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Some Days the Nightmares Win

March 27, 2015 //
1

Disclaimer: This post is about emotions. I sometimes work through them more easily with words, in text, that I can see reflecting the experience back at me. It is a way of getting perspective. This post, though, may be a downer – I say that before I even write it, because I am having my own experience, and I feel what I feel in this moment. I am so very human. So…do yourself a huge favor, take a moment for ‘informed consent’; if you are in a place emotionally where someone else’s pain and struggling may wound you, throw off a good vibe you are enjoying, or change your experience for the worse, I recommend skipping this one. Hey, if nothing else, the writing is likely to be of poor quality, and angst-y, and rife with spelling errors and weird grammar fails – who needs that on a Friday morning? I’ll understand, I promise.

Still here? Okay…

Some other morning, a coffee.

Some other morning, a coffee.

I woke crying this morning. I fell asleep crying last night. In between, I found myself ambushed by Demons in The Nightmare City. This is not an emotional space I want to occupy. I am frustrated by my lack of resilience, my lack of emotional regulation, and my lack of perspective. I feel sad. I feel angry. I feel resentful and let down. I feel. Yeah. I definitely feel. I feel mistreated, and mislead. I feel set up and I feel sabotaged. I feel hurt.

“That’s a whole lot of feelings there, lady, what gives?” I’m a human primate. I am an emotional being more than a rational one – it’s a balance. Today it isn’t balancing as well as I’d like. Stress kicks my ass, being hurt kicks my ass, abrupt change kicks my ass – and it takes me a little time to recover, even with some support. Emotions are not criminal actions. Assaulting people with them is, I hear, avoidable. That sounds like fine thing to me, and I turned the little sign on my door this morning to ‘do not disturb’, meditated a while, had a shower, meditated some more… I still don’t want to be as disturbed as I feel, right now. The sign didn’t do much to help with the feelings, but by design it may prevent anyone else from walking through the mess I woke to, within, this morning.

Meditation, mindfulness practices, good basic self-care are all going a long way to improve my experience of me, very nicely. I feel a momentary hurt, recalling with sadness how quickly encouragement turned to criticism, a few months after I began this journey. I was taking a moment to feel proud of my progress, and I was feeling pretty impressed with new tools and practices being effective at helping me on a level nothing else ever had… I got called ‘smug’. I was incredibly hurt. Admittedly, I had been foolishly trying to explain or share the experience with someone else… maybe they hadn’t asked? (I suck at that – put a person in front of me and I will probably just start talking. Are you aware that your executive function manages that for you?) It hurt, nonetheless, and since then I am self-conscious about feeling encouraged by progress, and reluctant to share positive feelings about it in conversations. (Sticks and stones? Fuck right off; words matter.)

I feel confused. “Emptied out”. I feel overburdened by unmet emotional needs piling up over time. I feel like I am not making the progress I could be, right now. It’ll be okay, I think – I hold on to that tightly. I’ve got the hotline number in my pocket, just in case it gets too hard.  I lost a beautiful niece to suicide this year, and I see how it hurts my cousin every day she is without her daughter; I won’t put my traveling partner through that, and I can take the steps to avoid it. Despair is a motherfucker – it is part of our human experience.

...and another...

…and another…

I can’t be certain that the intensity of my emotions this morning reflects something ‘real’ or necessary; they are only emotions. For all I know, this is a 100% bio-chemical experience with no grounding in events or experience. Does that matter in the moment? Well, sure. It matters the way anything true ‘matters’. One true thing is that my emotions are this intense, and unpredictably so. Another true thing is that my emotions, and lack of top-down control, are incredibly uncomfortable for some people to live with. (I don’t get a choice, myself; this is my experience and I live it.) Unfortunately, in a live and unscripted real-life environment, I also don’t get much compassion specific to the ‘invisible’ issues associated with my TBI or PTSD. I rarely fight for it; if it isn’t there to be offered, begging for it, pleading for it or wishing it were there will not make it appear. Compassion can be taught – but that phenomenon also requires an active learner. Change is, but forcing it on someone isn’t appropriate – and generally isn’t effective.

