(yes I am aware I am being melodramatic. That is how it feels right now. It seems to be coming at me in waves. It will pass or so I am told by the voice of reason when it can be heard over the other little voices in my head.)

Things feel sort of like they are running away with me right now. Lots of things are coming down on me and I am needing to deal and I don’t have the resources to deal with. I have verbally/textually bleed this into a number of places so I am putting copies here to keep track. Maybe this is all coming together right now to push me into my old modes of dealing where everything becomes Happy Happy Joy Joy and I am fucking AWESOME instead of the emotional wreck I am right now.

here there be dragons and there is no one to hold my hand

I probably have posted a definition of Thought Presents before. But I wrote out a way to explain it that I think is rather concise (more so than previous ways) and I wanted to preserve it.

There is a saying; The thought behind the gift that is important part.

When you see something or think of something that you would like to give to someone but for some reason it isn’t practical (it is too much, they wouldn’t have room, it doesn’t really exist, etc), you can give them the thought instead.

This is what I call a thought present.

This is something I seem to be hitting hard lately. When an apology is given, it seems that many people then add the word but and fill in an explanation. This ends up negating most of the apology and makes it more of a defense mechanism. If the sentence end after the apology and a new sentence starts with the explanation, it comes across as a real apology and info rather than the apology as an opening to get the info out there and justify whatever the apology was about.

I am sorry I stepped on your foot but I couldn’t see where I was going.

vs.

I am sorry I stepped on your foot. I couldn’t see where I was going.

To me, the difference is huge. The first feels like the person is saying don’t be mad at me, it wasn’t really my fault or I couldn’t help it. The second sounds like the person really is sorry and they are giving the information of how it came about. I appreciate the info because that is useful in figuring out how to avoid having it happen again.

This seems so very obvious to me. Yesterday, I had two people that care for me a lot give me apologies that I very much needed and deserved with the word “but” included. And it added to the hurt already present. I think it took this big of an issue for me to see how deal the word “but” is. When you aren’t all that close to someone it is easier to absorb the difference between an real apology and a defensive apology. When it is someone important and the hurt is large, there isn’t any room to handle a difference.

I don’t know if this is just a me thing or not. It seems to me that the feeling of needing to put in the word “but” really is a feeling the need to defend ourselves and get out there that we didn’t mean to hurt or it wasn’t our fault or whatever. Our need to not be in the wrong is more important than the apology we are giving.

I am under the impression that I have avoided the word “but” in my apologies. I don’t know if I have because I haven’t been watching for it and can only go back a little to see if I have recently. If anyone knows otherwise, I would appreciate having it pointed out to me (gently) so I can go back and see what I might have been thinking or feeling at the time and see if it fits with this new theory of mine. I don’t know if this has always been my way, I sort of doubt it being as I am a human like everyone else but I do think I have been doing this at least since 2005 maybe 2004. A lot changed for me back then and I think this could be one of the things that got rewired.

I think I have avoided the “but” because I have owned that I have done something that has caused someone to need an apology and the apology is for them, not for me. If they deserve an apology, then they deserve one that is heartfelt and complete. After the apology is done, then I can go on to give them whatever more information I think is relevant. Sometimes the apology is about how things have impacted them and I don’t feel I have done anything wrong. There is no defense in it for me, it is all for them and making them feel better. I already know that I am in the clear and I don’t need them to feel the same way. Part of how I word my apology includes that. I know I was doing this at least by 2006. I tell someone that I am sorry they got yelled at when they showed up, they didn’t deserve that sort of treatment. I don’t say I am sorry I yelled at them because at the time there wasn’t any other way for me to deal with anyone. At times like that I don’t even add the additional information.

When you hurt someone you really care about, you really want them to know you didn’t do it on purpose. It would be really easy for the word “but” to come into play. Or if someone is really angry with you over something you have said/done then the word “but” gets used to put in a defense. Both times, the focus really seems to be defending yourself rather than taking care of the other. The first case is really hard because you think you are taking care of the other rather than yourself but you are actually trying to replace your point of view for theirs while they are hurt. Their point of view needs to be acknowledged and taken care of before your point of view can be brought forth. Since being hurt it an emotional thing, it is already too late for rational explanations to make it better.

The more you hurt, the most you need your feelings taken care of before you can hear what led to the hurt. To have your feelings taken care of means to have them seen, heard, understood, and appreciated. They are your feelings, there is no right or wrong about them.

(this last bit is/was hard to write out. I don’t know if that means it is too close to home to feel easy to say, if it hasn’t been chewed on enough to be a complete idea, if I don’t feel I have managed to write it out well enough for it to make sense to others, or if it something I am writing out not so much for myself but for someone else to see.)

I am tired of reaching out. I am tired of trying. I am tired of pumping energy out and allowing myself to feel the need for contact with others and not be able to make it happen.

