The truth is out there, but it seems to require extra vigilance on our part. You can’t take for granted that the things being published on the internet–or even reported on television–are for real. You have to do your research and make sure what you are seeing is balanced and fair…and true.
I feel that these days being able to suss out the truth is harder than ever. The more sources you have, the harder it is to discern what is true and what is false. What is real and what is…they call it misinformation. It’s kind of ridiculous that we can’t find a place or a way to have the truth. I guess it’s a part of being human, that we all have experiences and baggage that colors our view of what might be happening. How do you remain human and offer unbiased news or information?
The truth shall set you free…even if you can actually offer it or find it.
One of the things I’ve been working on recently is owning the things that are mine, and letting go of the things that are not. Specifically, I’ve been dealing with this issue with Hub recently. I don’t talk about his issues too much because he’s a private person and I believe it’s his right to keep his private stuff to himself. I’m going to try to walk a tightrope here of what I will and won’t share, because his issues and my issues often intertwine.
I have always carried the emotional load in almost all of my familial relationships. This is something I have struggled with in my marriage as well. I did this automatically, not even realizing what I was doing until very recently. I wish I could say that my family (and my husband) abused my capabilities, but truthfully I did it because it seemed to work for me. Now I know it really doesn’t work for me, as I’m finally acknowledging that my body has physically been trying to get my attention by breaking down with multiple chronic illnesses that really could never be explained. While I’m working toward my transformation, my chronic illnesses—which often left me bedridden for weeks or months at a time—are easing. I’m feeling more energy and seeing more of the person I want to become.
One (technically two) of the recent examples of how I have carried the emotional load in my relationships happened with Hub (since he’s the guy I actually live with 24/7!). My father had called to tell me he was going for a stress test as per his doctor’s recommendations. The night before his test appointment, I acknowledged to myself that he would be in the hands of an actual doctor (it’s required for stress tests), and if anything happened, he was literally upstairs from their Urgent Care unit.
The next morning, my father called me after his early morning appointment to say he was home. The stress test had been truncated, due to something they saw on his ekg. He was waiting to hear from his doctor, so I said okay, asked him to update me whenever he had more information. Hub came into the room a short while later, literally telling me that I’d been worried about my father’s appointment. My internal hackles went up, because I don’t feel it’s appropriate for Hub to tell me how I’m feeling. I said no, that I hadn’t been worried, that I knew my father had been in good hands. Hub accused me of having my cell phone under my pillow, awaiting my father’s call. I said I had not had my phone under my pillow, and I hadn’t given up any sleep over my father’s appointment. Hub said he was skeptical; I was feeling as if Hub didn’t believe me and thus I felt not heard. I was angry and not okay with the situation.
Technically speaking, Hub had probably been worried about my father (they are sort of close, and my father has been more of a father to Hub than his own father). But because I’ve historically been the one to “worry” in our relationship, Hub pushed his worries onto me so that he didn’t have to deal with it as his own.
Later the same day, I had a text from B3 about his dogs and his trip to see a behaviorist for them. Hub and I are dog lovers, and B3 has been struggling with his two dogs, especially now that he has a small (almost walking) baby in the house. I told Hub what the text said and he made a face. Again he TOLD me that I had been worried about the dogs and what was going to happen at the behaviorist’s facility. I bristled for the second time that day, under the same exact circumstances. Hub was telling me how I was feeling, and for the second time he was wrong. I told Hub I had not been worried about the behaviorist meeting…and he told me he didn’t believe me. That I had recently told him I was worried about the dogs. I tried to explain that I was taking steps to stop worrying about things that I had no control over. I said I was sad that the dogs were struggling, and that it was unfortunate they were in the situation they were in. But I was not taking my time and energy to worry over an appointment that I had no say in and no control over. I suspected, again, that Hub was pushing his worry onto me because I’m usually the one who carries the emotional load between the two of us. I said to him specifically, if you are worried about the dogs, why can’t you say that? He said he knew I was worried, attempting to distract the conversation away from him and his emotions. I refused to let him get away with that, and I asked again why he didn’t just say he was worried about the dogs. He got mad and said I was worrying and I should admit it. I told him again that I was working hard to not worry about other people’s things, that I had enough of my own to think about.
I was pissed that he was telling me how I was feeling. And I was pissed that he didn’t believe me—and in fact attacked my honesty—when I was telling him the truth. I feel unheard, untrusted, and unworthy of being believed. We stopped the conversation since it was heating up, and later in joint therapy we talked about it. I also addressed it in my individual therapy, which was when T started talking about me carrying the emotional load in most of my relationships. She said she was proud that I had seen what was happening with Hub, and that I confronted the situation as it was happening. What I still had to work on was how to address it with Hub so that neither of us felt attacked or disbelieved. We continue to work on our communication skills together.
And the issues of feeling his feelings (or not) belong to Hub, not to me. The issue I was dealing with—carrying the emotional load for others—was what I had to continue to work on.
Women are often noted as having excellent intuition. I think anyone has the potential to have good intuition, but I don’t think I’m among the lot. To me, intuition is based on trusting yourself at the gut level, and I am still at a place where I do not trust my own judgement on a variety of things.
As someone who has lived with anxiety most of her life–as well as depression over my adult years–I know that my anxiety (and sometimes my depression) often lies to me. Is that pain a heart attack or a stroke? Is this pain the result of cancer? My anxiety will scream YES! but the majority of the time that answer is a lie. How am I supposed to trust a mind or a body that plays with my trust?
