Tag: #sortingthroughemotions

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Connected

*I guess we are all one phone call from our knees. *

I don’t think I could have bargained for all the gratitude this experience is bringing me. I can’t feel it too much yet, everything is just so painful. But I know that it’s there, and growing, and that this experience has already profoundly changed me.

If I do it right it’s going to make me realize all the things I take for granted each day. It’s going to make me realize what a gift and blessing my kids are in a new way.

We need to hit the refresh button on life often folks! Not just when bad things happen, but consistently. Not just once a year. Refresh, open your eyes, and look around at the landscape of your life.

My God I could have never imagined this. I never believed I would trust or love myself as much as I do now.

I would have never believed I’d be here living out my dreams. Here I am.

It’s interesting to choose a person early on because of a hunch and an intuition and then watch them unfold and get to know them with faith and trust the rest of your lives together. Love grows as you go through things. We have been through a lot this short time together.

Prior to this I moved quickly into love also, this was a need based approach it wreaked if desperation and seeking a buoy in the ocean with sharks swimming around. I’ve finally climbed onto an island and am relaxing. I did not purposely use those people. I didn’t even know my own bs as most of us don’t, until hindsight affords clarity. Hurt people hurt people. It isn’t nearly the intentional process believe I don’t think.

Now if you realize this is what’s happening and you don’t do something about it that’s a different matter.

Love now:

We know one another’s soul, and yet we learn new small things about the other each day. We become more and more familiar as time moves on. A confirmation of the original hypothesis. The other times were disproving and they were as devastating a loss as any for both parties.

Life is a learning playground is it not? I’ve rarely seen people set out to harm another, that’s a different category all together. But I’ll tell you what I still scan myself often and thoroughly for signs of being what I came from. I still take any feedback that could be construed as negative about me and make sure it’s twisted into that either way. This is one of my greatest areas of work.

Am I taking up too much space with my big feelings? Am I selfish? Am I like them? Do I make people uncomfortable with my rawness, and is that the same As the chaotic discomfort of my beginning. It is not the same. Thank God!

As I work for Vivint I’ve been meeting lots of people who lost their loved one recently or within the last few years, and my empathy as a person grows. After having something like this I get it. I’m already aware of the depth of suffering I’ll have when I lose it. I’ve never been able to cruise along in blissful ignorance, though I’ve often envied (probably falsely) those who have.

If you had told me two years ago that this year I’d be spending trying to get pregnant with the love of my life, I would have thought you were crazy. If you would have told me I would get so close to this dream after so much hard work, and then lose it suddenly and have to push it back again significantly, I would have told you I wouldn’t make it through something like that.

And yet here we are.

The courage of my wife astounds me. Her grace and kindness and gentle soul. Some people are just made angels from the very beginning, and others have lives that make them need one. We are the perfect match. Blissfully she seems to feel it’s the other way around. I’m still trying to figure out how that’s possible.

I am able to know I can be kind and unselfish when things are hard because she believes me to be that person.

I am trying to put this into practice with my children. Coming from a life of hyper vigilance and a huge lack of trust this has been very difficult. I’ve been RE wiring myself as long as I can remember and it’s difficult for anyone who doesn’t know what this work is like to understand the profound exhaustion that comes with it.

I am not exhausted from my children. They are my reason for getting this far. But over the years if you looked at my life you might have thought that, or that I valued my romantic relationships above them. Something I’ve long been accused of. I knew I needed a certain kind of love to heal parts of me, so those parts didn’t damage them. I had the foresight to know this.

And foresight is serving me again with this tragedy we are currently experiencing, because I can already see how the awareness it brings is challenging me to love better.

To my kids: I know it has taken my entire life to become a whole loving person that you deserve. I know this journey hasn’t been easy for you. I think the only redeeming part is that your lives will be better for it in ways you may only ever see when you’re my age. Distance brings clarity. I hope your lives end up as full as mine has been. Full of adventure, challenges, new experiences, real feeling, and the love I worked so hard to find, and to help you connect to it.

I’ve worked to connect with others and myself despite incredible connection difficulties.

And now here I am a connected and real person and boy does it feel different.

During times like this for a small moment I wish I could still be safely disconnected from my real feelings. But that never worked I always felt separate from the humans like that. It was terribly lonely.

I am connected to my self and currently my suffering too, and to the Universe, and to everything.

I am grateful for that. Thats what the smile below is about. It’s a different approach at times to this grief. For me great grief also brings great gratitude I have any of this at all. That I have someone to be sad with and lose something so important with. And we can try again for this, but this love is a once in a lifetime love. It’s the kind that always helps me love myself more, and I needed a lot of that.

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Ritual

I turn 38 on Saturday. In so many ways I never could have imagined my life would be where it is right now. I couldn’t have even dreamed this.

Today I am turning to my blog again as a healing medium. I don’t have well organized thoughts. I just know I need to write.

I could never have imagined being so sad and so grateful and blessed all at the same time. A blanket of numb sadness has set in this morning. I’m just trying to feel something. Anything.

I needed to renew my drivers license this morning so I came to Hamden DMV before my Vivint meeting. It was shockingly fast. I had anticipated a 2 hour wait, and running into my meeting late. But I was in and out.

If there was a Guinness Book of World Records for bad drivers license photos I would be a strong contender. The cameras are way beneath you. Why do they do that?! Is it the only satisfaction they have in their lives? Don’t they know women need a steep downward angle as they near their 40’s and grow softer under the chin and more robust around the middle?

