Day 29: My House

In the middle of our street. Our house… Yeah, I couldn’t stop. Me and the ear worms. My mind never shuts up. I can be singing two songs at once, like now. Confusing? Maybe, but mash-ups are a thing so I’m going with it! Weird is good.

Today’s delving question is…If your mind was a house, what would the house look like?

I’d have to say, it would be something between Jack Skellington’s house from the Nightmare Before Christmas with its odd, thin, crookedly angled towers and the Addams family house full of oddities and secret rooms that lead into one another or dump you out the front. Even the gate is aware and traps people in order to keep them out. Add a moat and you have it. Sounds pretty close to me.

There would have to be an attic or two full of thoughts I haven’t seen for years, all dusty and forgotten and a basement where I’ve shoved the things I don’t want to think about, overgrown with thorns and vines to dissuade myself from getting too close. There’s a mysterious beast living down there that fires up the anger at the drop of a hat without my knowing why…most likely because something buried there almost came to light.

The rooms are lushly furnished with velvet drapes and fancy moldings, full of scroll work, carvings and walls covered in paintings. Shadows pass along the walls, eyes shine from the darkness and dramas play out behind every door with a familiar set of characters, lit by candles along the walls. There are often earthquakes that shake the building, like the House of Usher, it’s built on shaky ground but on the bright side, the curse is a myth and retrofits have begun.

There are always new visitors who appear from nowhere and create their own stories; each room is populated by at least one. Some rooms are long neglected and cold, some warm and inviting full of laughter and books. It often rains and plunges the house into darkness, making the shadows darker and a heavy feeling overtakes the place, but like all storms they pass.

It’s the most comforting of houses though its labyrinthine halls each are haunted, it holds sweet memories of the past. sweet smells of celebrations past float through and make the paintings that remind come alive. Plants and flowers line window boxes, a touch of oft unnoticed femininity.

There is a room, of course, of kitsch, complete with velvet Elvis, pink flamingos and various bits of ephemera from different periods. There are lost rooms mixed up and uncatalogued; a ticket from a play, a velvet coat from the opera in the style of Mozart, a 1940’s style phone. It is the room of lost things; a place to sift through and reminisce on a rainy day with a pot of tea.

I love the place, gain solace from it. Anyone else would get lost. Hell, I do, but it’s at least an entertaining place to spend an afternoon, or a lifetime.

Day 28: Function

Do you consider yourself high-functioning or low-functioning?

Well hell, can’t there be a mid-grade in there somewhere? I mean, some days I’m on it and sharp as I used to be. Some days I’m a little ball of  nerves on the floor. For the most part, I tend to float somewhere in between, or at least swinging back and forth several times a day. (Insert Pit and the Pendulum joke here) I have bad moments and good.

So the question is a little hard to answer. I can’t really tell. It depends on your specific definition of functional.  If I could see myself from the outside it might be clear. I suppose I can tell by how well my life is working for me (not very) and how I get through day to day, but I also happen to be a bit of a perfectionist and intensely judgmental when it comes to myself. The vision must be blurred from my view.

I have a lot of people say that I’m such a strong person. That speaks to function a bit. I take care of my kid, I get meals made, I keep us roofed and clothed but in terms of thriving, not so much. I’d like to be able to plan crafts and activities for us, take him places and not have everything be a spur of the moment thing. I’d like to have birthdays planned and do vacations and have my house perfectly clean. From that point of view, I’m a big walking mess.

I manage most days at work, I manage the house by myself. I do everything alone. I function. The machine is in order, but it could use a good tune-up for high precision performance. I need a little loving care, some oil, some attention paid. If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s the importance of maintenance in all areas. In the absence of any caring company, and that’s been made quite clear lately, I have to look to myself for these things. My relationships are the least functional things I have going on. Not functioning at all, truth be told. My understanding is that relationships bear the heaviest toll in this affliction, and so in that category, I do believe my mechanism is broken.

