the knitted wicker furniture at M.W.'s house
Writing this post today has been one suckass experience. Every attempt to sit and type about some topic other than what sent me into the Land O'Franco-American has ended in writer's block.
So now that it's close to my midnight NaBloPoMo deadline, I have nothing left I can do but write about yesterday. It feels like I'm getting out the shop-vac to hose up the emotional vomit.
I kinda felt like yesterday's pictorial was a bit of a cop-out as a NaBloPoMo entry...but only kinda. It did meet my personal goal of being process oriented, that much I can say for sure.
I only ate 1 can of Spaghettios. But I ate it as breakfast, basically.
Right after leaving a message for my therapist.
I have a therapist. Not the PT kind, although I have those, too. This is the talking kind. I see her on an as-needed basis. She thankfully squeeched me in for an emergency appointment yesterday and we now have two more dates lined up this month. Seems I have moved from as-needed to I'z-needin'.
I'm under a lot of stress right now related to the lawsuit/accident. Honest to god, I really really can't wait for this all to be over with. I am not fooling myself into believing that the case will one day be over and that later that night the faeries will sprinkle pixie dust and wands will be waved and I will wake up the next day and all will be right with the world (please-please-please). I'm not that deluded (cherry on top?). But I am hopeful (and I do believe in faeries, I do, I do) and I do hold fast to the possibilty (fantasy?) that I will make a big leap forward once this chapter of my life is over. I'm really holding on to the notion that the case will end, a door will close, and another one will open. I don't even mind if the new door doesn't open right away and I'm stuck in a hallway for a bit. Whatever. Fine by me. But I am very ready for this door to close. I am sick to death of all the details being all up in my face. And I really hate feeling like I'm stuck-on-stupid over something that happened 2-1/2 years ago.
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The accident created many things that were therapy worthy...flashbacks, insomnia, anxiety, issues of self-worth, body image stuff, and I've dealt with every one of them...although it would seem that lawsuit shit is like peeling another layer of the onion.
There is another big thing the accident created, and that is Relatus-Interuptus.
You see, TheMIG and I met only 3 months before the accident. Our relationship was kind of propelled from zero-to-sixty in like, ohhhh...3 seconds. We kind of skimmed right over the phases that a developing relationship would go through.
Needless to say, we have some issues. I think that the stress I am feeling right now is making them more difficult to deal with than if they came up at some other time, but there isn't much I can do about the stress level right now.
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So the big question I've been asking myself over the last few hours (aren't you all just dying for a knitting post yet??) is why I get into a fight or flight response when someone is trying to organize my thoughts for me.
When I am having fffffeeeeeelings, I can usually articulate them, but not always in a way that is organized. My feelings can babble, like a brooke. Meander, like a stream. Roar, like rapids (wanna get in a canoe and go for a ride?? wheee!!).
Given some time, some yarn and some needles, I can usually go and knit-think-knit-think-knit for a bit and come back with something useful. It might not be perfectly linear, but when I can do it, it is something that even a left-brainer can make some sense out of.
But if someone (and by someone, I mean someone I am emotionally invested in) wants me to organize the thoughts faster than I am ready, or if they want to organize them for me so they can, oh....maybe check for understanding and carry on a conversation with me....I freak.
Fight. Or. Flight.
If I even get any sense at all that someone is organizing my feelings, I freak. It makes me feel like they are taking notes, making bullet points, and creating a power point presentation (and sometimes they are...at least two out of those three). So as soon as I get a whiff of the organizing, I yell or hang up or run out of the room or want to leave everything behind...until I start breathing again.
And I'm not sure why that happens. So I'm going to go crawl into bed with my knitting and some tea and see if I can figure out why the fuck I am so terrified by someone wanting to help me be understood.
4 comments:
Hon, I'm the same way. I don't think I'm a control freak (although I suppose I have *some* control freak tendencies) but it's an area in which I feel like all will be lost if I relinquish control. If I can't get the feelings organized on my own I try to bury them. Healthy, I know. :P
That is really a bummer, but what a good thing to know about yourself and be able to tell someone else.
The reason I think it's a bummer is just that it is bound to make communications difficult, of course, especially with a man you might really really love. In my experience, men, even creative men, tend to be "bullet-point" types of people, whereas women, at least creative women, tend to be more process-oriented. This is not a hard-and-fast division, of course; that would be stupid. But I have come to see men as tending to be more goal-driven, and I think this explains the disjunct in styles. So many men have expressed to me in all kinds of contexts that they just really want -- need -- to get to the point and be sure they've understood the point so they can progress to a goal and feel confident doing so, and safe.
I tend to do a lot of bullet-pointing, too, but only after I've thought for a long, long time about something, and usually (hopefully) only for myself -- except, of course, when someone (who? who?) demands it to prove I've listened and understood his point of view. Yet it's kind of funny that I would describe people as being so different by gender when I, a kind of manly woman, am in a relationship with a guy who has a lot of typically-thought-of-as-womanly emotional traits. We each go over the very lines I've sketched here regularly. But it always comes back to that, that he is goal-focused (and tells me so), and I am process-driven. And there's no changing that, nor should there be. It's good for both of us, though sometimes in some rather painful ways. He has learned not to let me fly away in a panic, and I have learned civilized ways not to let him force me to commit to a chain of consequences I can see forming in the wake of words but which I neither understand nor embrace yet.
Don't they say "It's always darkest before it's dawn"? I hope this is the case for you. It's tough right now, but soon you will be able to close that door and move on.
Hearing about your history with TheMIG is wild. My partner and I (of 15 years now) started dating a few months before my surgery and just like your relationship went from barely-know-each-other to seriously intense overnight. But hey, if someone hangs around during the hardest times and stays with you for another two plus years, they certainly seem like people worth some serious knit-think time.
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