So I've been having these dreams the first two of which are about old friends. One was of my friend Glo, affectionately known as my wife. (we were never actually married, we were just both single so long and loved each other so we decided that we should be one another's wives) For around a year we haven't been able to make contact and it has been rather sad, but the other night I dreamed that we got together, and it was a lovely dream because I could feel that old love, and immense joy at seeing her again. I hope the dream echoes a future re-connection.
I also dreamed of my old friend Charlene from childhood. We were the outcasts with our peers basically until graduation. After we graduated we kinda went our separate ways, but stayed in touch. She got married and had kids while I got sober and came out, and we had less and less in common. But we still remained in contact, a card or email here and there. Then her brother died and I never heard from her again in spite of the multiple emails I sent checking up on her. In the dream, we were at her parents house, and I don't remember the circumstances, but we were both getting ready for school, and there was something very stressful about the feel of the dream and the dream itself was very dark. Mayhaps it was a metaphor for our relationship, or any other of the old relationships I long for that wouldn't serve me any longer. Or maybe not. Having just completed my autobiography for class, I can tell you that looking back at the events of my childhood, they made me who I am today, and I don't dwell on them anymore. They will always be a part of me, and there will be moments that "issues" will raise their ugly little heads, but for the most part, I live in the present, and I am quite content to do so. I don't know what has happened to Char in that last few years since we've talked, but the old friend I knew was stuck in the past. Every interaction we had still went back to the assholes who had mistreated her in high school. Yes it was painful, but it seemed to completely blur her current life. I wish her healing and closure.
Finally, I dreamed that I had relapsed. I have actually been having re-curring relapse dreams of late. Usually I forget the dream until the next day when I am going about my business, then I get this god awful knot in my gut, then I remember the 'relapse', then I shake myself and remember that it was just a dream. The dreams themselves usually follow a pattern as well; I take a drink of something, then I suddenly remember that I am sober, I get a god-awful knot in my gut, then I say "Frak it! I've already blown it" and I drink some more, but never manage to actually get drunk. During the next day's remembering of the relapse (before fully remembering that is was a dream) I am always disappointed that in spite of blowing my sobriety, I didn't actually manage to get drunk, and then the rationalizing that I don't have to tell anyone that I drank because I didn't actually get drunk, then the surrender that I have to 'fess up, and then the full realization that it was all just a bad frakking dream.
Here is to good dreams and bad dreams...all grist for the mill.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Full Circle
When I started this blog, I was avoiding writing a paper for school. Guess what? I am avoiding writing a paper by blogging. If nothing else, I am consistent. So I have this research paper due next Wednesday night, and that is the last day of the class, so I actually do have to finish it. I kinda started on it yesterday...like, I opened up one of my old papers, deleted the text, and wrote in the new title, which isn't really the title, but it's a start. The research paper is for Techniques of Group Therapy, so the topic had to be anything related to 'group therapy'. The topic I decided to write about is whether or not group therapy helps trans-folk feel more long-term satisfaction with their lives. I chose this topic since I know a lot of trans folk who have had really crappy experiences in individual therapy---basically, they have to give the 'right' answers so that they can get their hormones/surgery, and they never get a chance to really process their issues around trans or anything else. Perhaps I'll share the paper when I'm done...and maybe I'll eventually have some pictures too.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Would it turn you on to see us make out?
That was a question asked me by a couple of my straightish girl friends last night after they decided that at some point that they would probably make out. Having not expected the question, I was a little not prepared for answering the question. After as long of a pause as I could justify, I settled for an honest, "uhmmm, not really. watching people make out doesn't do much for me." I am definitely a kinestetic person. Porn doesn't do much for me, looking at hot babes doesn't do much for me...I can certainly enjoy the latter, but it's not a big deal. After telling her about the exchange, Chris suggested I that I should have asked them if it would have turned them on to see Chris and I kiss. I'm not sure however, that I would want to know the answer, though.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Autobiography part II
This is part two of the auto-bio assignment for my class. I have this fantasy that now that I've quit my job, I'll have all of this free time to write, to take a writing class, to get back into tattooing, to catch up on reading, but then I seem to have all of these other obligations popping up everywhere-not to mention; part of the reason I wanted to quit my job was so that I would have a little down time...oi, thank god I'm winning the lottery tomorrow!
Autobiography: Part II
“Office girls they pass me by, they don’t know my name, put me on the danger list, just to wild to tame”. To keep the song quote theme going, in ‘Danger List’ John Cougar Melloncamp sings of being the outcast, the renegade, the lonely, misunderstood rebel. This is a favorite song of mine, in part because it reminds me of the person I used to be, or the person I used to want to be. In my twenties I was angry and wounded, and I kept everyone at bay with my rage. These days, I want to connect with people, I want to let them in. This is the story of how I got tamed.
Later Adolescence
Way back in grade school I had developed a chip on my shoulder. My general demeanor was that of “please fuck with me so I have an excuse to punch you.” This lovely little personality quirk stayed with me until I got sober. When I drank in public it was usually with the desire that someone would ‘fuck with me’, so I could have some outlet for all of the anger and venom I was carrying. Even though I was in my Late Adolescence, I was still stuck in Stage One; Doing. I didn’t trust others, I wanted others to know what I needed without having to ask, I didn’t know what I needed, I didn’t (think) I needed anything, I was numb (except for when I was rageful), I didn’t trust others to come through for me, I didn’t want to be touched, and I was unwilling to disclose information about myself (and, sadly, I still struggle a lot with this last one). At this stage in my life I was the walking-wounded, I was a raw nerve, and I had no resources at my disposal to confidently enter late adolescence.
Toward my mid 20s, I began to see that my attitude was just a cover for all of the fear that I had. I was afraid of everyone and everything. My guts were constantly knotted up, and it wasn’t long before I was carrying a bottle of Maalox with me everywhere I went. There were a few people who saw through my façade, but there were those too who really were afraid of me, who “put me on the danger list”, but instead of that making me feel empowered as I hoped it would, it made me feel bad.
Graduating from high school was a big accomplishment for me because for so many years I had no intention of graduating, and because it meant enduring 12 years of what felt to me, like Hell. Unfortunately, I had never really developed that plan B of what I was going to do with my life after taking over the ranch became no longer an option. I was still stuck in a place of not really having any career in mind that appealed to me. After graduation, I hired on as a ranch-hand for the man who was leasing the ranch. It was hard work, but work I enjoyed, and I enjoyed the company of my co-worker John. We worked long, hard days, but ended the days my favorite way; with a shared bottle of Jim Beam Whiskey.