Do I have intuition when it comes to others? Maybe…maybe this is something I developed over the years in order to anticipate others needs. Is that intuition or is it being observant? I don’t know.
Honestly, I opened the book to this page and this prompt caught my eye immediately. I’m just not sure how I feel about it with regards to my life. Maybe I’m not in the right place yet…maybe I need to work more on trusting myself.
How do you feel about intuition? Is it something you use regularly in your life?
I am still learning about my new, smaller body. It’s at once mine and not mine, as I am attempting to move it, wash it, dress it, understand it… When I first lost the weight, I bought a few new things to wear that better fit my body. The reason I did that was because I had been wanting to replace some old pairs of (comfortable) jeans. And when I mean old, I mean…oh jeez, probably more than 15 years old. They fit okay, I took good care of them so they were in good shape, and I liked the colors (one was purple, another was black, the third was a standard blue). Before and after my weight loss, my biggest issue with jeans was that my hips were a good bit larger than my waist, so jeans never fit right. If they fit at the hips, they were too big in the waist. I didn’t wear belts, I wasn’t paying to have a $20 pair of jeans altered, I just dealt with it. The jeans I had were sized/shaped in a way that the gap at my waist wasn’t horrendous, and I mostly covered it with long tunic shirts anyway. For the rest of my wardrobe, I bought knit pants that had elastic waistbands, they were forgiving and stretchy knit that I could wear even if my size changed. I bought leggings and lounge pants for around the house (since I hadn’t worked out of the house in years). I bought tee shirts in tunic lengths to cover my hips and butt. I dressed for comfort, wasn’t looking to show my body but rather was looking for clothes that covered me. The three pairs of jeans I had were the most “fitted” items I owned, and I didn’t even wear them that much because they were not meant for warm climates, so they were winter-only items. And I didn’t bother to wear them at home. Winter sometimes came and went without me going out of the house, so the jeans did not see consistent wear.
I had a slew of clothes from stores like Roaman’s and Woman Within (who are now the same company), because they were the stores that carried my sizes. I bought the same clothes over and over again, when they were on sale so I wasn’t spending a lot of money. Sure the clothes wore out, but I literally bought pants on sale for $10 in every color I could bear wearing. Sometimes I bought multiple pairs in black, blue, and gray. If I was daring, I bought purple pants. Then I had the $10 tunic shirts from the same store, during the same sale. For years I lived (at home) in leggings. Over the last five or six years, I’ve been wearing men’s lounge pants from Target that I buy on sale. They last forever, they’re comfortable, and they have GREAT POCKETS. As I was losing some weight, I went down in sizes, but continued to buy the same lounge pants. And I was collecting tank tops (thanks to my heat intolerance) from whatever store had longer length sizes. Again, cheap and easy care, because I don’t work and I didn’t have to worry about anything more than (sloppy) casual clothes.
As I was buying smaller sizes in clothing, I started taking the larger sizes out of my closet. I hang most of my clothes, so my dresser drawers have either held duplicates of clothing, or things I wasn’t ready to get rid of. I’ve gone up and down in weight for my entire life, but I’ve never lost so much weight as I have in the last four years. I assumed, like every other period in my life, I would just put the weight back on. So far, that did happen because of my migraine medication, but I was able to catch it after 15 pounds. With great concentration and attention, I have lost all of that weight again, and I’m very near to my final goal (another 2 pounds!). I am planning to stay at this weight because it is where I am physically comfortable.
I’ve had so many clothes sitting in my dresser drawers that are…four sizes too big. I was (and am) afraid to get rid of them, because what if I gain the weight and need clothes again? What if I fail again? What if…what if…what if… Last weekend, I got a bug up my butt and went through several drawers in one of my dressers and threw all the bigger clothes into bags for donation. I felt…okay. I knew I still had more drawers of clothing, so I let it go for the time being. Last night I ordered clothes from Woman Within again, because I wanted new leggings that fit and I was familiar with their options. And they were cheap. I stopped myself from buying their tunic tee shirts, because I don’t wear that kind of shirt anymore. And I didn’t buy any of their knit pants, but I have several pairs in only a size or two up and they fit for when I need them.
Tonight I went to my other dresser and started stuffing more clothes into trash bags. Pants that were four sizes too big, shirts that were too big and I would probably never wear again. I had clothes that I’d bought my mother in the last months of her life because she had lymphedema in her legs and needed stretchy knit pants. When she died, I took the pants from her house because I wanted to clean them, and they just ended up in my drawers. I had history with every pair of pants and shirt that I ripped out of the drawers and stuffed into the bags. I had lived my life in these clothes, covering my body without much thought. Covering my body with clothes that covered, not that fit.
After I lost the weight the first time (before the medication issue), I bought jeans. I struggle to find jeans again because my body shape is still such that my hips are 10″ bigger than my waist. I bought and returned clothes (from online) over and over again, giving up time and again. I finally found two pairs of jeans that were manageable, and I bought them. Then I hung them in my closet and didn’t wear them for months. When the winter season came after I bought the jeans, I had nowhere to go, and I was often sick from my migraine disease. I finally started wearing them to therapy because that was the only time I left the house. The winter is coming, I’m hoping to wear them again. I mostly like how they fit my body, and I’m learning to be okay with showing my shape.