A little break somewhere where I didn’t have to think of anything, some invigoration, a change…

I’d love to finally get to Britain. All of those plans fell through. In looking at what would bring me to life and that would do it I believe. Happiness heals so much. Nothing would make me happier.

Happy leads to enthusiasm which leads to action which is the essence of living. That’s where I’m hoping to get. Back to entering contests to get there. Until then, I’ll plod along a little broken with the check engine light on…

Day 27: Bad Habit

Do you have any bad habits?

Some days I think I am a walking bad habit. I mean, anyone who would stick by me on my bad (and surly) days must be a total glutton for punishment. Beyond that, I covered a lot under the self-destructive behavior post, but one habit above all others has been quickly dismantling me. It’s an old habit I learned somewhere along the way as a kid to self-sooth. I’ve seen myself do it while being aware and wanted to slap myself silly for being unable to stop myself, but I really have no other strategy. It’s the habit of calming myself with food.

I’m not sure where that was first learned. I come from hearty stock and my grandparents made food an event. Whenever I was upset, I turned to it for solace. Maybe it made me feel loved, or at home,  I don’t know, but shoving my face into a vat of ice cream does somehow make everything feel better for a while. Carbs, my friend. are king in that battle. Cakes, pastries, etc.

Something remarkable happened a while back. I became aware that my son was allergic to wheat and we cut it all out. I cut out all grains, my overwhelming cravings seemed to stop. I lost 100 pounds and seemed to have absolutely no interest in food whatsoever. It was the greatest gift I’d ever had, but then something, and I truly can’t remember what, made me slip.

I think that while I changed my diet and it worked marvelously, the underlying coping mechanism is still there. The first really big stressor that came along, and there were actually a few, my car breaking down, deaths, mental difficulties, and my relationship falling apart, it all pointed me toward my age-old friend, food. (You know, that pizza, you haven’t had one in a long time…wink, wink!)

That vat of Ben and Jerry’s called my name! I never did come up with new soothing techniques so what was I to do? I ended up binge stuffing into my face all the wrong things. I’ve gained back a good 20 ponds over the holidays and I’m so upset I could cry, which of course feeds the cycle.

So, “rewarding” myself by punishing myself and making everything worse is a heinous habit and that is really what it is. I learned to do it. I can learn not to. I can train my brain to turn to something else. It may take forever. I really wish that I was back to the point where I could take food or leave it. That was a dream. Being calm and not needing a coping mechanism may be the key to that, but I’m not sure. I know I feel bad now; sick and inflamed and just bloated. It’s enough already. I refuse to return to my former state of manatee look-a-like. I refuse!

I’m going back on that wagon and looking for better ways to distract myself from what I feel I need to escape from. If I can turn myself into one of those broads who copes by exercising, like Dexter’s sister Deb who coped with dating a serial killer by hitting the treadmill like a madwoman, well, I’ll be living the dream. Too bad I really hate the hell out of exercise. There must be one! I could always just start drinking again…

Day 26: Character

Name three fictional characters you relate to.

Well, I’ve already covered two here. I have a thing for villains I suppose, but really, the self-destructive behavior that I relate to, the loneliness, the abandonment, have come from a deeper archetype that at least Hook can be said to resemble in his character makeup. There is no greater tragic heroine or symbol of the abandoned and used. So, after my beloved Captain Hook and the Evil Queen, the third answer would have to be Ophelia.

I know that I mirror this pattern at the very least in all of my intimate relationships. They tend to turn into the be all and end all. I want them to be the one so much that I ignore everything else, lose myself, defend their intentions and in the end, usually end up letting them kill me on the inside because I wouldn’t heed anyone else’s warning. In the midst, my every thought is bent on it, looking for fractures and then talking myself out of them, or feeling the pain of them as though they’ve already happened. It really is enough to drive someone mad. It’s a bit like your mind making up scenes for itself and then acting them out as if they were really happening. It finds some minute anecdotal evidence and runs with it. That’s sort of another story…

Briefly I relate to, the Queen, getting older and fearing her younger replacement, Hook, being wounded and left all alone, and Ophelia, losing her already shaky place in the world, devalued by every man in her life she looked to. They are all models of what I can become if I don’t reign in my moods and reactions.