So I did a thing!!! A nearing 40 thing… and I’m sitting here trying to process what it means to me on the deeper spectrum.

It means to not be seeking acceptance anymore. To not be shaking in my shoes that someone won’t like me for how I look, a long held legacy stemming of course, back to childhood. It means to play with life a little and try new things without it being so serious. So yesterday my wife and I set out on an adventure. We went to a local barbershop and had a great old time. It will now be filed away in memories I hold dear to my heart.

The barber was amazing! Goodfellas Barbershop Ansonia CT. Fary Palacios. All the guys in there had a blast watching me get my very thick and long locks shorn off. It was a hoot.

Then we went to a local tattoo shop and got matching birds on our wrists to commemorate our twins and loss. To honor this pain and this process. This one hurt. Not worse than many moments in each day lately, but certainly was intense.

Food doesn’t really taste like anything. My brain can’t grasp on anything to focus. We have a 2 o’clock appointment today to find out what we are going to do and I know more waves of grief are imminent. My eyes look sad and dark, they have bags under them. I don’t want this to be my reality.

I don’t feel anything holiday like or like celebrating anything. My heart is breaking over and over each day in moments. One of the deepest cuts I have ever experienced. I’m trying to hold it shut myself, and clearly I need medical intervention. Irrigation, anti-biotics, and stitches. But I have become to not feel like I can trust those institutions to be careful with us.

Like a cornered wild wounded animal. Protective. Angry. Sad. Scared. Flayed open. Raw.

I am writhing with pain on the inside, and just trying to keep it together on the outside .

Help me please I just need some peace. It’s too in between.

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Tea cups….

I should never be trusted with soft and luxurious white hooded sweatshirts! They never stay without stains.

We lost a twin today. How does one even feel about that? I’m supposed to be happy we see one heartbeat right ? This has been such a roller coaster I’m just swirling around in a tea cup ride of emotions. The whole rest of the world is a blur. If the other one makes it to term will it feel like something is missing it’s whole life? I’m quite sure I’ll be told to think positively etc, but are real human feelings actually negative or are they just feelings? These are mine either way.

I am waiting to decide how to feel.

And we are also waiting to see if the rest of the pregnancy is ok. We did see a tiny heartbeat today. A glimmer. My intelligent mind fears the fact that if the genes are identical and one didn’t make it, that logically the pregnancy is in trouble.

And my heart hopes.

But what this blog post is really about is the first thought that plagues me as we haven’t been able to get pregnant for so long and now this.

This is unnatural, it’s a sin, and we are being punished. It’s against God. We are two women we shouldn’t be having a baby.

I know I don’t hold these beliefs and if there is a God, ours loves us too. I know that, but I have to fight so hard to feel that way.

I’ve forced myself to treat myself as normal as anyone else. To bravely announce proudly everywhere I go I have a wife. One day I just got tired enough of feeling like a bad person in so many ways for being gay. For breaking up a family, for hurting my kids, and their dad and his family.

Eventually all that responsibility just got too heavy for one person to hold.

I cracked open into fearless courage. It became necessary. It was a natural evolution to how deeply I harmed myself with negative thoughts about myself for so long. I tried to beat the gay out of myself. I would have done anything. I tried everything.

I think I’ve been in denial. I’ve built such a strong outward presentation for myself, that I’ve ignored the sting of my minority status.

I don’t speak to my mother. Guilt. I’ve been divorced twice. Guilt. I’ve put my feelings and needs before my children’s at times. Guilt. I can make deep connections but almost all of my early ones are severed. Guilt. I’m fucking gay. Guilt. I have a million thoughts. Guilt. I talk a lot. I am big and enthusiastic and open.

More Guilt.

I am guilty of being in denial.

I am denying the fact that if just in one aspect life could feel any easier for me for one second. If my family could walk down the street and have people look at us like a thing of stability and beauty, like the majority of families are already guaranteed. Instead of wondering who will whisper or become nervous around us.

I forced myself long ago to be so out and so proud, that I’ve been hiding in my comfortable life not advocating for those who aren’t as lucky yet.

I shouldn’t have to work at feeling normal should I?

So because we are gluttons for punishment we ate food we didn’t taste, shed tears we didn’t feel, and went and saw Boy Erased. It was intensely emotional.

After the movie I wonder why I don’t specialize in LGBT clients. I mean I never wanted to be pigeon holed to one population, but now I’m wondering if I would have just felt like a fraud. How can I help someone with something I still haven’t figured out.

Why is my first thought of us not being able to get pregnant and the potential of losing this one that it’s not the way things are supposed to be.

Why am I stuck with a belief in my head that’s not my own?

He’s the Boy Erased, and I’m the Girl in your Face…..

and the tea cup spins.

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A Very Thankful Thanksgiving….

As all these big feelings wash over me (they used to crash, now they cascade), I can tell it’s time to bring my heart to the blog and weave.

I am bursting at the seams with gratitude this Thanksgiving. Holidays as a rule are difficult for me, and that’s an understatement. I am always a guest in someone else’s Family Stone Family, the one whispered about when I leave the room. Thankfully nothing like Sara Jessica Parker in the actual movie. I was the Claire Danes, but still….

I was always liked that was never the problem. The problem was I chose my partner for the kids and for safety and love. I was at such a deficit. And don’t get me wrong all the people I’ve shared my time with are special and I learned so much from them. I really have no horror stories in my love life. Sometimes however I fear I became theirs. A taste of love and belonging and then yanked away. I experienced those losses too though, whether they were my decision or not. Another family, another warm heart beat pulled away, excruciating.

