Sanity
I suspect having negative sanity since about two weeks ago. Two things actually happened that caused that, and only my big sense of humour and finding funny stuff in everything keeps me from massive depression and going berserk.
I hadn’t spoken with my mother for more than a week before yesterday. It was one of the most quiet weeks ever. She had phoned me last week only to create more panic, and to inform me that my cats will die in a plane.
Since I’m panicked enough already and the relocation stuff has been occupying 100% of my time and thoughts, with my sanity already hanging on a thread, you can see how this wasn’t the kind of information I needed to hear right then, so I ended the call and cried for half an hour. At least I found out I can cry again. Sort of.
Anyway, she felt offended. Big time. And haven’t called me for over a week. Instead my father came over and went on how I treat my mother badly and now she’s unhappy and also that I won’t be able to do anything without help (sanity faded slightly).
The second thing was another phonecall from a so-called friend, who needed some sympathy, empathy or whatever, because he had a big unsolvable problem: his girlfriend had to go away. For two days. For two fucking days.
I quietly reminded him how long I’ve been forced to live away from my love and since when I hadn’t seen him. I found no understanding, or at least no real understanding.
After this incident I decided not to invite this person to my farewell party. Neither I need to hear pointless rantings of selfish people, nor take care of them and be their “good aunt” to cry their problems to.
I’m going to Dublin in less than two weeks. I’m afraid, panicked, tired of packing stuff and throwing stuff out, tired of living alone, having to listen to what my mother has to say.
Fortunately my love is coming over this Friday and the party is on Saturday, so it’s peace and fun and positive sanity again before me. But until then I have to be strong and finish everything that I have started.
My Mother III
Apparently I don’t communicate, because I don’t say much. Everything needs a comment. Or two. Or ten. Or at least five minutes of a monologue.
I made a mistake of admitting to having drunk two beers tonight, and I immediately was informed of how beer is fattening and how many calories it contains. Ok, whatever, what’s your point of saying that? No point at all. So why did you say that? And then there was the monologue of how I treat her badly and she’s afraid to say anything because I might get upset, and how she is a victim (oh, she can play the victim very professionally) and how she cares and how I don’t care and how I don’t communicate at all, and how she communicates with the whole world, and everyone tolerates her except me (“because they’re not assertive enough, mom”), and how I only think of my own needs and I don’t at all think about my family’s needs.
Mom, I only said that I didn’t like what you said and how I don’t like such comments, and you go on about how I am selfish. Look where your monologue is heading.
Silence.
Offended expression.
Every time I would like to say something important to her, I feel that if I tried, only a long scream would come out. I feel like screaming, very loudly and for quite a while. So I don’t say anything important. When I sometimes force myself to, She Feels Offended.
A quick update
I’ve been in Dublin since yesterday noon. It’s been sleepy, rainy, sexy and comfy. I kinda pamper myself here, getting bubble baths, taking care of my hair and nails and stuff. I’m here with my love and we’ve been doing everything together since yesterday: cooking, shopping, reading… I wonder how long it will last until we get bored… I hope long. It’s sweet.
I think I’ve gained a new friend recently… he told me that I’m a people person and connect with people easily… so that is what it looks like from the outside… I make a lot of effort to connect with people and for it to have a meaning. I love people, but I’m shy. I always have this feeling that they don’t want to hear what I’m saying and I don’t want to force myself upon them, really, so I usually stay quiet. Unless there’s someone I really get along with well, like that one person, it feels like I’d known him forever and each talk with him regains my lost Sanity points (if you excuse my use of RPG terminology)…
My good wizard has been away recently, celebrating a holiday, being with his girl etc. I miss him a lot, and I sort of feel our special energical connection fading away. I don’t feel his presence so strongly, although I feel a little bit of it all the time. We’re in touch, we exchange text messages at least once a day. But this doesn’t feel enough. I know he’s busy and again, I don’t want to force myself upon him. I’ll make updates once a day and that’s it, if he wants to talk he knows where to find me.
If it hasn’t been for my friends and all the great people I’ve recently met, I’d probably lose my Sanity long ago.
My mother II
My mother talks.
But she doesn’t communicate.
My agression control and sanity are balancing on the edge of explosion.
My mother
My mother talks.
She doesn’t stop, unless she is asleep.
She simply won’t shut up.
She talks about irrelevant crap, and about stuff that is so obvious that it doesn’t need to be talked about, and about things that are painful for others to even think about.
She will comment every fat girl on the street she sees, she’ll go on about how our family was murdered during war, she’ll worry about my each meal (both its content and amount), she’ll lavishly express her feelings about every stupid movie she watches, and when she doesn’t have a person to talk to, she emits words to the air or to the poor dog. She’ll keep talking about how she sacrifices herself to help others. Whenever she doesn’t feel appreciated enough, which happens strangely often, she keeps ranting about it, until she thinks she’s created enough guilt in every person present. And she just won’t stop.
