Psychologist appointment number two tomorrow. I'm not sure what to say. Maybe I should make some shit up. I won't tell the truth, because I think that, like an iceberg, the bits that are showing are dangerous enough.
I had a mild panic attack last night: it was sandwiched between two amazing nightmares. It was a pretty bad night all in all, but I've had much worse.
My problem is this (and I'm guessing it's the problem that a lot of us have so really I should just learn to suck it up since I've haven't grown the necessary cajones to deal with it): this world is pretty fucking ridiculous. I don't know how to explain it except to say that I didn't create this world and I don't buy into it. We're not free: our existence is a semi-palatable kind of slavery. If you're free you don't have people telling you what to do all day. I have people telling me what to do all day. Thankfully, they tell me what to do less than they tell other people because I don't work as much as other people and because - as it stands right now - I have more options than the majority of people. This could change rather quickly; I'm aware. Anyways. Basically I'd like a mulligan on, um, the way the world was created because it's totally and utterly fucked up and I know it and I think other people know it, but I think a lot of people don't know it. I get the argument that some people are just trying to create their own happiness and to go to work and do what is required of them and pay the mortgage and be decent husbands and wives and have families because in having a family you're creating your own little world that sort of feeds on itself and is somewhat insular and creates a type of happiness of its own and that, out of ignorance or out of apathy, they've given up trying to change the outside world and are instead concentrating on making their own personal universe as pleasurable as possible. I get it. I got it. Good.
Hmm... in writing this out it appears to segueway nicely into the other problem I'm grappling with: I don't have my own universe. I have me, and I don't appear to be able to bring pleasure to myself. It occurs to me, today of all days, that I don't really know who I am and I don't know what I'm worth. I know what I'm not, but I'm struggling with the concept of worth. My college says I'm pretty smart. By running standards I'm pretty good. Given my level of employability it appears that I'm more of an asset than a liability on the professional front. I garner a level of attention from men that is sometimes, to me, quite surprising.
What is a college education worth? What if 3:40 is a bullshit cutoff for women to get to Boston? I applied for a job that I rather wanted a couple of weeks ago and I didn't get a call back, so by their standards I am not at all employable. On the relationship front? Let's just say that there's enough material there for an entirely separate blog: I have wants; I'm no angel.
So gather all this up and what does it make me? Who am I? Does everyone know who they are at this stage of the game? The guy from our clinic that ran a five hour marathon last week thinks I'm amazing. Three of the four people I had coffee with today think I'm as slow as fuck. The fourth doesn't care about his time when he runs: for him it's just an experience. My mom thinks I'm too skinny. My psychologist thinks I obsess about my weight. There are people a lot smaller than me in our running group. I could have been married twice over by now. An ex of mine created a blog where he likened me cutting my hair off to Britney Spears' spiral into (temporary) insanity. Michael loves me dearly, but is constantly wary of me fucking up, which I do relatively often and with great aplomb.
So. Do we judge ourselves by our own inner critic? Cause mine is harsh as all get out. I think mine causes my panic attacks. To what vestige of perfection do I compare myself against only to ceaselessly find me wanting? But then if not my own inner critic, then what? My other critics - and everyone's a goddamn critic whether they think they are or not - are all over the board.
It's like that infamous article that everyone's read about women's interpretation of their body type. There are five pictures of the same woman. The middle one is what she actually looks like and the two to the right grow incrementally fatter and the two to the left grow incrementally skinnier. The study determines that the woman always chooses the worst case scenario as what she thinks she really looks like.
How does one judge one's worth? There are a million trite answers to that. There are cabbies with PhDs. What are they? They have PhDs but we value them as cab drivers. Which is it?
This is too fucking existential to discuss with my psychologist and so tomorrow I will tell her that I am mildly depressed and anxious and ask for skills to cope with the panic attacks which have diminished significantly. Who is supposed to answer this question? I'm supposed to answer this question. How? Perhaps this is one of those lifetime things. I'll let you know the answer when I'm 80.
In the meantime I feel that I am retreating further and further into myself. When people say, "How are you?" I say "fine". So, um, that's a load of shit. But what else am I going to say? Do you want to sit down and have a three hour philosophical conversation with me? No, you don't. And oh! look at me whinge about my higher-level needs when people are dying of starvation and AIDS and don't have affordable housing or access to the meds they need. Ahhh... Duder is having a little moral crisis. Let's let the world grind to a halt to make time for her. I get it. But it doesn't change the fact that day to day I feel like I fit in less and less.
A couple of weeks ago I actually had a conversation with someone I work with that really believed that she had melamine poisoning. We're in fucking Canada. Like, 50,000 kids got sick in China and because all she does is shop and watch the news at 6 or 11pm she thought she had melamine poisoning and actually went to her doctor because she was worried about her kidneys. And I stood in the washroom listening to this bullshit for about five minutes and I thought, "Holy shit. When does the comet hit?".