My traveling partner encourages and supports me – he frankly provides a level of emotional support that I can only describe as ‘super human’ – but the environment in the household, generally, is unhealthy for me. I feel aggravated and moody about looking for a place of my own, because I’d honestly prefer to continue living with my traveling partner – he’s wonderful to live with [for me]. I am painfully aware, though, that living with me can be hard on him. Right now so much of what I am working through touches on sexuality, gender, individual identity, boundary setting/management, and relationships with others that it’s harder to treat each other gently in moments when we need it most from each other. So…yeah. I need to be on my own a while – not a break up, not even a separation, just a different living arrangement. It still sucks to hurt over it. I hope by day’s end I am embracing it in good spirits.

I leave other household members out of this, generally; I am writing about my own experience and the other people in it are entitled to be free of public scrutiny of their values and choices filtered through my chaos and damage. But…I am not willing to continue to over-compromise my needs, or undercut my values to keep peace, and the time I spend in the arms of my loves is too precious to taint it with OPD, or games. As a population of individuals, we don’t want or need the same things, and at 52 I have no time to waste on fighting to get the most basic emotional needs met; we are not all equally committed to that endeavor. I don’t yet have the emotional resilience to hold enough in reserve to continue to take care of me when common place bullshit goes sideways, and often find myself without any emotional reserves left to care for me, myself, by the time I have a moment to do so. I feel positive about the choice to get my own place…and for the moment, sad that it is necessary at all.

You know what I don’t feel? I don’t feel guilt or shame over the choice to move out, it needs to happen; I don’t thrive in an environment in which my emotional quality of life is poor. Hell, right now in this moment… I’m okay. (Thanks, Dearheart!) My tears have dried. I’m not feeling social, but I’m not enthralled by Demons in The Nightmare City.  (If I knew that I would have the kind of nightmares that I had last night, in nights to come, I’d never sleep again.) I don’t have the headache that followed me around all day yesterday, which is a huge improvement.  My coffee tastes good – I feel a pang of sadness sweep over me when I realize I won’t have an espresso machine in my kitchen for some time to come after I move; it will be a frugal lifestyle, focused on painting, meditation, and love. Wow. Suddenly that sounds fucking amazing – and all over again I wonder why this hurts at all. I enjoy solitude. I dislike drama. I have musical and culinary tastes that are not shared in the household at large… and I miss a good French press in the morning; it’s a lovely ritual to prepare coffee that way, time it carefully, enjoy the outcome at leisure… I miss living a gentle life. (The most humorous thing about that is how little time I have ever spent living that kind of exceptional quality of life – across years and relationships, I can’t really pin down more than a total of about 18 months that qualify as ‘gentle living’ in 52 years!

I’ve already found my way to a better place. It’s nice. No rushing, either; I’ve made changes to my schedule, effective this week, intended to dial down some of the fatigue-related stress, and don’t have to rush off so soon on Friday mornings. Have you actually read this far? Are you okay? Thank you for being interested, curious, or concerned enough to come all this way with me – whether just this morning, or over these past couple years. I appreciate it. You help me feel heard.

Yeah. Some days, the nightmares win. Today they didn’t. 🙂

Because love matters more. "Emotion and Reason" 24″ x 36″ acrylic on canvas w/ceramic details and glow 2012

Because love matters more.
“Emotion and Reason” 24″ x 36″ acrylic on canvas w/ceramic details and glow 2012

Today is a good day to put down some baggage. Today is a good day to practice good self-care. Today is a good day for self-compassion – first, not last. Today is a good day to enjoy this amazing woman I am becoming without competition, dread, or games. Today is a good day to treat others well, and understand that they are walking their own path; their story, and experience, are not mine to endure, to manage, or to criticize – and participation is a choice.