I had some emotional battering today and feel I have no safe harbors to retreat to. I hate hurting and I hate crying. I hate that those that are suppose to keep me from hurting are the ones that led me there.

As I repeat to myself over and over, it will be different after some time has past. Tomorrow may not be any better but at least it will be different.

Yeah, there is a light at the end of the tunnel but I still feel deeply in the tunnel with little to no energy to move. As some people say, A quiet Gina is not a good thing.

Why would I ever want to wake up?

I have spent the entire day asleep dreaming incredible dreams. I was going to list out all the wonderful things that happened in my dream that are so much better than reality.

It was time for a phone call from my mom. she forgot to call yesterday. We spent most of the time going over something she has gotten wrong for over the last 20+_ years about my former ex0fiance and my relationship. She has chosen his delusion over mine and followed what she considered the “easiest” way of describing it based on the way “society” dictates.

open mouth, let out rant

A button of mine got triggered recently and I got to see how much of a trigger it has.

I am not a pretty person. I am a person that can be pretty. I can also look bad, weird, etc. I like the fact that I can look like many things. A part of my personality that I like the most is my silly side. It is also a part of my personality that gets me in trouble with “normal” people.

story/rant time

I feel like I might not be getting anywhere. A friend pointed out that I am no better than I was a year ago. I know there have been changes and forward movement but I find them hard to point to and I can see where she is coming from. Because this is being pointed out from the outside, I am passing it along to my therapist for their input. I did the same with my panic attack and both of them grabbed ahold of it a lot more than I expected.

When I was living in Belgium with my fiance, both of my parents stopped tooting my horn and saying how wonderful I was and how I could do anything. It was an odd lack. I didn’t realize how much support was in every interaction with them until it was gone. It took a while to figure out what it was that was gone. Independently they both felt that when I hooked my wagon to C’s that I stopped being someone that could go out and conquer the world. They saw how I placed myself in his hands and was something of a puppet of his. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds (it would take a lot more words to describe it at the level it was) but my fire, the thing that makes me me was dampened.

I feel like maybe I am in a state where I am dampened down again and the people that care about me are holding back and not saying anything. Or it could be that I am not in a position to be able to hear it. I would rather learn from that previous lesson and be more proactive. But by throwing the question out there, it opens up so many possibilities that I don’t know what to do again and I don’t know if I will be losing what I have been working towards. I have stepped back time and time again when I have found that I went too far too fast. Just because it is hard, I don’t want that to stop me. I want to move forward in the way I can and in a way that is good for me.

what does the online tarot have to say

FB posts from today’s bike ride:

Given my awesome lack of exercise, I am repeatedly amazed by how much I can actually do. I think I found where the lack of exercise shows up. I just rode 1 mile on my bike making sure to go slowly. It has been 15 minutes and I am still shaking like a chihuahua.

After an hour an a half of sitting, there was little to no shaking in the hands. The bike ride home was a lot easier. I don’t think I got that much better in this time frame so I am guessing that it is downhill from downtown to home.

I feel like I have been fighting myself a lot lately. I work very hard to do one thing and work just as hard not to move at all. This isn’t the passive fighting I was doing a year ago. This is straining in both directions. The muscles alongside my spine have been aching since last Sat I think because of how hard I have been trying to actually do things. I had a dream today about flinging myself around because that was the only way I could move sometimes. I would even fall asleep in the middle of things I wanted to be doing. It caused all sorts of problems if you can imagine. And oddly my surroundings are a lot like they are right now. I was just less aware and less able to move.

I have taken the first step in the Dr Amen better brain process. I have added supplements to my morning pill pile. Fish Oil is the next step. I do wonder if this first step is related to the fighting. If I am getting to a point where I am trying to push rather than just collapse and let whatever happen.

The last two days I have fallen asleep at 6pm. It doesn’t matter when I get up, if I have had loads of sleep beforehand or was short sleep, I have noticed a tendency to get drowsy at 6pm. The amount of sun seems irrelevant too. It has happened at different times of the year. One thing that is consistent between yesterday and today was drinking Arizona ice tea beforehand. I was very thirsty yesterday and it was part of quenching my thirst. Today I stuffed myself with food and it was the drink of choice. It affecting me like a sleep aid would be a drastic and quick change from how it affected me before.

I hurt tonight. I have written out the story and babbled about more stuff as part of the process of figuring out what to do with this hurt and how to deal with it and what it means. A very old misunderstanding got some clarification and took me right back to how it felt when it happened and has shaken up some things in how I have viewed stuff from my past.

It isn’t any real big deal other than how it is affecting me. Just another example of how I can handle some big things with ease and how a little pebble that most people wouldn’t even notice can derail me and bring me to my knees.
story time