don't.

If I feel like you are going to reject me, it's easier for me to decide that you don't want me than for me to wait until you tell me that for yourself.   Rejection is too difficult for me to take.  So very, very difficult.  If I matter to you, you wouldn't make a choice that would destroy part of me unless it enriched you so much that it was worth the risk.  This I would try to understand.  This would still hurt, but I would get it.  It's about you, as much as I try to insert myself into your life and make myself important, your life is about you.  I know this.

The choice to push you away, the door slam as it has been called, it's brutal; it is not easy for me either.  It's not something I am proud of.  At this point I am likely believing unconsciously or consciously that I am not good for you, that it is about me.  That you don't need me in your life.  At this point you'd have to stop me by wrapping me up and realizing what I am doing or telling me flat out that I am wrong.  I'll believe you, if I trust you.  I want to be loved.  If I love you I am not slamming the door for me, I am slamming it for you.

I want to be chosen.  Rightly or wrongly it's what I need.  I will work on that.  I have been for years.  This I knew already.  This I need someone who loves me to understand.  I need to be shown that I am important.

I need you to love me because, not in spite of.  I need you to understand that I am small and scared and very very insecure.  But I am worth it.   I really, really hope I am.

If you break my trust it will shatter into very small pieces that I will use to poke myself with and blame myself for what you chose.  I'll poke myself more than I poke you.   I will own that hurt and blame myself.  I don't know how to fix that, yet.  If I trust myself to trust someone and then that person does something to show me how right I am to stay well guarded, to not open up, to keep myself in and not let myself completely be, I get hurt.   It feels like I have been poisoned.  It weakens me and makes me doubt everything I know.

How do you try again and open yourself up to that, again?  What if I am wrong, again?  How much of this shit can I take?  Why can't I do this right?  What did I do to deserve it?  Why would I do that to myself?  I need to figure out what I am doing so wrong to the people I care about to make that happen.  I must, if anyone is ever going to be let in that far again.  And I want that.  Right now the idea of trusting anyone that deeply makes me weep.  Sob, actually.  That needs to change, too.

Diving into the "base" is not comfortable.  It made me take a really good look around and realize that I didn't need it to be that way.  My core is a fine place.  I chose to be there.

My core will bleed into my base and heal it.  I can let that happen.  I will.

I don't need anything from anyone to make that happen.  It's about me.  I am probably better off on my own with this.   I am worth loving.  I can love myself until someone else realizes that I am worth it.  It doesn't matter if anyone else is there for me.  I am.  I feel this way now, and I MUST sustain this.

Betrayal and hurt, anger and fear.  These things don't have to shape me.  I don't have to own any of it.

You don't have to get this.  These are all for me.  It's my own kind of therapy, remember?

Anger, again.

And so I cannot really escape the anger, even when I truly wish to.

This time I didn't build anything with it except a good head of steam to power a full on charge.  I chose not to wrap it around me and fend things off.  I chose to push it out.  Not a better approach.

I need to learn to control this.

While it may seem as if being angry when you feel wronged is a natural state,  it doesn't help anything and can be destructive.  It should not be the logical conclusion to feeling attacked.  Anger fuels the pain, and the hurt and it stops me from seeing how my anger is creating pain in other people.  It stops me from checking to make certain that there really is something to be upset about.  

I need to learn to control it.

I want to be the person I feel I am inside.  The person that peeks out when things are smiley and calm and when I don't feel small and insecure.  I want to learn to love so much that I can accept things that would make me angry now.  I need to learn to examine the issue, look at the people involved, apply empathy and understanding before I leap to defend myself against attacks that are not there.  Anger is not a defence or a coping mechanism.  It's often the cause of the pain, at the very least it exacerbates it.  

I used to be better at this.  I used to understand my brain better.  I used to be able to see around things and through things that didn't matter.  Issues used to be more transparent.  

Somewhere along the way I lost my ability to reason through things.  I think it has something to do with the fact that I was learning to care more about myself, to love myself more and I took that too far.  I made things about me that shouldn't have been.  I didn't have the balance I needed.

I really don't know why.  

When is it okay to have something hurt, and when isn't it?  Why should things hurt?  How do you know when you should own something that has gone wrong or when it isn't yours to own?

Why do I feel like I own so much?  What is mine to own and what isn't?  What am I going to do about that?

Questions to be answered.  Paths to find. 

Exposure

I thought that I was operating on a relatively high moral plane.

I truly wasn't.  

