An insight A gave me

So I had a TWO HOUR intake interview for the intensive therapy thinger where I am hopefully gonna learn the skills to grieve my mother appropriately and maybe stop being a hostage to such intense social anxiety. The interview was exhausting, but went really well. I almost didn't make it; I was so anxious. The woman who interviewed me said she wanted to "work it so that I was in one of her groups." We did hit it off, had a great rapport.

I love when it works like that, and people don't suck.

Anyway, allllllllll that talking about my extensive history softened me up for A, who was very good to see today. At the end of our work together, I posed an offhand question. Why did she think my emotions were coming out as anxiety / anger and not sadness.... which seems a more obvious emotion for grieving? She thought a moment and said, "Maybe because there's no fight in it. Sadness. It's like a surrender."

And really, she did nail it for me right there. What do I have a problem with? Being vulnerable. What makes one really vulnerable? Surrendering. Imagine how good it would feel to lay down my arms.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA like that's going to happen. Well, I'll need to do some work on my psyche before it does. I'll need to. Because the situation I have now is untenable. I can't live my life like this.

When I went into recovery nearly fourteen years ago, it was like building a whole new, healthy person from scratch. I had to decontaminate myself of all the toxicity that had been passed on to me and sort of start over. Somehow I got the idea that living well = fighting. Surviving. Being in control. Because the old me was so so soooooo out of control.

I wonder if the ability to surrender, or rather the inability to do so, is also the key to why I have fibro. Just a thought. I have to go cue up "Eye of the Tiger" now.

And here's a picture in case you didn't feel like reading all those words:

Pool

20 things : after

1. Ok so welcome to after.

2. it's thin like a napkin, friable, leaves crumbs in the couch

3. he said he still has scabs on his mouth and tongue from the fucked up intubation

4. the feeling I have when I hear this / is part of after / of what comes what comes next / next meaning the rest of our lives

5. want to stick that feeling down down subzero down

6. wake up time to not think about this

7. two wandering poems that I've found homes for in the last few weeks, for example

8. ... and yay and lunch. 

9. right out of the hi-def bright blue sky a ribbon of canaries and they each fall flat on their little conical faces --and black droplet eyes --and brown & yellow fluff --and wings amputated--

10. immediately I fell too into deep sleep and my face hit the sand and the sand filled every opening

11. who is going to pull me / us up the laughter of babies and sand in my mouth

12. she sent me one of those memetic surveys where you have to talk about yourself in the most inane way / I'll answer like I was him instead I'd rather be / I'd rather put my throat in the way instead / busted throat not really you are being melodramatic chakra

13. ... and tonight I'm supposed to have a beer and be all smiley at the reading.

14. it is true that I'm glad to leave the house even though hi-def sky even though canaries

15. feathers curl up like fur I think that one is a mutated color he's so cute

16. zip the mouth up and tap tap tap tap head held proudly

17. while all the lower beings cogitate on our worst punishments 

18. no I've forgotten about it by now don't remind me

19. So how are we feeling today?

20. the cage is white metal bars / pleasant / the fluid upward arc of the roof

I found my bag of eyes.

Good thing I had labeled it eyes really big.

I found my bag of eyes and a shiny page of crystals.

Haven't been blogging in a few days because my brain is in a really bad place like almost-relapse bad and I don't want to share it with the whole internet in specific. But I am staying strong.

There's a long long list a-building. One of these days. I'm going to tell them how I feel. Use my words! Ha.

She yells at her child and then asks him why he is crying. Does it remind you of anyone?

No man is an island but is, perhaps, a woman an island?

A woman-made island. A woman, made island?

But in the meantime. If I can't make a bridge. I found my bag of eyes.

I want a rock

As I walked to the bus stop this morning, mostly stepping around the discarded packaging that people leave to scatter on the sidewalk and blow against the banked edges of our yardlets (observed today: the wrappings and vessels of beverages, snack foods, cigarettes, and condoms), I spied-with-my-little-eye a perfect rock. Egg-shaped, but larger. Butterscotch colored. A smooth finished surface. Like one of those purchased river rocks that escaped from a garden or the concrete island of a gas station.

Every time I see a lone rock, I really really wanna throw it through a window. No one's in particular. But I am thinking house or storefront rather than car. I can imagine the heft, how it will fit the curve of my palm.

I have never thrown a rock through a window. How hard would I have to throw it?  I'm thinking of the big panes of glass on front windows. Would the window break all the way or would it just make those cool cracks like a huge jagged asterisk? With my luck, there would be a window screen that I hadn't discerned and the rock would bounce right off. But if all went as planned, I imagine myself as immensely satisfied.

This reminds me: at the university where I used to teach, they offered a major called Entrepreneurship. I thought this was bogus until at lunch one day I eavesdropped on this student, surely a product of that major, who had an idea for a business that I thought was pretty genius.

Basically, he wanted to rent a warehouse where he could amass unusable breakable items. He would give people skin/eye protection and weapons and let them beat the crap out of stuff that was destined for the landfill. He would employ people to load in the items and then to clean them up after. You would pay by the hour and/or the types of items.

Maybe because I'm a girl and socialized thusly, but I have rarely engaged in the on-purpose breaking of things for my own delight. How awesome would it be to whip rocks at an abandoned greenhouse or bust up a console tv with a sledge hammer? Very.