Right. So. I think maybe I'm overtired and I'm just a little emotional since my ovaries almost fell out earlier in the day and I'm all nostalgic because of the smell of the tiger lilies Michael brought to me on Friday (he's bought flowers for me maybe six or seven times in our eight year relationship) because he sensed that I was reaching the end of my tether when I was up at Lasqueti and I just have this vision of me dumping all my proverbial cards on the table and they're this scattered mess and I'm trying, unsuccessfully, to make sense of them and I'm wondering: I am seriously alone in this?
I had a mild panic attack last night: it was sandwiched between two amazing nightmares. It was a pretty bad night all in all, but I've had much worse.
My problem is this (and I'm guessing it's the problem that a lot of us have so really I should just learn to suck it up since I've haven't grown the necessary cajones to deal with it): this world is pretty fucking ridiculous. I don't know how to explain it except to say that I didn't create this world and I don't buy into it. We're not free: our existence is a semi-palatable kind of slavery. If you're free you don't have people telling you what to do all day. I have people telling me what to do all day. Thankfully, they tell me what to do less than they tell other people because I don't work as much as other people and because - as it stands right now - I have more options than the majority of people. This could change rather quickly; I'm aware. Anyways. Basically I'd like a mulligan on, um, the way the world was created because it's totally and utterly fucked up and I know it and I think other people know it, but I think a lot of people don't know it. I get the argument that some people are just trying to create their own happiness and to go to work and do what is required of them and pay the mortgage and be decent husbands and wives and have families because in having a family you're creating your own little world that sort of feeds on itself and is somewhat insular and creates a type of happiness of its own and that, out of ignorance or out of apathy, they've given up trying to change the outside world and are instead concentrating on making their own personal universe as pleasurable as possible. I get it. I got it. Good.
Hmm... in writing this out it appears to segueway nicely into the other problem I'm grappling with: I don't have my own universe. I have me, and I don't appear to be able to bring pleasure to myself. It occurs to me, today of all days, that I don't really know who I am and I don't know what I'm worth. I know what I'm not, but I'm struggling with the concept of worth. My college says I'm pretty smart. By running standards I'm pretty good. Given my level of employability it appears that I'm more of an asset than a liability on the professional front. I garner a level of attention from men that is sometimes, to me, quite surprising.
What is a college education worth? What if 3:40 is a bullshit cutoff for women to get to Boston? I applied for a job that I rather wanted a couple of weeks ago and I didn't get a call back, so by their standards I am not at all employable. On the relationship front? Let's just say that there's enough material there for an entirely separate blog: I have wants; I'm no angel.
So gather all this up and what does it make me? Who am I? Does everyone know who they are at this stage of the game? The guy from our clinic that ran a five hour marathon last week thinks I'm amazing. Three of the four people I had coffee with today think I'm as slow as fuck. The fourth doesn't care about his time when he runs: for him it's just an experience. My mom thinks I'm too skinny. My psychologist thinks I obsess about my weight. There are people a lot smaller than me in our running group. I could have been married twice over by now. An ex of mine created a blog where he likened me cutting my hair off to Britney Spears' spiral into (temporary) insanity. Michael loves me dearly, but is constantly wary of me fucking up, which I do relatively often and with great aplomb.
So. Do we judge ourselves by our own inner critic? Cause mine is harsh as all get out. I think mine causes my panic attacks. To what vestige of perfection do I compare myself against only to ceaselessly find me wanting? But then if not my own inner critic, then what? My other critics - and everyone's a goddamn critic whether they think they are or not - are all over the board.
It's like that infamous article that everyone's read about women's interpretation of their body type. There are five pictures of the same woman. The middle one is what she actually looks like and the two to the right grow incrementally fatter and the two to the left grow incrementally skinnier. The study determines that the woman always chooses the worst case scenario as what she thinks she really looks like.
How does one judge one's worth? There are a million trite answers to that. There are cabbies with PhDs. What are they? They have PhDs but we value them as cab drivers. Which is it?
This is too fucking existential to discuss with my psychologist and so tomorrow I will tell her that I am mildly depressed and anxious and ask for skills to cope with the panic attacks which have diminished significantly. Who is supposed to answer this question? I'm supposed to answer this question. How? Perhaps this is one of those lifetime things. I'll let you know the answer when I'm 80.
In the meantime I feel that I am retreating further and further into myself. When people say, "How are you?" I say "fine". So, um, that's a load of shit. But what else am I going to say? Do you want to sit down and have a three hour philosophical conversation with me? No, you don't. And oh! look at me whinge about my higher-level needs when people are dying of starvation and AIDS and don't have affordable housing or access to the meds they need. Ahhh... Duder is having a little moral crisis. Let's let the world grind to a halt to make time for her. I get it. But it doesn't change the fact that day to day I feel like I fit in less and less.
A couple of weeks ago I actually had a conversation with someone I work with that really believed that she had melamine poisoning. We're in fucking Canada. Like, 50,000 kids got sick in China and because all she does is shop and watch the news at 6 or 11pm she thought she had melamine poisoning and actually went to her doctor because she was worried about her kidneys. And I stood in the washroom listening to this bullshit for about five minutes and I thought, "Holy shit. When does the comet hit?".