I bought a pair of knee high boots that actually fit my legs, for the first time in my life. I’ve never been able to squeeze my calves into a pair of boots…all my snow boots were short because I had big calves. I’ve never worn those boots. I tried them on again tonight, they still fit, but I have no occasion to wear them. But I have them, and they are wearable.
I buy tank tops both that are fitted and relaxed. I wear them all, and I show the shape of my body. I show the shape of my stomach and I show my big upper arms. For better or for worse, parts of my body will never change (without surgery) because my skin was stretched out due to my weight. My upper arms are that way, and despite how flabby and floppy they are, I wear the tank tops and I don’t care. I don’t care who looks at me and sees flabby arms, I see progress in my physicality.
Last week I crocheted a top out of some yarn I’d been hoarding for myself. I shaped the top to fit me because I am comfortable showing my upper body. When I finished the top, I decided to crochet a skirt to go with it, in the same yarn. I figured like all the rest of my store-bought skirts and dresses, I would crochet a long skirt. I usually wear straight skirts, but they are always ankle length. Because I’ve never crocheted a skirt before, I was trying it on constantly to make sure it fit my waist and hips before going straight down to my ankles. As I tried it on where the hem was just above my knees, I stood and looked at myself in the only full length mirror in my house, which is in our guest room. I’m short, and I know logically that long skirts make me look shorter, but I do not like my legs. I have always had very heavy legs, and I really had no shape to them from hips down. So I always covered them with long pants, long skirts, long dresses. I’ve never owned shorts. One year I went crazy for our anniversary trip to the beach (in winter) and I bought capri pants. I wore them at the beach (so we could slosh through the waves) and never again. I literally found them this weekend and just stuffed them into the donation bags. But back to my crocheted skirt…I looked at the short skirt and I looked at my legs. And I looked at my body. And I realized I didn’t know who I was looking at. Again, I’m not–nor will I ever be–small, but I did lose weight and it is visible. And I saw shape to my legs, and I saw that the shorter length skirt looked good. Better than I could have expected. It was…weird. I ended up adding some length to the skirt (I would have been afraid to sit), but only just below my knees. I have no clue where I’m going to wear this outfit, but I made it and it’s pretty neat.
I have a second closet full of more “dress” clothes, the majority of which are the same four sizes too big. Multiple times I have tried to sell some of the clothes–they are all in good condition, but many are old even though the “styles” are pretty classic looking–but I have not been successful. Where I was fine tossing the majority of my casual clothes into bags for donation, the dressier items I would like to get some of my money back. Even if it’s a small amount. I can’t imagine that the companies I donate to will be able to do much with my dress clothes and I hate to see them just recycled or thrown away. I am on the fence about this, so we’ll see how I feel as I find time to go through the stuff in that closet.
I’m both afraid and excited to get rid of the oversized clothes taking up room in my dressers…and maybe in my “dress” closet. I’m trusting myself to stay at this weight, and trust isn’t something I do very often. I fear failure so much that I don’t do things so that I won’t fail. But these days I am challenging myself to grow and learn and be a better version of me.
I’m 48 years old this year. I know people will think it odd, but I’ve been in therapy for 7 1/2 years with the same therapist. Initially I was seeing T once a week, but after a couple of years, I “graduated” to once every other week. I really thought I would then move to once a month as I worked through my many issues. But then my mother got sick and I wanted to have the support of my therapist through that time. And then I wanted the support as I made my way into the grief following my mother’s passing.
Every time I thought it would be time to pull back on the therapy, something else came up that I wanted support for. At some point, I decided to just accept that I was going to be a work in progress, and that it was okay to have help doing that work. If I didn’t feel I was making progress, I think I would look for a new therapist…but I do see progress. I see as I crack open parts of me, there are new things to address. Changes that feel uncomfortable, changes I don’t understand, fear, anger, family stress, chronic pain and illness issues. So I continue on with T every other week, unless something pops up and I need her in between regular appointments.
I had this need this past week when I received an email from B2, two months after I had last contacted him. Initially I was concerned that he was telling me to take a hike. Then I was mad, because it was TWO MONTHS since I’d last tried to talk to him. Two months with no contact, not even a like on a FaceBook post. I couldn’t read the email for several hours after it came in, and even then I was pissed. I finally read the email, and the anger shot through my body. I told Hub I wanted to throw something.
I’m still learning to use my anger, because it’s telling me something needs to change. There’s nothing wrong with being angry and everything right. Girls are taught almost from birth that they shouldn’t show anger, that it’s ugly and no one will love you if you show anger. But we have a right to our anger, and if we use it properly it can teach us so much. T introduced me to a book, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, by Soraya Chemaly. I know the title is hard to see, but it’s a worthy read. It’s also a difficult read, and truthfully I have not finished it yet. Between my migraine attacks and the information in the book, I have to go through it pretty slowly. Parts have made me really mad, and parts have made me sad. I am about 2/3 of the way through, and I’ll finish it even if it takes me a while.
Anger, when we allow ourselves to feel it, tells us something. In this particular case with B2, it was telling me that my history with B2 needed to be investigated. There’s a pattern in my life with him, and if I want to have a healthy relationship with him I need to make changes. I need to be clear with my boundaries with him, and I need to follow through. I’m working on getting my boundaries and parameters down so that I can lay it out for him and SIL. And I need to cull out information that is, not irrelevant but extraneous because he won’t absorb it or understand it.