For the most part it seemed as if I was.  I was capable of doing so with regard to the bits that were easy and that were not challenging my sense of self.  I wasn't for the bits that triggered my insecurities.  Which means, of course, that I wasn't really up there.  I saw myself there, but when I looked at it closely I know that I knew that it was camouflage.  I was a façade.  I saw that and didn't act.  I was too complacent, too selfish.  And then the wall fell.

My parenting, my ability to be a friend, my self-image have all been shaken and laid bare.  I have been found wanting.  I have found myself wanting, and it has cut me to the core.  Ending a fifteen year long relationship causes stress.  I didn't react well to that stress.  I took everything I had built and blew it up.  My anger belied my integrity and I retreated to the self preserving core that I have always seen but never really taken the time to examine.  It is more than that though.  I have always been wanting.  I have left holes and made mistakes that it will take a long time to fill and fix.  I hurt people.  

I am not writing this for you.  This is about me. This is not for you.  I need to get this out of me.   I need to stop and look around and see what I have done and what I have left undone.  I can't dwell on what was, or what should have been.  I have to get this out and keep it out and walk around it poking into it to turn it all over and aerate the core.  I need this to decompose.  It's my own kind of therapy; an open diary.

Divulging all of this rawness in a global forum makes me uncomfortable.  I should be uncomfortable.   I want to change.  I need to change; to evolve, even.   I need to not do things the way I have done them in the past.  I need to not tuck this into the layers and fold it into myself.   I don't know if this is the right way to do this, it can't be worse than doing nothing.  

Small People

"Let's Dance, Fiona!"

In the supermarket, right in front of the checkout.  Four year olds can make me do things I would never do otherwise.  Like dance to bad 80s throwbacks in public...  Very much in public.

"Let's Run up the Stairs!"

Actually, this one took no convincing whatsoever.  I felt like running up the stairs.  And down them again.  I almost tried to convince them they had to go to the washroom again just so we could chase each other up and down, again.   Sadly, I am more responsible and not quite as silly as some people believe.  Not sadly, I meant, just yeah, I am responsible.  Yep, yep, yep.

"Tell me a Story."

... about a mouse;
... about when you were four;
... about when E was a baby;
... about when A was a baby;
... about when you were twelve;
... about monsters on the moon;
... about whatever you want.

"You love me because I make you laugh."
"I love you because you are silly."

"Where are you ticklish?" (Note to all of you, if you tell this to four year olds they will remember, and they will figure it out.)

What is important is what small people know.

Be yourself, no matter where you are.
Move.  Run.  Keep going.
Share your stories.
Love is mine (and yours) to have and to give
Laugh.

H is for Hysterectomy (and Hormone Replacement Therapy?)

So, I am still here.  (Obvious to those of you who actually read this, I have posted three times since my surgery, already.)

Three weeks to the day.

I have had very little bleeding.  In fact I have bled less in this three week period than I have since sometime around the end of July 2015.  Significantly less.  Less still than I had prior to and during that exciting March Break event not so very long ago and for a very long time afterwards.

It's over, my battle with my uterus.  I won by losing it...  (HAH, clearly I couldn't resist.)

Reading the potential side effects on this side of the operating theatre fills me with more trepidation than it did prior to the surgery.  I think that is reasonable, don't you?

I already know what hormone fluctuations can feel like.  How could I have avoided buying a vowel in that puzzle with what was going on before?    This time around I am running on a low tank, not on high octane.  It feels different, not certain if that is good or bad.  It's only been three weeks.

I would like to blame my faults and irrational behaviours on hormones.  I just think that my brain is stronger than that.  That's on me.  The rest of the possible side effects...  Yay!  I may grow a beard and become even more dwarf like...  So, um, yeah...

Charts like this, don't help:

http://www.hersfoundation.com/effects.html#Anchor-Chart-47857


The internet is not a good place to go looking for reassurance about your medical issues.  I am not reading any more on the internet about the side effects of anything.  Not even of chewing gum whilst walking in the rain.

I will see what comes next.   If anything does I have the joy of potentially looking forward to Hormone Replacement Therapy for dealing with the fallout caused by a hysterectomy.  There isn't any way to counter bleeding to death; not that I know of, anyhow.  So in that regard I at least have the more propitious side effects hiding behind the curtain.

To anyone out there who happens to be considering this surgery I offer no advice or counsel.  I would not have listened to you either.