The queen is full on wrath and comes to the surface when I’m angry.(That heart collection starts to look enticing…) Hook is my loneliness and pining for understanding. He’s wounded and then turns on a dime to anger. (I’ll make you feel something for what you’ve done to me and for mocking me on top of it!). Ophelia is the hopelessness. The loss of the envisioned future that was probably all in her imagination to begin with; the sinking I feel when that realization of loss hits and the depression comes on and the seeking out of that outcome.

My list isn’t so cheerful when you look but that all have their fabulous side. The Queen is beautiful and has mad magic skills. Hook has style and deep feeling, which I love. Ophelia has a determination and a courage to look head on into what Hamlet couldn’t, even if it wasn’t healthy. Gloomy gloom, gloom. One day I may find someone who mirrors my droll side. I’m sure there are many if I look. At one time, I was an angry anxious mess in the vein of Basil Fawlty, but without the hi-jinks. I love Black Adder, though  am hopefully not that mean, Abby Normal in the Christopher Moore novels is frightfully close in her style and dryness, but for now, these are the three. I’ll pick up the jokes on another day.

Day 25: Understanding

What’s one thing you wish non-borderlines could understand?

Intensity. One word sums it up better than a scroll of words a mile long. I wish people could feel, just for one second how deeply the emotions sink in, the fear, the anger, the pain, and on a good day, the love. Sometimes things affect me so intensely it seems like I can’t survive it, or don’t want to. I’ve written at length about the waves of emotion, highly charged and changeable like the tide. One small gust of wind and everything moves in a different direction, powerful enough to suck you and anyone nearby under. 

To the outside, nothing may have happened, nothing discernible anyway, but we will have registered a ton of information and triggers that cause avalanche to break inside us. Not seeing the ton of data that we see coming in must look rather like watching someone walk down the street making wild hand gestures and facial expressions only to realize later that they have a bluetooth ear bud in. They look crazy and overly dramatic, but that’s because you can’t see that there’s something else they’re hearing or seeing that you can’t. Like I’ve said before, it’s no superpower and a lot of what registers is wrong or misinterpreted. I know my satellite dish needs a good cleaning, or at least a change in the filter.

This one’s short and sweet because I’ve said it all before, but it truly is the most important point I wish was obvious. The emotions  run deep and beyond intense. If I overreact, well, it’s because I’m reacting to how big it feels to me. It’s a hard one to understand if you haven’t been there. I can be content being considered a drama queen. Everything is dramatic to me but that’s not all bad. As much as there is, it’s wonderful to feel. You know you’re alive and that’s deserving of big!

Day 24: Redo

If you could pick one year of your life to give back and start over, which one would it be?

I’m leaning strongly toward this past year. It has, well, it’s stunk. Actually, to be honest, the year before from November on pretty much bit. All my troubles started when I made simple little cleaning mistake. I turned my dining room chairs upside down and put them up on the lip of the table so that I could clean the floor easier, the way they do in restaurants.

Long story short, I bent down to pick up something and hit the chair, which turned over and hit me square on the head. These are solid wooden chairs and I felt dizzy and weird afterward but I never lost consciousness or anything like that, I was just out of sorts.

What I did feel was my neck crunch downward. That’s a big deal for anyone but for me, someone who’s already had a broken neck, it caused a lot of problems. That one mistake would have been huge to take back. Everything after that went downhill, nerve damage, random numbness that led to panic attacks and eventually, my breakdown. I made some lousy decisions and my mood began slipping only down.

It’s true that I should have taken better care of myself, respected myself more, taken  more time off to recover so that I could fully heal. Then maybe things wouldn’t have snowballed the way they did. If I had fully focused on myself, things would have turned out much differently.

Of course, now I’m finally dealing with some things I truly need to. It wasn’t all bad, but I could have gotten to the same place a lot easier.  I could have eased off my relationship, given myself time to grieve something that showed signs of ending instead of holding on to false hopes. The emotional turmoil has been truly overwhelming. Without a chair to the head, I imagine the whole world looks much clearer.

