Random Thoughts for Mid-November & the Weekly L.I.E.

Yesterday was a good day. It was miserably cold (for November – which is the same weather that we’ll consider positively spring-like when it shows up again some time in March.) and we saw the first snow flurries of the season. But I didn’t have to go anywhere, so I cocooned here with the dogs, writing and napping and cleaning the kitchen and baking frozen pizza. I wrote more than 5,000 words, and they were pretty easy to write. On Friday I barely yanked 1,000 words out of my highly-recalcitrant brain, and each one hurt. Yesterday’s words practically jumped out onto the page. That’s a nice feeling.

This whole thing with taking all the Fridays in November off to use for extra writing time, it’s not working exactly as I thought it would, but it is really working. Instead of turning into some kind of writing machine on Fridays I’ve been using the day to decompress, run errands, get my mental house in order. And just not having to be in the cosmic shithole of stress and aggravation that is my job, that’s a benefit in and of itself. Then on Saturdays I can get some writing done, since I don’t have to use that day to decompress.

I’ve also been going out on Fridays, as usual, and that is adding to my mental well-being too. I had a moment this Friday where I looked around and realized I was surrounded by people I really liked. (Of course I’d had a few drinks, so even people I don’t like all that much were seeming more like people I at least sort of liked.) It was just such a cool feeling, hanging out with a bunch of friendly familiar faces, talking about things with people who either share your point of view or will argue vehemently against it and maybe change your mind. I caught a fleeting glimmer of why other people like to socialize. Because for just that moment the world felt like a warm, friendly place. For a few hours I lost that persistent feeling that life is perpetually gearing up to clock me in the face. I relaxed.

I wonder if the world feels like a friendly place to other people all of the time, or at least most of the time? And if it does, I wonder if they know how lucky they are?

I also made more of an effort to pay attention to what was going on around me, but it was really hard. When MyTodd™ and I went out on Monday there were four separate occasions in which he had to point out to me that someone was either trying to say hello, goodbye or converse with me. Which is why, as he explained, people sometimes think I am an asshole. (Which, yeah I am an asshole, but not the kind who purposely ignores you if you’re trying to talk to me. Seriously, I didn’t see you there.) And on Friday someone came up to me and waved at me for 15 seconds, directly six inches from my face before I figured out they were trying to get my attention. Anyway, we’re going to call that “extreme internal focus” and not “criminally absentminded cluelessness” because we’re trying to be nice to me, OK?

Of course it’s never me going out unless I end up having some type of Ludicrous Interpersonal Exchange with someone, and this week’s exchange actually came from a guy that I know, rather than a random weirdo stranger.  (Sorry weirdo stranger guy at the bar who was eyeballing me and seemed to be vying for this week’s most ludicrous exchange, my friends helpfully created a physical barrier between us for most of the evening, and I made sure that I was never alone so you couldn’t get weird with me.)

Anyway, when I walked in I was greeting everyone. That’s a standard social convention to which I subscribe. But of course there’s always that thing when you’re greeting a bunch of people where you know you’re in the friendship stage at which you hug some of them hello and then you end up hugging like two-thirds of the group, but then there’s a few people who you don’t know well enough to hug, and they’re standing there all unhugged-akimbo and it’s awkward. And you try to fuss with your purse or order a drink to cover up how you’re not hugging them, and then it’s all over and the awkwardness is done for another week. Or until it’s time to leave.

Well there was one guy there who I know well enough to have just started hugging hello the last few times I’ve seen him. So I had greeted everyone else and I was going to be sitting next to him, so I was all “Hello <<Name>>!” and I hugged him. And I may have done a little air-kiss thing next to his cheek, too. When we were done embracing he asked me “Are we ‘kiss on the cheek’ friends now?” Which to me is a step up from hugging friends, but I didn’t want to be an awkward asshole, so was like “Of course!” and he said something like “Are you sure?” and I said. “Sweetie, whatever you want! You want a little tongue in the ear action, you can have that too.”