They weren’t a fit because their hearts were as unsure as mine if we could pull the whole thing off. I wonder at times if I had more faith in life and myself if it would have been different. But then how could it be when I am this happy now, and they are in their journeys towards happiness as well.

I figure those who take the actual time to read through this whole thing deserve to know our IVF has worked. We are 5 weeks today I believe. And once we hit 2000 HCG (we are at 1100), blood level then we will begin ultrasounds. We won’t make any official announcements until it progresses a bit further, but that whole thing is so superstitious and sort of the opposite of faith. I hate the whole privacy idea in a way. Sure it might be exhausting to share bad news with your loved ones, but you will need them right ?!

We need each other, all of us beautiful fragile human beings. Why isn’t that allowed.

We are so fucking careful and so private. I’ve never liked that, but since my life isn’t just me anymore I have to walk that line a bit more carefully. I do not want to live scared of anything ever again. I’ve spent most of my life anxious. Anxious I won’t be loved or even liked for that matter, and often I wasn’t. Anxious I wasn’t enough. Anxious I wasn’t smart like other people. Anxious about my health. Anxious about how everyone around me feels, if I have somehow hurt or bothered them. Anxious about money. Anxious at any minute something terrible could happen. And it always could.

On fucking eggshells most of my life. Profound exhaustion. And now I’m stepping out into the light and loving myself enough to stop stressing my body and my heart with these anxieties. I am practicing enough self love that when someone else doesn’t see me how I’d like to be seen I can weather that storm.

Rian just popped in the bathroom and said, “you should watch Courtney butter this turkey, it’s making me uncomfortable” bwhahahahhaah! I told her to butter that bird up with love and she’s doing just that. There is actually a video, but I’m not allowed to post it 😉 sorry guys!!

My latest self-inflicted therapy is of the exposure variety. I am going to get over my profound nervousness of if people like me or not, by exposing myself to the highest possible annoyance. Arriving on their doorstep to tell them about how solar can save them money and the environment.

Last night a lady told her adorable children who came to the door to tell me to get away. The house was so cool too and I was warm and friendly. Scolded like a bad dog, and instead of reacting I simply smiled and thought of a time I would have done the same because I was overwhelmed, and thought I needed to protect myself from someone trying to take advantage of me. So I get it lady. You keep paying your giant electric bill and teaching your kids to be rude. Ok so I’m as enlightened as I can be, but still human 😉

But these interactions don’t up end my world anymore, reaffirming a long held belief that I’m bad, wrong, and unworthy. I’m learning to let them roll off my back, that they have nothing to do with me.

And sure enough I landed a nice couple with a giant electric bill, amazing sun on their roof, and it warmed me right up. They also had a 6 month old baby who adored me and laughed the cutest and it made me so excited to be a mom again soon enough !!

“There will always be light and dark in life, and often we never know which we will find behind the door we knock. We must knock anyway, even if it’s mostly dark, because eventually you’ll land the right door, and things can change in an instant.”

The dark is always more seductive, it gives us permission to blame and to throw our hands in the air. We had a deep rejection this holiday, and I’m surprised to find myself watching this one from the outside. It’s been so long since it felt like my sexuality was a shameful thing. I should say since someone else shared they thought our sexuality was a shameful thing. It cuts like a knife to the heart, we will feel the sting and the loss today.

But it will never be as bad as the pain of living a life inauthentic. I always know that truth. Sad, scared, and unhappy people will always spread those feelings, the best we can do is to love them anyway. From a distance. I’m proud we won’t let this be a dark cloud on our happy time. It hurts, but it won’t block out our sun. See what I did there 😉

I’ve created my own solar panels for how I receive energy in my life, and it’s clean energy. I’ve chosen the kind of want to focus on and absorb and learning to protect myself from pollution.

This Thanksgiving is the first one where I feel like I belong. I am about to be 38 years old. It seems like that story would be a sad one, but I assure you it is anything but.

I belong here and am not a guest. I am grateful beyond measure for my kids who believe in a mother who has made herself from scratch. I am grateful they let me make mistakes and love me anyway. I am grateful for my beautiful wife who is the glue of this whole operation. I always thought I had to be the glue and fell into resentment at times, but it turns out she is. She is the constant warmth that keeps me glowing. She made this house a home in so many ways.

I am in radical gratitude this year!!!

My life gets better and better with time. Thank you to all who follow my journey. You are definitely a dedicated reader, and you are part of me being able to believe I am not too much.

A toast to family, red wine, and turkey basters to all of you 😉

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Children in suits of armor wielding swords…

I once had a very astute counseling mentor point out that she was realizing how much I can present myself so strong, and yet how much pain boils beneath the surface. She seemed to marvel at it. The message was received and now I notice the difference between my “functioning suit of armor” I wear daily, and the soft and gooey inside that puddles easily at emotion.

The two sides battle to the death each day. My soft and playful heart wants oxygen, and the so necessary armor of my young life is a tungsten fitted suit custom made with no hinges to remove it. A trapped and scared animal that will stand in the sun, even as it heats the armor to unbearable temperatures, just to soak some sunshine in through her eyes and mouth. If this is the only way, then that’s what I’ll do. I am determined for the light to get in and eventually blast off the heavy protective gear.

Layer by layer my hearts light is weakening it from the inside, and my people are weakening it from the outside. And someday I am going to dance around feeling the breeze on my skin, and basking in light. Except my mind tells me the second the armor is off and I’ve worked so hard, that inevitably something bad will happen, and I won’t be able to enjoy it.

