a fixer upper

•October 8, 2009 • 1 Comment

Starting this process felt a little like buying a cute little Victorian town house that had been allowed to get a bit run down.

I figured, “Hey! This is a great deal and a solid investment for the future! Sure, it’s a bit run down. It’s been through a lot; but all it needs is a little paint, some new furniture and it’ll be terrific!”

So, I got all moved in and made myself comfortable. With great enthusiasm, I started examining paint samples and buying painting supplies. But before I could start painting, I found out that I’d have to scrape off all the layers of paint that had previously been applied. And when I started scraping off the paint on the upper levels, I discovered that the roof was on the verge of collapse and there was no insulation in the attic.

Feeling overwhelmed with all that needed to be done on the outside, I thought, “Well, I should probably make the inside habitable before anything, anyway.”

I began to prepare pictures and frames to hang on the walls. But everytime I tried to hammer in a nail, chunks of plaster would crumble off the wall and fall in my face.

With huge holes in the walls, I began to notice that the wiring was completely fucked up and nowhere near being up to code.

Termites had been gnawing away at the structural support of the load-bearing walls.

The foundation was cracked and threatening subsidance and eventual collapse.

The stairs were long disused, creaking and thick with cobwebs. The hearths were clogged, cold and empty.

The carpets were molding and the floorboards were rotting.

It’s easy to feel discouraged. Every new challenge only serves to highlight all the progress I’m failing to make and I seem to have forgotten the potential I saw in this fixer-upper when I bought it.

a quiet evening

•October 2, 2009 • Leave a Comment

trees fill with a breath touched by helios’s waning strength,
clear skies stir hope.

sipping earthy wines, kissed with spice
gentle laughter and farwelled knights

an Egyptian musk burns on the shelf
an offering to the gods; a half forgotten memory of the future.

the evening warms and scents imagination.
the embers invite silence. crisp and harmonic

serene as the moon.

the slip

•September 17, 2009 • Leave a Comment

slide
and that’s how you slip
down
you slip into
it

the judgment
lapses
sways
retreats
to the stand

it is
not the girl who objects
who calls?
the wing cups & folds
all rise

isn’t that nice?
there.
that’s better.

flitting to the edge of the abyss
in three-quarter time

when the spider’s verdict is spoken
and the mirror has been broken
then all betrayal blossoms

she is put
up with

without a hearing

see,  the strawman shambles
between
both of them now firing
the battlefield aflame, casting ominous shadows
putting everything in a different
light without warmth

reciprocal zugzwang

the war drums speak
and all sixty-four dance
racing to construct deltang’s triangle
the queen slips away

neglect the breach
that becomes liberation
tearing the bonds of the silk prison

the border line
has been crossed
the defenses are fatigued

still the guns
and seek the cessation of antipathy

peace without surrender

never over
ever
again

you know
not this

it is
not the numbers that count
not the times, the calculations
the representations of varying positions

do you know?

it is
the frantic flight;
swinging from,
sliding down
the last strand of
the painstaking web of dysfunction.

it is
a subtle variance

it is
imperative defiance

it is
the gentle
closing of the door

it is
that’s how
there.
that’s better.

autumn approach

•September 12, 2009 • 2 Comments

luminary…fire and ice

poised at my fevered brow

trying to hide from the traitor’s

moon in the glorious velvet

of the sky

yet dancing on pools

that whisper and sigh

i hold stillness with meticulous chaos

days execute equations

that dictate the balance of mercy;

nights have become a cornucopia

of dreams

sugar swells robust globes,

heavy on clusters in the vineyard

i weave a basket of my mind

to prepare for the harvest

a little death

•September 3, 2009 • Leave a Comment

Today at lunch, I walked to my favorite spot in the park.  As I approached the bench where I usually sit in the shade, I noticed a small white butterfly apparently dead on the walkway; its wings fluttering sporadically as the gentle breeze washed over it.

As the keeper of the butterflies, this little insect mortality caught my attention and made me think.

I saw in myself this death.  And I began to think that the hope that I have been feeling these past few days was, in all, useless.  I stood in my melancholy, wondering at the meaning of this; and whether it was coincidental or the cool brush of fate.

I decided to move the gentle creature from the cruel pavement to remove it to a nearby flower pot as a more fitting final resting place.  I gently lifted its wing and as I did so, the beauty began to flutter frantically in my grasp.

In my nervousness, I quickly placed it in the flower pot.  It seemed to limp over to the leaves of its new bower.

I know not if it was injured or if it was merely too new to its wings, or if it was indeed on the precipice of death, but it slowly made its way to the soil where it disappeared among the leaves.