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Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring, The Big 5, women, Words

In Accordance With the Customs of My Tribe

March 26, 2015 //
2

Have you ever taken a moment to consider ‘polite’ versus ‘rude’, courtesy, manners in general, and what ‘consideration’ means in a detailed and nuanced way? Have you similarly considered how relative to our individual culture, clan, tribe, family, community, ‘scene’, or region these things all are? It’s these subtleties – and mismatches in practices and expectations – that result in fairly predictable ‘incompatibility’ issues that occur in my own experience. I think about these a lot.

Surely, if we all wish to treat each other well, and we all go forward ‘doing our best’ to treat others well moment-to-moment, and we are all similarly aware that people around us also hold the intent to treat others well, and are doing their best…surely the outcome is that we all feel well-treated? (Are you giggling? Are you frowning? Do you see where I am going with this?) Even if those things are simple truths – that we each wish to treat each other well, and are all doing our best to do so moment-to-moment – we likely won’t see the outcome of ‘everyone feels well treated’; as defined, the premises do not lead directly to the proposed outcome, at all. Good treatment is relative to cultural practices, our own expectations, and how we experience our experience. The understanding that we have treated others well, is similarly biased – and biased in our own favor, generally, because we believe we have ‘done our best’ – whatever that may have been.

That’s a hell of a gap. How do I bridge the gap? How do I treat others – all others – well, with consideration, with courtesy – universally recognized, no fail, always a win, courtesy is what I’m looking for here – and get the result that each person thus treated by me also feels well-treated? I am pondering this because of a longer-term association I have in which I feel fairly chronically mis-treated in willful and overt ways, lacking in any shred of courtesy or consideration – a circumstance in which I am also quite certain that this associate has no understanding at all that the day-to-day interactions are experienced by me as ‘mis-treatment’ in the first place. In some cases, explicit statements by me indicating that some specific behavior/action/language is unacceptable or inappropriate have been disregarded, in others they have been actively dismissed and argued with, but in most instances it is not clear that the conduct is intended to be abusive, lacking in courtesy, or intentionally hostile.

Sometimes well-meaning people are clueless asshats… But… sadly… sometimes they are not actually well-meaning people, based on their practices, choices, and actions. Practicing good self-care means building healthy relationships; abusive or unhealthy relationships do not support my emotional needs.

Words have definitions, and we are each having our own experience. What I consider ‘courteous’, ‘respectful’, or ‘considerate’ may not be quite the same as what another person finds defining about those concepts. Still… I think there are some cross-cultural behaviors that spell out universal ‘good treatment’ – or, I do until I try really looking at practices in other cultures. It’s complicated. “They mean well” is a phrase that matters; the intention of someone’s behavior is what let’s us ‘let it go’ more easily when customs clash. “They mean well” is a band-aid, though, a temporary fix; we build relationships. Choices and compromises over time, clear expectation setting and boundary observing conversations adjust our shared understanding of ‘good treatment’, ‘consideration’ and ‘courtesy’ – but only if we have those conversations.

So…I sit here considering all manner of things to do with manners, and where I got which idea that what notion amounts to ‘polite’, ‘considerate’, ‘supportive’…and how can I best express to others who matter most to me what I want and need – and what counts with me as ‘considerate’, and whether that is reasonable. Eventually, if words are said, ideas are shared, boundaries expressed, terms defined… and I still feel mis-treated… then what? Learning those boundary setting practices, the firmly drawn line in the sand, the opportunity not to compromise and instead politely decline additional mistreatment are similarly guided by custom, ‘manners’, and expectations of consideration… How do I treat others well who do not treat me well? It’s an important question for me to approach, and I approach it with great care. (Let’s get “why would I want to treat such people well?” out of the way; because it matters to me to be someone who treats others well. It’s not about them, it is who I am.)

Sometimes I can see where the path leads, but the way is not easy.

Sometimes I can see where the path leads, but the way is not easy.