OK so obvious disclaimer here, that was a joke.That wasn’t even a particularly flirty joke, it was kind of a ridiculous joke.

Then somehow as I am fussing with my purse and ordered a drink he segues into “OK it’s decided then, we’re going to kiss on the lips now!” Seriously! And then he kisses me on the lips! And I was all ‘WTF just happened right here?’ in my head, but trying to play it off like he hadn’t just swiped half my lip gloss. So I just laughed and wished a lot that I could sit somewhere else. Luckily right that second he got a call that he had to go pick someone up, and took off. OK, that was weird.

So later in the evening my friend Dave showed up. Now, Dave is a most excellent friend because he’s extremely even-tempered, and he finds pretty much everything ridiculous. So you can totally point out ridiculous things and people to him all night long, and he gets the humor of it, but he just accepts everything with a nice calm way of being. Todd says it’s because Dave’s already seen every freaky thing in the world and there’s nothing left for him to get excited over, but I think it’s also part of his nature. It’s hard to explain, but it’s the perfect foil for my own sense of the ridiculous + tendency to freak out a little. His calm enhances my calm, and I like it. So Dave ended up sitting next to me at some point in the evening, just when I saw this other guy show back up.

Knowing he’d appreciate the bizarre contractual aspect of those kissing negotiations, I started telling him the story. “OMG, when <<name>> came in earlier, I was all “hey” and then he was all “hey, now we’re going to be ‘kiss on the lips’ friends!” and I was all “!!!” and then now we’re apparently kiss on the lips friends! Isn’t that fucked up?” And Dave was laughing that that was indeed fucked up, because he knows I am barely ever hugging on people I really like, much less kissing people I don’t know well. And then as I am sitting there telling him that story, here comes the original guy, leans over Dave’s shoulder and fucking smacks one right on my lips again! And then he says to Dave “We’ve agreed that we’re going to do this from now on.” and then he looks at me and says “Right?” and I am all “Uh huh!” and Dave is laughing his ass off. And I am realizing that not only does this guy think we’re kiss on the lips friends, but we’re apparently kiss on the lips friends every time we see each other in the evening! What? I mean, what prompts that, exactly? How long do we have to be absent from each other for that to kick in? If I leave to pee, when I come back do I have to do another round of lip-kissing? What?

And before anyone says it is some kind of weird hitting on me thing, it’s not. When the guy left earlier it was to pick up his girlfriend, who was then sitting right there for the return-kissage. I think he’s just kissy or something, I don’t know.

And even if the poor man was desperate enough to want to have me in his back pocket as some kind of “break glass in case of not having your dick sucked in six months” emergency ration, and this kiss thing is supposed to be laying the groundwork for that, it’s totally going to backfire, because now I am going to have to dodge him every time I see him! Tiresome! Anyway, that was the Ludicrous Interpersonal Exchange of the evening, for your reading pleasure. Now breakfast.

Saturday Update, For Lack of a More Exciting Title

Work event went well today. Good crowd. good weather, things went according to plan. We like when that happens. I’ve been dreading this work event for 2 months, and I am so glad it’s over. However I am totally, bone-dead exhausted right now.

I was sick yesterday, very faint and light-headed all afternoon. Which is funny, because in the morning I had just been thinking “Wow, I’ve only gotten about 6 hours of sleep per night this week, max, and I feel fine!” Guess that shite caught up with me. Came home and napped, then took my ass out for some recreation and fun times. Enjoyed it so much. Was accused later of looking like I wasn’t having a good time. Pondering wearing a shirt that says “I am having a better time than my face will comfortably express.” but then of course sometimes it wouldn’t be true. And a shirt with messages that change during the evening seems too much trouble entirely.

Longer post at some point about how my social wants and needs have 180-ed on me in the last year.

Anyway, MyTodd™ took off for Chicago this afternoon, but he’ll be back tomorrow. And my happy exhausted ass is headed to bed.

Updatery

I am tired. Still. Was that debate not fucked up? Srsly? This was pretty much how I felt about it too, John.