One of the things I’m just realizing, partially because of this situation with B2, is that I spent most of my life trying to anticipate every else’s needs. I thought if I anticipated people’s needs and tried to do things or fix things before they even asked–sometimes before they even realized their own need–that they would love me. If I rushed in to support them, to cheerlead for them, to help them, to fix a problem…if I just did it before they asked, they would love me. I don’t think anyone overtly ever told me to behave this way, but it was ingrained in me by the way I was raised. This was what women were supposed to do…they should anticipate the needs of their parents, their siblings, their spouses, their children, and fix or do things for them. They should praise them when they needed it, pump them up, fix their booboos…whatever was needed, before it was needed. Being able to read the situation, read the person, and just know what needed to be done was a skill. Something a woman should cultivate and practice as often as possible.
I did these things with precision. My family was visiting my aunt and uncle out of town, and we were staying at their house. The neighborhood was kind of old, the sidewalks were pockmarked and bumpy, the streets were filled with potholes. I was sitting in my aunt’s living room, probably watching television, and my mother walked in the front door. I had no idea she had gone out, and no clue where she might have gone. I took one look at her and popped up off the couch to go to her. I knew right away that something was wrong, and I did a quick visual scan.
“You went for a walk and you fell. Are you hurt?” She had no visible bruises or cuts, but I saw the way she moved, I saw how she was holding her body. I helped her into the kitchen and made her sit at the table so I could get her ice for her knee and a towel to clean her hands because she had caught herself going down over a huge crack in the sidewalk.
I spent my life studying my parents and my siblings. I could see things that others didn’t see because I’d been taught to pay attention, to notice before anyone else, and to give care. My mother didn’t announce that she’d been out for a walk and had fallen, she didn’t request that I help her to the kitchen or get her ice, she didn’t ask for me to clean her gritty hands. I anticipated her need and I did it without asking her or waiting for her to ask me. It was my job to do things before they were requested.
Only now am I realizing that I was doing these things because I thought if I took care of things before they even happened, people would love me. They would see my value, they would want to be with me and be a part of my life, and they would want me to be a part of their life. I learned to be hypervigilant, to pay more attention than anyone else, to insert myself into situations where I hadn’t been invited. I made myself miserable, anxious, and I didn’t like the way I was living. And I lived that way for, oh let’s say, forty plus years. When I got the email from B2, part of it was talking about all the things going wrong in his life and how he missed sharing those things with me. I was angry, because I thought for two damn months he didn’t bother to try to contact me, but when he starts having issues then he wants me there so he can lean on me.
It’s not entirely his fault. I’ve spent my whole life teaching people how to treat me. For forty something years, they have learned that I will anticipate their needs and automatically take care of them. Sure, I didn’t learn that on my own, I was raised in a home and in a society that taught me those things. But in the end, I was choosing to live that way in the hopes that others would see my “value”.
I want to be valued and loved for who I am, not for my crystal ball skills. Not for my ability to read body language or facial expressions, not for my ability to see the small details that others might not notice. Not for my ability to bake a good cake or cookie, not for my delicious ice cream capabilities, not for an amazing pan of brownies. Me, I’m valuable as a living, breathing human.
I am considering allowing B2 and SIL back into my life, but under certain parameters and boundaries. And those do include not allowing anyone to abuse or disrespect me. My inclination is always to keep my family together, but I don’t want to be anyone’s doormat.
I’m still working on myself and this particular issue. Some of these revelations are really really new, and I need to learn how to live in a new way. I need to learn to see my own value, just as I am right now, even if I have nothing to give but myself.
I know that title seems very deep, and to some extent it is a deep and soul searching journey that I am on, but for this post’s purposes it probably won’t be a big existential reveal.
Growing up, I was fat and shy. I had a few good friends but always on the outskirts of everything happening. I spent many hours on my own, writing, playing with Barbies, making up stories and poems.
My brothers didn’t want to hang around me, so for the most part I was on my own. B3 is almost exactly 18 months older than me, B2 is 5 years older than me, B1 is 8 years older. When I could get some attention from any of my brothers, it was mostly B3 because he was more my age. We were generally in the same school, riding the same bus to school, and on the same schedule. B2 was the extrovert of the family, the “cool” kid, the person who went on all kinds of interesting adventures. He was the kid who broke the rules, who got into trouble often, and who wanted independence more than anyone else I’d ever met (at that age). I always wanted B2’s attention, but I never got it. I got a lot of B3’s attention, but like me he was an introvert and never seemed to do anything exciting.
I am realizing today that I always longed for B2’s attention. He seemed so adult to me, and did so many interesting things. He butted heads with my parents, rebelled against all authority, and had so many cool friends. From as young as I can remember, B2 rejected me. I can’t say why or explain what he was thinking, I only know how I felt and feel. When he upped at moved out of the family house to move in with an older woman, I felt abandoned. Even though we weren’t incredibly close, he was an idol that I looked up to.
He got married the year–hell, the DAY–that B3 graduated high school. We had to run from B3’s graduation to B2’s wedding. Seriously. The day I graduated, B2 and his first wife brought their brand new baby to the party, so once again he was the center of attention. At the time, I didn’t care because I didn’t want attention…I just wanted to graduate and eat cake. Shocking, I know. Then there was the argument, of which I know nothing (except I heard that the first wife felt my parents’ overstepped some bounds with their first kid?), and suddenly B2 was no longer speaking to the family. He disappeared from our lives, and I was abandoned by him yet again.