That fall, my uncle passed away and left a trust fund for my dad that included my uncle’s house in town, so I quit my job and spent more time in Dickinson with my dad and less time out at the ranch. Shortly after moving into town, I started Tae Kwon Do, which had been a dream since I was pre-school age. I excelled at Tae Kwon Do, and was pleased to find something that I felt I was good at, and that I enjoyed.
I had no intention of going to college, still believing that I wasn’t really smart enough for college. That winter I visited my old English teacher who convinced me to try one semester of college in the fall. Having a great deal of respect for Mrs. Anderson, and being a people pleaser, I agreed to try one semester (fully intending to drop out after that first promised semester). At that point in my life, I was completely lost and I knew it, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. I had always been good at art, so I chose that as my major, and proceeded to take my classes. Much to my dismay, I found that I really loved going to school, so I let go of my plan to drop out (one positive repeated pattern J).
That winter, Dad got sick and by the time he let me take him to the emergency room, he was suffering from advanced cirrhosis. At the time, his doctor gave him a 50/50 chance of survival. When dad was at home I became his nursemaid, preparing special meals, waiting on him, taking care of the edema in his legs, etc. He had taken it seriously when the doctor told him that if he took another drink, that he would die, and stopped drinking as a result, and I lost my supplier as well, so we were two dry drunks trying to live with one another. I became very angry and impatient with my father, and with my family who wouldn’t bother to visit or give me some relief from being a full-time student, and a full-time care-taker. In the late summer my father wound up back in the hospital, for what was supposed to be a two week stay, but two weeks turned into two months. During that time, my oldest brother Gary duped me into taking care of his two daughters while he and his wife went to Disney Land. Before that the nurse’s aides had asked me to spend whatever time I wasn’t at school at the hospital because they were too short-handed to keep up with my father, who at this point didn’t know where he was and would wander the halls. And still no visits from my siblings.
Ten days after my 20th birthday, my dad died while I was at one of my evening classes. I was devastated because I had thought that I would be by his side when he died. Both of us being the “tough cowboys” that we were, couldn’t risk the vulnerability of saying “I love you” to one another, but being with him when he died would be my way of letting him know. I have few things in my life that I would change if I could, but being able to go back and tell my father that I loved him, and telling him I was sorry for being such an asshole when he was sick, would be at the top of the list.
His death was a great excuse to get really drunk, which is exactly what I did after his funeral. During the funeral Gary became very concerned when he saw me crying, giving me further proof that I wasn’t supposed to cry. Later, after the funeral he took me aside and cried in my arms, telling me “Bud (my dad) was the only real father I ever had”. I wanted to tell him, “Then where the fuck were you when he was lying in the hospital suffering? Oh yeah, you were in fucking Disney Land while I took care of your little fucking brats.” But I didn’t say it, because I was still a good little girl, and I still haven’t said it, although it still stays close to the surface in my mind. By then I had developed some sense of autonomy from my mother, although she continued her vampiric drain on my soul, but this was a forced autonomy from my father that I didn’t expect or want.
With my father gone, I no longer had a place to live, so I had to get a job. Terror in hand, I got a job working security while continuing on with my studies. At one of my security gigs, I met a drunk guy, who I went out with after my shift was over. ‘Went out’ translating to driving around drunk and making out. Dating consisted of him showing up drunk at my door all hours of the day and night to make out. One morning he showed up at my door at 6 am having gotten fired from his job. In high school I had developed rigid-religiosity, so at this point I was using my Christian values as an excuse to cover my fear of sex. We had had the “I’m not ready for sex” talk, which he said he “totally respected”, so I was taken by surprise when he got on top of me, held me down, and had sex with me. I had been a tough cookie between fighting with the boys in high school, and studying Tae Kwon Do, so I was quite disgusted with myself for “freezing” instead of “fighting”. At the time I didn’t really know there was such thing as “freezing”, because at the time all we talked about in Psych class was “flight or fight”. It took years of therapy for me to get that “letting him” was a product of all the trauma (particularly learning over and over again that if I said “no” I wouldn’t be listened to) and lack of support from my care-takers in my previous life stages up to that point, and that there was nothing to forgive myself for. And this was my belated introduction into the world of ‘romantic and sexual relationships’. I wasn’t impressed.
Toward the end of that school year, my advisor/art professor took me under her wing and invited me to move into her and her husband’s basement. Delighted to have someone to take care of me and give me some positive attention, I took her up on her offer. It didn’t take long before our relationship became a sexual one. On the positive side, the first time she kissed me I realized that I wasn’t frigid, I was just a lesbian. On the negative side, she was married, she was my professor (and the only full-professor in the art department), and she was borderline.
Throughout college, I struggled with what I was going to do when I graduated (art degrees weren’t exactly marketable degrees), with my alcohol use, and with my past traumas. Eventually I got into therapy, and was directed to AA. After a year of sobriety in AA, I relapsed with another member who became my new girlfriend, I broke up with my professor, and moved in with my new girlfriend…in that order. Up to that point my professor had threatened my grades any time I rocked the boat, and at that time in my life, my grades meant more to me than anything else. By the time I relapsed, I was so sick of threats and black-mail that I just didn’t give a damn about my grades or anything else.
It was now my senior year, and I needed to decide what I was going to do next. I figured grad school was the next logical choice since I was still suffering from a great deal of social anxiety/phobia, and I actually felt a certain level of comfort in school and I was really good at it. As graduation approached, I tried to get sober. Everyday I would wake up with the intention of not getting drunk, and everyday I would wind up drinking. At the time I was also on anti-depressants, all of which were making the depression worse and were affecting my memory (to this day, I still have memory problems as a result of taking the meds). During the last round of anti-depressants (that I wasn’t supposed to drink on), I drank, and I was convinced that I was going to die. For 24 hours terror kept me from sleeping and from drinking alcohol. That was thirteen years ago, and I haven’t touched alcohol (or drugs) since. During one of my father’s last lucid moments, he had said to me, “If I could have one wish…” And in the pause I filled in the blank in my head ‘I would have saved the ranch, I wouldn’t have let alcohol destroy my life and my family, I would have spent more time with you…” But no, “it would be that I could drink the way that I used to.” I have to remind myself of my father’s words often so I don’t forget just what alcohol could do to me, as well.