I have to work on Saturday. I don’t want to. I want to go to Chicago with MyTodd™ for Tony’s party. Bullshit and bad luck that I have to work two weekend days a year and this is one of them. There is a cool-sounding party/art show at the Koken Art Factory, and that’s so close to me and I have always wanted to go there. Can’t see myself wanting to drag my carcass out (and dressed up even) after my day on Saturday, but maybe I will force myself. I don’t know. Maybe.

I’ve been steady having my feelings hurt all week it seems, and I need to quit it, but I can’t. Maybe I am over-sensitive, maybe people are just real doucheholes, but I just feel a little raw and out-there and crazy this week. Surely everyone can’t spend all their time just hating me though, right? At some point they must have errands to run or dinner to cook or other things to do which would cut into the time they could spend showering me with disdain.

Ummm, that’s all I think. Everyone is sucky, my life makes me mental, I am sick and tired, I am not doing half of what I need to be doing, everyone else has it all figured out and they’re doing it all WAY BETTER THAN ME and otherwise things continue as normal.

Going Out, Zones of Comfort, Being a Moron

So I was trying to write up a whole blog post about how challenging I find this “mixing with the populace” thing that some of you citizens call “socializing.” And while—after much therapy, soul-searching, navel-gazing and other forms of pondering—I understand my own weirdo ways of being, I find that when I try to explain myself to others with any level of detail beyond ‘Please remember that I am socially disabled.’ I sound like a complete and utter raving loonytard.

So…please remember that I am socially disabled, and if I look like I am frowning at you and/or ignoring you A) That’s just the way my face looks and B) There’s a 98.9% chance I didn’t see you because I have socially-induced tunnel vision.

That’s all.

Self-Torture My Speciality

There’s nothing at which I am better, it seems, than self-torture. And not even the fun kind—just the kind that makes me crazy. I go out of my way to prove something to myself, knowing that once it’s proved I will be unhappy. I worry at benign situations like Chelsea worries at pork chop bones the squirrels drop in the yard.

Eventually even the benign becomes malignant, malevolent. I dig and dig until I find my unhappiness and then I withdraw, wounded and hurt. I have a talent for making myself miserable that I defy anyone else to even attempt to match. Though I don’t know why anyone would want to.

One day I am going to learn to leave well enough alone. But not tonight.

Helemaal Niets

As is often the case when I haven’t been saying anything for awhile, I really haven’t had anything to say. And what I have had to say, I haven’t wanted to share.

I’ve been more than my fair share of paranoid lately, and my stress level is truly insane. I wake up at night, worrying.

3 a.m. and I lay awake fretting over flowers I haven’t watered, baseboards I haven’t dusted, phone calls I haven’t made, work I haven’t proofread, conversations I haven’t had. I worry about things I said that are taken the wrong way, things I forgot to say that needed saying. Things people said to me and what they meant, things I need to do that I forgot to put on the list of things I need to do. Things people are going to do to me, things they’re going to do that I have to fix. Things that are going to go wrong and how I am going to fix them. Big things, small things, everything. All of it useless, angering me because it’s taking up my time and brain and rest.

It seems as if all of my friends are in the middle of major life dramas; divorce, homelessness, joblessness, depression, money troubles, health troubles. The world is falling apart and everything’s going wronger by the minute. Nothing about me seems very meaningful in the face of that.

My own treadmill of worthless time-wasting work and worry keeps speeding forward, and my life is thrown away on the most useless things, in the most useless ways. I work nonstop for enough money to maintain a life that bores me beyond sanity, and I don’t know how to stop. I don’t see anything else that would be less boring, and I am afraid to let go of what I have for something even more useless. I’m sick and I am scared and I am lost. Everyone seems so much happier than I am, no matter what they’re doing. Why isn’t everyone else screaming?

See why I haven’t had much to share? What’s the point in putting more of this out there? Anyway, you know where I am if you need some Eeyore thrown at you.

The Ways I am Supposed to Feel

So here’s Friday night’s going-out story. (Do I need to preface this with all my situational going-out anxiety and confused/conflicting feelings about being out in the public sphere? I didn’t think so.)