Many years later, after they had their second baby, whom we didn’t meet, B2 became unhappy in his marriage and was looking to get a divorce. I had sent him a couple of letters, trying to keep the connection to him but I never told anyone at the time. B2 finally got back in touch with me and asked for help getting back in with the family. He wanted my help to re-establish contact, and I did what I could to introduce the idea and smoothed the way where I could. As I said in another post, B2 lived with me for a year while he was getting his divorce, then he moved in with his new girlfriend (now SIL). He moved an hour away from me, became a family with his kids, his step-daughter, and his new GF (SIL). I had almost no contact with them except at holidays.
As a course of life, I married (my sweet Hub), and eventually we moved to a town about fifteen minutes from where B2 and his family were living. We still saw them rarely. I mean, for serious, I had never even been to their house…ever. Fifteen minutes away. Never once. Then they bought a house walking distance from where Hub and I were living. We helped them move, we saw them a bit more…and in less than a year SIL received an offer to move with her job to the midwest. So their little family picked up and moved…I was yet again abandoned by B2.
Now I know what you’re thinking. He has a life to live! He’s just my brother, he has no responsibility for me. Don’t be rude! No, but really, I’m showing a pattern that has shaped my life. Stick with me.
B2 and SIL and their kids now lived about 12 hours drive away. They were out there for about ten years, and not once did I ever see their house. Never. Not once. Ten years. This is how not close we were. And as I was realizing in therapy today, there was very little communication between them and me. Not emails, not letters, not phone calls, not texts. Maybe we’d talk in email about something, but it was pretty rare. No regular communication. Like the time he “left” our family, he was out of my life again. For about a decade. They promised when they moved that they would come back to visit, split holidays between there and here, stay a part of the family. Sadly, did not happen. They found their “family” (neighbors) out there and they forgot the biological family they left behind.
Our mother got sick during the years they were living in the midwest. B2 did not come back to see her, or to help support her. He promised, but didn’t. He and I were communicating more because I would write reports in email of her doctors’ appointments or tests…or I would inform him as to what was happening. To his credit, he didn’t question or second guess what we were doing, but he also didn’t participate or help out. He stayed 12 hours away.
Until the end. Then he and SIL swept in, acting like they were saving the day, and they were here to see my mother die. She didn’t even know they were here, she was too far gone. Something B2 will have to live with for the rest of his fucking life. S’cuze me, resentfulness slipped out.
After Mom passed, they went back to their midwest home and lived their lives. For some reason, they decided to head back east…B2 always wanted to live by the water with his boat. So they began making plans to move back, despite SIL’s loud and persistent protests. B2’s company wanted him on the east coast to pick up some work, so he moved into my Dad’s house and set up shop in my mother’s den/office. He was here for about a year as he and SIL looked for a place and town to live. I feel like he and I got close again while he was here without SIL. We pulled together and tried to help Dad through his grief. He helped around their house, he spent time with those of us living here, we got to know each other again.
Although SIL continued to put off selling their house in the midwest and complained about not wanting to move, they finally found a house that SHE wanted. It was nothing like he had said he wanted, but was completely opposite. He wanted something simple by the water, with enough room for their kids to come and visit, or my Dad to come out and go on their boat for a day. She wanted–and got–a home almost exactly like they had in the midwest, not near the water, big enough to raise the three kids they had already raised and sent on their way (2 are married already). She had always (loudly) announced that she had no clue why Hub and I bought the house we are living in because it’s pretty large. Why would we want that when we have no kids? Who wants to maintain such a large place for no reason. When they bought their traditional colonial nowhere near waterfront, I said nothing.
During the time they were looking for their new home, I was neck deep in migraine issues. I wasn’t leaving the house, somedays I wasn’t even leaving the bed. Being in a car just to go locally to my doctors or therapist left me with motion sickness for days. B2 and SIL bought a house 90 minutes away from all of us, via highways. I couldn’t help them move (though Hub was integral in assisting them), and I never saw the house. Still haven’t. But guess what? There they went, abandoning his family when they made sure to buy outside of our immediate area. Abandoning me again.
They’ve been living out there for about a year, maybe a little longer. Initially, I was talking to B2 about once a week, because his job is on the road. So when he was bored and had time, he’d call from the car and we’d catch up. It was nice to stay in contact even though he wasn’t living nearby again. It also meant I had some extra support with my father when needed, because he could make time to stop by while he was on the road, or come down over a weekend without too much trouble.
Then the spat happened. I reached out to try to bring us back together, and he walked away. Abandoned me again, like it was no big shit to him one way or the other. Two months went by without one word from him. I had decided I was okay, that I could go on with my life because I’d lived without him before. Two months…
And he emails me. Because he’s having a difficult time with things in his life. And he misses me most of all…because I’m the one who always makes time in my life to support him, to talk to him, to let him come back like I’m not worth anything more than the leftover crap he offers me…on his timeline, in his way.
I got so mad. I’m working very hard in therapy to become the person I want to be. I’m not going to go backwards and let him make me feel like nothing. And I’m going to tell him that. I’m going to tell him that I have parameters and boundaries for my life, and he wants to be a part of it then he’ll have to abide. If he can’t, then I will tell him I love him, but it’s not acceptable to me.