No amount of logic cuts through these thoughts. They come and I have to have them in for tea until they leave. Because trying to outrun them all those years only created other problems.

Make friends with them and know I’ll have times they aren’t visiting, but they always come back. I’ve known their game so long and their function, that they don’t get me so scared anymore. But that never makes the fact they visit any less exhausting.

No child should be in a full suit of armor, and wielding a sword. It’s too heavy for them, but so many are. And those children carry those suits into adulthood and they use the sword because they always had to.

And I have to wonder once the suit comes off if then they are too fragile for the world? They can’t take the normative difficulties because their skin feels too unsafe all the time. Just being in the air can bring them to tears with gratitude, and they are generally unintentionally shamed for that too because many people don’t have the understanding. So even after all that work…. only to be back to running.

They had to work so hard to even get the armor off, that they are walking among other people, feeling so many things that aren’t included in the present moment. And since they know that’s what they are doing they feel awkward and anxious. Not belonging.

And another suit is forged…..

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The Great Room Cleaning Stand-off

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

My seventeen year old son is brilliant, kind, generous, sensitive and anything a parent could want in a child. However lately we have reached a place where we do not see eye to eye, and I am wracking my brain to crack the code on this situation.

To give you some background I could be described as middle of the road when it comes to cleaning. My wife and I do not fight over household chores. We generally ebb and flow with effort in this department and when one of us ebbs, the other tries to flow. We do this dance fairly seamlessly unlike the resentment filled arguments with past lovers. We came into this both having thought through the complexities of the situation, and choosing to be grateful we have the other, all bags included.

We don’t ask for made beds, or color coordinated sock drawers. We understand that if our room becomes cluttered at times when we are exhausted or extra tired that this will happen with kids sometimes. Our expectations are that things are sanitary, somewhat kept up with etc, and that every couple of weeks you do a deep clean. Sweep, mop, vacuum dust kinda deal. That maybe 2 times yearly you go through all the crap that has amassed, and your clothes and see what you need and what you don’t. And for the love of all that is holy change your bedding at least every two weeks. For obvious reasons :p

About a month ago give or take I noticed that my son wasn’t eating hardly anything but fast food, potato chips, and gummy candies from where he works, Trader Joe’s. These empty containers could be found tucked behind the bed, in drawers etc. The regularity of showering diminished, the laundry piled up, pay stubs cluttered everywhere. The room took on an unsettling odor. And even the smallest task seems to appear insurmountable to him.

I chalked up this struggle to ADHD, as his computer had already been removed from his room so he could get into some kind of organizational routine. So we tried Vyvanse. Thus far the room isn’t clean and his mood is worse. He has new behaviors of lying, being more verbally aggressive, and placing all blame for his current predicament on me.

He got into my phone and read text messages he shouldn’t have, and I’m quite sure this breach of boundaries is the largest culprit of held anger. If you read something out of context and put it through your own fears and emotions it can be a deadly weapon. The result a poisoned relationship. As highly sensitive people it is hard on both of us that this is dragging out in this way.

As a child I wasn’t really raised per say. My grandparents talked at me, but they rarely followed through. And we had no structure built into any family unit. Once I reached a certain age they just often said they didn’t know why I didn’t help around the house etc. I was shamed in front of friends. They felt helpless and would say “you don’t keep your room like hers right.”

So for me I wanted my kids to not only feel part of a family, but to participate as a part of a working unit as well. This has been part necessity and part purposeful through the years. Most of the research I have read suggests children who help others and learn hard work are better off than those with everything done for them. I tend to agree based on my struggles and lack of that in my upbringing.

I know all about choose my battles and I’m confident many parents who would give their eye teeth for a child like mine would say, “just clean it he gets good grades”, or another camp who couldn’t stand the disarray and therefore would clean it out of their need.

I somehow feel it’s extremely important that he cross this hurdle on his own, and that he understands none of us are entitled to anything in this life. It is important to me my children are grateful, humble, and respectful. I was not. I can go on and on about our differences in upbringing there are many, most importantly of which is a lack of any invested parent on my end. However my behavior either way sucked, and it took me most of my life to relearn a better way. I don’t want my son to have this same struggle.

I’m quite sure the more we see the less desirable versions of ourselves in our young charges that we really become upset. And in these moments it’s difficult to be gentle and nurturing. I want to hug him and help him, and by God I also want to slap him. Such a confusing concoction of emotions.

So the stand-off is this: in an effort to not let him off the hook for accountability and responsibility that he will need in this life, and before he goes away to college, I have removed his privileges. A car we have provided and help pay his insurance on, a phone his parents pay for, etc. Now I can’t figure it out. If I were a senior and had to ride the school bus I would have that room cleaned in 2 hours flat. One swift upswing of motivation, be it rooted in anger or whatever.

Motivation! I am providing the motivation. He has dug his heels in and refused. I have bent and tried a more gentle approach after the storms calm. I had given back the car at least to get to work so he doesn’t use all his money on Uber and Lyft. Again 30 bucks for a ride or clean your room?! I bent to try and be an understanding parent. And my reward for having been a willow tree? He lied about the time he got out of work, and then caused a huge scene and protest. To which Courtney’s beloved co-worker and great friend helped defuse. It takes a village folks it really does! And we are lucky.

In all of this what hasn’t happened is him owning his behavior. He will say things like gee why would I lie? You think because I miss my friends. And that I am controlling his life. Now he is determined that he needs help, is depressed, and doesn’t know why he can’t clean his room. So his statement is that he physically can’t clean his room. Is it odd that I can’t understand this?