The end of my drinking also meant the end of my relationship. I also found out that the one graduate school I had applied to for art therapy had not accepted me. In truth it was a relief because I knew I had no business doing therapy on anyone yet. That summer, the will of my mom’s latest deceased husband was settled and I received enough money to live off for a while, so when fall came, I decided to go back to school. I took a couple classes both terms and worked as a photographer in the university relations department. During the school year I concentrated on my sobriety and I also became the homo poster-child. I spoke at psychology and nursing classes, I started a LGBT club on campus, and I published an underground Queer-zine. I had to deal with a lot of rejection once I came out in my small ND town, but finally, I had an identity and I felt pretty damn good about it. I still struggled with gender and gender identity, but identifying as a butch lesbian allowed me more comfort in my gender than I had had before.
Early Adulthood
After having embraced my identity as a sober lesbian, I was feeling a little bit more able to face the world. That summer I got certified as a motorcycle safety instructor. And discovered that I loved teaching, but wasn’t quite ready to admit it. In the fall I took a job on the other side of the state, which was a bit of feat for me at the time as I was still feeling pretty fragile. Around this time I started thinking about going to massage school, but didn’t yet have the means to do so. After working the winter at the factory, I moved back to Dickinson and got another factory job there. I talked to my old therapists about my dream to go to massage school, and they were able to get me involved in a job-training program. Through their efforts and support, I was able to come to Albuquerque to attend massage school.
I moved to Albuquerque with no job, no place to stay, not knowing anyone, and only about $200 to my name, but I trusted that everything would work out, and it did. Through AA I met people who helped me get settled into the community. I was quite thrilled to come to a place that had a Gay Community, and I finally experienced ‘group identity’.
After graduation I set up a practice, and quickly had a very busy practice. I was very good at what I did, and six months after graduation started teaching at the school as well. I finally at this point admitted to myself that I loved teaching, and was starting to admit to the fact that I liked people. And happily, I was finally doing work that I enjoyed.
A couple years later I entered into a long term relationship. Roberta was someone who had grown up in a rural setting as well, so I thought that we would be able to relate better than the women I had been with before. Unfortunately we both brought our own set of baggage to the relationship, baggage she refused to work on, and I was still trying to be a care-taker. In addition to her baggage, she also came with a ten year old daughter. I had never wanted to have kids, but I loved Roberta, so I was willing to be a co-parent to her daughter. Sadly, Roberta, like her mother, had no clue how to be a mother, so I became the daughter’s primary parent. There when I knew that I needed to leave the relationship, but I knew if I left the relationship, my new daughter would be getting abandoned once again, and I just couldn’t do it. So I stayed and tried to make things tolerable with Roberta, but it just wasn’t working. I tried coaching Roberta as to what her daughter needed from her (mysterious things like saying “I love you” and “You are wanted”), but the response I got was “you’re not her mother; you don’t know what she needs.” But the truth is, I was her mother, and I was the only mother that she had ever had. During this time, many of my friends stopped being my friends because they didn’t like that I now came with a child. This was the first time I started to see that some of the people I thought were my friends, only desired a one-way relationship, one in which I did all of the giving. After Roberta moved her thirteen year old brother into our one-bedroom apartment, I finally decided I couldn’t do it anymore, and with much guilt about leaving my daughter behind, I left the relationship.
Around the time that relationship ended, I hurt my wrists as a result of over-work and not enough self-care. As devastating as it was to lose that career, it taught me a valuable lesson about self-care, one that I probably wouldn’t have been able to learn otherwise, and one that I absolutely had to learn before I was ready to enter the counseling field.
When I had to give up massage, I was once again lost as far as career goes. I next went into retail management because it fell into my lap. Right before I started my new career, I had to have surgery for excessive uterine bleeding. I happen to have a very strong phobia of doctors, especially when it comes to being naked around doctors, so I had a great deal of anxiety about the whole thing. The months before my ‘procedure’ I really reached out to my ‘friends’ because there were days when I thought that suicide was a much better option than going through with the procedure. Once again, I was finding that the friends who wouldn’t hesitate to call me when they needed something, were sorely absent when I was in need. At this point I really started to re-evaluate what it meant to be a friend and I wasn’t feeling a whole lot of mutuality with my peers.
While I was still recovering from my procedure, I started a relationship with one of my friends. She was someone who had just gotten out of a very similar emotionally abusive relationship to mine, which we had bonded over. I had suspected that Leah had a crush on me, but my interest in her was as a friend, so I ignored the signs. During my recovery, I just didn’t have the energy to rebuff her advances, so we entered into a four year relationship. In the beginning it was actually a relief because neither of us went out of our way to start fights, and neither of us were pathological liars. After about six months, I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to be in this relationship, but Leah seemed to be completely in love, so I just assumed that her feelings were right and my feelings were wrong, and that was theme of our relationship. Looking back at the affirmations for Stage two, I needed to work on “I know what I know”.
After working at the retail job for a year and a half I got very burned out, frequently working 14 days straight because we were short handed, and I quit. I eventually found a job as a clerk at a clinic. At first I thought about settling, after all I was for the first time in my life getting benefits. It wasn’t long before, once again, we were short handed, but because I was keeping up with the work on my own, the management wasn’t hiring more people. After about two years I got burned out, and was thinking about what I was going to do for a career. I started thinking more seriously about acupuncture and counseling, but graduate school was a huge commitment, financially and time wise, so with the constant echo of my mother’s voice in the back of my head “we don’t have enough money…” I wasn’t going to rush into a decision.
Middle Adulthood
As I entered this stage I was stagnating in both my personal and my career life, and I knew it. I was miserable in my dead-end relationship and I knew I needed to go back to school, but I was terrified to do anything. Looking back at the handout, the early part of this stage I was caught in the Stage Two: Doing. I was reluctant to initiate, over quiet, avoided doing things unless I could do them perfectly, I didn’t know (or trust) what I knew, I thought it was ok not to be safe, supported, and protected. Looking back with the help of my therapist, I have been able to see that the nature of my relationship with Leah reinforced many of my ancient fears and inadequacies, making it difficult to do things differently (my paper is already too long, so I’ll spare you the details).
I quit my job at the clinic, and started another retail management job, this one at a vitamin store, which was at least in a field that held some interest for me. I finally decided that I would start school, and I decided after months of going back and forth, that I would study acupuncture. Leah was already in acupuncture school, and I expected her to be happy for me. Instead, Leah completely lost it because acupuncture school was her space, her thing, and how dare I impinge on the one thing that was hers. Slapped in the figurative face, I eventually decided to go into the counseling field instead.