This past week I went to see my gyn oncologist for my annual cancer check-up. Oddly, the office was very quiet and they took me back on time. Normally the place is mobbed and we wait forty-five minutes to an hour to see the doctor. I’m not complaining, it was just so weird. As it was, my original appointment was at 2pm, but the Thursday before my appointment the office called to say the doctor was going to be out of the office at that time and could we move the appointment to an earlier time. We, of course, got there about twenty minutes early, and during that time we saw my doctor wandering around casually like he had nothing much going on. Normally he’s running from one exam room to another and never comes out to the front the entire hour or so we’re waiting.
I wasn’t sure if all this was a good omen or a bad one.
My blood pressure is always good in their office. This time, though, the wrist cuff they normally use wouldn’t stay velcro’d on, which was a bit upsetting because it made me feel like my wrist was too fat. I had to stop myself and change my inner monologue, because every other time we’ve been there the wrist pressure cuff has worked. I assume this particular one was losing it’s velcro power. So the nurse did an old-fashioned manual check and again my BP was pretty awesome. Normally I get white-coat syndrome and my BP is kind of high, but at the gyn/onc’s office it’s in the normal range…and I have no idea why.
Le Dottore came into the exam room wearing an awesome royal purple tie with white polka dots. Purple is mine and my mother’s favorite color, so I took that as a good sign. I even told him how much I loved his tie and he said purple was his favorite color. We did the exam–which took no time at all–and he pronounced everything “awesome.” I asked about my yearly CT Scan, because the original plan in 2015 had been yearly ct scans every July, and yearly paps every January. This last January he said paps every TWO years…and this week he said he saw no reason for a CT. I said I thought it was yearly CT’s and paps every 2 years. He said “no reason to do paps unless there are symptoms” and basically the same for the CT scan. He said my exams have been perfect and without symptoms, he didn’t see a reason to do the scan. I don’t know if their policies have changed due to new information or what, but it was kind of stressful to hear that they wouldn’t be following me as closely as I had been told. I said I was a little concerned about not doing a CT, but that I understood getting a CT subjected me to radiation (which can actually cause cancer), so the choice wasn’t cut and dry. He said it was my choice, we could do one now or talk again next year. He said recurrences happen most often in the first two years, but even that was a low number (he said 10% but I’d read 15%). But again, he was happy to give me a referral if I wanted the CT. I asked for the referral but said I’d think about my options.
I discussed this with Hub and with T, and in the end I think I’m going to get the CT scan. I’m too worried about all the bits inside that he can’t see or touch, where cancer could be growing without any symptoms or pain. (My mother had cancer recurrence and she had no physical symptoms that she spoke of.) If I didn’t do the CT when I could have and then something happened, I’d beat myself up something fierce. And since “ct scan radiation causes cancer” is actually NOT something they can prove scientifically–it’s a guessing game because they can’t subject people to CT’s to see if they get cancer–I’ll be taking what is an unknown risk versus the actual risk of missing something growing.
I’ll be waiting until after the wedding to do the scan so it doesn’t make me feel lousy or sick this week when I have so much to do. And I’ll have the relief of knowing there was nothing to be seen that could have been seen.
So here’s the thing. I went into the salon and said, “no yellow and no orange” and had given them an “inspiration” photo which I think they must have misplaced. But truthfully, I told the stylist to do what she thought would look awesome, but that I wanted purple and blue to be the base colors.
I got some purple (in some lights) but not as much blue as I wanted. Beyond that, the stylist really went gung ho on my hair. Other stylists kept stopping to watch, and one who went home before we were done made my stylist promise to get pictures and put them on instagram. Ya’ll are gonna see more of me than you ever have (don’t be dirty!) in this here post.
So for comparison, here’s my hair under normal recent circumstances.
I had some color done last January and that shit just hung on for dear life. It really didn’t look too bad, but you can see it was growing out. It was red, so the stylist was worried about some warm orange tones sticking around even after the “lift” procedure.
Step one…I call this “Foil and Plastic Nightmare”
It was hot as shit under those plastic sheets and those foils. And then THIS nightmare happened…
I had no idea this is what would happen. I seriously sent this to Hub while I was in the chair saying, “Who am I and what am I doing here?” His response was “uh, okay…” I walked into the salon at 9am. By the time they’d washed and toned and washed this mess, it was about noon. My ass hurt so bad from sitting in that chair, I can’t even…
Then I got the goods… (I wish I had taken pictures of the colors in the bowls, but alas, I did not.) This was about the time other stylists started stopping by the chair to watch the painting. Every now and then one of them would walk by and go “oh yeah!” or “so cool!” or whathaveyou. It was weird.
That’s some shit going on there. At this point, my butt hurt so much I actually got up from the salon chair and was walking around aimlessly. I was pacing around in the front area and a poor woman came out of the salon area to pay and I think I scared her. She jumped and sort of giggled, then ran to the desk to pay. So then I sat on the cushy sofa in the front waiting area while I ate some crackers I had brought along. Shortly thereafter, the stylist came to check on me and we headed back to wash out the colors. Oh, the colors! I got a wash and a special deep conditioning and a scaaaaaaaaalp massage. Then back to the chair. She did a quick trim (I only wanted a trim), showing her assistant how she was handling the cut (which I had thought she was going to do in layers but I don’t think she did).