I could redo a bunch of years. Stopped myself from getting married, decided to finish college, moved away from everyone and started over somewhere new when everything fell apart, taken better care of my teeth… though all of those things have made me grow as a person. My regrets show me what I value. I can still change some of those things, but the health things are huge. The self-care, the self-respect, the need to truly take care of yourself. If anything has been the big thematic lesson of the past year, it’s the importance of  care and maintenance.

If you love something, show it, take care of it, spend time. attention, and effort. Don’t let the important things slide. Don’t put it off and most importantly, take care of yourself! Nobody else will…

Day 23: Perception

How do you think other people see you?

When I decided the title, it was so hard not making this a William Castle joke with the Tingler “Percepto!” ad…any excuse to use Vincent Price! But hey, Joan Crawford is more apt here.

You know, judging by the feedback, I’d have to say that people tend to see me a bit like Joan Crawford, erratic, unhappy, impossible to please, and likely to snap at any moment, especially since most people misread my sadness for anger because, well, that’s just my face.

Pain looks like anger. Sadness looks like anger. Ambivalence…you get the picture. I’m still pretty sure that one of my bosses is convinced that I have secret ninja skills and that I may strike at any second, which really cracks me up. I may or may not foster that misconception.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen pictures of me when I’m just sitting normally, not in any particular mood and I do indeed have resting bitch face. I can see how people assume irritability but usually, I’m just deep in thought making up a story about this or that. While I do have big mood shifts, I’m usually focused inward with them, meaning there’s not likely to be a spree with an ax in my future, yay for everyone!

The one thing I will concede to is that I can be kind of depressing. I’ve heard that for a very long time and I think there’s a big perception that I”m like Debbie Downer from Saturday Night Live (Wah wah). I do tend to see the dark side to every situation and that’s not a helpful quality at times. My friend once told me I should have had the job of coming up with the plethora of ways people could die on Six Feet Under because my worst case scenario brain comes up with some doozies to worry about. ( Did I just nick an artery shaving my legs? O~o)

Of course, I can only go by the bit of feedback I get and I can’t assume that it’s been 100% honest. I’ve had tons of people comment that I’m funny as well, but that tends to come and go depending on my outlook. I see a lot of things as funny and laugh to myself all the time. I suppose if I wasn’t so shy or such a neurotic mess  and shared what I was thinking, a lot more people would think I was at least mildly amusing. I’m sure when things die down a bit with what’s going on I’ll find some hilarity in it. I usually do after the fact, especially when looking at what I’ve been acting like. Sort of like Johnny Depp said in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas…you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way but you can’t control it. (This is bat country!)

Another thing I’ve been told time and time again is how calming I am and how consoling, which is very good for the job I do, but my gosh, for an anxiety ridden afore-mentioned neurotic mess, I can’t help but crack up at that one too.  I’ve got Panic Disorder for crying out loud! Get with the program people! I’m, of course, happy to be there for people so that there’s at least something positive I can offer. Being here to help people through tough times and to be a witness to their story is what appealed to me in the job. I’m loving and empathetic but man does it go straight to the heart and stay.

I’d love to be one of those carefree, smiling, laughing, joke-telling people who other people like to be around. I’m probably never going to be a calm person, despite the good sponge thing I can do when the occasion calls for it. I suppose until something radical changes and I start jumping off things for adrenaline’s sake (yeah…never) and screaming “Woo!”, not much will change in the perception department. I’m going for smaller changes to begin with.

If people stick with me over time, I hope the result will be a shift from seeing me as a complete mess to someone they’re happy they stayed with. It’s been a rather tough time and the ones that stick are keepers I think. I’ll swing back again. In the end though, I need to stop worrying so much about what people think and try harder to reflect the truth. Then the right folk find you…like people who get all your jokes and make them right back at you.

Day 22: Realization

Pick a random story from your childhood.

