Complacency Kills

Today I got a little reality check cashed that I wasn’t expecting.

I thought I was doing so well with my depression and my coping issues for months and months and months now. I’m no longer on antidepressants, my therapist released me from ongoing therapy, and my life has been on quite the upswing. But today was proof that even when everything seems to be going right, shit can still creep up on you and flip you ass over tin cups.

I work with a girl who frustrates me to the point that I have become obsessed with everything she does wrong, just to shake my head, tsk-tsk in her direction and say things like “I don’t know how she still has a job”  behind her back. Her lack of work, while I bust my ass, and the way I feel that management has allowed her behavior with no consequence, straight up makes me resentful. You see, I have a job where I do what I’m supposed to do, my manager and I sit down every couple of weeks to go over my case load, and unless someone starts jumping up and down in the meantime, I’m pretty much left to my own devices otherwise, and expected to just do my job. This girl I work with takes advantage of our freedom and often spends more time during the day texting or surfing the internet than she does actually WORKING and I’ve become too concerned with what she does, or doesn’t do, each day that I’ve been making snide comments to fellow coworkers. Apparently others have heard my comments and went to my manager about them, thus resulting in a call today. I can be an awful bitch at times, for sure, and heaven help those who get on my bad side as I can say some nasty stuff with proper motivation – and you best believe that this girl gives me proper motivation. Through all of this, I have not lost control of my caseload and I do not have issues with unhappy or neglected clients, but I have certainly delved into the zone of negativity which is a place I strove for a very long time to climb out of. It’s a place I haven’t been in a while, and slipping back into it was so easy, it kind of scares me.

I feel a lot of shame, too. Shame for being so petty about this girl, shame for being naive enough to think that management had no clue of her shenanigans, and shame that I made my manager waste some of her precious time just to tell me that I needed to get a grip. I can’t believe that I’ve forgotten where I was when I started this blog years ago – miserable, negative, hating everything, feeling nothing and being just plain depressed and anxious – and how long and hard I struggled and cried and learned and fought and what I implemented in an attempt to change all of that. And here, I have allowed one co-worker, in a matter of a few months, to ruin that for me and start to take away what I worked SO HARD to obtain.

My manager was ultimately right, and I thanked her for bringing this to my attention. Sometimes, it’s hard to see how extreme a situation has become until an outsider points it out. I promised her that I would let it all go, and starting tomorrow, i intend to do just that. I’m going to let go of the resentment, let go of the shame and let go of the negativity – I don’t want to be that person again because at this point in my life, I have too much to lose.

 

Dial up the crazy

It almost feels funny to type this, as it’s been almost a year and a half since I’ve used this word, but, I have a ‘boyfriend’. He’s wonderful, I like him a lot, he does all the things I think a good boyfriend should, and I hope that I get to keep calling him my boyfriend for a very long time. With all that said, however, my crazy still manages to poke holes in what could otherwise be a completely normal relationship, and in times like these, I write.

I live in southern Pennsylvania, (southern enough that I rarely admit to the PA residency except when trying to prove that I drive the farthest to work when compared to anyone else), and for those who don’t know, Maryland and Virginia (along with many other states that i have no reason for mentioning here…) got hit with a helluva storm the last weekend in June, with 80 MPH winds, hail, monsoon volume rains and excessive lightening. There are people to this day that are still without power due to the storm damage, and my boyfriend works in Maryland, for one of the companies that’s out and about replacing some of the telephone poles that were broken, cutting up trees that were splintered and generally trying to fix some of the shit that got jacked up. Since he and I have about an hour and 15 minutes worth of distance between us, his long hours and 7 day a week shifts have taken a toll on my emotional stability the last 2 weekends, as I’ve seen him for a fraction of the amount of time that we PREFER to see each other. See, I intentionally typed “we prefer” to try to outsmart the crazy, but the crazy is uber smart, and it sees through my thinly veiled attempts with little to no effort. The small amount of time that we HAVE been able to see each other isn’t exactly the same sort of QT that I’m used to spending with him, either, as he’s exhausted, a mere fraction of his usual awesome personality, and I swear – dude falls asleep LESS THAN 5 minutes after his head hits the pillow – I don’t think a narcoleptic could top that. So this weekend, I ate dinner with him and his family, then we watched a movie, I got to sleep in his arms, and then got up at 5 am and drove home as he went to work. I’m not complaining, because I wasn’t exactly living la vida refreshed either, but as soon as I give my brain a moment to wander, it immediately jumps to him distancing himself from me for some yet to be discovered reason. Or for some reason that I may have thought of but dismissed, or for some reason that I may never even think of because there’s probably not even a reason in existence at this point. Logically, I know what sheer exhaustion can do to a person and that this is his true reason for being less than all over my grill as of late. Yet my crazy expects him to be bright eyed and bushy tailed, utilizing every second I am within his vision to adore and fawn over me, despite the fact that he’s worked no less than 10 hours per day, for the last 10+ days straight, and he’s already doing about all he can just to stay awake and spend a few hours of face to face time with me. I am interpreting his exhaustion for disinterest, and this is where I inevitably lose my sub-par grip and sob into a pillow for a few hours. Queue the red, puffy eyes I’ll have for the next 2 days.

