Friendships

Thankful

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Really Real Thanksgiving Post

I had a hard time figuring out how to write this one, even though I knew what I wanted to say.

Thanksgiving is really hard for me.  It’s one of my favorite, but also least favorite holidays of the year.  It holds the best memories, but also the some of the hardest.

I mean, it’s a holiday and that’s kind of what happens around holidays, we link a lot of memories to these “special days” and it makes sense that some of them aren’t going to be great.  Maybe a lot of them.  But hopefully we have some good ones.

I remember the first holiday meal that I offered to host was a Thanksgiving, probably 14 years ago.  I didn’t own any sort of mixer except for one of those hand crank mixers and I made mashed potatoes from scratch using one of those.  I got one hell of an arm work out.

My older sister bought me my stand mixer for Christmas that year and it was the start of us bonding online, over a love of cooking.  I still have that Kitchen Aid.  It’s one of the things I carried through countless moves and stored through homelessness and carried across state lines.  It means the world to me because of the bond it represents between my sister and I.  (This is another one of those things she may have no clue about, Hi Sis!)

It also reminds me of that first Thanksgiving that I hosted.   That first Thanksgiving is also where I found the recipe for my turkey.

I’m so thankful every year I get to make the turkey.

Everyone loves my turkey.

But some years I didn’t get to make the turkey.

One year we were too broke to buy dinner so we went to a soup kitchen instead.

One year we were in a hotel provided by the Red Cross, eating dinner out of Styrofoam containers sent over by a church, because we’d had a house fire 2 days before.

And holidays are still hard.  Thanksgiving was the first major holiday without Parker.  It hit me today that this is the 3rd one without her and that just seems impossible that it’s been that long.

This year it’s the first major holiday with Kidlet all grown up and moved out.

But I’m always happier when I get to make the turkey, and it’s kind of funny when we are going to someones house and I offer to bring a turkey, but they are normally kind of thankful, I think.

And I make a really damn good turkey (as the anxiety hits that I’m going to fuck it up this year, but that’s a pretty typical anxiety for me).

But I’m thankful that I’m spending the day with friends and with the woman I love.

I’m thankful that I get to make the turkey.

Case of the Blah

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Really Real Mental Health Post

The pharmacy is back ordered on my main anxiety medication, Buspirone.  Luckily I knew before I ran out so last week I took half my normal dose but this last few days I’m totally out.  They have no idea when it’ll be back in stock.

And I’m fighting constant low grade anxiety now.

Everything I do is a little bit harder.

Batwoman and I will go to stretch at the gym and I’m worried about exactly where our mats are located because we might be in the way of someone else and they might walk past us.

Things that I was just saying were a non-issue a few weeks ago.

Better living through chemistry, except things like this happen, and needing medication to function properly means I depend on the manufacturer to make the drugs.

This is why I used to hoard medications.

Except I stopped hoarding them when the back stock of medications became tempting as an overdose technique.  I had months of this medication at one point.  It was a 3x a day medication and I regularly forgot the afternoon dose so I ended up with plenty extra.  I got rid of all of it.

And right now I’m thankful for the people I have in my life.

My anxiety is so bad it’s causing depression.  It’s causing me to want to walk away from the things that I know will work.

Instead I’ve got Wonder Woman who held me this morning at butt early AM while I broke down because I’m convinced that the gym is pointless because I’m not losing weight and my body isn’t changing and I don’t feel stronger and I’m losing all of my motivation.  And she just let me get it out and just held me while I got if off my chest and out into the air so it stopped eating me alive.

And then when I was ready to back out of going to the gym today Batwoman listened to me complain about how I’m not losing weight and my body isn’t changing and I don’t feel stronger and I’m losing my motivation and she reminded me that we made it through that last class even though we thought we were gonna die, and we didn’t die, and we came back the next day, so I am getting stronger, and I am changing, and it is working.  And then she asked if she needed to carry me to the gym kicking and screaming, because we both know that once I go and work it out I’ll feel better and the anxiety will maybe let up a bit.

But first I sat down to write, because I know that putting my fingers to the keys and processing this all through type is one of the ways I can help myself.

It’s not fair that I’m so dependent some manufacturer who doesn’t even know me.  It’s not fair that my stability is based on some tiny little rectangle pill.  And it’s not fair that without it I’m feeling constant nausea from this never ending feeling of impending doom.

But all I can do is rely on what’s available to me in these moments.  Those around me who love me, and doing what I know works even when I don’t want to.

Conflicting

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Really Real Mental Health Post

Or at least, it sort of falls under mental health but I sort of think everyone does it.

I have this really bad habit of trying to wait till the perfect time to bring a difficult discussion up.

Like I’ve said before, conflict is really difficult for me.  It goes back to my childhood when conflict didn’t happen without some form of emotional explosion.  I see things in super bright colors so even minor yelling seemed like fireworks and arms waving seemed like pots and pans flying.  I can’t tell you how bad it actually got because in my head it was all horrible.  And I don’t know how much of that horrible was different from what other children experienced.  I don’t know how much of it was just me being “too sensitive” and how much of it was a really toxic environment.