The reason I’m picking something not so nice is because a) I tend not to remember the nice things, which is sad, and b) I managed in one fail swoop to accidentally traumatize my son yesterday. I’m not terribly good at sneaking around and he saw a truth that I wish he hadn’t. On the bright side, through his tears he managed to tell me he wouldn’t be needing therapy. I felt bad but it was only a matter of time.

As for me, I have many a traumatic story from my childhood but I’m going for the one that isn’t really that bad. It’s a similar kind of thing.

I don’t remember how old I was, but I imagine I was close to my son’s age. It was Christmas eve and my parents made me go to bed ridiculously early. It was a long time to lay there in the dark thinking.

At some point I remembered that we didn’t leave cookies out for Santa. I heard everyone downstairs playing music and whatnot so I knew Santa hadn’t come yet. I wanted to remind them all before it was too late.

I remembered running down the stairs  past my grandmother in the den who yelled at me not to go into the living room. Adjacent to the living room was the dining room and as I ran to see my grandfather sitting in his chair next to the fireplace, out of the corner of my eye I saw that my parents were hard at work putting together a tall, pink, Barbie dream house.

Instinctively I put my hands over my eyes while frantically trying to tell my grandpa that we needed to put out the cookies.  He assured me that it would be done and to go back to bed. It’s funny but I knew. I knew before I saw it but I pretended that I didn’t and let my mom walk me back up to my bedroom while they finished their stuff.

She tried to grill me on what I’d seen, but I just replied that I saw nothing and kept asking about the cookies and the fireplace. I remember feeling like it was my fault everyone was so unhappy, like my son did last night. He kept asking if it was his fault, like somehow seeing the truth was a bad thing. Did I ruin it? Is it my fault?

I know somehow that no amount of explaining will make a difference except to make sure he knows that it isn’t his fault. He didn’t ruin anything. He’s a little upset today but I’m going to make sure to be as open a possible so he knows it is always ok to seek out the truth and to not feel responsible for ruining anything by doing what he needs to do.

Nothing really changed for me on that night other than I remember it. I’d known, I just hadn’t seen. I think my son is the same. I just hope he feels ok about it eventually.

Day 21: Disclosure

How many people know about your diagnosis? Well, for starters, everyone who’s read my page!

Honestly though, I really don’t think I’ve come out and told  people. It’s a little hard to bring up in every day conversation. “Hey, everybody, I’m emotionally unstable! Isn’t that something?”

Not that I wouldn’t do that, because I totally would if the occasion called for it, but so far, it’s been a little unnecessary.

This Borderline thing has been a hypothesis that I brought to my therapist. I read a description of it while reearching how to deal with something different and the book made me cry so I figured I should look at it. My psychiatrist asked if I’d been diagnosed with Bipolar II when I told him of my latest shenenigans. He’d never seen me other than depressed but when I told him that I was looking at Borderline, he told me it was difficult to differentiate the two until a long period of time had passed as they are similar in a number of ways, all under the same umbrella as PTSD and a few others. We need to consider them all, therefore I don’t think I’ve been all out diagnosed. My therapist is working with me on it since I seem to be fitting a lot of the profile and I’ve asked a few of my close friends for their opinion. To everyone so far, it’s made a heck of a lot of sense. There have been many “Oh! Of course!” expressions floating around. It does indeed fit rather well, but as far as telling people? I haven’t even told my mom. I certainly haven’t told my dad. They’re just both aware that I’ve been having “problems”.

Even at work, my bosses are aware of my panic disorder. I never went into the severe depression with them, though I believe that’s obvious to everyone. After that it all seemed unnecessary information. They know I go to therapy and psychiatric appointments. As long as things improve, I see no reason to delve. I didn’t omit it out of shame or worry. Quite the contrary.

I came out with my panic diagnosis because I felt that people I interacted with every day needed to know. At first I didn’t want to be treated differently, but after a while I realized that I indeed needed to be treated differently, with a bit more patience and understanding. Hell, everyone does, I just have an excuse that works in my favor on that level. I haven’t felt the need to update anyone. The people who need to know do. I’m not against bringing it to the attention of more people once I’m sure. If anything, I think there needs to be more awareness and understanding and less judgment.