I have recognized he was over-scheduled with work and lots of high level courses. I can spot the signs of burn out a mile away, and he kept citing these as reasons to again break the rules. So I’ll offer practical solutions to him. I had suggested before classes began to reduce work hours and focus on school. But I won’t let him out of accountability and responsibility in the name of his emotions. In my opinion this does a person a great disservice.

I’ll meet part way. When he asks for help between one of his three parents, and a multitude of extended family, and even my ex partners who love him, he receives it.

And still nothing gives.

Stuck.

And I miss my son.

His response to this is to lay in his room, when he could have just cleaned the room and step into accountability. We each up the bar on stubborn, when what we really need is to let go….

So internet land help?! Share your experiences as a teen or a parent. How did you get through these battles and not lose your hair or your sanity?

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On becoming real…

I have a relationship with my writing that has developed silently by; that I am only realizing now. If I just trust myself a little (ha) and trust life a little bit, my needs are met much more easily than I ever imagined possible. Writing shows up, and I’m learning to show up for it as well. We have had a tentative courtship for years, but I always RE-coiled as less than worthy, and so writing couldn’t be close either.

Recently I saw the movie a Star is Born. It awakened the young songwriter and poet that I dismissed when I was young. I forgot all the dramatic song singing, all the pretend play, all the notepads filled with writing. I’m slowly remembering them now, going back for my child, reuniting us.

It’s raw and difficult work. It seems so secondary to the pressures of adult life, but something is slowly showing me that it’s actually necessary. The catch to all this new enlightenment ?! I feel everything. I am raw all the time. Vulnerable as a newborn baby. Living new lives within a single life. Defying gravity.

I continue to progress and grow as a Clinician, my sessions deepen and my clients return. I am learning new ways to love and be loved. I can cry when I feel like crying. As a mother I struggle to keep the same rigid beliefs and templates. But I just can’t. I empathize now. I am closer now.

I always thought I was keeping them at a safe distance from me. But really I think I was keeping a self that is so much more fragile than she ever knew safe.

Life is going to touch me now. “I’m a real boy”, the wooden parts abandoned for soft and breakable skin. And this means I am scared to death lately of my own emotions sucking me under. They are giant, terrible and beautiful things. They are mine and I can’t reject them anymore, or hold myself compartmentalized. But I am so very raw.

I’m safe and strong now, and I’m also the small child I was never allowed to be. And that’s confusing and scary. It’s not supposed to be, my backwards life. It’s intense and too much to bear or understand for most people. It’s weird and unknown.

“Tell me something girl, are you happy in this modern world. Or do you need more, is there something else you’re searching for.

“I’m falling’

In all the good times

I find myself longin’ for change.

And in the bad times I fear myself

Tell me something boy, aren’t you tired of trying to fill that void. Or do you need more, ain’t it hard keepin’ it so hard core…

I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in. I’ll never meet the ground. Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us. We’re far from the shallow now.”

The movie was a spiritual experience for me.

My work deepens. No shallow living here.

Part of me still tries to panic as we ready ourselves to create a life and bring them into the world. But that part has grown quieter, it doesn’t run the show anymore. In its absence peace and joy are filling in.

And as an existentially minded person I know beyond a shadow of a doubt the cost of loving with the much of an open heart will be excruciating pain at some point. I can’t use a superstition or an illusion to numb me from that truth.

I always know. I am acutely aware. And the acutely attuned suffer more. I’d take a guess that’s why so many artists numb in ways that destruct themselves, and obliterate their loved ones with them.

And I’m so aware I can’t even do that. The tendencies are all there, Born or learned they are there. They try and seduce me; but there’s just too much life to experience that I must feel. And I could never live with myself if I let those I love suffer with my self destruction. So I recognize I can’t destroy my soul either, by not allowing my emotions, because they overwhelm me.

Everything overwhelms me….

If I don’t feel I can’t art, and if I can’t art what’s the point of it all anyway.

And if I can’t love two feet in…. my kids, my wife and myself….

then I can’t rest.

And if I can’t rest, I can’t write

And if I can’t write I can’t breathe.

I’m two feet in now….

Maybe I should write a song about that,

About what that feels like.

Maybe I will….

Once you realize all your dreams really have come true…. once you’re not running anymore….. you have nothing left to do but surrender into whatever moments life has in store for you. And that’s such a foreign feeling.

I’ve been creating my life for so long, so intensely. I don’t know how to sit back and enjoy everything I’ve worked so hard for. And if I don’t find out how, I’ll drive through the rest of all of our lives frantic and seeking, when everything I wanted is right here.

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Victim or survivor ? What is your story….

Things have been very difficult for me lately. And because of this I’ve lost so much good writing to the madness. (Victim statement eek) To getting caught up explaining myself to sources that have never sought to understand. (I can only choose to stop explaining to those who don’t see). Challenger versus victim.

Let’s put the Karpman Drama Triangle to work right here. The actual truth is that rather than taking my writing away from me, the difficult experiences humble me, and give my writing back to me in a more authentic way. But surrounded by the feeling it doesn’t seem that way.

I am a slave to my triggers right now. And as a mental health counselor RE-visiting this place feels such a threat. It feels like it could take everything away. And when I am in this place I am scared and rabid. I lash out and flood with texts based on the emotions I am feeling.

I don’t like this self. It is an old one. It is a self my critics would like me to be because it will validate their story about me, and for this as much as anything I’ll have the courage to dive into my own behavior and rescue myself out of the perils that are causing this version of myself to be more accessible right now.