Went out to dinner for Jessica’s b-day at Michael’s. Had a minor melt-down in the early evening due to something really stupid I did on accident, and my inability to accept that I sometimes make mistakes. Yes, even me. Yes, mistakes. Things done wrong for which I am responsible. Unacceptable. Will assess and address this issue later. Maybe. Anyway.

Went out to dinner and it ended up being the four of us. We all left at the same time, ostensibly to go to the bar, but Friend 1 had to take leftovers to her house and Friend 2 had to go home to put her jewelry on. So MyTodd™ and I (in separate cars) made our way to the bar. Midway there he calls to tell me that he sees a bunch of his colleagues’ cars in another bar’s parking lot, so he’s stopping there for a drink. No problem, I go on to the original destination bar without him. (See? See how brave I am become?) I get there and (male) Friend 3 is there, along with Friendly Barkeep. So I am comfortable and feel safe with these people I know, and sit down and start chatting. Unfortunately I am really, really tired. Two days of physically intense photo shoots at work plus the stress of a no-show photographic subject on Friday, plus aforementioned meltdown = me being almost totally (albeit pleasantly) brain-dead and non-talky. I was leaning my head in my hand on the bar, actually. Which caused the Friendly Barkeep to wave his hand in front of my face to see if I was awake at one point.

OK, here it’s going to get all complicated and over-explained and stuff, so if you don’t like that kind of thing… stop reading. Continue reading »

One More Reason

There are so many reasons that I have problems being around people. But as I was out last night I was reminded of one of my least favorite things about socializing.

To wit: for some reason, guys think that it is their absolute unfettered right to publicly critique the appearance of any girl around them and deem it “appealing” or “non-appealing.” No detail is too small for their consideration! Outfits, hairstyles, skin tone, muscle tone, ass fat, cleavage, handbags – they’re all open to dissection, judgment and potential scorn.

And citizens, these are guys that I LIKE, acting this way. These guys are my friends. These are guys who read and are aware of politics, hold professional positions, make house payments, supposedly live in the real world. But they still feel as if every woman who walks into their line of vision has apparently spent her entire life waiting for just such an occasion to present herself to them, and they do not shy from filling out their mental scorecards on each aspect of her appearance. It’s like it doesn’t even occur to them that women exist for a purpose other than visual pleasure.

And these are not above-average guys, either. These are normal, everyday people with no special claim to attractiveness and/or eligibility.

My favorite (of many instances last night) was a guy who was complaining about the lead actress in a superhero movie, because she was unattractive. Her level of not-attractiveness (according to his discerning taste) was such that it made the entire movie unrealistic. OK then. That’s what made it impossible for you to suspend your disbelief in regards to a movie based on a COMIC BOOK. The actress, someone who is professionally beautiful, is not hot enough for you. Ruined the whole movie. Mmmhmmm.

What compounds the confusion for me is that I see the women that these same men are with. They’ve somehow attracted mates, a few of them. And they’re just regular women. Regular looks, a wide variety of ass sizes, weird teeth, imperfect skin, smeared lipstick… regular women. And I can’t figure out if the guys have two standards in their head, one to judge a woman they’re currently fucking (“she can have imperfections, I can’t do any better.”) and another to judge women on the street. (“Not allowed to have imperfections, must be completely hot.”) If this is the case, then apparently the “woman on the street” category is broad enough to encompass you and me while we run to Target to pick up toilet paper AND professional actresses on the red carpet who’ve had 3+ hours of prep time for their photo op.

I don’t know if the guys who do this understand what it feels like as a woman to sit and hear that kind of conversation. It fucking sucks. That casual dissection of the female appearance is just unsettling, stacked as it is on the assumption that women are supposed to be visually appealing at all times and if they aren’t then they’re somehow doing it wrong.