I started at University of Phoenix in their marriage and family program, still not convinced I was doing the ‘right’ thing. Also during that time, I knew I had to get out of my relationship with Leah. Leah still seemed to think that there was nothing wrong with our relationship, and was oblivious to my dissatisfaction with the relationship. I was unwilling to ‘drop the bomb’, so I asked her to do couples counseling with me, in order to hopefully get us on the same page, whatever that page might be. Over the course of several months, Leah was able to get to the here-and-now of our relationship, and we mutually decided to end the relationship.
Around the same time Leah and I were breaking up I surrendered to the fact that UOP wasn’t the place for me and I started working on transferring to Webster. I started classes at Webster a couple weeks before my birthday, and Leah moved out the day before my 36th birthday. On my birthday, I made myself a cup of coffee, went into the back yard and sat under my favorite tree, and enjoyed the start of my new life. At that moment I really got that life wasn’t about making other people happy, but rather about my own happiness. I made a commitment on the spot to do the things that make me happy, and to never suffer for the sake of anyone else again. I came out of my cocoon that morning; my confidence was better, my self image was better, and my self esteem was better. That fall I also started taking 5-HTP which has helped immensely with the mood and sleep problems that I couldn’t control with lifestyle and attitude changes, giving me a greater sense of empowerment and control over my life.
Over the course of this last year, things have only gotten better. I have a clearer sense of who I am and what I want, and I’m not afraid to get it. I am not constantly living in fear and anxiety. I finally know what ‘normal’ people feel like, and I am loving life. I have moved toward generativity, and will continue to do so. I now have a better sense of who my friends are, and I don’t waste my time with people who aren’t willing to give as well as receive caring. I have recently started a relationship that actually feels like a partnership, and I finally feel like I'm ready for a good relationship…and a good life. Before, I didn’t believe I could have a good life, that that only happened to other people. Now, I know I can have it all, and I want it all!
Autobiography: Part II
“Office girls they pass me by, they don’t know my name, put me on the danger list, just to wild to tame”. To keep the song quote theme going, in ‘Danger List’ John Cougar Melloncamp sings of being the outcast, the renegade, the lonely, misunderstood rebel. This is a favorite song of mine, in part because it reminds me of the person I used to be, or the person I used to want to be. In my twenties I was angry and wounded, and I kept everyone at bay with my rage. These days, I want to connect with people, I want to let them in. This is the story of how I got tamed.
Later Adolescence
Way back in grade school I had developed a chip on my shoulder. My general demeanor was that of “please fuck with me so I have an excuse to punch you.” This lovely little personality quirk stayed with me until I got sober. When I drank in public it was usually with the desire that someone would ‘fuck with me’, so I could have some outlet for all of the anger and venom I was carrying. Even though I was in my Late Adolescence, I was still stuck in Stage One; Doing. I didn’t trust others, I wanted others to know what I needed without having to ask, I didn’t know what I needed, I didn’t (think) I needed anything, I was numb (except for when I was rageful), I didn’t trust others to come through for me, I didn’t want to be touched, and I was unwilling to disclose information about myself (and, sadly, I still struggle a lot with this last one). At this stage in my life I was the walking-wounded, I was a raw nerve, and I had no resources at my disposal to confidently enter late adolescence.
Toward my mid 20s, I began to see that my attitude was just a cover for all of the fear that I had. I was afraid of everyone and everything. My guts were constantly knotted up, and it wasn’t long before I was carrying a bottle of Maalox with me everywhere I went. There were a few people who saw through my façade, but there were those too who really were afraid of me, who “put me on the danger list”, but instead of that making me feel empowered as I hoped it would, it made me feel bad.
Graduating from high school was a big accomplishment for me because for so many years I had no intention of graduating, and because it meant enduring 12 years of what felt to me, like Hell. Unfortunately, I had never really developed that plan B of what I was going to do with my life after taking over the ranch became no longer an option. I was still stuck in a place of not really having any career in mind that appealed to me. After graduation, I hired on as a ranch-hand for the man who was leasing the ranch. It was hard work, but work I enjoyed, and I enjoyed the company of my co-worker John. We worked long, hard days, but ended the days my favorite way; with a shared bottle of Jim Beam Whiskey.
That fall, my uncle passed away and left a trust fund for my dad that included my uncle’s house in town, so I quit my job and spent more time in Dickinson with my dad and less time out at the ranch. Shortly after moving into town, I started Tae Kwon Do, which had been a dream since I was pre-school age. I excelled at Tae Kwon Do, and was pleased to find something that I felt I was good at, and that I enjoyed.
I had no intention of going to college, still believing that I wasn’t really smart enough for college. That winter I visited my old English teacher who convinced me to try one semester of college in the fall. Having a great deal of respect for Mrs. Anderson, and being a people pleaser, I agreed to try one semester (fully intending to drop out after that first promised semester). At that point in my life, I was completely lost and I knew it, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. I had always been good at art, so I chose that as my major, and proceeded to take my classes. Much to my dismay, I found that I really loved going to school, so I let go of my plan to drop out (one positive repeated pattern J).
That winter, Dad got sick and by the time he let me take him to the emergency room, he was suffering from advanced cirrhosis. At the time, his doctor gave him a 50/50 chance of survival. When dad was at home I became his nursemaid, preparing special meals, waiting on him, taking care of the edema in his legs, etc. He had taken it seriously when the doctor told him that if he took another drink, that he would die, and stopped drinking as a result, and I lost my supplier as well, so we were two dry drunks trying to live with one another. I became very angry and impatient with my father, and with my family who wouldn’t bother to visit or give me some relief from being a full-time student, and a full-time care-taker. In the late summer my father wound up back in the hospital, for what was supposed to be a two week stay, but two weeks turned into two months. During that time, my oldest brother Gary duped me into taking care of his two daughters while he and his wife went to Disney Land. Before that the nurse’s aides had asked me to spend whatever time I wasn’t at school at the hospital because they were too short-handed to keep up with my father, who at this point didn’t know where he was and would wander the halls. And still no visits from my siblings.
Ten days after my 20th birthday, my dad died while I was at one of my evening classes. I was devastated because I had thought that I would be by his side when he died. Both of us being the “tough cowboys” that we were, couldn’t risk the vulnerability of saying “I love you” to one another, but being with him when he died would be my way of letting him know. I have few things in my life that I would change if I could, but being able to go back and tell my father that I loved him, and telling him I was sorry for being such an asshole when he was sick, would be at the top of the list.