I made an informed decision and I am well aware of what may or may not happen afterwards.  I have some control over the consequences of this surgery.  I had no control over my uterus, it held me hostage and hijacked my peace of mind.  I was worried about me, about dying in front of my kids, about dying in front of my friends, about making myself an emergency and having other people have to deal with it, about never being able to relax and just swim in a lake without wondering if I would bleed everywhere when I came out, about bleeding on people's chairs, couches, passenger seats...

This is better.

All apologies

What else should I be? ...

What else should I say? ...

I suck at apologies.

I thought that when I explained the how and why and said that I was wrong, that was better than saying I was sorry.   I thought that the apology would be tacit.  What it was was insouciant.   I believed that it was better that way. What I didn't see what that the how, why and admission are about me, the apology is about the person I wronged.

It's more than regrettable that I have taken so long to wake up to this.  It's asinine.  It's not like I haven't been told that I was behaving selfishly about apologizing.  I am also not stupid, parts of me are, but my brain isn't.

Not apologizing when you know you are wrong, even if you have tried to explain how you feel and why you did what you did, is ignorant.   Apologizing when you mean it is important.   The apology won't fix what you did.  I used to think that I didn't apologize because I didn't want to be forgiven.  I was equating the apology to me fixing things, not to me relating how I felt and showing my shame.  If you want to fix what you did, you have to make it right.  To learn and to understand and to think beyond the wrong.  You may not be able to fix the thing you did.  You can fix yourself.  If you are fortunate, the person or people you wronged will give you the chance to show them how you have done so.

Why blog about all of this, lately?

I make mistakes.  I make big mistakes.  I don't want to hide this from myself.  I started this blog years ago to not hide.  I didn't get far enough.  I have to leap farther.

I can fix this, in me.  I can look around and see what else there is to fix as well.  Taking your vehicle in to get new tires, knowing that you also need a new suspension and then cursing the new tires afterwards because you are still bouncing around like a rubber ball is pointless.

Desperation

I did something very wrong recently.  It could have been disastrous.

I then compounded the damage by not apologizing properly.  I was truly and completely sorry, but I didn't say that.   I was too busy trying to build myself back up I didn't see who I was knocking down.  It didn't end there.  I started to panic and I shut myself down.  I just kept fucking up.  No censorship.  If you are a kid and you are reading this you know this word already.  And I mean it; I fucked up. Repeatedly.

I was feeling unloved and unworthy and I was neither of those things.  I was flat out wrong.  I found the anger and fear and insecurity I have never let go of and I wrapped myself so thick in it that I blinded myself to who I really am. To what I really am, and to what I was to people. I put it on like an old, worn-soft flannel shirt and decided that is what I was to to wear.  I  threw myself back.  I should have seen it coming.  I think maybe I did see it coming and didn't let myself find my anchor and use it.  I was desperate to be seen differently; to be seen as better than I was, to deny the ugly parts of me.

I am stubborn.  It's more than that, I am obdurate.  I saw what I wanted to.  I was heading in the right direction and I let my emotions drag me off into the dark.  I didn't listen to my brain.  It's a pretty good brain, too.  I didn't listen to the people who loved me.  I didn't let myself.  They loved and supported me and tried to shake me out of it.  I didn't let them even when all the love was starting to sink in and feel right.  I was believing I was loved and could be loved.  Then I let everything that was bothering me build up and overwhelm "me".  I let myself fall into a hole.  Then I dug it deeper.  My emotions hijacked my reason.   I just lost it.  My reason and my sense of justice.  My morality and my integrity.  MY INTEGRITY.  All of it. 

Not so very deep down I knew my behaviour was wrong.  I didn't see how it was wrong, how wrong it it was. Stupid. Foolish. Dangerous.  Selfish.

I know that I am worthy of being loved.  I was loved.  I deserved that.   I am loved.  I deserve it.  Even the ugly bits.  It's okay to have ugly bits.  It's all me.  I can be pretty Awesome.  

I take responsibility for my stupidity, my selfishness and stubbornness.  I will work to not devalue or debase myself again.  I am worth too much to do that to myself.

I will fix this.  It's mine to fix.  I own this.

I Have Built Armour out of Anger

I have, recently, built armour that is thick, strong and hot.  Deeply forged it enveloped me in a layer of protection so effective that anything aimed at it either was absorbed, shattered, or dissipated.  That is what I thought it was doing.  I was wrong.

It kept Things out.  It was also somewhat self sustaining; it required little fuel.

It wore me down and I found myself dwelling in the rawness of my core.

It was spurious; anger is not armour.  It eats at you and chews you up if you don't shed it.  If you don't at least see it and acknowledge the truth of what it is and where it came from.  Anger is corrosive.


Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Mark Twain