It’s especially disturbing when whatever flaw they’re discussing is one you have. There are some sensitivity issues here. For instance, it would never occur to me, when speaking to a guy with a weight problem or snaggly teeth or bad skin or thinning hair, to start negatively critiquing another guy with the same issue. Honestly, is that something that people really need to be reminded not to do? Like remembering not to say “God, I hate cripples!” when speaking to a person in a wheelchair? I mean, we all got that message when we were about five or six years old, didn’t we? So when a guy is talking to me and starts ragging on the appearance of a girl who is already way better looking than I am, how am I supposed to feel? Does that mean I am invisible, or just someone whose feelings don’t count? Am I supposed to assume that there are two standards, one for the “real” girl the guy is talking to now, and one for the plaything across the room? Because I am across the room from someone, and I know that I don’t look any better from over there than I do close up. So I can only assume that there is someone over there saying awful things about my body, my clothing, my hair. And hey, guess what? That makes me as paranoid as all fuck.

And I don’t understand what’s doing it. What’s made every single outing an adventure in hot-or-not? Is it the InterTubes? Is it Photoshop? Is it plastic surgery? Is it the impossible beauty standard created by already attractive women who are then surgeried and ‘shopped into an even more ideal image that is in no way connected to reality? Or is it just man’s innate tendency to be a judgmental douche?

It’s all disheartening. It all makes me dislike other people. It all makes me dislike myself even more.

I suppose that one of these days I am going to internalize and grow numb to the fact that all guys will fuck anything that moves while constantly keeping their options open in case a much-more-perfect specimen comes along. That all guys assume we exist only in an attempt to please their eyes and get their dicks hard. That no man understands there’s more to a woman they see than… what they see. But today’s not that day. And last night was certainly not that night.

Have I Become More Boring?

Sometimes I go back and see what I was doing a year ago, because that’s one of the reasons I keep a damn blog in the first place. And 08/05/07‘s post was way funner than anything I have to say at the moment.

Don’t know if I’ve gotten more boring or just more jaded. Actually, I didn’t think more jaded was possible. Maybe that’s the lesson from last year to this year  – It’s always possible to become more jaded, bitter and cynical than you are right now! Can’t wait to see how that plays out for next year. I think I may just take up carrying an Uzi full time by then, and casually shooting anyone who uses ironic quotation marks incorrectly.

I know, I know, I always get more introspective this time of year. Yeah, I know, you didn’t know it was possible for me to actually ramp up the level of introspection periodically, but it is.

Right now, for the record, what I feel is kind of sorry for myself. Kind of like I wasted this year. Kind of sorry for other people I know, who seem sad and unable to grow. Kind of bored of all this, and really not understanding the point. Kind of lonely. Kind of wishing things were vastly different. Kind of lucky they’re at least as good as they are. Kind of frustrated that I can’t be a different sort of person.

I had determined that this year was going to be a year of Big Change. And I did do lots of different things. And lots of things happened to me that I wouldn’t have chosen. So things did change. But I still feel the same.

One thing hasn’t changed from last year to this though – I still think all sports are a retarded waste of life, and will gladly not-watch sports with any of you, anytime.

Time makes you sorry for the things that you’ve done
Sometimes you walk away and sometimes you run
And the weather’s fine here; I can feel a slight chill
Some things change babe, and some never will

So I call you up just to tell you why
Why I left you and say goodbye
Ooh must be the mood I’m in
I’m thinking of you again
I call you up just to tell you why
Why I left you and say goodbye

Eva Cassidy – Say Goodbye

People With Whom You’re Done*

Yesterday at the Moolah I had to do the “people you used to know” dodge, when I saw an old acquaintance of mine leaving the showing immediately prior to the one I was attending. This was someone with whom I had shared some mutual friends, hung out, chatted, had over to my home – but not someone who I would think to call if I was sleepless and crying in the middle of the night. (my personal Official Friendship demarcator) Anyway, after a while the friend/acquaintanceship waned, as they are wont to do, and then it gets to the part where it’s all awkward. Like… how do you tell someone you’re through being friends with them, when they’re not through being friends with you? And even worse, when you run into them there’s a social expectation that you’ll act very surprised and happy to see them, as if your failing to return their phone calls & emails for the last two years has been The Merest Accident and Something You Were Planning to Get to One of These Days. And then you have to pretend to care what they’re up to, and pretend to want to tell them what YOU’RE up to, and then you have to pretend you’re terribly late for Some Important Something and you MUST DASH but will CALL SOON and have lunch or coffee or some-such. Because your ignoring them was just an oversight. Really. Rilly.