I must feel safe with my boyfriend, though, because instead of bottling it up and becoming aloof, I’ve opened up and explained these feelings to him, and god love this man, he consoled me and assured me and managed to quell my concerns in just a few words. In past relationships, I would have been told “That’s stupid, why do you feel that way?” and it would end up being an entire discussion about my feelings and why they are dumb, his lack thereof, and I would still never feel that acceptance or understanding that I longed for. Despite the fact that I want to talk about my feelings, I don’t feel the need to make an entire presentation out of it – I want to say my piece, have him reply, and move on. Then I want to reiterate his reply in my head to make myself feel better whenever crazy girl sneaks in and tries to overwhelm the awesome that I have created. Seriously, I know that these crazy thoughts are crazy things that only crazy people make up, but I literally CANNOT help them from seeping into my brain and once they are there, the only way to make them go away is to say them out loud and gain affirmation for their complete idiocy, or their legitimacy.

One huge thing I’ve wanted in a boyfriend is someone who would actually listen to what I say, and HEAR me when I say it. I don’t need it fixed, that’s on me, I just need a man to understand that I have feelings (I know, you’re thinking ‘You’re a chick – DUH you have feelings’ but wait, explanation on this to follow) and be OK with hearing them out-loud. Too many men seem to completely suppress, or downright forget that chicks have feelings, and need to express them to get over them, and firsthand I can say this has created more than several issues with me and men in the past. This one guy I dated told me that I wasn’t ALLOWED to tell him when I was disappointed. His reasoning was that he didn’t like making plans anyway, so when plans fell through, I wasn’t allowed to be disappointed because it was something I used against him to make him feel badly. Not badly enough to NOT break plans or to even TRY to not break plans, just bad enough that he didn’t want to hear about it. I feel that you don’t get to know a person if you’re always just putting on a show, so I want to be honest and try to share who I am in my entirety. All the world is a stage, but even the stage hand gets to know the REAL person playing the part, and I want to be with someone who knows all of me, not just the stuff that’s lollipops and gummi bears. Long winded reason # 47 why my boyfriend is awesome.

 

Sometimes, hindsight sucks

Today I let a little crazy out. My man and I had this wonderful weekend together full of awesome people, literal fireworks and tons of Q.T. and I almost fucked it all up in about 5 minutes time, just as he was leaving. At least, that’s what I thought until he proved me wrong.

My past still seeps through into my present at times, and while most of my past is what has made me who I am today, ergo, I am thankful for it, there are plenty of things from my past which benefit no one, no how, no way. Mainly, this is regarding my previous dating encounters, as those are still the my biggest hurdles of insecurity in life. However, I think anyone with a pulse can agree that past relationships all have their double-edged swords. On one sharp side, I’ve learned from the mistakes I’ve made and I have managed to stop picking men who have issues with commitment or emotion or who hate their mothers or anyone with a womb, but the other side of the slice is that those ‘learning experiences’ jack you up so much emotionally that when shit happens which triggers memories, before you know it, you’re sobbing hysterically into a sofa pillow cushion wondering why in the hell you don’t just magically become the crazy cat lady now and save yourself the anguish of WAITING for it to happen.