Today is a good day for hard questions. Today is a good day for the very best self-care. Today is a good day to skillfully treat others well. Today is a good day to continue to honor and respect my values, in the face of mistreatment, without anger; we are each having our own experience. Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Big 5, Words

And Then There’s Love

March 25, 2015 //
0

Seriously, love is a thing. I didn’t always think so, and now that I do, well… it isn’t always a perfect Barbie Dream World experience, at all, and requires substantially more actual effort than I understood when I only dreamed of love. I’m speaking specifically of romantic sexual love – Eros. Nothing feels quite as ridiculously amazing as being loved, loved well, and adored romantically by an attentive affectionate lover with shared values, good communication skills, and the will to put reciprocal effort and time into the art of love.

Sometimes this is the face of love.

Sometimes this is the face of love.

Now, I’m no expert on love, frankly – I may well make more mistakes in this area than is commonplace – but I have been a devoted student for some time, and I’ve learned one or two things I am happy to share:

1. We are each having our own experience, which may feel very shared in a given moment, but are quite distinctly separate; however much in love, we are individuals.

2. Good treatment begins with treating myself well, by setting explicit boundaries, knowing my limits, communicating clearly and simply and remaining aware of the fundamental humanity of all involved – mistakes will be made, feelings will be hurt, boundaries may be trampled, and promises may be broken. At the end of the day, love is, and people are capable of change and growth.

3.  It’s not truly possible to force change on love; people change with their choices, their circumstances, and by way of their will. See items 1 and 2. If you are finding that love ‘needs’ a lot of change… that may not be love.

4. Criticism is a poor way of expressing a request, but commonplace; taking criticism personally generally prevents hearing the request, and failing to set boundaries about being criticized in lieu of being asked for an action or a change undermines love over time. Use your words wisely; love is listening.

5. Love really enjoys encouragement, kind words, emotional openness that also respects boundaries, consent, gentle frankness, laughter, and touch. Love enjoys being heard.

6. Love is undermined when we take it for granted, treat it as an entitlement or guarantee, speak harshly, violate boundaries, demean or diminish with our words or actions, speak with derision or contempt, disrespect it, or fail to treat it with consideration and importance, or… hey wait – honestly, if you’re doing these things, how is that love at all? Seriously. If you are treating another human being this way, maybe stop calling that love.

7. Emotions are very nuanced, and people have a very personalized experience of their experience (see item 1); making assumptions about someone else’s feelings or understanding of circumstances is a first-rate way to improve one’s rate of learning – the number of times you’ll be wrong will definitely result in plentiful opportunities to learn a lot – but it is a poor way to treat love.

8. Expectations are not ‘real’, and they don’t count as ‘plans’; mismatched expectations are a poor fit for love. Fortunately, this is an easy win with explicit, clear communication – as with assumptions, we can simply choose not to take this path. Trust me that building ‘love’ on expectations and assumptions is like trying to walk the average cat on a leash.

9. However challenging, getting love right is… beyond words, really, which is likely why so very many people write so very many words on the qualities of love; it’s worth communicating, and damned difficult. It’s worth the effort to invest in love every day – and that doesn’t require a partner! We invest in love when we are not in a relationship, too, with good self-care, enjoying what matters most to us as people, taking our own heart for a joy ride, solo, and savoring the small joys of life – when we do, love finds us so much more easily, than when we slog through our experience tragically grieving the lack of love.

10. Calling it love doesn’t change what it is.

...with what matters most. "You Always Have My Heart" 8" x 10" acrylic on canvas with glow.

…with what matters most.
“You Always Have My Heart” 8″ x 10″ acrylic on canvas with glow.

Today is a good day to love.

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Big 5, Words

The Things I Like About Love

March 22, 2015 //
0

Like anything else, love tends to be imperfect, and there are moments less worthy of celebration than others: misunderstandings that cause hurt feelings, the human failings and small shortcomings that lead to inevitable disappointments small and large, and the effects of change and the passage of time having their say in matters of love, too.

