Daily Archive for May 30th, 2006

Before You Leave Me

Published on May 30, 2006 in For the Record, Mental Health and Relationships. 0 Comments

Lord, abandonment issues, people leave or I do. I often leave before they can leave me because leaving is better than getting left.

I use to consider myself the best hit and run friend a person could have. I’m what they need for a moment but before they get a chance to figure out the “real” me I’m gone. I make my impact and leave before they figure out that I’m more broken than they realized anyone could ever be. But for a moment I’ll make you laugh, offer support and give beyond what others usually give. Inside I’m thinking, goodness, they’re going to find out I’m a fake. They’ll be as disappointed as they are inspired or supported or whatever they feel. Leaving before they find out I’m a fake is much easier than facing them with that horrible look of disappointment on their face. That’s when I get to hear myself say again, “Austin, you’ve fuck up yet another relationship.”

I either get attached to people too quickly or I don’t attach to them at all. There isn’t much of a balance there. It’s usually one way or the other. For friends that stay I ask myself, what does so-in-so want from me? Why does he/she stay around? I expect them to out of the blue expose their real purpose. I guess it shows how little I trust people.

Sg trusts everyone and takes everything as truth. I don’t think this is naive, I think it’s stupid and potentially deadly. The converse is true as well, not trusting can be deadly. If you trust no one then there is no one to run to when things get bad. I’m too busy thinking that so-in-so doesn’t really care about me and that they just want something from me. So I don’t call when I need help or I don’t let on that I need this or that. That leaves me out in the cold with just me and sometimes I hate me.

I worried so much about loosing Sg. I worried about her dying like her friend Raleigh did. Even though she had a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon we stayed up pretty late. I set the alarm clock to wake her up but she was up and gone much earlier than I expected. When I finally got my butt up and into the shower the usually relaxation was interrupted by thoughts of her getting into an accident and never coming home. I threw the idea out of my mind and finished enjoying my shower. But when I got out there was a message on the phone. That little green light was blinking. I froze, dreading what message was on the phone. The caller ID said it was from a local hospital. Surprisingly a flash of anger struck me. It was like, damn it Sg. I knew it! I knew it! But then it was like, yeah, you did know so why are you so upset? You knew! It turns out that from her doc appointment they had her got to the ER because there was a problem with her sodium levels and her potassium levels. They were dangerously out of whack. So right now she’s at the ER while I’m sitting here thinking about myself! Selfish!

I could offer her some advice. I could tell her that she’s taking too much medication. I could tell her that people that don’t have a fatal disease usually don’t take literally 15 different medications daily. I could tell her that the side effects of some of the meds are really screwing with her head, clouding it and making her spacey. I could tell her these things again, like many others have done, but she needs those pills to feel cared for. Everyone else has left her, too. She doesn’t feel like she has many friends. She feels she’s wasted her life going from relationship to relationship. She feels like a failure and she feels stupid, empty headed, less desirable than when she was totally fit and could do pushups on her knuckles. She told me she has Bipolar Disorder and Fibromyalgia but I’ve never known anyone to need 15 meds to live with those 2 disorders. Sometimes she takes so much medication that it makes her toxic and she has to go IP to get her body to come back from that shock. When I got the call from her saying she was at the ER about her blood work I was irritated because I remembered that last night she was talking about needing to go on yet another med. She’s not on addictive pain medication she’s on psych meds but her pdoc is known for his overmedicating and free script writing. So when she comes home she will have yet another script to combat the current problem and then we’ll deal with this all over again.

First I thought I was going to lose her and that pissed me off. Now I’m pissed because she won’t listen to anyone and like me she looks to other things for comfort and care instead of accepting what is offered to her without tricks and strings. We may be alike in this area but most often we are the total opposite. She is totally open and trusting, I’m mostly closed and distant, untrusting and suspicious. She dresses down, wears her hair to cover her face, keeps her head down and walks through life passively. I dressed to not look like a woman. I dress to make a statement, “don’t fuck with me.” I walk with my head up and I refuse to just be stepped all over then offer forgiveness so they can do it again. The thing we have in common the most is the need to be needed. I think that’s why we’ve been friends so long, I think that’s the only reason we’ve been friends so long.

How did everything become about me in the last few days?