Despite the fact that I sipped copious amounts of crazy juice this afternoon, lost my shit for a minute or thirty, and even shed a few tears (but don’t tell anyone), instead of spinning wheels away from crazy town faster than a Delorian, my man was so worried about MY feelings that he stuck around and talked through things with me until I felt better, even though that meant his time table was pushed back and he got home later than wanted/expected for his stupid early 5:30a Monday morning. He was more interested in making sure he and I were copacetic than anyone I’ve ever been in a relationship with and I could not express to him, or you, how incredibly amazing and wonderful that is if I sat here until my ass and fingers went numb, using a thesaurus to select any and all words related to AWESOME in three to five different languages. His concern for my feelings eased my worries faster than an ice cube melts in hell, yet on top of that pile of awesome, just to assure me more so that all the amazing things he said earlier were incredibly true, he called me on his way home under the veil of being lost, just to make sure that I was OK. Seriously, the man knows his way home by now, and I generally am anti-lying, but I’m OK with this particular guise.

I am so happy that lately, people are remarking upon how happy I look, even when I’m not talking about him and I, and even when they have no idea that my man even exists. And ya know what, I’m not even gonna pull the “I don’t know how I got so lucky” card because dammit, therapy has taught me that I deserve some fricking happiness at this point in my life and I’m finally starting to believe it. I’ve been with terrible men, I’ve been with men that just weren’t a good fit for me for one reason or twenty, and everything in between, and I may sound like a selfish asshole when I say this – but I DESERVE someone who appreciates me, crazy and all, and who gives as much of a shit about what I think and feel as I do about what he thinks and feels. And I truly think I’ve found him, especially after today.

 

Don’t hate me because I love yarn

I am über proud of my Granny Skillz. And by ‘Granny Skillz’ I mean my abilities to knit and crochet. I don’t care that I’m 30 and love knitting, I happen to greatly enjoy sentient activities and this one allows me to at least FEEL productive while I use as few muscles as possible. It’s quite remarkable, actually. You can spend hours moving little more than your arms from the elbows down and yet you can create these beautiful, imaginative items that are often made out of extremely long, but single pieces of yarn, all woven together in pretty little patterns. You can create flowers (seriously, you can, I can’t, yet), scarves, socks, headbands or little sock like things for your kindle to keep them from getting banged up in your purse since you carry it everywhere. Yeah, that was my first crochet project – it left some things to be desired, i.e. I MUST learn how to make prettier end stitches before moving forward with much else – and it is complete, for all intents and purposes, and it’s not a bad go for the first time I’ve crocheted, either, so I’m cool with it. Not gonna sell the pattern for profit, but I can consider it a success.

Anyone that KNOWS how to knit and/or crochet will tell you how EEEAASSSYYY it is. And I will admit to having done such a thing myself, but let me tell you this: that is bullshit. It’s so freaking hard to learn one or the other and it’s even harder to know one, and try to learn the other. They are similar, but so VERY different and it’s like trying to teach a lefty how to cut construction paper snowflakes with righty scissors. It’s as difficult as trying to explain the color blue to someone who was born blind. Ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I was feeling rambly and trying to make that work…anyway, it definitely took me a few hours of patient one on one teaching to learn the pattern and movements of crochet and I still have some cleaning up to do of my stitches but overall, I think I’ve got the basics down – half shells, double crochet, single crochet, and chains – not too shabby. I remember when I started knitting, I didn’t realize that there was a front, and a back to the piece of work – I thought it somehow magically knew that on its own or something, or perhaps I just didn’t imagine it made a difference as I expected patterns to follow my method, not the proper one. Truly, until a few years ago, I knew how to knit, but I had been doing it all wrong. As soon as you recognize a front and a back, the patterns make SO much more sense and you can actually create something that looks like the picture – I HATE it when stuff I make doesn’t end up looking like the picture, but that’s an entirely different rant – and people then look at what you’ve knitted and tell you how beautiful it is and ooh and ahh at it while they touch it and rub it against their faces… and then you say, Oh, it was EASY.

