I found my friend, the one I was reaching for.  All is well.  Now.  Well, all is okay with her anyway.

I also found a truth that I’ve been too timid to face.  Things have really sucked for awhile now.  For more than a year, since last September when I began to have funny abdominal pains and the doctors took four months and a multitude of tests to determine that what was wrong wasn’t cancer (!!!) but was a failing gallbladder that for some reason never showed sign of gallstones.  I won’t laundry list the rest with Mike’s jobs and all that followed, but life has been rougher than average, especially lately.  I have tried ignoring it, laughing through it, voicing sarcastic complaints about it hoping it would get the hint and go away and leave me alone, but it’s just not happening.  It is something I must face, as it is dragging me and my relationships down, and I’m pulling inward again.  Last time I pulled into myself, I couldn’t get out without professional help. 

The thing of it is, I’ve tried to tell myself that bad things happen to everyone, and sometimes those bad things accumulate for others as well.  People have bad years, or have a week where things are just falling apart around them, or a month where they just can’t seem to catch a break.  I know that I’m not unique in this respect, and as such, I’ve tried not to let it get to me, to let it eat at me that apparently it’s been my turn for a bad month several months in a row.  But turning my back on the fact that cumulatively this more-than-a-year has sucked is only exposing my unprotected flank to its jaws.  They bite hard, those jaws, and they’ve latched on tight.  I feel like a lioness-hunted zebra felled by a broken leg, crazed with fear and panic, and yet unable to save myself.  Mama down! 

So while outwardly I’ve complained and bitched and moaned over my poor hard luck, inwardly, I’ve been telling myself that yes, things suck, but other people deal with it, so I should be able to as well.  Quit being a pansy and stop looking for sympathy ~ you’re driving your friends away ~ not that I was really looking for sympathy so much as a way to just fah-reakin’ deal already.  That’s it in a nutshell.  I’ve tried to just deal, and I think it’s the “just” in that sentence that’s keeping things out of balance.  Intellectually, I could face that it’s been a hard year, that there are things I’ve needed to reconcile within myself, that there is actually (shudder) MORE navel gazing to be done.  Internally, I was beating myself up for not being able to handle it better.  I’ve been comparing my circumstances to those that happen to other people and in the Department of Handling Bad Things, I come up short in the comparison.  I don’t do well with bad things.  I chew on them, turn them this way and that, try to find justification that they happened instead of accepting that sometimes, often randomly, bad things just happen and I haven’t necessarily done something to deserve them.  So while my brain says, “Yes, you have things to deal with, so take your time and handle them however you need to handle them,” my emotions say, “You can’t even handle this?!  THIS?!  Well, I know of this person who handled the exact same thing, and did it with grace.  So who are you to think you deserve to be able to wallow?  Because of your ineptitude in facing your troubles, you’ve lost your chance to deal with those troubles, and now you must just ignore them, sweep them into a corner to accumulate dust and spiders, and you don’t get to work on getting through them.  You’ve lost your opportunity with your inability to be strong.  Pansy.”  It’s as if I’m a toddler who didn’t pick up my toys like I should have, and because I’ve procrastinated and gotten lost in petty complaints, I get a time-out, and I’ve lost the privilege of the toys for the rest of the day.  Like any toddler in trouble, I’ve been pouting, wondering why I’m not allowed the chance to pick up when now I know the consequences of my inaction.  Why can’t I wallow a little bit?  My dog died; my car shot craps; my finances are screwed up; I have a baby on the way and I’m uncertain about a lot of things!  Why can’t I have the chance to be a little upset that things aren’t that rosy? 

Intellect: Yes, hard year.  Take your time.
Emotion: You have five seconds to get this mess picked up before you lose your chance. 
Me: blah blah complainy boo hoo, waaaah, big fat mess-cakes.
Emotion: Go sit down!  No dealing with problems for you, since you clearly don’t know how to do it!

It’s all very cyclical, and any attempt at facing my difficulties has a heaping helping of guilt attached because of my emotional ineptitude.  So I make empty complaints, half-hearted jokes at my own expense, and I don’t truly believe I can really deal with it all.  It piles up in the corner, with the spiders and dust and the occasional string that floats by and gets stuck in the mess.  I write blog posts because I tell myself this is my place to dump all this crap.  Well, supposedly, because when I get to the meat and potatoes of the posts, where I can really get some of the crap dealt with, I hesitate and flounder.  Is this really where I want to vent?  CAN I vent here, knowing others read and will maybe judge?  Clearly, I don’t handle judgment well.  And didn’t I change this blog from one I used years ago in therapy to one that was meant to chronicle my life as mother and wife?  Does that mean opening all the cans with the worms in them here or does that mean those cans must be opened elsewhere, away from public eyes?  Wasn’t this place supposed to be a little bit of trivial mixed with the funny and maybe some slight introspection thrown in?  What do I want of this place?  Is that expectation too shallow for what I need?  I don’t know.  Didn’t I also say that I would do my best to write the truth here?  What’s the point of the funny and trivial anecdotes if it’s just the surface and the underneath is what’s in desperate need of attention, especially since what’s in the beneath is sucking down the funny trivial?

