The Inevitable

Saturday, October 31 2009

This is a dangerous entry to write because I sit poised on the edge of more disasters than usual. There's nothing exactly new involved but the emphasis is more personal than external. As long as I keep quiet or manage to be discreet enough, the problems can be survived or managed. Now would be a very bad time to be told to shit or get off the pot because I'm not even sure how I'd answer.

There's an old saying in the circles where I used to roam. Only those you care most about can hurt you enough to matter. There's another that seems appropriate as well. Sometimes, you have to hurt the ones you love...

Sometimes, those external problems and internal problems combine into one ugly ass tornado of misery. This is difficult for me because I am normally the very soul of discretion. While I was trying to claw my way out of a deep depression and thought I had succeeded, I got a phone call. It was my mother who decided that she was going to solve all my problems for me...by triggering pretty much every self destructive impulse I have.

I credit her with meaning well along with my father. It's no secret that I was intensely suicidal for much of the last decade I spent living with them. Going into specific reasons why would be counterproductive even at this point but I learned a few things about survival. One of the most important survival strategies was to manage how much influence they had in my life.

I used to claim that I would rather die than be like them. Since I gave up that option, there's not much I can do to defend myself. The funny thing is that I don't object to anything specific in this attempt to take my life back over. I object to the fact of anyone taking my plans and using them to hurt me. That's right. I used the specter of this very outcome and used it to implement a plan to clean the house and escape my essentially life-long black sheep status.

In fact, this was no mere plan on the shelf. The first stages were implemented but we ran out of time before leaving for our "vacation" in New York. I put that in quotes only because it took on connotations of family obligations and we spent most of our time trying to deal with my illness. Other vacation-like activities involved paying bills online from out of state for many reasons but mainly because paying bills aggressively was part of the plan. We returned hoping to enjoy the Pearl Jam show tonight and move on to do more.

Instead, I walked into a fucking ambush. My father used a flimsy excuse to explore a bathroom that our questionable water quality has turned into a swamp. The plan called for this room to be cleared out completely so that the myriad problems could be isolated then handled. It was the epitome of my new shaving away at the problem strategy. It took forever but I managed to turn theory into working practical plans.

Thank God for Pearl Jam! I am going into great detail about the concert in another entry. We'll leave the concert, itself, at the fact that it was one of the single most healing events of my life. In fact, I'm listening to some Pearl Jam music right now and it still works.

There are so many negative beliefs about myself that I take completely for granted. It doesn't have to be that way and I thought I had made a lot of progress fighting those beliefs. I do not claim to be perfect or the ideal person. There are things about myself that I have to accept and others that I can change. Among those that I can change, there are those that I will choose to invest in changing.

Feeling the need to remind you that I do not claim ideal status is part of buying into those negative beliefs. You guys know better. I am happy to admit that the rest of you out there play a big part in who I am. I know I am a decent person because good people like me and seek to treat me well.

There are scars all over me that are invisible to the naked eye, of course. Then again, they were never that tough to see. Whenever I could, I stood in the doorway of a room if I entered it at all. The doorway is the safest place to stand when you know there's always a good chance you'll want to get out quickly. After all, it doesn't matter if they started off angry with you or not. You make a good target so your best chance is to sense it coming and make your escape.

Never allow anyone to see you enjoy anything. If you like it, there's always the chance that someone will decide taking it away makes a good punishment. Happiness is dangerous. If the football team you like has gone all the way, Super Bowl Sunday is an ideal moment to ask what you're going to do with the rest of your life. Holidays are meant for discussions of things like grades because you might get comfortable otherwise. The nicest of gifts is a great opportunity to note how much money gets wasted on you.

If you're lucky, there comes a point in your life when you decide that this is all wrong. In my case, a whole bunch of people have helped me decide this a little at a time. It takes a long time to acquire so many scars so it takes just as much time and/or effort to heal from them. My friends and others who have acted in love have come and gone in generations. I miss those who have gone but they did what they could while they could do it. According to them, I did what I could for them as well.

The point is that there has been progress if slow and difficult. I am capable of trust now even if I don't trust easily. At the Pearl Jam concert, I experienced joy and security at the same time. Here was this perfect situation where I was with the woman I loved surrounded by pure happiness. No one took that away from me, no one tried to take that away and disapproval felt pointless instead of menacing.

I suppose the best that I can do is continue to implement my plans as best I can. That involves managing my illness. It involves slicing away at tasks that lead me toward my goals. It means learning to say no and to ignore tasks that lead me away. It means embracing the good things in life and accepting what I cannot change within the bad.

I need to accept me for who I am but knowing that means acceptance of a moving target. I must continue to train for self improvement while accepting the fact that I will continue to get sicker. I must continue to exercise those parts of me that comprise my identity. That means continuing to be a writer, an appreciator of life and someone who helps manage the people around me.

That last part is the toughest and weirdest for anyone unused to me. The greater part of what I ask in life is to have control over myself and influence over my immediate surroundings. Part of managing my own life is managing how my life interacts with those around me. Melissa is an easy example because we share so many goals. We want greater control over our finances and a cleaner house for two examples.

I refuse to be a tyrant even if I could have it in me to push people around without them laughing me off. Therefore, I need to point out to others how they can reach their goals. Some have called this manipulation but I think I'm awfully open about it. I believe the most difficult part of what I need to do is to manage others without becoming a tyrant or a wannabe dictator.

So, the lessons learned from this recent conflict may still be coming in. I have to stop trusting the wrong people so darn easily. Does the fact that you mean no harm make me hurt any less? No. I need to implement my plans without so much dithering before the fact. This may mean stepping on a few more toes and bruising a few more egos but I believe my apologies will be accepted at least by those who want less dithering. The time between finishing a plan and putting it into action has to be as short as humanly possible.

Also, one nasty fact remains unchanged. The shit may have hit the fan but this was worse than it sounded. All of the external dangers out there that I mentioned continue to lurk as if they were intelligent and evil intentioned. The energy used here was wasted on things that should have been secondary priorities. In the weeks to come, I need to focus on taking some of these problems out of the picture. Otherwise, I really could be up shit creek without a paddle.