Left mom at the airport, her flight leaves in about an hour. I have a lot of mixed feelings, emotions, thoughts. A bowl full of mixed jelly beans including the bad tasting Harry Potter ones.

I think the bowl if full of good tasting ones but it is a little hard to tell. When savoring a good one, it brings a warm smile to my face, I sit back comfortably well grounded and pleased. If you look too closely, the cracks and fractures show up and get larger. When encountering a bad tasting one, I feel like I need to smash myself with a metal bat and rip my flesh with pointed claws. The negative side of me is rather harsh lately, I try to keep it in its cage. The variance in intensity makes it hard to review the last few weeks to get any sense if it has been an over all good or negative experience.

I can say it has been an experience. Shitty stuff came up and it was dealt with in mostly good ways. I feel more connected to my mom and to my SIL and more willing to work with my brother. I will add dad back into the system in a week or so.

This has been a good growth opportunity and I think I managed to work through it instead of just run away. This counts as a big win.

You know that heavy thing you had to carry around and complained about all the time and you can’t help but miss when it is gone? Yeah, I feel like that. In a way I feel free and I can run and play, in another way I feel like I have stepped off a cliff into open air and am about to fall.

I told myself last night that tomorrow will be different. I stayed up way too late (6am got up at 7:45am) and it wasn’t that much different. Had a therapy session with mom that really pushed at me and made me tense, had a break from mom for an hour and a half, picked her up and dropped her at my place and went to visit a friend. Had lunch (almost 4pm), picked up mom and took her to another friend’s house for dinner (I managed to invite my mom and I to his house, we brought the ingredients and he cooked), then took mom to the airport. Things feel very different now than they did yesterday, or this morning or earlier this afternoon.

I was nice to be able to be with friends in a different environment after an intense time with mom. The dinner was lovely. My friend and mom got along better than I do with either one of them. I sort of wished I had a picture of him helping her to the car. It hit a soft spot in me.

Really not wanting to exist right now. I have been hiding in my hole trying to reboot and am currently feeling very stressed out and like there isn’t a clear direction to move in. I know it is all in my head and I am whipping it up but that doesn’t lessen the affect it is having on me.

Not enjoying the concept of life at this time. Not enjoying the concept of being me at this time.

A thing that does bring a smile to my face is Happy Jewish Dead Zombie Day. I like that.

I got woken up from a deep sleep by mom and was instructed to just put clothes on and get out the door to pick her up. She said that she needed time to cook. I told her 15 minutes. I took 5 minutes to curl up under my covers (because I was freezing) and drink my shake. I had lost track of when time was so I really didn’t know how long I had. As soon as my allotted 5 minutes was up, I got up, put on pants and jackets and headed out the door.

I found mom at the hotel’s computer searching up movie times. She proceeded to list off locations and times for How to train your dragon. I didn’t care. I really didn’t care to see a movie but this is one I would like to see. I was on “get mom to home to cook” mode and really wasn’t processing her load of data. She didn’t seem to care. There was a sense of resentment over not really wanting to see the movie and hurrying out the door so that I had to sit and wait while she babbled data at me that I not only didn’t want but wasn’t processing and I had to figure out a way to tell her.

We got going and in the car I am smelling something that smells like Altoids. In the past, I have gotten very sick on Altoids and so the smell makes me nervous, uncomfortable and somewhat nauseous. I asked if she had had an Altoids and she insisted that she was sucking on a lemon drop for her saliva. Then told me a story about a little girl taking her Altoids, blah blah blah. She showed me her lemon drop and it looked like it was a round Altoids thing. I asked could it be a lemon/Altoids thing. She described it and in her description there is the possibility that this “lemon drop” has a lemon outer covering and an altoids like inner center (instead of a lemon drop that I am familiar with which is all lemon candy). But I think she was stuck on the name of Altoids as my issue (even though I kept asking about a mint thing, just that Altoids has that extra kick that takes mint to sick for me).