I wish I had pictures of this, but it was now 1pm and my stylist had another appointment at 1:30. So she pulled in her assistant and the TWO of them started drying my hair at the same time. One yanking one direction, the other yanking the other direction. And as my hair is drying, they both start grinning and pointing at different sections of the hair and I’m like WTF, just show me already! So my stylist laughed and they just kept going. Big round brushs twirling, yanking, hot air. It was quite the show. Then they took a picture with my hair straight.
Brace yo-selves…
That is some kind of sumpthin’ right thar!
I sort of wanted to cry a little. It was so crazy. I’m so not a crazy person. But this was so crazy.
My stylist had to get to her other client, so she left me with her assistant because I didn’t want to leave with straight hair. The assistant went to work with a big barrel curling iron and as she’s curling my hair she’s muttering, “so jealous, dammit. I want this hair so bad.” I told her I was sorry but it was attached to my head. She told me she was going to get the stylist to do it to her because it was so fun. So the curl is done and the assistant drags me out in front of the salon to take pictures for their instagram. Then she took a few shots with my phone.
One more time, Effie…
So there’s that.
Now, for more real-life photos…
One of the neat things? She did a bunch of teal and magenta shit underneath, so when I put my hair up, you can see all the more vibrant colors. Also, depending on the light, my hair looks like different colors (you can kinda see that in the pictures). And lastly, as it fades, I’ll get kind of a new set of colors, which will be interesting. Sorry for all the blobby white bits…you know how I feel about privacy. Although, shit, if you see me on the street at this point you might recognize me from the cray-cray hair. Oh well… LOL
So after all was done, I paid up (holy shit did I pay) and after more compliments from the front desk staff, I went out to my car. I locked myself in, picked up my phone and texted Hub… “You’re going to flip your shit!”
Predictably, because my husband loves me, he told me how amazing my hair looked when I got home. He’s kind of a sweetheart like that.
I think, should I get this touched up in a few months, I’d opt for more blue. I like the blue areas a lot. I really would like more of my hair to look like the underside…but there’s always next time.
Also, I left the salon at 2pm. No joke, from 9am to 2pm. My stylist rocked, and she earned her money for sure.
There are days I wake up feeling mad at God. And days I go to sleep feeling mad at God.
I’m not overly religious, but I was raised with religion. I follow many of our traditions but I do not attend services every week. I did not grow up attending services every week. My life now as an adult is pretty close to my life growing up. My family’s traditions and habits stayed with me through the years to now. When my grandfather died, my mother started taking my grandmother to weekly services because my grandmother found comfort in the ritual. And I think it gave my mother special time with her mother. When my grandmother passed away, my mother continued attending weekly services because I think it became comfort to her. She generally attended the services with my father, who only went because she did. Sometimes she went alone, but that was pretty rare.
I do not find comfort in weekly services, so I never got into that tradition. I found comfort in my family. That family is in chaos without my mother.
I’m angry at God for taking my mother away. I’m angry at God for not giving me the ability to heal her. I’m angry at God for leaving me with this emptiness, this pain, this loneliness. I’m angry at God for putting my father through his own personal hell.
I’ve had previous tiffs with God. When I first got sick, I was so involved with being sick that I didn’t have time to think about God’s part in it. When I got sick again–more on top of the first illness–I was tired and I wanted to just give up. I didn’t think about why I was sick, only that I was. But as the years went on and my chronic pain and other chronic issues continued, I got mad at God. Why was He letting me be in pain all the time? Why wasn’t He helping the doctors figure out what was wrong with me and how to help me?
Why did He give my grandfather leukemia? Why did He let my grandfather suffer? And why did He let my grandfather die at only 82 years old? Why did He give my grandmother an eye disease that left her mostly blind? And then the stroke? And the dementia? Why did He let her linger year after year, lost in her own mind, needing others to care for her physical body because she was no longer able? My uncle, my aunt…on and on.
Why the cancer released on my mother’s body? Why did it have to be so aggressive? Why so fast, so hard? Why did it have to ruin her body and her mind at the end? Why did He have to take her away from us?
I know a lot of people who find comfort in their faith. Some give all their problems to God and accept whatever the answer is. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to get past the anger. I’m not saying I spend my days raging at God, because I don’t. But there are days when I sure want to rage and scream and ask WHY WHY WHY. How do I have trust in God and in a universe that has stolen my mother from me?
I watch commercials and I’m angry at kids with their mothers. When I’m out in stores I silently scream at kids with their mothers, wanting them to relish their time together because it won’t last. I’m jealous of Hub, who has his mother in his life. I’m so pissed off that my brothers had my mother in their lives longer than I did. I know these are petty things and don’t change what happened, but they are more reasons why I question God and faith and religion.
So many things in life I can attribute to decisions made by human beings. Why the election results? Too many people made the wrong decision. Why are people being killed in our cities? Too many people make wrong decisions, do bad things, trust the wrong people.
Why did my mother get an aggressive and rare form of cancer that took her away from me too fast and too early? I can’t blame that on a person or a decision. I can’t point to something and say, “oh that’s it! that’s why she’s dead and I’m living my life without her and my father is barely living a life at all…” Who else is there to look to? Who else was there to make the choice to give her cancer and take her away other than God?
Is any of this rational? Is anger at God rational? Does God even care if I’m angry at Him? Does God even care at all? Am I terrible for even asking these questions or feeling these feelings?