And as an adult I became the yeller and I dated and later married people who were really good at keeping up with the yelling and the arm waving and we made our own fireworks.

And now, I’m so afraid of those fireworks that when something bothers me I hold back.  And I know I’ve written about some of this before, but processing isn’t a once and done, so here we go again.

I hold back because the person has something difficult going on in their life, so I won’t talk about the thing bothering me, because it might be too much on them, and therefore make it more likely to explode, so I’ll wait.  And then I wait because there’s another stressful thing, or because I’m not in the right mood and I’m more likely to become upset.

It’s a really hard lesson for me to learn that hard conversations don’t have to mean fights.

I think, It’s an even harder lesson for me to learn that I’m allowed to be upset about things.  To me, being angry or upset means I’m going to yell and scream because that’s what anger looks like.

To be frustrated and stay calm means some sort of passive aggressiveness or plotting or silent treatment.  It can’t mean I’m angry and I understand, I’m frustrated and I’m okay with that.  Except now, that’s exactly what is does mean for me.

Even separating those feelings, anger, frustration, upset. . . . and the underlying anxiety that I feel because of them,  they all have little nuances that I was never able to figure out because I was too busy reacting instead of reflecting.

But knowing this stuff also means that I’m even more likely to hold back because I work through the emotions and decide that it’s not worth acting on or even talking about.

Finding the balance, working through these emotions while still verbalizing what’s bothering me without waiting for the perfect time, is really really hard.

It creates its own type of conflict, an internal one.

I’m relearning a lifetime of unhealthy skills and it won’t happen overnight.

But it’s happening.

Friends

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Really Real Life Post

Yesterday I had an intake for a therapy group that is starting next week.  I’m super excited about this as I’ve been trying to find and get into a Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills group for a few years now and it’s finally happening.

These groups are a mix between an educational, skills based group, and group therapy.  I’ll learn how to work through negative thought patterns, intrusive thoughts (like my suicidal thoughts tend to be), extreme emotions, and also how to cope with trauma.  Lots of mindfulness and living in the moment kind of stuff.  The group facilitators are specifically trained in DBT skills and overall it tends to have really good outcomes.

It’s a 42 week commitment, once a week, 2 hour groups.   Bring it on!

Anyway, that’s not really what this is about though.  One of the intake questions was about my friends.  “Who are your most supportive friends and family?”

And I realized that, in person, I have a lot of people, but that my closest friends are all online and spread around the globe.  Most of them I met online first, even if I’ve since met them in person.  Most of them I’ve never met in person but I’ve known online for more than a decade.

The biggest part of my tribe are my online friends who I reach through a screen.  They are my best and closest friends even though they are so far away.  They are part of my chosen family, even though I’ve never sat in the same physical space with them.  They are the ones I can’t wait to tell the newest and greatest news to, even though I will only hear their excitement through the words that show up on my screen.

It’s not that I don’t have any in person, people.  But most of them I haven’t known as long, and those friendships have changed drastically over time.  Friendships wax and wane and it seems that online, it’s easier to handle that change in dynamics.  The difference in communication makes it a bit easier to deal with life changes as well.

For whatever reason, there’s a specific group of friends that I’ve known for about 18 years and we’ve been through thick and thin together.

I know I’m lucky to have the support network I do.  My girlfriend, my derby friends, my other local friends, my family who all support me in different ways no matter if they are local or far away.  I think one of the most significant differences the past 2.5 years has been the support network I’ve built around me.

But don’t discount online friendships, they’re as real as anything else, and I know during some of my worst times they have been a lifesaver, and during some of my best times, they have cheered the loudest.

What’s Real

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My brain spends a lot of time telling me lies.

Anxiety is my brain telling me there is danger when there isn’t any.  It causes my entire system to react as if there truly were a danger.

Suicidal thoughts cause my brain to think I really want to die, and at times I’ve attempted to act on those thoughts because they seem so real.

I spend a lot of my time trying to work out which thoughts are real, and which aren’t.  I have to work out what is anxiety and what is intuition.   Sometimes it is easy to get too wrapped up in my own head.

When your brain spends most of its time telling you lies, it becomes very difficult to trust yourself.  Sometimes that goes too far.

Now that I’m trying to write this out, it’s hard to put it into words, so try to follow along.

Sometimes I start questioning not only how others feel about me, but how I feel about others, and if my brain is playing tricks on me.

If my brain is capable of perceiving danger that isn’t really there, if people really do care about me and my brain is lying to me and telling me they don’t, then maybe my brain is lying to me about my feelings about other things and people too.

Do I even know how to love people?  Is this really what love is?  And not even just romantic love, or friendship love.  I felt this way as Kidlet was growing up too.

Maybe I don’t really know how to care about people.  Maybe it’s me who doesn’t care enough or know how to love and maybe what I feel isn’t really love and maybe I don’t even know what love actually feels like because my brain has been lying to me all along.

I start over analyzing all of it.

How many times does someone have to lie to you before you start questioning everything they tell you?

What if the person that lied was your own brain and it lies about your own thoughts?

How would you begin to trust yourself again?