His death was a great excuse to get really drunk, which is exactly what I did after his funeral. During the funeral Gary became very concerned when he saw me crying, giving me further proof that I wasn’t supposed to cry. Later, after the funeral he took me aside and cried in my arms, telling me “Bud (my dad) was the only real father I ever had”. I wanted to tell him, “Then where the fuck were you when he was lying in the hospital suffering? Oh yeah, you were in fucking Disney Land while I took care of your little fucking brats.” But I didn’t say it, because I was still a good little girl, and I still haven’t said it, although it still stays close to the surface in my mind. By then I had developed some sense of autonomy from my mother, although she continued her vampiric drain on my soul, but this was a forced autonomy from my father that I didn’t expect or want.
With my father gone, I no longer had a place to live, so I had to get a job. Terror in hand, I got a job working security while continuing on with my studies. At one of my security gigs, I met a drunk guy, who I went out with after my shift was over. ‘Went out’ translating to driving around drunk and making out. Dating consisted of him showing up drunk at my door all hours of the day and night to make out. One morning he showed up at my door at 6 am having gotten fired from his job. In high school I had developed rigid-religiosity, so at this point I was using my Christian values as an excuse to cover my fear of sex. We had had the “I’m not ready for sex” talk, which he said he “totally respected”, so I was taken by surprise when he got on top of me, held me down, and had sex with me. I had been a tough cookie between fighting with the boys in high school, and studying Tae Kwon Do, so I was quite disgusted with myself for “freezing” instead of “fighting”. At the time I didn’t really know there was such thing as “freezing”, because at the time all we talked about in Psych class was “flight or fight”. It took years of therapy for me to get that “letting him” was a product of all the trauma (particularly learning over and over again that if I said “no” I wouldn’t be listened to) and lack of support from my care-takers in my previous life stages up to that point, and that there was nothing to forgive myself for. And this was my belated introduction into the world of ‘romantic and sexual relationships’. I wasn’t impressed.
Toward the end of that school year, my advisor/art professor took me under her wing and invited me to move into her and her husband’s basement. Delighted to have someone to take care of me and give me some positive attention, I took her up on her offer. It didn’t take long before our relationship became a sexual one. On the positive side, the first time she kissed me I realized that I wasn’t frigid, I was just a lesbian. On the negative side, she was married, she was my professor (and the only full-professor in the art department), and she was borderline.
Throughout college, I struggled with what I was going to do when I graduated (art degrees weren’t exactly marketable degrees), with my alcohol use, and with my past traumas. Eventually I got into therapy, and was directed to AA. After a year of sobriety in AA, I relapsed with another member who became my new girlfriend, I broke up with my professor, and moved in with my new girlfriend…in that order. Up to that point my professor had threatened my grades any time I rocked the boat, and at that time in my life, my grades meant more to me than anything else. By the time I relapsed, I was so sick of threats and black-mail that I just didn’t give a damn about my grades or anything else.
It was now my senior year, and I needed to decide what I was going to do next. I figured grad school was the next logical choice since I was still suffering from a great deal of social anxiety/phobia, and I actually felt a certain level of comfort in school and I was really good at it. As graduation approached, I tried to get sober. Everyday I would wake up with the intention of not getting drunk, and everyday I would wind up drinking. At the time I was also on anti-depressants, all of which were making the depression worse and were affecting my memory (to this day, I still have memory problems as a result of taking the meds). During the last round of anti-depressants (that I wasn’t supposed to drink on), I drank, and I was convinced that I was going to die. For 24 hours terror kept me from sleeping and from drinking alcohol. That was thirteen years ago, and I haven’t touched alcohol (or drugs) since. During one of my father’s last lucid moments, he had said to me, “If I could have one wish…” And in the pause I filled in the blank in my head ‘I would have saved the ranch, I wouldn’t have let alcohol destroy my life and my family, I would have spent more time with you…” But no, “it would be that I could drink the way that I used to.” I have to remind myself of my father’s words often so I don’t forget just what alcohol could do to me, as well.
The end of my drinking also meant the end of my relationship. I also found out that the one graduate school I had applied to for art therapy had not accepted me. In truth it was a relief because I knew I had no business doing therapy on anyone yet. That summer, the will of my mom’s latest deceased husband was settled and I received enough money to live off for a while, so when fall came, I decided to go back to school. I took a couple classes both terms and worked as a photographer in the university relations department. During the school year I concentrated on my sobriety and I also became the homo poster-child. I spoke at psychology and nursing classes, I started a LGBT club on campus, and I published an underground Queer-zine. I had to deal with a lot of rejection once I came out in my small ND town, but finally, I had an identity and I felt pretty damn good about it. I still struggled with gender and gender identity, but identifying as a butch lesbian allowed me more comfort in my gender than I had had before.
Early Adulthood
After having embraced my identity as a sober lesbian, I was feeling a little bit more able to face the world. That summer I got certified as a motorcycle safety instructor. And discovered that I loved teaching, but wasn’t quite ready to admit it. In the fall I took a job on the other side of the state, which was a bit of feat for me at the time as I was still feeling pretty fragile. Around this time I started thinking about going to massage school, but didn’t yet have the means to do so. After working the winter at the factory, I moved back to Dickinson and got another factory job there. I talked to my old therapists about my dream to go to massage school, and they were able to get me involved in a job-training program. Through their efforts and support, I was able to come to Albuquerque to attend massage school.
I moved to Albuquerque with no job, no place to stay, not knowing anyone, and only about $200 to my name, but I trusted that everything would work out, and it did. Through AA I met people who helped me get settled into the community. I was quite thrilled to come to a place that had a Gay Community, and I finally experienced ‘group identity’.
After graduation I set up a practice, and quickly had a very busy practice. I was very good at what I did, and six months after graduation started teaching at the school as well. I finally at this point admitted to myself that I loved teaching, and was starting to admit to the fact that I liked people. And happily, I was finally doing work that I enjoyed.