Before You Leave Me – Tuesday, May 30, 2006- 4:57 PM

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Good Morning Emotional Evening

Published on May 30, 2006 in For the Record and Mental Health. 0 Comments

Good Morning Emotional Evening – Tuesday, May 30, 2006 – 2:29 AM

We blew the morning over coffee and crackers. We just sat for two hours drinking coffee and talking. Later we came in the office and looked at a few site, Oprah and some others. Sg decided to check her voicemail as we looked at some information about Dan “the Rose man”. She got quiet, hung up the phone and then looked up at me with huge tears in her eyes and said, “Raleigh died.” I said, “What?” she repeated it. I hardly knew him but she knew him well. I struggled to feel anything at all. As a matter of fact I intellectualized the whole thing. He was a liver transplant patient on meds that kept his body from rejecting the transplant. He hadn’t been doing well for about 3 weeks. When I heard this come out of my mouth I realized that I’d left out the emotional side of it. I left out the part about what a good musician he was. I left out that he had a good sense of humor, that he was kind and giving. So instead of talking I listened. Then I realized she needed a shoulder so we moved to the loveseat and she just cried her eyes out. At this point I still felt nothing. I hope she couldn’t feel that nothingness. I held onto her tightly and told her how sorry I was that she lost him but man I knew I was talking without feeling. … So I stopped talking and just listened.

Later we went back to her house and got together some roses to put on his door as a vigil. It wasn’t until we were back at her house that I started to feel panic and anxiety. When I walked into her house I had this strong urge, a need for her to give me something, anything so that I could take it home with me. I didn’t really care what it was; it could have been small or large as long as it was hers. I just felt like I needed something of hers. The last time I felt this way was when my therapist K left. I felt like I needed to take something (be given something) from her office just so that I didn’t lose her totally. I’d been feeling that way for awhile when my time with that therapist wound down. That feeling ended and didn’t surface again until today.

I’ve come to know that when there is a strong urgent sense to my thinking that there is some emotional reason behind it. I took some deep breaths and gathered myself. I realized that when a person dies, even if you were not close to them, the whole issue of mortality comes up. I worried about loosing Sg. I worried about her dying. After I kind of processed that out I was okay but for a bit there I was almost in a total panic. I wanted anything at all to take home with me. I wanted to take a part of her that couldn’t die, that couldn’t get sick and die. After that realization I returned to numb. I tried to make today about her and what she needed but I struggled to feel anything at all. I noticed I was talking about things that could wait. On the day she found out that he died there I was talking to her about stuff that could wait. I caught myself and again I stopped talking and returned to the void emotional state I was stuck in just before the panic.

We ended our evening again at the dining room table over crackers and dilled havarti cheese but this time we didn’t laughing or enjoy good conversation. It was quiet, emotional, solemn and for her, tearful.

Joan of Arc

GRATITUDE MONDAY:Good Friends

Published on May 30, 2006 in For the Record and Gratitude Journal. 0 Comments

Gratitude Monday Good friends and slow gentle times Monday, May 29th, 2006-11:52 PM

Gratitude: being thankful, having the desire or reason to thank somebody, to value something of quality, to understand the importance, meaning and significance of something.

Gratitude Monday: a loose rendering of gratitude, a list or just a few words to show appreciation for or recognition for big and small accomplishments.

Subject: Good Friends and Slow Gentle Times

Sg and I sat at my dining room table and talked for two hours over coffee and crackers. We talked mostly about my grandfather and her brother but the conversation was mild and thoughtful. We had quite a nice time. It is moments like this that give me the recharge I need to take on life’s challenges. I long for quiet, calm moments without extremes and without emotional intensity.

In life, one of the things I appreciate the most is simplicity. I don’t require lavish things and I don’t require “red carpet” type activities to make me feel appreciated or loved. I'd rather spend a few moments over coffee with one or two people than to go to a party with a room full of people. I'd rather sit at Denny’s and have a burger than to go to a fancy restaurant for steak.

I love the symphony, the zoo, small out of the way café’s and little jazz bars. To me, those places feed the soul and not the ego. For me, they are a place to relax, not to entertain my date or be entertained by my date/host/friend. I simply prefer the quiet life. So today when Sg and I sat drinking coffee and enjoying good conversation I knew for sure I'd have something to write about on Gratitude Monday.