Perhaps this string of events is not imbued with the importance to which I wish to ascribe it.  But I cannot deny that it challenged my perspective.  I have committed to cherish such things and I know I will carry it with me from now on.

september morn

•September 2, 2009 • 2 Comments

as sultry days lengthen into restless nights,

i sweep my hands through pools of memory and

wonder where you are

melancholy, so recently draped across my shoulders,

does not suit me today.

i twirl out from within the cocoon of sorrow

and decide to dance through the dappled day.

taking flight, i bring you laughter once more.

the cure

•August 16, 2009 • 4 Comments

I’m not doing very well.  I’m a bit lost and don’t really know what I’m feeling right now.  Things have been so stressful at work that I’ve gone pretty numb (clinically referred to as “Stress Induced Dissociation”).  According to my doctor, that’s par for the course with BPD.

When I was very first diagnosed with BPD, I remember freaking ever so slightly out.  The only thread that I clung to was that there was this treatment out there call Dialectical Behavior Therapy and it was apparently very effective.

I heard “effective” and immediately thought “cure”.

A moi. L’histoire d’une de mes folies.

I know that rationally, that is inaccurate.  DBT isn’t a cure per se.  But I’m not understanding that emotionally.

It makes DBT rather frustrating.  It’s a lot of work, but it isn’t really making much sense, and I’m not seeing any results.  And I don’t know if it’s because it’s still rather early in my treatment; or if it’s that I’ve missed something; or what.  I do think that one thing that is not helping is my DBT coach.

She’s very nice, but she’s a hippie.

She’s a Reiki Master and she wears long gypsy-ish skirts.  She’s positively (pun intended) dripping with crystals and she really, really likes Nancy Ann Tappe.

And that’s all fine.  I am fascinated with auras and parapsychology, but I don’t know that it’s very practical or useful to me at this stage in my therapy.

Because the more she tries to link BPD with a specific color of my aura; the more she tells me that DBT is linked to the flow of Qi, the hokier this all seems. I’m confused and scared and here is this DBT person telling me to light candles and meditate.

And I guess I could do that to distract myself from cutting myself up.  But I can’t hide in the smoke of the incense forever.  I’m something of an emotional wreck over here and all the alfalfa tea in the world probably couldn’t change that.

I need a new DBT coach.  I know this.  But I none of the DBT specialists in my health insurance plan are accepting new patients and I can’t afford to pay out-of-pocket right now.

And that means that I have to radically accept that I’ve got to hobble along my present path and that the destination is not the cure.

leaving pi

•July 22, 2009 • 4 Comments

I’v recently found myself ruminating over pi.  It’s been almost a year since I walked away from our relationship.  At the time, I was firmly convinced that he was not good to me; that I deserved better; and that I was taking care of myself.  In all honesty, however, I reckon that I simply abandoned him before he could abandon me.

Now that I’ve been diagnosed (correctly, finally) with BPD, I have to wonder how much of my decision to end the relationship was due to my condition.  Because when I think about it, a lot of my symptoms of BPD were made manifest in our interactions:

  • blowing minor things out of proportion:  CHECK
  • pouting when I was not the center of his attention:  CHECK
  • cutting people out of my life over trivial or overblown issues:  CHECK
  • being suspicious and distrusting:  CHECK

And I would switch between being sweet and charming and being an out-of-control mess in mere seconds.

However, I never had an idealized fantasy of what our relationship would be.  One of the main reasons I demurred to his flattering remarks was that I didn’t really have romantic feelings for him.

I just wasn’t that into him.

(but my ego really needed him to be into me).

I know that I’m recycling right now.  I miss him.  I still care about him.  I hope that he’s happy.  I hope that he’s healthy.  For me, the toughest thing is coming to terms with what happened.  I can’t change it, but I feel badly about it.  I can only tell myself that though I may have difficult feelings now, I know that this, too, shall pass; and hope that things will be different and better in the future.

past tense

•July 14, 2009 • Leave a Comment

I had a lengthy conversation with my sister last night. She is the only one of my family that I’ve told about my BPD diagnosis (because I had to list a next of kin when I checked into the hospital). It’s been interesting to re-examine our history and our relationship through the lens of my BPD. It’s actually been rather good because there are some things that really make a lot of sense now. This change in perspective hasn’t “healed” me. It hasn’t “healed” our relationship. We’re sisters. Much of our life has been tangled up in jealousy and resentment; and a lot of that has been carried over into our lives as women. The DBT however has helped me examine our relationship, and the things that I would normally find distressing, and begin to identify better coping mechanisms so I can step forth into the future in a healthier way.

One of the problems that we keep coming up against, though, is that my sister desperately wants to broach the subject with our mother so that she can negotiate some kind of “peace” between us. This is a problem. And it’s a big problem, because when it comes to my mother, I am not ready to even acknowledge the past, let alone examine just how distressing it was and the negative ways that I “coped” with it in response. Those were some of the deepest (most distressing) cuts, and I don’t know if those scars will ever fully heal.