A couple years later I entered into a long term relationship. Roberta was someone who had grown up in a rural setting as well, so I thought that we would be able to relate better than the women I had been with before. Unfortunately we both brought our own set of baggage to the relationship, baggage she refused to work on, and I was still trying to be a care-taker. In addition to her baggage, she also came with a ten year old daughter. I had never wanted to have kids, but I loved Roberta, so I was willing to be a co-parent to her daughter. Sadly, Roberta, like her mother, had no clue how to be a mother, so I became the daughter’s primary parent. There when I knew that I needed to leave the relationship, but I knew if I left the relationship, my new daughter would be getting abandoned once again, and I just couldn’t do it. So I stayed and tried to make things tolerable with Roberta, but it just wasn’t working. I tried coaching Roberta as to what her daughter needed from her (mysterious things like saying “I love you” and “You are wanted”), but the response I got was “you’re not her mother; you don’t know what she needs.” But the truth is, I was her mother, and I was the only mother that she had ever had. During this time, many of my friends stopped being my friends because they didn’t like that I now came with a child. This was the first time I started to see that some of the people I thought were my friends, only desired a one-way relationship, one in which I did all of the giving. After Roberta moved her thirteen year old brother into our one-bedroom apartment, I finally decided I couldn’t do it anymore, and with much guilt about leaving my daughter behind, I left the relationship.
Around the time that relationship ended, I hurt my wrists as a result of over-work and not enough self-care. As devastating as it was to lose that career, it taught me a valuable lesson about self-care, one that I probably wouldn’t have been able to learn otherwise, and one that I absolutely had to learn before I was ready to enter the counseling field.
When I had to give up massage, I was once again lost as far as career goes. I next went into retail management because it fell into my lap. Right before I started my new career, I had to have surgery for excessive uterine bleeding. I happen to have a very strong phobia of doctors, especially when it comes to being naked around doctors, so I had a great deal of anxiety about the whole thing. The months before my ‘procedure’ I really reached out to my ‘friends’ because there were days when I thought that suicide was a much better option than going through with the procedure. Once again, I was finding that the friends who wouldn’t hesitate to call me when they needed something, were sorely absent when I was in need. At this point I really started to re-evaluate what it meant to be a friend and I wasn’t feeling a whole lot of mutuality with my peers.
While I was still recovering from my procedure, I started a relationship with one of my friends. She was someone who had just gotten out of a very similar emotionally abusive relationship to mine, which we had bonded over. I had suspected that Leah had a crush on me, but my interest in her was as a friend, so I ignored the signs. During my recovery, I just didn’t have the energy to rebuff her advances, so we entered into a four year relationship. In the beginning it was actually a relief because neither of us went out of our way to start fights, and neither of us were pathological liars. After about six months, I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to be in this relationship, but Leah seemed to be completely in love, so I just assumed that her feelings were right and my feelings were wrong, and that was theme of our relationship. Looking back at the affirmations for Stage two, I needed to work on “I know what I know”.
After working at the retail job for a year and a half I got very burned out, frequently working 14 days straight because we were short handed, and I quit. I eventually found a job as a clerk at a clinic. At first I thought about settling, after all I was for the first time in my life getting benefits. It wasn’t long before, once again, we were short handed, but because I was keeping up with the work on my own, the management wasn’t hiring more people. After about two years I got burned out, and was thinking about what I was going to do for a career. I started thinking more seriously about acupuncture and counseling, but graduate school was a huge commitment, financially and time wise, so with the constant echo of my mother’s voice in the back of my head “we don’t have enough money…” I wasn’t going to rush into a decision.
Middle Adulthood
As I entered this stage I was stagnating in both my personal and my career life, and I knew it. I was miserable in my dead-end relationship and I knew I needed to go back to school, but I was terrified to do anything. Looking back at the handout, the early part of this stage I was caught in the Stage Two: Doing. I was reluctant to initiate, over quiet, avoided doing things unless I could do them perfectly, I didn’t know (or trust) what I knew, I thought it was ok not to be safe, supported, and protected. Looking back with the help of my therapist, I have been able to see that the nature of my relationship with Leah reinforced many of my ancient fears and inadequacies, making it difficult to do things differently (my paper is already too long, so I’ll spare you the details).
I quit my job at the clinic, and started another retail management job, this one at a vitamin store, which was at least in a field that held some interest for me. I finally decided that I would start school, and I decided after months of going back and forth, that I would study acupuncture. Leah was already in acupuncture school, and I expected her to be happy for me. Instead, Leah completely lost it because acupuncture school was her space, her thing, and how dare I impinge on the one thing that was hers. Slapped in the figurative face, I eventually decided to go into the counseling field instead.
I started at University of Phoenix in their marriage and family program, still not convinced I was doing the ‘right’ thing. Also during that time, I knew I had to get out of my relationship with Leah. Leah still seemed to think that there was nothing wrong with our relationship, and was oblivious to my dissatisfaction with the relationship. I was unwilling to ‘drop the bomb’, so I asked her to do couples counseling with me, in order to hopefully get us on the same page, whatever that page might be. Over the course of several months, Leah was able to get to the here-and-now of our relationship, and we mutually decided to end the relationship.
Around the same time Leah and I were breaking up I surrendered to the fact that UOP wasn’t the place for me and I started working on transferring to Webster. I started classes at Webster a couple weeks before my birthday, and Leah moved out the day before my 36th birthday. On my birthday, I made myself a cup of coffee, went into the back yard and sat under my favorite tree, and enjoyed the start of my new life. At that moment I really got that life wasn’t about making other people happy, but rather about my own happiness. I made a commitment on the spot to do the things that make me happy, and to never suffer for the sake of anyone else again. I came out of my cocoon that morning; my confidence was better, my self image was better, and my self esteem was better. That fall I also started taking 5-HTP which has helped immensely with the mood and sleep problems that I couldn’t control with lifestyle and attitude changes, giving me a greater sense of empowerment and control over my life.
Over the course of this last year, things have only gotten better. I have a clearer sense of who I am and what I want, and I’m not afraid to get it. I am not constantly living in fear and anxiety. I finally know what ‘normal’ people feel like, and I am loving life. I have moved toward generativity, and will continue to do so. I now have a better sense of who my friends are, and I don’t waste my time with people who aren’t willing to give as well as receive caring. I have recently started a relationship that actually feels like a partnership, and I finally feel like I'm ready for a good relationship…and a good life. Before, I didn’t believe I could have a good life, that that only happened to other people. Now, I know I can have it all, and I want it all!
Friday, July 18, 2008
Autobiography part I
For my human growth class, I had to write an autobiography complete with developmental stages, bla bla bla. I've been working on my memoirs for, well, years. I haven't shared them with many people because I've felt, well, odd about doing so, so here is my practice run....