 

Some things change, some things stay the same

It’s been several years now since it started, (somewhere between 4 and 6, I honestly stopped paying attention) and yet I’m still about to write this next sentence: My therapist has suggested that I start blogging again. It helps to solidify the neuro pathways that I’ve rediscovered and it helps to emphasize the reasons behind why I’ve made the choices that I’ve made, and why I used to think that I only deserved [X] amount of anything – happiness, love, kindness, friendship, you name it. I almost feel like I should create an entirely new blog as I am not the same mentally nor emotionally as I was when I started this, or even the last time I posted, and its only natural to want a fresh start after such change.

My ‘perception filter’, as my therapist calls it, is still distorted to a point, but I’ve managed to get the blame game down to a dull roar and I can now see where my deep-seated feelings of guilt, worry and my overwhelming fear of disappointing others comes from. The knowledge alone has opened so many doors in my head that I feel like my brain is a freaking mansion as opposed to a cardboard box. A cardboard box that was once shared with evil, spiteful rats, gnawing on whatever was left of my well-being without regard.

Thanks to my amazing therapist and my own want to learn and grow, I am excruciatingly happy today. I am content with who I am, and I am content if there are people out there who don’t like that, or me. I can say with confidence that, emotionally, there isn’t much I can’t handle now, and I have more confidence and trust in myself now than I’ve had in a long time. Life is good and I look forward to each day with a genuine smile and the outlook that great things are on the horizon. After several years of dating, trying to find the man who fit into my needs and wants while I fit into his, I have found one who is the closest I could ever hope for, and I know that were it not for my therapist and the progress that I’ve made personally, he would not be in my life at this time, and that is the best motivation to continue to grow that a girl could EVER ask for.

I hope to continue to explore myself and what makes me tick, and I hope that I can begin to start sharing my growth again via writing, as it truly is something that I enjoy and I denied myself enjoyment for too long. I saw something via one of those witty websites the other day, a meme of an EKG heart rate; underneath it stated “If life didn’t have ups and downs, you’d be dead.” Well spoken and a good reminder that the bad things that happen don’t have to define who you are or what you do – YOU make those choices and only you can take back the control and turn life into what you want it to be. Thanks be to my therapist for helping me learn that lesson.

 

What I learned today, or, Why I should go the hell outside sometimes

• Today I learned that I can, in fact, sit on my couch and watch 35 consecutive episodes of Reno 911. The show is THAT. GOOD.
• Today I learned that a three-day old bruise from giving blood makes me look a lot like I have a problem. With injecting things into me. Like, drug things. People look at you funny when they think you have track marks and suck so bad at shooting up that you cause yourself to bruise egregiously.
• Today I learned that my mother’s dog whines and follows me around more than my own problem child dog, and it’s really starting to annoy the shit out of me, 24 hours into dog sitting him. I thought my tolerance was through the roof since I live with a dog who thinks he is my shadow; to the extent that I ALWAYS find him outside of the bathroom door whenever I open it. ::SIDEBAR:: As a habit, I tend not to close doors in my home as I live alone and have ridiculously dependent pets, but when I shower, I like to get all steamy and fog up the mirror and shit, so I shut the door. Never fails – my helper is laying in the hallway in such a way so that he can see my face from the moment the door’s crack is wide enough for recognition.
• Today I learned that I do love that annoying little dog and his habits of being near me at all times, even though he drives me insane and causes me to trip over him on a daily basis. There is something to be said for being that loved by a soul.
• Today I learned that if you own a pick up truck with a lift kit, and you’ve re-routed your exhaust to go up and above the cab of your truck, 18-wheeler style, it’s in your contract to hang out in the Arby’s parking lot. They take their obligations VERY seriously.
• Today I learned that 50 degrees F and no sun makes for a very cold, long day that continuously seems later than it truly is, which causes you to waste the day away while at the same time wondering what happened to the day.
• Today I learned that fountain coke tastes better than fountain Pepsi. But if given the choice between a can or bottle of coke versus a can or bottle of Pepsi, I would choose the Pepsi. This fact was validated today on two separate trips to places that sell fountain sodas.
• Today I learned that evenings in are more fun whilst intoxicated. Tanqueray and limeade is the SHIT, people. You don’t know what awesome is if you’ve never tried T&L.
• Today I learned the most pretentious way possible to google ‘quotes that make me happy’, which is a very popular search and gets me a lot of hits. This is an IRL google search that got someone to my blog: “to make life colourful and happy wordings”

 

Feast or famine

It seems that I only feel like blogging when I’m hating on myself via some deep-seated emotional issue that has been triggered by a thought or some outside event. This post shall be no different from the norm.