Whatever. That’s all WAY too much pretending for me. I know it’s awkward when you don’t want to be friends with someone anymore, but I think after a certain amount of time you should be legally allowed to not acknowledge that person if you see them out and about. Can’t you revert back to being strangers after some socially-proscribed period?

Interestingly enough, this phenomenon never happens to MyTodd™ who is (or at least seems) always pleased as punch to run into anyone he’s ever known ever, and perfectly happy and comfortable catching up on the last 27 years of history with them as if it’s not all a boring waste of time because if you have your way you won’t ever speak to this person voluntarily again. This is one of the primary ways in which Todd is a better type of person than me, and also why he can keep up a vast, global social circle, the maintenance of which would drive me stark raving batshit. Todd is also my closest friend because he’s the kind of guy who sends me a text message to warn me if someone he knows I don’t want to see is at a place he knows I am going. See, I am nothing like him, socially, but he makes allowances for my eccentricities. Zees ees whai we loooove him zo!

Although… he does sometimes torture me with threats that he’s going to call a bunch of people he knows I don’t want to run into, and have them all “accidentally” meet us somewhere. And I’ve got tiers of people like that in my life, so it would be torturous. People I haven’t voluntarily spoken to in 9 years… 4 years… 2 years… 6 months… given my propensity for adding and dropping casual acquaintances it’s got potential to be a seven-layer dip of delicious awkwardness. We have also debated starting a support group/blog “superBadGirlRefusesToSpeakToMe.com” where they could spend time comparing notes and strategizing my downfall and leave off calling/emailing me.

Look I never said I was nice, or even 100% human. I know I have my (severe) interpersonal interaction limitations. But honestly, I would rather ignore you in good faith than fake wanting to interact with you. And of course I am not talking about YOU anyway. YOU I could never, ever do without and will have in my life always. Really. Rilly. Call me!

*Whenever I want to end a title of my blog with a preposition I always think of the joke that ends “Where y’all from, bitch?” I know that the way I have it written reads convolutedly, but I can’t just leave that “with” dangling at the end of the sentence.

Living in Dali

My work life is so surreal right now. Nothing that happens makes any sense. Nothing that I say is what needs to be said, nor does it bear any resemblance to what I am thinking.

The less I say what I think the more people think I am awesome for agreeing with them, and then I just go and do what needs to be done without reference for what I told them I was going to do.

Mostly they don’t remember what they were wanting from me anyway, because they didn’t understand what they were talking about when they were trying to tell me what they wanted.

It’s enough to drive me totally insane. The most insane-making part of it is how I am getting USED to it. I don’t want to be the person who successfully navigates these waters. I feel this huge schism opening between who I pretend to be all day and who I am, and I don’t want that. It was too much work (and cost too much in therapy bills) to integrate the real me and the me-you-see in the first place. I don’t think any job is worth subdividing my sense of self.

The only thing I can do is be myself REALLY HARD whenever I am not there, and it makes me feel vaguely manic, the need for that much self-expression between 4 and 10 p.m. every day. Especially because I am so exhausted all the time. I have someone bugging me to do some freelance work for them, and I was telling MyTodd™ that I didn’t have the energy to contact them and deal with it right now. He said “Yeah, you sound like you barely have the energy to tell me about it.” Which, I thought I was maintaining a BIT more perky of a facade, but apparently not.

Anyway.

Doing lots of Cure listening lately. Continuing on the retro kick. Is it a sign of lack of personal development that I feel like the same songs describe me now as I thought did in 1988? (Parse that sentence, I dare you.)

Maybe it’s more about the immutable nature of Susans, who may bend and sway and even grow, but adamantly refuse to be moved.