One perspective on home.

One perspective on home.

I’m back from my trip out to the trees, and I am thinking about love, and the things about love that move me most, that matter most, and that nurture me in solitary moments. I am struggling a lot, lately, with attachment. The challenges pile up, tangential to each other, complicating progress like trying to wind sticky yarn into an orderly ball in a strong breeze; I feel frustrated and dissatisfied. Some of the questions feel angrier than usual, and perspective, compassion and understanding compete with resentment and discontent – emotions all vying for the attention of this broken brain; whatever shouts loudest, first, will likely be the thing expressed, however poorly, and however low on my list of real priorities. That, too, frustrates me.

Not this way...

Not this way…

Moments like this it’s too easy to drown in discontent, to bring the focus to what isn’t, to what was, to what I yearn for and don’t have. I haven’t had much success with changing that; loss hurts. One healthier practice I practice when I’m struggling with attachment and feeling resentful or discontent is to take time to consider, instead, the things I very much enjoy and value in my experience that exist and are real – even things I’m not so fortunate as to enjoy regularly (or at all, let’s be honest; there are times of plenty and times of famine) – because putting the focus on the joy, itself, rather than the momentary or immediate lack of it, does make a difference in my perspective in general. It’s worth the discipline – and there are verbs involved – because if nothing else, it just feels better to contemplate, and savor, the beautiful experiences life offers more than it does to allow myself to become mired in the sorrow and heartache of regret. Enjoying the recollection of the things I like about love is a handy rope ladder I can throw to myself…

…Sometimes I need the help.

The path isn't always well-marked...

The path isn’t always well-marked…

You know what I like about love? Tenderness. I like tender words spoken softly, almost in secret, in my ear unexpectedly. I like the feather soft touch of a lover brushing my hair from my face while looking into my eyes. I like little moments of gentle touch, here and there, in passing, in the hallway, in the kitchen, the unexpected embrace, the sense that love is so urgent that not another moment could pass without touching. I like passion; I most enjoy the passion of reciprocal sexual love, body against body, seeing into each other’s hearts, feeling touch and feeling touched in shared moments, electric, intimate, raw. I like romance, flirtatious, playful, rambunctious, mysterious, and enduring. I like looking into a lovers sleepy eyes as we wake together, realizing that we fell asleep together, unplanned, cuddled like puppies, exhausted from friendly adult play. I like cooking together, and laughing about calories. I like deep conversation, mind to mind, sharing intellectual fervor – and emotional vulnerability, looking for understanding instead of righteousness. I like engagement – heart to heart, sharing personal moments, important memories, things that matter – and things that don’t. I like sharing laughter – laughing with a lover feels better than any other laughter, ever. I like slow lingering intimate moments after sex, when just being, and breathing in the same space is the only ‘I love you’ anyone needs to hear. I like the touches that lead to sex; too exciting for words, communicating so much more than words can. I like that breath-taking moment in a lover’s arms when it is clear that it is the only place in that moment that any of us need to be.

It's worth enjoying the best the journey has to offer, no matter the weather.

It’s worth enjoying the best the journey has to offer, no matter the weather.

Today is a good day to love, and to enjoy what love offers now. Today is a good day to invest in love, by taking time to appreciate, savor, and value all that it means to me to love, over time.

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, The Big 5

Basic Problem-Solving

March 16, 2015 //
0

This morning my mind wanders through all manner of oddness, sifting through bits of things as I resist sleepiness and try to shake off the grogginess which is the most common outcome of waking up on time, after too little sleep. (I rather foolishly caught myself still sipping coffee at 3:00 pm; a rookie self-care fail.)