Failure is a word that triggers a strong emotional and mental response from me. It could be failure to complete a task appropriately or the failure of a relationship – it doesn’t matter, either way, I end up feeling like a fuck up who can’t do anything right or correct in life. This is a feeling that has followed me around longer than I’ve probably even been aware of it, and it’s become a topic of interest over my last few therapy sessions.

Each time I recount the failure of a relationship, or that one time I applied for something and was denied, or when I just allow people to take advantage of me, I end up a bleary eyed mess and full of emotional turmoil. Mistakes are failures, the inability to mesh with a single person for the rest of my life is a failure and you bet your ass that I’ve failed at life because I’ve never accomplished the dreams I had as a stupid child. It’s enough to drive a person into a downward spiral of depressive sludge.

Today, as I was having a moment of incredible weakness to my BFF, I kind of realized that in some deep, dark, psychotherapy place in the recesses of my mind, my parents divorce has warped my perception of relationships and their levels of success or failure. I’m sure it’s much more involved than that and I’m sure it has a lot more to do with the whole inability to deal with or discuss emotions that my entire family possesses, but I’ve never really thought of my parents divorce in a negative way until today. It’s one of those situations where the more you learn about yourself, why you react the way that you do to certain things, and where those feelings of inner turmoil and blackness actually COME from, that you can’t help but start to look at events in your life differently.Some end up being more detrimental while others end up having that silver lining to them. My BFF pointed out that relationships take two people and that I cannot blame myself for the end of every relationship because I AM AWESOME. So, in a moment of clarity, I’ve realized that I AM awesome, and have apparently been setting my sights too low, hence the fizzle of each of my past relationships. Awesome shines brightly and some people just burn faster than others. To truly be happy in life, I need to aim high and find someone who’s awesome matches my own, instead of dialing down my aura to fit others.

 

Lesson #4,624 or Why therapy is a good thing

I had yet another interesting session with my therapist this week. Perhaps it was due to my emotional state as of late, or the phase of the moon, or the status of my menstrual cycle, but she seemed…….short with me. As if she felt I was lacking forward momentum; hung up in some sort of way. And I am, but I just can’t get past it enough to literally GET past it. I try, then I figure I’ll fail, then I quit. Quitting is always easier than failing, I figure. But I feel like my struggle to change is starting to frustrate her, which  makes me feel kinda shitty. I mean, it;s gotta take a special talent to frustrate a therapist, ya know?

I have this one constant complaint and it’s a real roadblock in my emotional development. My therapist is fond of using a metaphor regarding how I view myself through a distorted filter. I see others differently than I see myself, and I often pound on myself like a bully. So she’s started this new thing with me that begins with “If one of your friends was dealing with {whatever issue of the moment}, what would YOU tell THEM?” And I gotta admit, it helps!

This weeks session focused heavily on my biggest issue and she pretty much told me that it was time to shit, or get the hell off the pot. Obviously, she put it much more eloquently, and in some sort of psychotherapy terminology, so it sounded less harsh, but the fact remains – she’s right. I USE this against myself, and stop myself from having to make the changes that I need to make to be HAPPY. Why would a person deny themselves happiness? Why would they purposefully put everyone else ahead of themselves? Why would I want to set myself up for failure? BECAUSE I’M CRAZY. I mean seriously, how long have you known me?

Truthfully though, I realize that she’s absolutely right. It’s hard to be 30 years old and feel like a child being scolded, and I’m sure she never meant for it to come across that way, but it shocked me enough to start making some choices and getting some shit done. I’m hopeful that the momentum lasts, and so far, each time I’ve started to have my doubts, some thing has been happening to bring them back up; but I’m not counting any chickens, yet. Just a few eggs.