She then tried to make some joke about it (I can’t even remember what it was and it probably would be a good thing to remember) and it pissed me off. Being out of sorts I let her know how much it pissed me off because this happens over and over, her trying to make a joke, it not being funny and then turning it around to it being about me not allowing her to be funny. This time instead of just putting up with her, I let her know what I thought. She gets to sounding so self righteous about how other people would think she is funny and how maybe the problem with me not finding her funny is not her but me. I hope I don’t do that to other people like she does it to me. I will have to watch for it and I am pretty sure it will be hard for me to see and if anyone stuck my face in it then it would hurt. It probably would have to be pointed out to me softly and let me figure it out for myself. Asking me questions and getting me to dig about some time when I did it would probably work. This is something I would really want to know if I did because I would want to fix it. I may think that someone responding to me badly is their fault but pushing that back onto them is not the way to handle it.

I would like to think that the right way to handle that would be to accept that people respond to things based on who they are and what is going on inside themselves. If they respond “wrong” then the event triggered something in them that led to that response. Approaching it as the problem is with them just leads to them getting more defensive and reinforcing that “wrong” behavior, possibly spreading it into other areas because stuff from me gets marked as not safe. I would like to think I absorb the “fault” for “wrong” response by owning what I did to trigger (even if I think I was in the right and they were wrong). From there I could possibly find out why my trigger got the response it did to find out what is behind what I see as the “wrong” response. With that info I think I could see that my idea of why the response was “wrong” is faulty or I could find out what the “wrong” response is really triggering from. There is a chance that my action combines with something else that sends things down the wrong channel resulting in a “wrong” response. Or I could find out that there just isn’t any way to make heads or tails of it and that I should leave it alone. In the end I still would have x trigger gets y response which means if I don’t like y response then I shouldn’t do x trigger.

My mom and I get caught before this level happens and go around in circles. I think I make complete logical sense and she seems to think that just because she doesn’t mean any harm in it that I should adjust my attitude to match hers. I feel she should earn that trust and should learn why she doesn’t have it. The reason I had trouble with her “joke” this time was because I was having a hard time getting the info I felt a strong need out of from her and was somewhat frustrated with the translation problems. Her timing of the “joke” hit the button of her purposely adding miscommunication to the process. I did not get the feeling that she understood what my problem was and her part in it. She just made a very poor attempt to joke about it. To me this feels a lot like someone razzing you and then saying it is your fault for not being able to take a joke. This really pisses me off.

One thing I learned is that since mothers will still love you no matter what your behavior, the need to control how upset you are feels less. So I let her know how upset this made me. It has been a problem with us for years. She seems to think because others would find it funny that it makes her in the right and that I am in the wrong for not finding it funny and I should change my attitude to allow her more room to move. I think my reactions are my reactions and if you tell a joke and the other person doesn’t find it funny then it isn’t funny. The interaction between two people is between those two people with everything they bring to the table. If something doesn’t work for one of them, then it doesn’t work. Period. You can only change yourself. I guess I do tell her to change her joke making stuff. That since I don’t find it funny, it doesn’t work and to stop doing it because it pisses me off. She tries to tell me to stop letting it piss me off. I think mine is more reasonable but both are telling the other to change.

Mine is a change to avoid a negative outcome. Her’s is to try to remove the negative outcome. I guess I just need to codify the negative outcome. I really don’t like getting pissed off and then dealing with her. Since she doesn’t seem to be willing to stop doing what pisses me off, I should figure out what I need to do when I am faced with that. Right now I want to let her know that when she attempts to tell a joke and fails to make it funny and it pisses me off I will hang up or turn around and deliver her back to her hotel room. Trying to stay connected results in more negative reactions and I don’t like them. I don’t like needing to suck it all in and sit on it so that we can stay connected and have the low simmer resentment. I think this is a very negative reaction and is probably coming from wanting to make a point more than just taking care of my needs. That I am somewhat cutting my nose off to spite my face losing more than I want in the process. But I should figure out something.

So I was in cranky mode and it just got worse. I admitted to being cranky because I didn’t take the time to start the day. I have to do this quick starts every now and then but I usually am by myself for awhile and then in public where there is no direct social contact. I have a chance to get on my feet and be ready to be a social creature. Boyfriends of mine taught me that they prefer to feed me breakfast and take care of me first thing in the morning because I am much nicer and more pleasant to be around if I don’t have to use up my energy taking care of myself. I get breakfast bed so that they get to have the good side of the Gina experience. I have gotten spoiled by this and have a hard time training a new boyfriend in the process. Not everyone can figure out that feeding me before I have to be social and interact with others is a good idea. Especially when I have gotten better at managing the social aspect with lower and lower reserves.