And then she’s so astonished when I get aggressive.
Empathy III
My brother says that my biggest problem is that I feel so much true compassion for people. This actually is true. When somebody is in pain, physical or mental, other people say they’re sorry, they express how they sympathize with that person, they discuss their feelings and generally do a lot of talking, “ohs” and other relevant noises, and then they go on about their business.
I don’t.
Instead I feel the pain which feels like swimming in liquid cotton. Instead I get sharp aches in my stomach. I get a numb, pulsing pain in my left hand. I get white hairs. I get a lot of bad dreams. I get a dark and pulsing sadness. I get the feeling that nothing is ever real. In several combinations at the time. The feeling is usually so overwhelming that I usually don’t say much at the moment, because nothing feels relevant or appropriate, which can be interpreted (and often is) as being rude and not compassionate.
And, contrary to what one might think, I sort of appreciate all those things. Not because I like the pain, no. I don’t. It makes me feel sick and helpless and hopeless and numb. I appreciate them because sometimes those emotions that come directly from my empathy are the only thing that give me energy of a certain kind, make me feel alive and make me feel emotions and remember that I once turned myself into an emotional vegetable on purpose, in order to not feel sorrow at all. I blocked all the emotions as an effect of blocking the bad ones, but now I understand that joy would be worthless without sadness.
Maybe there is a way to not feel the physical pain when my empathy turns itself on. I don’t know. It probably won’t happen unless I learn to express those emotions to people (at least to the ones I love) verbally or through the touch (this is where we come back to the communication issues again), which I doubt will occur soon. I’m still too blocked, emotions still hurt me, even the good ones. This is one of my biggest demons. I learn to feel again, and when the emotion is strong I get petrified for a while.
I have to learn to feel without hurting myself.
Communication
Talking about my feelings is an enormous effort for me. I always have the feeling that the person that I’m talking to doesn’t give a crap. So I don’t. I close up. Even to my love. But in spite of that, I have a distant feeling that people should talk about their feelings to their spouses, right? Right.
So sometimes I try. I try to cry to feel a relief, but I can’t. And when I try he changes the subjects, starts talking about irrelevant silly little things that make me mad at the moment. Or he tries to make me laugh, when all I need is someone to take my pain and ground it, because I don’t have a lightning rod in a form of God or gods.
And he has that stupid little habit of interpreting all problems as medical cases.
So I accused him of that all.
He accused me of closing up. He said that I should talk to him more. Because he isn’t a telepath (which he probably isn’t, true) and he has no way of knowing what brews inside my head. And that the more he’s trying to listen to me, the more I close up. Which is also true.
And we started talking. I told him that I have a problem with talking about certain stuff, especially to him. How can I talk about my problems with religious identity to someone who sacrificed a normal religious life to be with me, right? This wouldn’t be fair. So I didn’t. But he asked me to start talking, so I did. And I managed to tell him all the things.
That I don’t deny existence of any gods or a single God. They may all be there, for all I know. I just don’t give a damn. I refuse to worship them.
That the Bible or any other “holy” book is for me merely a set of legends, written to keep people together, because when they are unhappy, they should have a tradition and religion to make them feel more safe, and it should be treated as a legend, not as the only truth, because if you think logically it just can’t be.
That I simply hate people who think that their way of thinking is the only right one and I think that because their beliefs simply aren’t verifiable (is that even a word? O_o), so they might be right, wrong or both, for all I know.
That I think that bringing up a child in any religion (especially the one like his, which doesn’t tolerate any signs of thinking differently, or maybe I’m too harsh?) is brainwashing them from the beginning and making them believe things that aren’t verifiable (O_o) as they were real and true.
That he doesn’t talk about himself much and after all those years I barely know anything about his emotions, his spiritual life. I only know his opinions about various stuff and his brilliant sense of humour, which helped us through many difficult times.
He didn’t say much. He wasn’t too happy with what I said (I probably hurt his religious feelings more than once, and I realize that too painfully), and he had probably suspected such an opinion from me all this time, but he was glad that I started talking. And promised he wouldn’t send me to another shrink, and acknowledged my problems as something to be solved by some serious work from me, not by medications and talking about irrelevant stuff to a strange person, which I hate with all my heart.
I also asked him if he really wanted to be with me and why, I don’t really know why I did, because I feel that he does. Maybe I needed to hear it again to feel wanted.
I know it’s not much. We didn’t solve anything, only opened some old and new wounds. But we began communicating and it’s a good start.