What if as soon as you started trusting yourself another round of bad anxiety or suicidal thoughts happened again and you had to convince yourself not to trust those thoughts?

It takes a lot of energy to untangle this overthinking, and a lot of that energy is spent just sitting with the thoughts and letting them run as background noise.

I’m thankful when they can stay relatively quiet.  I’m thankful when the people in my life understand.  I’m thankful when I don’t have to work so hard to untangle what is real and what isn’t because none of it matters as much.

I’m thankful when I can just be.

 

Thankful for Friends

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Considering how spectacularly shitty the last 36 hours has been in my brain, it’s also been pretty incredible to see how much my people love me.

Everything from the way Wonder Woman just keeps being here. I keep expecting to be too much and she’s just here and doesn’t seem to flinch. I’m perplexed.

To the friend that just keeps showing up and asking if we’re walking or gym-ming tonight. It’s like she keeps twisting my arm and reminding me to take care of that part too. Gah.

To the friends that are helping figure out logistics and listening online to my trains that keep derailing and helping me pull them back in so I can keep it together long enough to let the process work.

The friends who are keeping games of words with friends going in their spare moments . . .I don’t know if they realize how helpful those games were tonight while I was trying to make some order out of my house again.

And then all of the people who publicly and privately reminded me how making the call was the bad ass self care that needed to happen.

Thank you all.

I made it through one more day.

2/3rds

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Ericka was one of the women Parker and I met in the shelter. She was young, maybe 20 or 21. Such a sweet kid and adored Parker and I.

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Look at this Facebook post. She’s talking about a Mother’s Day potluck, in a homeless shelter. Waking up to make breakfast for 80 people, in a homeless shelter.

We took buses to the light rail to go to a church in the city and then came back and hung out at a crappy little pond that was pretty damn gross but it killed time and gave us something to do. And bread was cheap. Broken wing (Gregory House) was a mean little cuss but he kept going and the other ducks knew to follow him because the humans felt sorry for him and always threw the food to him. Also, there were more geese than ducks, but it was still the duck pond to everyone in the shelter.

Look how normal it all seems in this post. It all became almost normal to us. Wake up, fold up your mats if you are on the floor in the hallways, put away your bins, do your chores.

Ericka died about a year or so later. My heart broke. She fought so hard to overcome her mental health shit, but she lost. Two out of the three people in this post are gone…..

The right kind of gay for this.

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At some point in the past two years, between Kidlet, Mickey and I, mostly around fashion. “ I’m the wrong kind of gay for that” started getting thrown around.

Mickey and I were shopping for makeup for her niece… “I am the wrong kind of gay for this shit”

I would ask Kidlet for fashion advice (seriously… when you are dressing to impress other people, you have no fucking clue what looks okay). “Mom… wrong kinda gay for this”

I’ve started settling in on my style. It started with pink everything and then I found more and more of what fit me exactly.. the kind of shirts and skirts I liked, etc. Now I’ve found a style of makeup that suits me….

It turns out I’m exactly the right kind of gay for this…

Except I prefer the term Queer, it fits better because it’s less restrictive.

Power

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After an amazing weekend away, I’ve realized that my anxiety in public has virtually vanished. There were multiple times that I went off completely alone in NYC in crowds, without a thought.

I went and retrieved a pizza when they suddenly couldn’t deliver it and throughout the weekend I had no issue figuring out the subway and actually enjoyed getting lost and missing stops and backtracking. It was a puzzle, a game.

I survived one of my worst fears a year ago, and so those people in that giant city have no power over me anymore.

But now those close to me have 100 times more power than they can ever imagine. And it’s power they don’t want, and power I don’t want to give them and it’s become a whole different kind of anxiety that I’m now battling. These trains are just as loud as the trains that used to tell me I couldn’t leave the house.

I know loss, and not in the “we can’t be friends anymore” kind of way, and not even in the “this isn’t working out” kind of way. We had a fight, a stupid fight over stupid shit and she went to bed and did not wake up. And while I know I had nothing to do with Parker’s death, I cannot quiet that voice that tells me I did . . . . it’s part of the process . . .

Because of that, the social anxiety that was always there is now 100 times louder. The fear that everyone else is going to leave gets louder and louder.

Every time someone is angry with me not only do I feel that tension and need to run from it, but I’m internally petrified . . what if I don’t have a chance to make amends. What if there is no tomorrow to say “I’m sorry, this was stupid” after they calm down.

Because of it I end up sometimes becoming incredibly irratic and overbearing and talking over them and even over myself to try and fix problems that aren’t even there because in my mind . .

If I don’t put out those fires I’m going to lose more people.

And i LOVE my people. I love my tribe. With every bit of my being.

I am both thankful for, and sorry to those who have been so close to me this past year. I know I am a lot. And I know that by now, you thought it would not be so much to be so close to someone who you have given so much to. And I do appreciate you, more than you could ever know. I wasn’t on even ground to begin with, and a year ago that ground disappeared. I’m quite thankful that I realized I could fly, but you guys have done more than your fair share of carrying.

I am intense . . and I am trying to get better. All month I have been trying to figure out how things feel so right in some ways, and so wrong in other ways.