I really have some issues right now, and I need to face them.  I need to stop thinking shallow empty words can do any good for me.  I need to quit comparing what I’ve been feeling with what I perceive I should be feeling and focus on what my real feelings mean.  What my emotional side was doing by putting me in time-out was taking away my confidence in being able to face things.  I haven’t felt allowed to feel what I’ve been feeling because I’m not doing it right.  I’ve “just” dealt, instead of actually dealing.  I’ve been too worried about the appearance of how I’m handling things instead of doing any actual handling of things.  I’ve worried my complaints have driven off friends, family, readers, and even my own self-worth, and yet shallow grumbles were all I really knew how to do.

Yes, life sucks in many ways for a lot of people, including me.  And my newfound truth is that it’s okay to be mad about that, if that’s what it takes to move the righteous eff on so that I can see that life is wonderful in many ways for a lot of people, including me.

What I’ve decided is that while I’m going to let myself be mad about The Suck in order to better handle it, beyond this explanation to you dear folks for my poor content and my horrendous mood and terrible commenting habits, I’m not going to be mad about it in the public eye anymore.  I can’t.  I’m too worried about how it looks to others, and the only way I’m going to quiet the emotional response to my outrage at being dumped on so continuously is to stop giving the emotional response the ammunition to shoot back at me that I’m deficient in the strength required to get through.  That ammo is built out of comparison to others and I can’t worry about what others think or have done when walking in similar shoes.  That’s them, not me.  I need to get me straightened out, before finding me becomes a process that requires a copay again.

I’m doing it again.Pulling away, that is.

I seem to go through cycles, where I begin to feel overwhelmed, and instead of relying on my friends and family to help me through, I wilt, like a flower that’s changed its mind about blooming. I curl in ~ my lips curl in and purse tight, my shoulders curl in and hunch, my eyes curl in and break contact, my hands find each other and wring, pulled close to my chest. Paranoia rears up and replaces the outlines of myself that I’ve shrunken from and I begin to think that, even though I’m the one pulling away and hunkering down, it’s really those around me who don’t want to be near me and so leave me alone to deal. I can go weeks without calling my friends, without talking to my mom, without reaching out in any way to anyone.

Apparently, I’m doing it again. On more than one occasion, I’ve been reminded that someone wants to be there for me but I failed to ask. I’ve been told that people are on pins and needles around me because I appear so sullen. My usual daily interactions have become sparse and interwoven with minimal effort at contact.

I don’t know why I do this. Unfortunately this time around, I have reached out to one person, but my reaching has closed on emptiness. Emails have been unanswered. Outright questions about my committing offense have also fallen into silence, as if my person has taken a short coffee break and I was not aware I was talking to an empty room while I blathered on. The paranoia, it burns, and yet I can think of nothing that I may have done or said to spark irritation.

I have been doing it here. I don’t know what to say. I can’t think of post ideas. I can’t even remember my tried and true fall back ideas, where Gabe says something funny or does something I wish to remember. Well, so much for remembering.

I feel kinda lost. I know some of it is my own fault since I wished to be left alone, so alone is how I shall be left. Yet, once that aloneness was achieved, I realize that I haven’t a clue about what I want. And so I try to follow the echoes of people who have given me my space, only I don’t know how to emerge and fill out my own uncurled outline again. I reach out, but either I find only emptiness or I say something stupid which prompts more avoidance. Avoidance by my friends, who don’t wish to watch my train wreck or don’t wish to be in the path of said wreckage, or by me so that I don’t become a spectacle in front of those about whom I care.

Is it moodiness? Hormonal uncertainty? My own loner tendencies? I don’t know. All I know is that I’m flailing, and I don’t like it. Not one bit. And the one whom I am comfortable asking and getting the truth of the matter from has been decidedly silent, retreating herself to a room where I cannot find the door, cannot turn the knob to even follow her and ask that which I already know to be the answer.

Is it me?