You’re begging me to stay
But I’m laughing in your face
You’re so desperate
Not to let those years of care
Go to waste
But it was you who wanted love
Not romance
You have to pay my price
Bodies may be made of fire
Souls are made of ice

I’m mean
And cold
I’m cold
I’m told
I’d love to love you girl
But my body
Has just been sold

The Cure – “I’m Cold”

Protected: On Dipshits and Their Habits

In which we all gaze at my navel

Breathe through it
write a list
of desires

Make a toast
make a wish
slash some tires

Paint a heart repeating, beating
“don’t give up, don’t give up.”

- The Weepies, Not Your Year

I guess I am pretty introspective at the moment. I am not really trying to be, but to be honest I haven’t really tried to be anything at all for the last eight months, except alive.

Last summer when my Mom got better after being so sick, I swore that nothing non-fatal would ever seem serious to me again. And that really lasted for a while. I did my best to embrace life, to forge new connections, to be happy. Things were going well at work, at home, in my personal life. It was exciting and new and fun. But there’s no accounting for fate, what will happen and how/whether we will be able to accept it. If I had known at this time last year what the following year would be like… I think I would have just given up on it, quit my job and gone to live on the beach somewhere. And I would have hucked sharp rocks at anyone who tried to get within 30 feet of me.

Maybe the only reason we don’t get to see into the future is that none of us would choose to live it if we saw it coming. It was hard enough to live through this year once, I would never choose to do it again.

Life is seeming better right now. The summer, full of sun and flowers, is in front of me. I am off for vacation next week and will have the chance to finish my Savannah research for CWaCS. That means a hell of a lot to me. Not just the getting out of town aspect, but the “finishing something I challenged myself to do” aspect, too. Things at work are absolutely dismal, but dismal is four-and-a-half steps up from where they were in March. I finally got a diagnosis for WTF my problem is (again I remind you that it’s not mental – I don’t CARE what it seems like to you). I can walk (almost) normally again, with little pain on most days, although my foot has a tendency to swell up all crazy-like if I sit too long, and I feel like someone’s dead grandma when I take my first few steps each morning. But I can get out and about, I am not trapped in the house for day after endless, depressing, repetitive, gray day. I am back to where I was last year at this time – a state of “OK, OK this isn’t as bad as all that. I can do this. I really think I can do this.”

Hopeful, I think we call that.

And I am trying to look forward rather than back. Trying hard.

But by nature I like (love? need?) to dwell on things, pick them apart, put them back together until I really see how they work – and I am in that phase now. Maybe I need that phase right now. To be honest, I had enough on my plate just trying to stay alive this winter. I didn’t have time or energy to ponder, understand or learn. Just moving my exhausted, broken carcass from place to place and doing the basics needed to survive – that took every ounce of will I had, and then a few. So now that I have some energy to spare, some time on my hands, some new internal strength reserves from which to draw, I am in full-on wonder mode. If it bores you, there are many,many porn sites within a few clicks of here, knock yourself out.

What I am dwelling on right now is the fact that I seem to keep learning the same lessons over and over. And each time they seem so shiny-new, and I think “How did I not know that before?” and then I read something I wrote a long time ago, or re-read something I underlined in a book a long time ago and I realize that I DID know that before, I just didn’t know it THIS MUCH.

My wise, beloved, former therapist once told me that you need to learn the same things over and over in life. You can know something on Monday and know it on a different level on Wednesday. Friday you can know it ten times more. A year from Friday and you know it in a new way, about a new thing. Understanding comes in layers, you rarely get to bottom.

I haven’t gotten to the bottom of any of my own lessons yet, I suspect. Right now I am working on three things.

This summer I am going to:

1) Let the past fall away
2) Dare
3) Stop trying to fix things which are irreparably broken

It’s that last one I anticipate trouble with. I am nothing if not tenacious. I hate to accept broken as a diagnosis – for situations or people. I know that I need to, but I suspect I am going to spend most of my life relearning that particular lesson.

…but because it is his

Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his.