I have complex PTSD. Wordy clinical article to distinguish some things

More reader friendly information on C-PTSD

This means that I am hyper vigilant and distrusting primarily when my character is challenged. Because that was the really big problem in my childhood. My grandparents used guilt as a means to try and control me, and so they often told me how I was behaving and why I shouldn’t. No one came along that understood what was going on in my home. This is why I am a fierce advocate in my counseling office of seeing the unseen and unspoken. It was nearly invisible and I suffered but didn’t know what to call it, so I internalized.

Invisible wounds are the most dangerous, both to the wounded, and to those they will unintentionally wound as a result of their pain.

Now as an adult my weapon of choice is awareness and speaking my truth loudly. And yes I too must realize when my perceived truth is clouded by painful Triggers and symptoms of C-PTSD. It is arduous work. And then when I am in it, because of it’s invisibility to others I am sized up very simply as being selfish. Because of who we see a parent should be.

It’s easy to sit in a glass castle and throw stones. Anyone can have an opinion. The internet is rampant with them. The persecutors are ashamed of their own privilege so they lash out at those already afflicted with wounds and wrong them further.

Thankfully I’ve never known and therefore liked easy, but also it has caused me to make things harder than they need to be. I clamp down furiously on my truth and hold on for dear life. I got better at being iron clad over my young years, not being soft and gentle.

Now I’m taking the responsibility to learn this late in life. It’s taken me surrounding myself by people who see the good in me, the true colors, but those too were mostly conditional, and again when my poor behaviors would escalate I would be criticized. But do you know what didn’t happen? No one came along and looked at the whole picture and said hey look at what’s going on here this sounds an awful lot like complex PTSD. Let’s look at your whole life and see what’s going on here. No one besides a few very brave mental health counselors who changed my life.

This is why it’s my greatest privilege in this life to take the heavy heavy burdens of misunderstanding of this nature off of people’s back. They leave them in my office and we hold them tenderly, unpack, RE-frame, develop strategies, and show the importance of the interaction between wiring and experience in shaping a person’s behavior.

We must take responsibility to educate ourselves, to see beneath a surface and try to understand. To see beyond our hurt feelings and stories to look for understanding.

We have two choices with witnessing or being effected by someone’s behavior. Persecution or understanding. If the behavior is absolutely destructive and unsafe then our only responsibility is a boundary and seeking help from a mental health professional.

But most of the time, almost always without fail, if we help someone see the best version of themselves (believe in that story) and accept the parts that hurt too, they become more of who we believe them to be.

Innate in being human is a struggle between our light and dark selves, we all possess the capability for both, and who we become depends on such a complicated variety of factors. But the ingredients for the best outcome include unconditional positive regard (Carl Rogers of course). The magic of counseling is believing in someone’s best self. Seeing the unseen in this way until there is enough encouragement for them to emerge.

I have emerged and yet the journey is never over. If you surround yourself or become bogged down with your critics and you have fragile attachments from the beginning you’re at a great risk.

I have never really wanted to own my whole story. I think that’s why my memoir won’t come. I want to be the strong, not the weak, but I am both. Both a hurt child and an advocate for others. I am a wounded healer, but at the start of my career I’ve been too afraid of being invalidated for my hurts, to allow myself to be whole.

I cut off my beginning and searched frantically to replace it with something that looked better. I might as well have cut off my limbs. My whole story matters here and I don’t tell it because it fills me with shame and self doubt, which threatens the stronger self I’ve built over the years. I don’t tell it because I’m afraid I’ll be viewed with pity or as a victim or accused of that, and that is what every abuse survivor is up against. This is why people don’t speak out.

We would rather not be uncomfortable with someone else’s discomfort, let’s just be honest here. So they shouldn’t really say anything because look at all the mess their speaking up causes. Then someone else will have to feel marginally as uncomfortable as them.

My selves will have to unite into a whole for me to write my memoir. And I’m so afraid it will all return, the nightmares, the insecurity, the foundation always feels like a thin plate of glass no matter how many layers I lay down.

The last time I was vulnerable with one of the two people who you hope will love you unconditionally, he accused me of being emotionally unstable like my mother, and then he died. This was our last interaction.

My children’s father believes me to be selfish and emotionally unstable, and I prove him right with my behavior lashing out in texts. In truth any parent in my position would be stressed and venting. Raising teenagers isn’t for the faint of heart, but when it’s me because of a belief system I’m emotionally unstable. Trigger. I instantly become the less calm and grounded self. This is why considering the source to trust for feedback about yourself is VITAL folks.

And anyone can go to someone for validation and tell them a story and get feedback based on that. Counseling is so much more than that. It’s beyond validation to challenger, and what is your part in this? My part is my triggers and how they cause me to behave and I will always find the courage to face and work on them.

My father, I’ll never know why he didn’t fight harder to protect me if he knew the dysfunction I was in, and why as an adult he wouldn’t be able to connect the dots. I had just been diagnosed with a disease. I was telling a story at that time that mine would be like my mother’s. Toilets filled with blood, multiple bowel resections, daily throwing up, fistulas, and many scary medications. I felt like it was a death sentence. I did feel sorry for myself and like a victim.