Today I just let it go without trying to control it. The sad part is even though I owned up to me being in cranky mode and it was a me thing, my mom bought into it and was cranky in response. So when I did try to control it and was much better behaved, she would bark back at me and I didn’t have enough room to just tolerate her. We reinforced each others cranky moods and it just got worse.

Mom’s are suppose to put up with our tantrums and take care of us and sooth us and make us feel better. They aren’t suppose to be human and need taken care of and soothing themselves.

We decided that it would be better for her to go back to her hotel and to try to start this day again later. I don’t mind it being a day of mom and the day before she leaves. I do mind it needing to be a holiday we are suppose to spend together and we have to have ham and man & cheese and see a movie because of what day it is. We bought all the supplies for stew and I am ready to just forget about have mom cook it just to take something off the list of “This must happen.”

I am ready for a day by myself, I don’t even feel the need/desire to spend it with friends. I think this is mostly because it is a so called Holiday and while mom isn’t pushing it, she is making me aware of it and it bothers me.

I was quite happy asleep. The dreams weren’t all that great, my friends and I were getting punished for what a huge group of people did, we just were the only ones that agreed what we all did was wrong and stuck around to help clean up. Not fair and other stuff was going on but I would rather be there dealing with that than awake and dealing with this.

Even when life isn’t all that bad, I don’t like it and resent needing to live it. Bah.

When I got the results of my brain scan, besides Mood Disorder (which is were the depression fits in) I also got Anxiety disorder and ADD. Given my issues with Anxiety (first not thinking I had it when it is common for my enneagram type, finding it, refusing to let it live inside of me, removing it, having stuff crop up all over, blaming it on not treating my anxiety correctly, seeing it all over now) I figured my lack of progress of getting better is because we have been working on the depression instead of anxiety. My idea was I was using my well trained depression actions to avoid my new anxiety issues.

Well, now that I have done more research on the ADD side of the question, it looks like all my depression stuff is really Lymbic ADD (there are six kinds according to Dr Amen, I don’t know if the rest of the Brain people say so too or not). It shares a lot of symptoms of mild depression. It really does look like my current problem is ADD and not depression which would explain why what used to work for my depression isn’t working.

It feels like I am doing the diagnosis of the month thing but hey, it works for House, why not me? I just don’t have to get to the point of dying to get to the right answer.

I realized that I have actually heard from both of my parents now (I think within the last year if not the last 6 months) that they are glad I decided not to have kids. I can’t remember what my father’s thing was. My mother is grateful that our family shit is not getting passed down through me. In some ways she wish it wasn’t being passed down through my brother either. She would prefer it stop with us.

Not that it is any great horror, just she is seeped in the crap right now and sees the good about the crap not continuing. I think I am learning where I get my overly large reactions from.

Thinking about posting this, I realize most older adults who are single and childless have to deal with their parents asking them when are they going to get grandchildren. My family is unique enough and wired backwards enough to thank me for not creating more grandchildren. ::sigh::

Where in the Hell Did my family get this ability for DRAMA????

Yeah, we are pretty dysfunctional but not much more than most every other family and we are not nearly bad enough to be used as an example of bad. So many families are worse.

But this drama thing is wearing me out. Again with the coordination of Mother, Brother and SIL. (Yndy, I am thinking my family drama is about the same level as yours, different reasons, different players but similar levels.)

And I think I don’t actually have any horse in this race. And I am the hub for each of the players. But then again that might be why I can be the hub. I don’t have any agenda but my normal one. Stir things up until we get an homogeneous mix and everyone understands everyone else and everyone is on the same page. And I might be the one with the best skills to work on this shit. I might be a fully experienced therapist before this is all over. Bwaaahaaahaaaaa.

Guess my work on myself is doing some good for others. And if nothing else, it is covering the fact that I am still not doing well with my own crap.

Onward Ho!!!

I have always avoided my family if I could. I prefer to deal with each one of the separately. In mass, it just wasn’t ever workable. I didn’t have any hard reason, no facts to point to, that is just how I wanted it.

I have loads and loads of reasons why I should avoid my family now and not have anything to do with any of them when there is more than one. I have enough to justify every moment of past avoidance.