If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading. – W.H. Auden

My name is Susan, and I’m addicted to narcissists.

Though I have known for years that I tend to form strange-attractor relationships with narcissists, each time one of my new “friends” is revealed as having Narcissistic Personality Disorder, I am again stunned at my peculiar (perhaps willful) blind spot for this condition.

I am not talking about people who are just self-centered and/or occasionally grandiose, but people who have clinical NPD – an inability to see others as real people with wants, needs and feelings. To clinical narcissists we’re all just cogs in their massive ego-feeding machine. We’re wanted as long as we’re useful for that purpose and we’re disposable once we’re not.

Narcissists can be hard to detect; they can masquerade as normal people for a surprisingly long time – when it suits them. Some of them can successfully hold down jobs, and since they hate to be alone they are usually surrounded with “friends”. Some of their actions toward you or others may seem altruistic or even benevolent. For instance they like to be seen as helping others, rescuing the less-capable or using their “special” abilities and knowledge to assist friends and family. They’re also quite skilled liars/serial exaggerators (especially about other people and events in their lives) so unless you get to know them in their native habitat and can assess their truthfulness for yourself, you may be taken in. For instance, a narcissist may complain incessantly about the inadequacies of their friends, family or coworkers. They may explain to you in detail how they have helped/assisted/educated/saved these people. It’s not until you meet them that you discover the contribution of the narcissist was probably rather less than they have claimed, and the other party was not in quiet as hapless, helpless and inept as they were reported to be.

One of the key indicators of narcissism (and my particular downfall in recognition of them) is that they have no empathy whatsoever and show no interest in other people’s lives (unless they think that person is of a special importance/level of expertise and/or will impact their own life in some way that they desire). They will expect you to be very interested in them, their projects, their day-to-day heroics (or minutia) and whatever else they want to show off about. But they will almost never ask what you are thinking/doing/working on, and will not be able to dredge up more than the most superficial interest in things you attempt to convey to them.

I almost never recognize this because: Continue reading »

Barbs and Pointlessness

It’s not the spark that caused the fire.
It was the air you breathed that fanned the flame.

- Over the Rhine, “Spark“

It’s no surprise to anyone that I remain confused by the people I interact with. It’s not that I don’t understand how they feel – sometimes my empathy for people I don’t even LIKE can overwhelm me – but I don’t understand what they do about how they feel.

(Unless I am in the middle of some sort of emotional shit-storm/freakout, and hey that can happen.) I try to evaluate what I am doing in terms of what my desired outcome is, and whether I am likely to achieve it by the action I am planning or any other action. If I am doing something that I can see from the outset won’t get me what I want, I usually either stop doing it altogether or modify my strategy. I’ve learned over what seems like a million years of fruitless actions that there’s no forcing anything in this world – at least in relation to people. You take people as they are – full stop – or you walk away.

For an obvious example – my Dad is an active alcoholic, and frequently also an asshole. Every time I visit my parents I could spend my time arguing with him about his drinking, his assholish comments, his racism, his insane politics or whatever else of his I don’t agree with. Which would gain me… nothing. Ever. He’s going to stay an alcoholic, sometimes-asshole. I could walk away from the relationship entirely, and I’ve tried that several times over the years. But he’s my Dad. Aside from the fact that I would be running into him when I try to visit my Mom – awkward! – there are good qualities about him, I can see clearly that he’s only a product of his upbringing, and although he can’t say he loves me there’s usually nothing he won’t do for me (aside from the obvious “giving up drinking” part.)

My point is that I’ve just had to accept that. Can’t change him, unwilling to remove him from my life completely, so acceptance is the only way. Make your peace with the things you can’t ever fight. Especially “for your own good!” things you want to change about other people. That doesn’t mean I let all of his bullshit comments pass, or that I subject myself needlessly to his drunken nonsense-fests, but I manage the relationship so that it’s OK for me to take some limited part in it. What I’ve learned is that there is a hell of a lot of shit you can ignore when you A) consider the source and B) don’t have to live with it full-time. Continue reading »