When I realized, last night, that I just wasn’t succumbing to sleep, I got up for a little while, dimmed my monitor to avoid rousing my brain further, and archived photos to make room for more photos, and puzzled over camping comfort ‘how to’ questions; there isn’t really such a thing as ‘too well-prepared’.  I meditated a while more. Then I considered my common overuse of figures of speech, adjectives, and semi-colons. Sometime after that, and after returning to bed, I began sorting my dreams into categories, looking for patterns. This morning feels more than a little like a continuation of last night’s unfocused, undisciplined activities of mind. I’m okay with that, for now; my brain isn’t hurting anyone, not even me.

Perspective still matters.

Perspective still matters. Enjoying the night is vastly more pleasant than fighting wakefulness.

Last night could have gone much differently. I went to bed feeling vulnerable and anxious after a very frank, explicit conversation of the ‘where I’m at with this’ variety. It wasn’t a confrontational exchange, and my emotions remained generally well-managed. I’m pleased that I didn’t react to my own emotions as though they were ‘causing’ something – or being caused by someone else – they sometimes take on a life of their own and get way out of hand before I can do much about it. I work on this a lot, and the practicing of a great many practices related to emotional intimacy, emotional self-sufficiency, and good communication in general, really proved themselves last night. I had a conversation about emotional quality of life and actions I anticipate taking to meet my own needs over time, and felt mostly heard. No meltdown. No tears.

I also learned some things that I’m still sorting out; we are each having our own experience, no surprises there. Seeing my experience reflected back at me through the lens of someone else’s perspective revealed some interesting misconceptions, or differences in understanding, that I am unsure how to correct simply; they fall into the ‘you had to be there’ category of misunderstandings. It’s thought-provoking; I’m not actually sure there is any need to correct them, or that there is value in attempting to do so. We’re still having our own experience, and mine will not be understood from the perspective of living it by anyone but me. Seeking that level of understanding would be a fool’s errand.  Still…some factual issues were apparent that are likely correction-worthy at some point. At the time it mattered more to be heard – comprehension was less critical in some hard to describe way – and it meant more just to enjoy the time with someone dear to me, knowing I’d be out of the household for a few days, quite soon.

It's just one night...

Tonight is just one night…

My traveling partner is out-of-town for a work conference. It’s strange to miss him so greatly for an over-nighter. Although I am generally very aware of his absence when he is away, and often find myself thinking of him, last night I felt myself yearning for his company, his presence and his touch in a very earnest and almost adolescent way. Strange to feel it so strongly when he’s barely been away hours… We’ve got time set aside to spend together tomorrow evening, before I head to the trees. I am self-conscious about the lingering cough that may be with me a few days more…coughing is not particularly sexy.

I feel a bit of anxiety surge at the self-conscious, self-critical observation; I apply basic emotional trouble-shooting, which for me comes in the form of the titular ‘basic problem-solving’ – the first step being (for me) ‘determine if there is an actual problem requiring a solution’. I did the same with my anxiety last night. (It’s been powerful for defusing internally driven emotional escalations of the sort that begin with an attack on myself, and generally result in lashing out at someone else once I have reached a highly aroused emotional state they are unaware of.) I observe that the anxiety began with the self-critical observation pinging against implicit expectations I was unaware of until that moment. I pause, take some deep cleansing breaths, and work on letting go of the expectations; they aren’t entitled to existence, and are entirely within my control. I choose what I expect in life. Further, in this instance, those expectations exist on a deep level; they were set by some element of the chaos and damage, and are not expectations I set with intention. This doesn’t necessarily make them easier to let go of…but it does function as a handy mile marker on life’s journey that I have reached a new point of self-awareness, and acceptance, that feels very solid. I reinforce the positives by lingering on this experience of improved self-care and improved awareness with contentment, and an almost merry pat-on-the-back sort of feeling.

Taking time to appreciate pleasant moments gives them lasting impact on my day-to-day experience.

Taking time to appreciate pleasant moments gives them lasting impact on my day-to-day experience.

Today is a good day to take time to celebrate small victories. Have you had any, yourself? Today is a good day to share your triumphs, too! If not with someone else, surely with yourself. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, women, Words
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