My ex husband of course was a replacement for my father. It doesn’t take a genius to see that, so it’s pretty simple to see how seeking his acceptance against all logic still feels important. And this is a beast only I can slay. On long walks, in books, in the counseling office, and in the arms of someone who sees the WHOLE STORY. And someday everyone will know my whole story…

My saving grace?! I can never stay there long. I can never stay in a victim role long because there’s no creativity in it. Through awakening my creative self I’ve found The Karpman Drama Triangle, and am using it constantly. Another tool for healing faulty, surface, thin perception that only leads to inaction and unhappiness.

The Karpman Drama Triangle and Relationships

I still deal with the struggles of Crohn’s Disease. It has made me more compassionate to myself and others. It has taught me to care for my body when it needs. I still struggle with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It helps me see these behaviors in others and to help them find a secure grounding and create new behaviors.

What we all want is to be seen and understood for our whole best selves, to be accepted and encouraged. For someone to see why we act the way we do when we aren’t our best selves. To be understood wholly.

If you can create more of that in yourself for someone else then you will be reaching towards enlightenment. Kindness, compassion, understanding that is not conditional upon something. That is given because you have found it.

This is what I strive for….

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Keep going…. into the fire…

I woke up this morning feeling closer to the ground I want to stand on with my ex-husband. This is what happens when you dig into the wound. When you hunt around for the splinters even as you wince and wonder if you just let the skin grow over it they won’t just stay mildly uncomfortable forever, but at least you won’t have to suffer this intensely.

He is not a threat, these feelings that rise are the threat. The threat here is the pain from still wanting to be seen favorably by him. I can still see his face that day he asked me to marry him. I can still picture the day we held our son for the first time. He knew a little girl me, that no one else in my life now knows anymore. He has pieces of my story no one else ever will. And the tears come. My divorce still hurts. And it isn’t supposed to right ?! I’m gay, and I’ve moved forward. But I can’t ever get back those firsts with that man, they are embedded in my story forever. And I choose whether they are splinters, or protective layers I honor because they are part of me. I don’t want them to be splinters anymore. He wasn’t a mistake, and I wasn’t either, and our children are amazing. We still made them, no matter how much I move forward that’s still a truth.

I still want to be seen favorably as we all long for. I want to be seen for my best parts, as we all do, but I think lacking a core family perhaps makes this a more desperate need in me. I wanted to move forward and keep my home base. Was this really so wrong ? If you had seen my whole life would you really fault me for this? And he saw it as no one else did, and has blocked those parts, because to continue to see me favorably only prevents him from moving forward.

Human beings have to tell a story they can live with to be able to move forward. Otherwise it’s nearly unbearable, especially for the deeply feeling. A gift from my life is that I always chose good people. I had seen so many bad, that this was a priority. So each time I held on tightly and then realized I still had places I needed to go, I internalized all that responsibility for the hurt. I was the bad guy I never wanted to be, rather than someone who wanted a safe home base and to also explore the world. The problem was my only model for a safe home base was in romantic partnership. I had my wires crossed. How else was I supposed to obtain that intense closeness I always yearned for. I wanted stability, but I couldn’t be stable.

That is the code I cracked for this relationship. Through being a counselor I heal right along with my clients. I found a self that was safe in herself, finally, what I had been desperately seeking. Along my way here people thought it was them I was wanting and needing. That must have felt intoxicating. To be so needed by another. Of course I was charming, that always was my true self, but I couldn’t maintain it if it wasn’t real. If it was a self I was trying on, but couldn’t keep. Because I would get scared and lost again, and then move quickly forward leaving my feelings, and my ex partners to wonder what happened,

Except now I could explain this whole thing, and have tried, but by now their own work keeps them needing a boundary against me, and what I have to learn is that we did have meaningful time, that wasn’t just erased by the ending. The whole story isn’t ruined by the ending. I truly believe that.

Can’t they forgive me for what I didn’t know then? Didn’t they know me well enough to see through clear lenses after?

I still love him, that is the problem. I wouldn’t get so hurt if I didn’t. Hate and love are from the same point of origin, they are both love. You have to love someone to hate them.

Not in the way both of us had hoped when we created new lives together. He stays in his feelings. I had to disconnect from mine enough to move forward. Doesn’t mean I don’t have them, doesn’t mean his way is better.

I’ve tried to write him long letters explaining my growth. Each is received first as too long, that is always pointed out. You’re too much Christina, because that’s not a trigger. Because that’s not THE trigger. And then regardless of the truth I have laid out on the page it is ignored.

True feelings and vulnerability were my weapon of choice against so many confusing realities. If I shout my truth out loud I’ll have to live up to it. I’ll force myself to not comfort at the expense of anyone around me. Very few of us are always our best selves are we ?! Did I somehow miss this mark other people are capable of? Or am I just more honest about it?

The truth is I had such a deficit of comfort that the first half of my life was spent almost solely in that pursuit. I picture myself for a long time, and when I got diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease after fighting so hard for a better life it felt like a death sentence. It cost me a marriage and a partnership again, the dark place I ended up in.

And again all along the way were people shaming me for seeking comfort. My own father sizing me up as “daughter your Facebook posts reflect some frightening mental states lately, not unlike your mother .” If he wasn’t there for much of the journey, completely inexplicably, then I wasn’t going to allow him to add insult to abandonment. Our journey knowing one another ended there, again. Abandoned again, after the warmth of hope had crept in. This has wandered to another blog post.

My conclusion: I won’t get as triggered if I don’t seek, expect, hope, crave, beg for understanding from those who don’t have it to give. For they are at another place in their journey. Perhaps where I was long ago, just needing comfort. He is still hurting and I would persecute him for what? Being mad at me?!

Hate is just love in another costume.