My mother.

What can I say about my mother? She has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but eschews the diagnosis. I’m not a clinical psychologist, nor am I her doctor, but as her daughter, the diagnosis makes perfect sense to me. I would have to admit that this disorder primarily informed how dysfunctional our family’s relationships really are.

Especially when it came to my sister.

Especially when it came to me.

Growing up, I was daily reminded that my sister and I had very different mothers. My mom and my sister was more like best friends. They gossiped together. They went on diets together. They worked together on all of my sister’s big homework projects. They listened to the same music and went to the concerts together. They wore matching clothes.  I, on the other hand, was forever excluded from their clubhouse. Neglect is such an ugly word, but it sums up how my mother treated me. My mom made it abundantly clear that I was a “mistake,” and that she really didn’t want another kid. There was nothing in me with which she could sympathize. In one of my earliest journal entries, I wrote that I was a “terrible girl” because nothing I could do was “right.” She never once spanked my sister, but would routinely wail on me for minor infractions (like spilling a glass of milk when I was five). I think that as I’ve gotten older, what is more painful than the physical hurts is the emotional pain that I feel when she reminisces about just what a terrible child I was.

“You were always such a brat. And you just needed a good spanking every few days!” she laughs. “And after your spanking, you’d do okay for a day or two; but then you’d just go right back to being awful, and I’d have to spank you again! “ she laughs again.

She loves telling me this, preferably when there are other people present.

My family hasn’t never really been healthy. In my immediate family we wouldn’t ever acknowledge our feelings openly or honestly, primarily because my mother regulated the emotional life of our family. Any “non-sanctioned” expression of emotion was grounds for punishment. My father was so inured with that doctrine that he simply withdrew and became more and more emotionally absent. We, none of us, ever learned how to express our feelings in a healthy way. What ended up happening is that all that emotional energy and all that dysfunction got funneled down to and through me. I was the proverbial black sheep.

As such, I’ve done what I could to hightail it out of there. I may have “alienated the family” (my mother’s words) and abandoned them, but I’ve always felt that they abandoned me first.

Quite frankly, I’m just not ready to “smoke the pipe” yet. I haven’t really identified all of my feelings (aside from the anger) and so can’t really address them yet. Besides, if I tried addressing the past with my mother now, I know that I would want to lash out at her; want to hurt her as she hurt me. I know that that would only perpetuate the cycle. And I know from experience that it’s a nasty cycle. I want break out of it. I don’t feel like I could do that just yet. I’ve got to take my time on this. I’ve got a lot to sort out and I don’t want to rush it. I feel like this is a moment, an opportunity, and I want to do it healthfully.

It’s too important not to.

To me.

nausea

•July 6, 2009 • Leave a Comment

i’m a consummate actress and one of my signature roles is Got-It-Together-Girl.  she is a terrific character because she exudes the message, “i’ve pulled my personal thing together and can interact successfully in society.”  i’m trying to maintain when i’m fucked, and the truth of the matter is that i’m just as much of a mess as i’ve always been.  i mean, yeah, i’ve made some cosmetic changes; i’m on some new meds, but at my core (if i’m even capable of being completely honest with myself) i’m adrift and coming up against existence with the force of the tides, irrationally confident that whatever obstacles i encounter can be overcome through sheer force of momentum.

i tell myself that i don’t know what i’m feeling, but that’s not entirely true.  i’m feeling depressed and anxious, and those feelings are driving me (i.e., my emotions, my actions, etc.).  i’m still withdrawn and scared of what this diagnosis means for me presently and how it (should?) (shall?) inform the future.

i tell myself that i don’t know what i’m doing, but that’s not entirely true, either.  i’m trying to come to terms with just how i got here in the first place.

i’ve been re-reading a favorite book, Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea recently.  it is the “diary” of Antoine Roquentin, and in one of the first entries, the character writes, “…and yet, if i had even a shadow of self-knowledge, i could put it to good use now.”

how true i find this right now.

Sartre’s works have always been, to me, explorations of the means of survival; of finding some way out.

unfortunately, i feel like i’m not ready to grasp where i am and not quite sure how i’m ever going to find my way out of it.

i’m not really buying into DBT so much.  i wonder, am i being too lazy about it?  perhaps i’m too jaded (some of the suggested “soothing” techniques seem hippie/dippy and rather silly)?  perhaps it’s too functional and utilitarian? as to the latter, i find that in looking over the “homework” and “exercises,” it seems like there is the intention to turn DBT into a mechanical process.  a machine.  and once you learn to operate the machine, it magically moves you from point A to point B.

that doesn’t seem right to me.  but if the answer is not within, nor is it without, where the hell is it?