Isn’t it amazing how sometimes you will write something that has a lot of emotional attachments (like my last post) and you get little to no responses to it. It makes you wonder if anyone out there is ready your journal or even cares. I think I am learning it is more of a factor that the more emotionally attached you are to something and you express that in your entry, the more people steer clear of it for their own reasons. They might now have anything to say, it might hit too close to home for them, they may have too much to say and not enough time so they put it off, or some other reason. It feels like a me thing but realistically it is a them thing.
Now onto the actual update.
I am getting better but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like things are just has hard but I am getting more done each time. Objectively that means I am getting better.
I am very grateful to Ken and dkferret for being there for me. I really needed it as I really couldn’t take care of myself. But I feel like I might have worn out my welcome. Some of this is just worry on my part which is annoying in its own way. I hate asking for things that people don’t want to give me. I would rather just close down and fade away. This feels a lot like how I act when people don’t want to hear what I have to say. The words just dry up and talkative me can’t say anything.
So much for relaxing and getting to feel what it is like to be taken care of when I need it. Now it is pushing to be as self sufficient as possible so I can hide back in my hole and out of people’s ways again.
This is one of the reasons I have a hard time when people offer to help. I can turn things over to them but I find that it is hard for them to let me know when they don’t want to help anymore and if it comes up without me expecting it, then I am left up a creek without a paddle so to speak. It is much better not to trust that they can do anything. They really want to and they feel they can do so much but then reality sets in and it won’t last and I don’t do well with the way others handle their withdrawal. This is the benefit of Self Preservation people. They may seem somewhat stingy but they only offer what they can afford to give. Not always, I have offered things I couldn’t live with in the long run because I was really excited. But more often than other types, I have a clear understanding of what I can get away with and what I can’t.
I still haven’t decided if this surgery thing was a good idea or not. It has been a learning experience. The can’t eat, can’t take care of myself, hurt thing has not been a good experience and if I thought about it before and what it would have brought up, I might not have decided to do this. It has killed the idea of other surgeries that I have been thinking of. I was really looking forward to this. Yeah, the rest of my life was seen as so bad that this was a highlight. That has changed. I did have rather good spirits about all this even through the being scared and the panic and the pain. Those spirits have left the building. Time for me to hunker down and go back to being alone and disconnected again.
Don’t you disappear on me. I’ll show up on your doorstep with Chicken Jell-O and the looong booooring saga of my week at work and how our HR department is teh suck.
You are a scary individual, you with that Chicken Jell-O.
Ghods, I can see it now. Chicken Jell-O salad mold with bits of stuffing or rice floating in it. *shiver*
hey… I replied!!
Maybe a lot of people are out of the loop like I’ve been the past few days.
Remember that most people read LJ mon-fri during the day…
(((((((hug))))))))
I hope you don’t ‘hunker down and go back to being alone and disconnected again’ – it’s not a good place to be. If we lived in the same state, I’d be telling you to get your butt over to my house to let me put you up in my guestroom and take care of you until you felt better.
It’s not lack of desire, it’s lack of realistic ability on my part.
Unless you feel like taking a trip to Colorado!
That said, try with the talking… you have always been one to assume that you are annoying or burdening people when it’s not the case in fact. You are inclined to interpret ‘general annoyance’ as ‘annoyance caused by or directed at you.’ People sometimes come across as exhausted or exasperated when it has absolutely nothing to do with you, sweetie.
I don’t know your friends – but I do know some of your ‘coping’ mechanisms and the one where you assume that crankiness on the part of someone else can only be due to an inability to tell you no causing you to take action yourself to end the situation is one of them!!!
Use your voice and get that cleared up. Repeat after me “guys – I really appreciate all that you have done and are doing for me – I just get afraid that I might be trying your patience a bit. Can you do us both a favor and be direct with me if you think I’m asking too much of you? Otherwise, I’m left in my own head trying to figure out if I’m leaning too much or not, and that’s never a good place to be. I really need your help right now – but I also want to make sure that I’m not crossing any lines. So just speak up, kay?”
((((((((((((hug)))))))))))
Yes you did reply and I appreciated it. That is why I listed few to none.
And you are correct about my over assuming I am being the annoying one. I have found it is safer for me to error on that side than the other. I am too sensitive to handle being dropped without warning. And I think I am right about half the time. It is really hard to tell people you have had enough of them and want a break. Especially when they are hurting and need you. I have a friend that I love because she tells me “it is 10pm and I love you now go home and leave me alone” in a very brusk manner. To me that means she knows me well enough to understand I crave the information and trusts me enough to understand her meaning.