There are a few people that wouldn’t understand. I know that. I’ve told one who consistently judges me for my reactions just so they will know that sometimes (all the time) it’s been beyond my control. My emotions are huge. Things effect me deeply and I react in an over the top way. I’m working on that. It’ll take years. I’m not pulling anything, trying to create drama, trying to manipulate the situation or people, it’s just the way I feel. The more people understand about that the better off I’ll be I think.

In the meantime, I get to experiment with a pile of pills that make me better or worse. Lately, it’s been worse. I can be dry as a Looney Tunes character before the big gag hits or as over the top as a drag queen who’s just been read. I have a wide berth with my level of animation. The pills complicate when they’re wrong and we’ve yet to hit the right ones. So, to any of my loved ones, know that it’s hit or miss given the day and circumstances. Lately, I’ve been coping and odd things bring up high emotion. I hide it as best I can when I’m out. At work I have crying fits that I’m waiting for someone to walk in on, but so far so good.  If that time comes, I’ll spill the beans.

I’d rather sooner. A clear cut set of criteria is always easier to work with than a cloud of mental “problems”. The second sounds worse. Even if I get a room full of freaked out expressions, there’s something to work with. I’m used to getting looked at like that anyway. I just hate to lose my air of mystery…

Day 20: Expression

How do you usually express yourself?

Let’s see, there’s this, lurking creepily at the cemetery, lurking creepily downtown, lurking…well, I do a lot of creepy lurking. Actually, no, I don’t, not anymore. Ah, the old days. I could also make a bad joke regarding my kid under the heading of breeding monsters, but he’s being a little too sweet today for that. I try to get him in on the self-expression, but so far he’s got his own thing.

Most of my expression now comes with me writing in one form or another, be it here or in my journal (very sporadically) or writing stories that I wish were Gothic. I do create monsters in my stories and actually, in my one finished manuscript I think I came up with some good ones. Oddly enough, most of the things I end up writing are sci-fi or fantasy and God knows I love a good battle scene. I have no idea where any of those things came from. All I want to do is wander the English countryside in a corset writing stories of unquiet souls tormented and longing with some frightening things running through the center of it all. Somewhere some wires got crossed but isn’t that why I’m writing this blog? A lot of my wires have shorts in them, or at least lost their insulation.

Over the years my expression has changed. I began with drawing and painting and then moved on to writing when I  hit the double digits. Later I moved on to music, photography, and graphic art and then came back around to writing. I do a little of all of these depending on where my head is and how much patience I have. I haven’t really painted in years since with my son, it’s a hard thing to get time to do. The same with the self-portrait photography though there’s nothing quite like getting a character out in that cathartic sort of way, by becoming them.

Writing is similar in that way. I can pace and say what they’re saying aloud, figure out how they’re feeling and why they do what they do and in the meantime I get to both become someone else and explore a side of myself and give it voice.  It’s an interesting process.

Today, I was making a piece of art for a friend as a gift. That’s also a nice thing to do. Crafting is a new form of expression for me. I was going to take up knitting to make something hilarious and wonderful for DG, but I really didn’t have the patience for it. I may, if I calm down, give that another try.

For now, I get a wild hair and go with it in whatever form that takes. Maybe I want to do Queen of Hearts makeup and take pictures in that character, maybe I write a story about my dad. It’s all very random but that’s what expression is about to me. You have something that you need to get out and you do, whatever it takes. Sometimes you make something beautiful and sometimes it’s something frightening.

It’s probably the one thing I’d go mad without, creating. Whether it’s lasting or transitory. whatever you make is a reminder to the world that you were here and tells a small bit of your story, your point of view. Everyone deserves to have a piece of themselves seen and understood. There are a million ways to do it, to make your mark. Every one of them is worth your time and energy and who knows, maybe it might even be appreciated by someone who never knew they could do the same thing or how to say something you were able to. It’s all beautiful…the most beautiful thing in the world.