To be continued …..witness my pain and my process, weaving in and out of truth and understanding, sitting with my feelings. I’m not going anywhere this time. As my own parent I won’t abandon me when I’m not my best self. I am my person.

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On Narcissism, Empathy, and the Many Shades of Grey in Between…..

So now I am sitting here thinking about “who is this self so long ago who fell in love with this man, and who was this man for that matter?” And perhaps more importantly what did both of these people need and want? What were they looking for, and how did that translate into finding one another, and believing this would answer their insecurities about where their lives were going.

I recall at one point wanting a Nintendo more than anything. Those shiny controllers with their attractive two red A and B buttons and directional pad. My grandparents would hem and haw about how expensive and unnecessary, and I would be relentless until I got what I wanted. I am still relentless in pursuit of my dreams. Relentless at the expense of others is what those who have been victimized by me cry out. It was easy to believe I was bad or wrong. I always had looked for ways this was true. I remember the very first time that he posted a MySpace status update saying, “so I married a narcissistic lesbian”, to the tune of “so I married an axe murderer”. Might as well have been. I remember already having spent years fearing being a narcissist. I poured over texts on the subject and was my own judge and juror, always finding myself guilty. So realizing I was meant to be with women only solidified those negative beliefs. The proverbial nail in the coffin so to speak.

Here are a couple of my favorite articles on Narcissism and Empathy. It is rarely cut and dried, all or nothing. A relationship between two people is a complicated alchemy full of lots of external factors. All people are capable of light and dark, whichever side presents itself more depends on many factors. Where they just came from, who they have been around, what they want, what they need, how life has touched them up until this point, their belief systems, and on and on. If only we sought to understand for the sake of understanding and not to reduce our discomfort by being able to label something. If only we sought to understand for the growth that it provides, and not to appease the ego. 

They are favorites because they don’t encourage a victim perspective. Why the World Needs Narcissists.

A letter to those who call themselves empaths

I was forged in narcissism. A narcissistic mother. But not someone who was merely selfish, not somewhere on a spectrum, but fully disengaged as a mother. She never became a mom. I spent so much of my life fearing that would be my fate, when I was never disengaged in the same way that she was. I was off in my head often. I still am. I was there trying to make full well sure that I didn’t harm my children in the same way. All the while the very thing I feared creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. To be in my head afraid of the thing took my presence. To focus as hard as I possibly could on the goal of not being something, created so much of what I feared. Crippling self-doubt. Trapped inside my head, one of the only things drawing me out was the security of the joy I was able to find when engaged with another adult. Don’t leave me alone with me I used to think. I could be like her. I could hurt my kids, but if I stayed busy, and active, and around others I felt this was less likely to happen. It made me be outside my head. When I was alone with the kids I felt so anxious in ways I didn’t even understand that I felt like I was distant from them. My assessment of course reflected the harshest possible evaluation. If an another adult was around, particularly a fun one, I could take a deep breath and relax. This represented a safety to me that kept me from causing damage. A damage I only anticipated as a possibility and therefore dreamed it into a very real threat. I was nothing if not adaptive…. and to be successful at adapting one must separate themselves from their feelings enough to observe the best course of action. Hence my lifelong mission to reconnect to my feeling self.

So much shame lies here. By looking at others and thinking that should apply to me, taking for granted the differences in many other areas. 

I remember playing video games on the Nintendo and Super NES system. I really liked Mario brothers and Adventure Island. I remember being very impatient playing these games. Watching my grandma play was like watching paint dry, lol. Watching anyone for that matter. I didn’t want to learn from watching. I wanted to be the one playing always. I ran quickly forward. I wasn’t the type to fully explore for all the secrets and hidden things. I was the type to rush forward and see how fast I could get through a level. I was anything but conservative and careful. I still live like this. It has made for a very interesting life, full of lessons. Clean up on aisle 9! I live life as if I have unlimited lives, just like I did in the video games.

Another thing Martha Beck said in this last video lesson was: Comedy is just pain + time. Once you are far away enough from the situation you can see it with a different clarity that allows you to be able to capture your own truths, as you saw them, and make them into something someone can benefit from in some way.

This is the mission that I am on currently. From the secure space I now occupy in my life humor is a much larger part of my everyday world. I think perhaps when it comes to writing I have an outdated version of myself in my mind. One who takes everything seriously and who isn’t that funny. My wife finds me funny all the time. It’s interesting who you are able to be in the presence who believe in the best possible version of you. And how easily if you don’t fully believe this yourself, someone can pull you back to a place of self-doubt based on their opinion. This is the necessity of the solidly grounded self. This is what I am working on right now, and writing into and through my feelings is my cement, mold, and level.

This process of being so utterly happy and wanting to bring another life into this world as a result, and not being able to get what I want right when I want it, is what has brought me to my knees. It is forcing me to sit still in feelings, to see myself in new ways, and to have an even deeper level of empathy for all of those around me. It is bringing me even closer to myself, uniting all my broken pieces. I am able to truly connect to how those around me feel in a way that is calm, careful, and present. For me this is truly being entirely re-wired. It turns out there is a lot to this wiring stuff. I am beginning to believe we are all capable of a lot more than our experiences in this life lend us to be. As I am able to watch myself become a more whole person, a more kind person, a more attentive one, a wiser one. I know that it is possible.

It’s a complex mixture of having the right amount of support, along with the right amount of accountability. Too much of one, or too little of the other and its a dangerous concoction. I am very enthusiastic to continue to share this journey and everything I am fortunate enough to be able to become aware of, to learn, and to share.