“I grew up dreaming a-bein’ a cowboy, and lovin the cowboy ways”. These are the words of Waylon Jennings, and they are words that are imprinted on my heart and my soul. I grew up dreaming my dream on a ranch in rural North Dakota. I was the youngest of my mother’s children, and my father’s only child. My father was a cowboy through and through, and I wanted to be just like him. My father wanted a little boy to take over the ranch, and what he got was me, and I did my best to be his “little boy”.
Prenatal
Prenatally, I was to be my father’s first (and only) child, so he eagerly anticipated my birth. His father was also eagerly anticipating his first (and only) grandchild from one of his sons. I was to be the son that would carry on the Robinson name. As it turned out, my grandfather did his best to live long enough to see me born, but he passed away from heart problems a month before my birth.
My mother turned forty a few months before my birth, and she was getting tired of having babies and taking care of alcoholics. My mother didn’t handle stress well, and her coping mechanism to deal with stress was to smoke lots of cigarettes, drink lots of coffee, and not eat, which is exactly what she did through her pregnancy with me. As a result, I was born with a low birth weight (5lbs, 2oz), and have had chronic allergies all of my life.
Infancy (Birth to 2 years)
‘Mutuality with the caregiver’, is the central process in this stage of life. My mother suffered from depression all of her life, and was always withdrawn as a result of her inability to deal with her ‘issues’. My mother was not the doting mother. My father, who had eagerly anticipated a boy, had to deal with the grief of getting a daughter instead. I know that he loved me, but he was still disappointed. The core pathology of this stage is that of withdrawal, which is certainly a pathology that I can relate to. I have known since before I had a verbal conception that I could only count on myself and no one else and that it was my job to entertain myself.
Toddlerhood (2-3)
I don’t a whole lot about my life in this stage. The little bit I remember is from the latter part of this stage. I remember being in the house a lot in the winter with my mom, playing by myself. I also have a distinct memory of one of the few times my mother left the house. We went to a neighbor’s house, and I remember her telling the woman “Lu Annie is such a good girl. She never bothers me and she always plays by herself”. Toward the end of this stage dad started taking me into town with him to “get parts” (read: go to town to pick up booze). Again, I was expected to be a good little quiet girl and entertain myself. I don’t actually remember it, but I have had several of dad’s old bar tenders tell me that he would always order a “shot of rye” for both of us, which I would drink. I guess that’s why I was such a quiet child.
I don’t remember any specific incidents that would relate directly to “autonomy vs. shame”, but what I do know is that I came out on the shame side. Even when I was very young I can remember always having feelings of shame. I was also incredibly shy. Whenever we did leave the ranch and I was around strangers, I was basically terrified of interacting with them; not in the sense of being afraid they would hurt me, but afraid that I would do something to embarrass myself.
Early School Age (4-6) Newman and Newman tell us that, “The lessons from early childhood about what it means to be a good person, to be a “good” boy or girl…to be cherished or despised are established at a deep emotional and cognitive level. These ideas are intertwined with feelings of being safe, loved, and admired or neglected, rejected, or abused. As a result, the basic beliefs about oneself and others that are formed at this time are often difficult to review or revise” (p. 230). If we revisit the line from my mother in the last stage about what it means to be a “good girl”, we can make some conclusions about why it is so difficult for me to have or state my needs.
The part about this stage that struck the deepest chord with me was the section on gender identity. The book speaks of how we learn what it is to be a boy or girl from community and from family. By this stage, my father had neutralized my gender by referring to me as “Pup”. I ceased having a gender in his eyes, as far as I could tell. Personally, I didn’t want to be a woman, because the only women I really interacted with regularly were my mother and sister (there were never women in the bar when dad and I went in the early part of the day), and as a result I didn’t have a very good picture of what it meant to be a woman. My mother was fragile and weak, my sister was, well, nuts. I couldn’t identify with either of them. My father on the other hand, in spite of his drinking problem, was still a hard worker, and by this time gave me the only attention that I got in my immediate family. My distinct thought was that I wanted to be a boy, not, however, that I thought I was a boy, and I certainly had no intention of meeting the social expectations for a girl.
Newman and Newman speak of some of the factors that influence gender preference. First is how “closely one’s own strengths and competencies approximate the gender role standards” (p. 237). Granted I did have a distorted idea of what it meant to be a woman, but even if I had the right information, I still wouldn’t have wanted to fit the female role. I was always more comfortable do the “man’s chores” and playing the “boys’ games”. Another factor is “liking the same sex parent”. At this point I had definitely identified more with my father. An important event that happened in this stage involved my mother. One cold winter day I awoke from a nap to my brothers’ distressed voices. I couldn’t make out what they were saying but it was something about “mom”, “left”, “note”, and “freeze to death”. By the time I got out to the living room, my brothers and dad were in the car speeding up the hill. I didn’t know what was happening, but I could still feel the tension and fear in the house. I waited in front of the window alone for what seemed like hours. Eventually the car came back into the yard, and I could see my mother sitting in the back seat, her face drawn, eyes empty. My stomach clenched, I knew there was something very wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. I was afraid so I went and hid in my bed. I listened quietly to everyone’s voice to try to figure out what was happening, but it was time for everyone to pretend nothing had happened. I learned later that mom had basically left a suicide note, her intention to go out and freeze to death. Another thing I learned about my mother later in life, is that she likes to orchestrate fake suicide attempts to get attention. The point being, I didn’t want anything to do with my mother’s gender role.
The core pathology of this stage is inhibition. On page 269 the authors state that mothers who are “very depressed or psychologically unavailable, may be unable to engage in the kinds of consistent, rhythmic behaviors that produce early experiences of cause and effect…as a result some children have a very passive orientation toward play and social interactions…(caused by) a lack of basic early structures or schemes for the positive process of initiation”. The authors continue, “inhibited children are likely to emerge as shy, withdrawn, and often lonely during the subsequent period of middle childhood…they become increasingly withdrawn, not knowing how to impose their ideas into the ongoing activities of the group, and not experiencing the confidence-building effects of making suggestions and having them accepted”. Interestingly enough, this is a dynamic I continue to repeat in my adult life, particularly in my work life.
Middle Childhood (6-12)
By this stage, my father’s alcoholism had accelerated to the point where he wasn’t at all cognitively or emotionally present. My mother too was a walking emotional zombie. I knew that I was alone in this world, and I was terrified. By the time I started first grade, I woke up everyday with a knot in my stomach. I hated being around other people, and the constant shaming I got from my teachers and my peers reinforced that hate. My teachers told me directly and indirectly almost daily that I wasn’t smart and that I was lazy. In grade school I experienced every form of abuse at the hands of the older boys, as well as constant ridiculing from my peers. The few times I told on the older boys for hitting me, I was informed that, “If you would stop fighting back, they would leave you alone.” I didn’t care much for my teacher’s solution, and things continued on as they had until I was 15, and big enough to adequately defend myself against any of the older boys.