Right. So. I think maybe I'm overtired and I'm just a little emotional since my ovaries almost fell out earlier in the day and I'm all nostalgic because of the smell of the tiger lilies Michael brought to me on Friday (he's bought flowers for me maybe six or seven times in our eight year relationship) because he sensed that I was reaching the end of my tether when I was up at Lasqueti and I just have this vision of me dumping all my proverbial cards on the table and they're this scattered mess and I'm trying, unsuccessfully, to make sense of them and I'm wondering: I am seriously alone in this?
5 comments:
Okay.
I'll tell you what I want.
What will make me happy.
It's figuring out how to get a fucking flickr slideshow going in my links bar.
I've tried but it's just not working.
You don't have to advise me on this. I just wanted you to know what the last ingredient needed for my cake is.
;)
My first comment was crap so I deleted it.
Okay.
Here's my take.
You have to do what makes you happy. I am not sure how old you are but you seem to be pretty young still - late 20's/early 30's.
I always knew that I didn't want to work forever. I didn't want baybees, either. If you have baybees, unless you are rich, you usually have to work forever.
So I was lucky in that respect in that I knew that I wouldn't need to put much behind me to start living my life in a way that I thought was worthwhile.
I left home at 16. Spur of the moment deal. Looking back I wondered at how I could have made such a decision. But I did. I did it because I didn't want to fuck up my life, like my mother seemed to be doing with hers.
So I got outta there.
I knew nothing about anything between my 20's and early 30's other than saving money was all I could do to help me on my way to a free life.
Long story short, I'm not mega rich but I do have some cash saved and two flats that I can sell in the end, and I know that I have enough money to get me through till at least 60, spent frugally, if indeed I am fortunate enough to live that long.
I feel sorted.
I want to leave all this bullshit behind. All the people working to pay off bricks or whatever.
I want and need to live a simple life. Outside, on the sea, on beaches, in jungles. Simple. Simple. Simple.
I want to be shit scared. Deleriously happy. Cunningly content.Rebeliously relaxed.
I am on the cusp of having planned it all to happen and given my lack of experience, I am sure there will be a lot of shit scared moments.
Love. Ha. I am so in love it's almost sinking the rest of me.
This is something I cannot allow to happen. It is my only weakness.
I am working on it.
If ever I went to a head doc, it would be love that I'd end up talking about and how it totally strips me of so much confidence and adventure power.
Love,in a way, shouldn't be thought about; if it happens, it happens. If it doesn't,well, why bother worrying about it.
This is something I am currently trying to master; going with the flow and not worrying about if he's gonna want me next year or w.h.a.t.e.v.e.r.
It's the only issue that would get me on a couch trying to sort my head out and I'd rather fix that myself because everything else is RIGHT and ON TRACK.
So you have to ask yourself what you want. And then focus on getting it. Sounds cliche, I know, but sometimes our wants can have the simplest of solutions when we take ourselves out of the usual ratrace that exists in the lives of 90% of the people around us.
I mean, there is not one person who I admire in this school. Not one person. I cycled past school this morning, at 5am, and lights were on. Who the fuck needs to come into work so early after being a career teacher for 20-plus years!!!!!!!
What a waste!!
You'd think they'd have their schedule sorted by now.
Yep, this one teacher, in his 50's, comes to school everyday at the crack of dawn.
What kind of life he has at home, with his family, is anyones guess.
Then I look at myself and I think, 'you might be a bit mad sometimes but goddammit you know what you want and you are going for it, despite the risk'. And it feels good.
So think about what you want and the resources at your disposal, whilst I head home to drink a glass or two of Frontera and hope that you wake up tomorrow feeling more in control of your destiny.
Cos life can be amazing; far far far far better than we are ever led to believe.
M
I have so much advice to give you. So much advice that would lead you to despair. I can say that "I've been where you are," but that's total bullshit. I AM where you are. I'm there at all times, if I stop to think of it. The best part of my life is not thinking all the time. I've been to shrinks. I went to college as a double major (Psych & World Lit) because I wanted to be a shrink. The only point of therapy is to look into the mirror and actually see yourself. Well, I've got news for you Dude, looking at yourself isn't always what it's cracked up to be. You can't really see yourself right now. You're looking through this "Duder Prism" that incorporates too many things. World view. Self view. The view of your lover. Too much.
I've come to realize in my 48 years (I can't believe I'm already that old!) that the cycles never end. You feel great - you feel confident - you feel good - you feel okay - you feel blah - you feel like a waste of breath. The order changes but the revolutions continue. It all comes and goes and comes back.
I hope this didn't make you feel better. These were only words. Better comes when it comes.
Today is today. Tomorrow is another revolution. Viva de revolución!
Thanks for all the advice. It's good advice, all of it and it's definitely got me thinking. I'm glad to know it, life, whatever, isn't as easy as some people make it look. And there are things I want and not having them makes me unhappy so I have to set in motion a plan to achieve as many of those things that make me happy as possible. And it won't happen overnight. It'll take a long time. And in that long time I will be confident and despondent, happy and sad and I'll get off track sometimes (often). But I will stick to it because otherwise, what's the point?
Thanks again. These are definitely comments that I will be rereading throughout the day when not plotting how to defraud the company I work for for millions of dollars.
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