But I am to the point where I won’t let go. I have allowed myself to become attached and while I don’t like it and feel pulled through the ringer, I feel this is a good thing. Some of my problems are that I don’t have practice in how to deal with all this. Too many years of not being emotionally invested in my family members. I am aware that they are important to me but I don’t actually feel they are important to me, if that makes sense. I don’t feel the love and care and concern that I know I am acting on. I also don’t feel the dislike, aversion, threat that they used to be to me.

In a way, they are a chore. The type that I don’t question if I want to do it or not, I just do it and move on. I am sure this is all part of my work. Just keep Swimming, just keep Swimming.

I currently have Mother, Brother, and Sister-in-law emailing me for advice on how to deal with the others. In a way it is sort of funny. I have to keep each of their personalities and selves clearly in my head when I am responding to them so I actually say things in the way that one hears them and is honest about the others. If they would all just do what I told them they should do before I fricking left, then most of this shit would already be done with. Arggggg.

I just remembered my dad told me that I could call him when it got tough/aggravating if I wanted to vent. Sometimes he is a smart man. And sometimes he is stupid. I don’t think he realizes that he has an equal share of issue between him and my brother and is just as much a pain in the butt as well. I don’t think I need to add my dad to the mix of family I have going on right now. Thank god I am still distant from my Uncle, Aunt and cousins.

Why is it that when I finally get around to doing something I should do in life it has to be a tidal wave of stuff? I used to completely believe that I created the wave. That when I stuck my head out, I am so good at gathering things/events/people that I overwhelmed myself. This time I feel like I am the only one with her feet on the ground and am providing anchors for these other loopy family members. Maybe I have just leveled again. I want my +2 healing potions and sacks of gold and +5 sword of cutting through bullshit already. Leveling sucks. By the time you have everything in hand and have plenty of resources, you jump up a level and end up facing bigger issues without the abundance of resources to deal with them.

Well I guess the Universe had enough of me self sabotaging and decided to give me something else to chew on. Sure would be nice if I could leave the house. I don’t know when I have done that this week. Maybe Wed? Oh yeah, Thursday. Wed, the beginning of Thur, Fri and Sat were all focused on getting to a book store and getting my hair cut. So it seems overly long that I have been glued to the computer and feeling overwhelmed.

I had decided that the shoulder I had to lean on was not worth the fighting (not quite the right word because there is not anger, just the struggle of not being able to communicate what you need and working against what the other one is sure is right for you) to use it and I was going to let it go. Right now I could really use it.

Tomorrow I see friends from the South (So Cal). That will be a nice refreshing break in my current drama.

When I am the taking the reasonable role in a relationship drama, I can feel a difference inside of me. It is like I am swallowing part of my ego. It is almost like I am addicted to it right now, I can’t help myself, I want to be the one that brings the middle ground to the argument and bring everyone back to the center and workable. I want to see everyone’s side and mix up the info so everyone is working from the same pages.

But I feel I have indigestion from all the stuff of my own I am swallowing. On one hand I feel good and I like the results. On the other hand I feel so tired and weary and sick of it all. But I dive in and dig more of it up.

I have an offer of a shoulder to lean on and I so want it. I want it badly. But the one offering, while I care for him, just doesn’t grok me and I end up fighting what he thinks I need to get what I really need. It turns into another case of needing to be reasonable and because of our very different ways of viewing things the translation programs are not worked out and I get so frustrated. I end up allowing myself to be open enough and vulnerable enough to want/need a shoulder to lean on, fighting for who I am and what I am and so very frustrated at the hole process and feeling the need to lock myself inside myself again.

I am so very tired. It is easy to do things with a clear path. In some ways taking care of others is easier because then I am not involved and I can do it all outside of me. Or there is the option of excluding others and being focuses completely on me. Trying to be rational and juggling those leads to trouble as well.

Tired, just tired. In the past I would crawl into a hole and hide but I find that doesn’t suit me nowdays. I want the connection too much to close myself off to take care of myself. Guess I am learning to do things in a new way and this is the growth process. Part of me wants to say it sucks, another part of me wants the results it is producing badly.

I could use a pat on the head and a “there there”

Sometimes when you finally give up on something and turn away, you will find it in front of you and you can have it. But if you give up too early, then when you walk away, you leave it behind and you don’t get it. The trick is to figure out where that turning point is, if that is even possible.

x-posted to facebook

I feel like I screwed up. I feel bad. I want to try to fix it and it is now out of my hands. The thing that worries me the most is that I find I have a hard time talking about it.

this is where I blather on with an edit review