I don’t have many people that can do that. Even the ones that are aware of it and try. They just don’t have the practice or models for behavior. A lot of times, they can’t tell themselves and I end up stuck without the info because of that. I try to train people to be that upfront with me by being really easy to deal with. I hope I am getting somewhere. But it is mostly an issue on the other person’s side, not mine.
I have one friend that used to talk to me every day via the phone and can only seem to deal with me over IM. He has to hide behind text. I am guessing as to why and have told him my guesses. He has still yet to get back to me about how right or wrong they were.
I’m sorry. I read your post, and didn’t reply because I wasn’t sure what to say. Or rather, wasn’t sure if you were looking for input or just logging the experience and all the stuff that went with it.
I spend a lot of time, being hard on myself when I don’t get responses to my entries. I should have known better.
*hugs*
Sparrow
I didn’t write my post to make people feel bad. But it is so easy to feel like nobody is caring when there is little to no feedback and I wanted to acknowledge that. I watched someone on LJ pull a drama fest when they posted something important to them and got no replies in less than a day. They announced that they were thinking of leaving LJ. The feelings are understandable and I feel the reasons for that post being presented in that way was to push people’s buttons and make them feel badly for not posting and get some response. I don’t like playing the drama card but I did want to let people know I was feeling a little lost out here in the open ocean of the internet. There are so many reasons why people don’t post and most of them have nothing to do with the postee. I felt I needed to recognize that and not be dependent on others to pat my head.
Now if others were made aware that I wanted my head patted and could oblige, that would be a good thing.
Thanks.
You didn’t reply to my post, either :p
that said, I read your post and you’ve been in my thoughts but I didn’t feel I had anything constructive to add to the situation, so *shrugs* I get irritated when people offer me what I consider to be platitudes so it doesn’t really occure to me to offer them to other people. Miss Sara is big on platitudes and social noises so this can be problematic.
But I do care and I’ve missed not seeing you around (and not just because my hamster still doesn’t have a soup can). The new book comes out in june, but it isn’t even 400 pages. What’s up with that, man?
No, I didn’t reply to your post either.
I don’t always read them because they are such great stories and I don’t always have time for the stories. But I do enjoy them when I do read them. I think I get most of them. And I pretty much have no clue what to post about them. You have contained everything in the story. The characters, the action, the conclusion, the entertainment. I can’t help but reply to Miss_Mimsy because she always needs something and I have ideas.
Sorry my dear but you are not needy enough.
Sometimes I even bounce because I have a Noirem post to read. If it wasn’t for the fact that many people want to be writers and it seems hard to break into, I would recommend you do some sort of writing for your career. I could see a column in a newspaper or magazine working very well with the way you write.
I do miss seeing you around too. I have been such not the social person lately and that is where most of my contacts are.
And how could it be less than 400 pages? It always gets bigger, never smaller. It might be becoming more reasonable? Or there is less Angst and more point to the story? Or she was on such a deadline she ditched entire plot points just to get it in?
The soup can is still next to my sink. It is not quite buried by dirty dishes but is hanging out with the pirate skeleton band.
People don’t respond because they are affraid that they will say the wrong thing. How many times to we accidentally push other peoples buttons? It’s not often that we get warned.
I know and it is such a pain sometimes. Here you are putting something out there that you want support on, something important to you and you get crickets in reply. When you put out some stupid test and you get a downpour of responses. Life can be so unfair sometimes *le sigh*
I read it but I didn’t have anything to say to it beyond “*hugs*” and personally I get annoyed at content-free comments like that so I tend not to leave them for other people unless I know they’re the kind of people who explicitly appreciate them. I didn’t figure you for such a person. You just seem more pragmatic than that. But maybe I’m wrong.
You are not wrong. I hate the thing too. But when there is nothing coming back, even the hugs thing begins to look good.
I always figure it is good to put in a comment that basically says I have nothing to say but wanted to let you know I am reading your posts and you are in my thought. I haven’t heard back from anyone I have left one of those for to find out how well it went over. I think it would be good for me. I feel like I am being heard and I don’t have to feel patronized by the *hugs* (don’t in cheerleader style in my head of course).
Nod. I’m the same way, with an extra coating of a self-conscious “Gads, I’ll feel like an idiot, having nothing useful to say or add.”
It’s easier for me to respond to a fluffy post or a meme, as it requires little actual thought on my part. I frequently begin to write considered responses to serious posts and then get distracted/interrupted and leave it half-finished. If I can’t reacquire my train of thought when I return, it usually won’t get posted.