Hub often calls himself a heathen. He grew up with religion because his mother (and then his step-father) were religious. But he was very turned off as a youngster by the religious leaders in his community and he moved away from his religion. At this point I think he considers himself to be agnostic, though he deeply respects my feelings for my religion and traditions. These days I can more clearly understand his feelings, though not because of any religious leaders, but more because of my current predicament.
Despite my mother’s faith in her religion for most of her life, I don’t really know how she came to grips with any of this during her illness. It wasn’t something we discussed, mostly because I’m not sure she wanted to think about dying. At the end, I don’t know how much of her mind was still there, so I’m not sure she had time to question her faith. Even when we were at the point that the cancer had spread and there was no other medical intervention available, I don’t really know that she knew that. None of us wanted to say that outright to her, and when she didn’t ask specifically, we kept the information to ourselves. In those final days when her mind was still with her, we didn’t talk about the fact that her death was imminent.
I don’t know how to forgive God for my mother’s illness and subsequent death. I don’t know how to let go of the anger.
Cardiophobia is defined as an anxiety disorder of persons characterized by repeated complaints of chest pain, heart palpitations, and other somatic sensations accompanied by fears of having a heart attack and of dying. Persons with cardiophobia focus attention on their heart when experiencing stress and arousal, perceive its function in a phobic manner, and continue to believe that they suffer from an organic heart problem despite repeated negative medical tests. In order to reduce anxiety, they seek continuous reassurance, make excessive use of medical facilities, and avoid activities believed to elicit symptoms. The relationship of cardiophobia to illness phobia, health anxiety, and panic disorder is discussed.
I had no idea. Did you even know this was a thing?? (edited to add that personally, I don’t actually make “excessive” use of medical facilities…but I do think about how often I go to the doctor and I think about how it would be to go to the doctor every time I felt health or heart anxiety)
I did a bad thing and I googled something semi-medical. I googled “I am afraid of exercise.” And lo and behold, there are people out there just like me, who are afraid of exercising because of cardiophobia. There are other reasons for fearing exercise, but I was mostly focused on the cardiophobia because that’s my issue. Cardiophobia is the main culprit of my health anxiety, although these days I do have some mild cancer recurrence fears, too. By the way, I survived my google espisode and I REALLY only looked at cardiophobia postings…I did not stray or fall down any medical google rabbit holes. Go me.
I had my appointment with my cardiologist this morning. I have mentioned this before, I believe, but I like this man because he’s non-judgemental about my weight and talks bluntly yet kindly when we meet. He listens to what I’m saying before starting in on any exam. He even listened to me when I said I was afraid to exercise because of my heart, and that I was working on it in therapy. He did an EKG which came out fine, then said we hadn’t done a stress test in many years (not since I first saw him probably in 2012 or 2011)…and he said we could do it right away if I was amenable. I said yes, of course, because no time like the present. The stress test was with an EKG and blood pressure cuff hooked up to me, but no echocardiogram like Hub had a week or two ago. The nurse said they only do echocardiograms when there’s a potential structural defect, which the doctor was not concerned about.
The stress test was hard for me. At one point, the BP cuff was so tight (I hate when it starts to tighten, stops, then starts again like it’s starting over…) that my entire right arm from cuff down to my fingers was beet red. I told the tech that the cuff was way tight and she reset it. But those stress tests make you go fast and at an incline on the treadmill and that’s hard. It was already hot in the room and I’m pretty heat intolerant. When they went from high speed and full incline to cool down, I got woozy and I told them. The nurse said that happens and it’ll go away, which is kind of did. Except for the fact that I am having a lot of imbalance issues (like being on a boat rocking up and down) these days, so it didn’t fully go away.
They unhooked me and gave me a cup of water, then the nurse left to consult with the doctor. When she came back, she said they saw no blockages and no abnormalities on the test results, so I was free to go home. Hub was waiting in the waiting room and he helped me out to the car because I still felt overheated and wobbly.
Do I feel better? I’m not entirely sure. But at the very least, when I go in to see T on Friday and we start working on my specific health and exercise anxiety, at least I can say that I was cleared by the cardiologist. Unfortunately, I’m dealing with heartburn again, which had mostly been under control up until about two weeks ago (a lot of this pain is probably the heartburn crap, which I think started out “silently” and is now just getting worse and worse. I’m going to get back onto my digestive enzyme regimen, with the exception of having to find a new digestive enzyme pill because the previous stuff I was using had to be purchased through a practitioner and the nutritionist I was seeing for it refuses to respond to any of my inquiries. I think she’s pissed that I stopped coming in for appointments.
Anyhoo, I’m cleared by the cardiologist. I go in to see T on Friday for hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP’s creators claim a connection between the neurological processes (neuro-), language (linguistic) and behavioral patterns learned through experience (programming), and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life. Apparently NLP is something that hypnotherapists can try to use to help along with the hypnosis. I don’t know squat about it, but we’ll see how things go.
I’ve already had one hypnotherapy session, just an induction where she wanted to see if I could go into a hypnotic state. We tried again on the last session, but I was so mired in grief that I basically burst into tears mid-hypnosis and that was the end of that.
I’ll talk about hypnotherapy in another post soon.
Hub and I started and stopped acupuncture, but are planning to start it again because we both felt it was somewhat helpful for certain issues. We were supposed to start again this week, but my cardiology appointment screwed that up. Hopefully next week.
meANXIETYme 