It would be safe to say that in this stage I experienced a fair amount of feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. I certainly had an eagerness to acquire skills and learn meaningful work, but to me that meant staying home and working the ranch, not going to school to be humiliated and abused every day.
By about age 8 I had also developed a strong sense of Learned Helplessness. The primary lesson was that no matter what I did I couldn’t stop the bad things that were happening to me, and I surrendered. I surrendered my hope that anything would ever change in my life, I surrendered my hope that my life would ever be anything but painful, and I surrendered my will to try to make anything different. It was also at this time where my drinking went from the stage of drinking just because dad offered it, to pursuing alcohol because I knew it was the only thing that would change the way I was feeling. Let’s check off inertia as another core pathology for Lu Ann.
During grade school, my mother started having “nervous breakdowns” that would land her in the psych ward at St. Joseph’s Hospital 80 miles away. My siblings were gone by this point, so it was dad and I alone at the house when she would go away, and it was my job to take over the household duties. And once she got home, my brothers reinforced something I had already internalized: It was my job to take care of mom. Part of taking care of mom was not stressing her out by telling her anything that was going on in my life. When I was 11 or 12 and it had been a while since my mother’s last hospitalization, I got fed up with being my mom’s keeper. Everyday since the first trip home from the hospital, I would ask my mother how her day was when I got home. And my mother would tell. And everyday I would want her to ask me how my day had been. So I decided to do an experiment at the beginning of the week. I would ask her as usual how her day had been, and after she had told me every detail of how bad her day was, I would wait expectantly for her to ask me, figuring she would pick up on the subtle hint. By the end of the week, she hadn’t taken the bait. I couldn’t confront her directly, so I wrote her a note pointing out that she spent all this time growing a jungle in our house of exotic plants, and she always had time to groom her dogs, but she never seemed to have time for me. Her response was to run through the house picking up every planter she could lift, carrying it outside and smashing it in the front yard, all the while screaming about how her plants were the one good thing in her life, and I wouldn’t even let her have that. Once again I was reinforced not to have needs.
Fortunately, for the first nine years of my life, I had my grandmother. She was the one person in my life who was really interested in me, for me. She showed me unconditional love, and she was the only person in my life who gave me physical affection. After she was gone, I eventually developed an aversion to touch, which I relate in part to the lack of receiving any ‘safe’ touch.
Early Adolescence (12-18)
On page 335 the authors state that, “having a depressed mother increases the risk of depression during adolescence. Teens whose mothers are depressed are characterized by more anxious attachments, more suicidal thoughts and more frequent episodes of depression…”. I can certainly say that this statement rings true for me. By junior high I constantly had a stomachache from anxiety. Even in the summers I was anxious because I knew I would have to go back to school in the fall. I had experienced depression while still in grade school, but as I got older, the symptoms and severity progressed. My one saving grace was that I was going to quit school as soon as I was legally old enough and work the ranch full time. It was a good plan until we got foreclosed on when I was 13, and we lost the ranch. I was completely devastated because not only was it my refuge from people, but it was also the only place I ever wanted to be. I had no plan B for my life.
I also had to deal with puberty in this stage of life. I was dreading developing breasts and getting ‘the curse’. I wanted my body to stay as close to a boy’s body as possible. More than ever I was much more inclined toward the male gender role. My mother wasn’t exactly the type to discuss puberty, so everything I learned, I learned from my friend Charlene.
I didn’t date in high school. I was one of the losers; no one was certainly going to ask me out, even though I hadn’t come out as a lesbian yet. I wasn’t particularly attracted to any of the boys, but not dating certainly added to my feelings of being an outcast. The authors tell us on page 354 that some degree of alienation is important for development, however, “in the extreme…the lack of social integration that may result from negative resolution of this crisis can have significant implications for adjustment to school, self-esteem and subsequent psychosocial development”. The authors also tell us that alienation-related problems “occur when adolescents are unable to form interpersonal ties that provide feelings of acceptance and emotional support”. If parents are distant or neglectful, “children find that they cannot count on the family to serve as a source of emotional or instrumental support. They lack a template for experiencing the foundational benefits of belonging that are associated with group identity.”
Emotionally I wasn’t particularly stable as a teen. On page 338 the authors state “youth who are exposed to violence experience higher levels of symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder including difficulties regulating emotional reactions, difficulty concentrating, and difficulties inhibiting aggressive impulses”. Although I never threw the first punch, I was often doing things that I knew would start a fight with the older boys, because I wanted to get my ‘aggressions out’ so to speak. I constantly flew off the handle and had little ‘flip-outs’ because I couldn’t deal with stress…or anything really. My grades suffered because of my inability to concentrate, combined with learning disabilities that weren’t diagnosed until I was in college, as well as my belief that I was truly stupid. To make matters worse, it was more and more difficult for me to get alcohol, so I spend most of my adolescence being a dry drunk.
My one saving grace in adolescence was after we moved into town. I started hanging out with another girl whose father was alcoholic. We were able to bond over our dysfunctions and she brought me along to the Dungeons and Dragons group she belonged to. Our group totally accepted me and I finally got to be a team player, and I got to leave the reality of my life behind for one night a week. In the group I was able to really feel like I was a contributing member, rather than someone who was just in the way. My Dungeons and Dragons group didn’t totally cure my social problems, but it certainly gave me an outlet to do some healing and to feel like a part of something.
The summer I was fifteen my mother decided that, because of my dad’s delusional behavior as a result of his progressed alcoholism, we would move out of state before he actually shot her. We moved to Wyoming for a few months, until she informed me that “because you’re so unhappy here, I’m going to have to quit my good job and we’re going to have to move to Texas” (I learned later that we actually moved because she needed to get away from her other ex-husband). The move to Texas was a difficult one. We were in what was for me a very large city. I was surrounded by strangers and paralyzed by anxiety. During our time there my mother was constantly telling me how we didn’t have enough money, so to help out I wouldn’t eat lunch. At the time I didn’t eat breakfast either because my stomach was so upset from anxiety that I couldn’t eat, besides I was convinced I was a “fat cow”, so I needed to eat less. Even though we didn’t have enough money, mom kept sending expensive leather vests, jackets, and Harley T-shirts to her boyfriend back in ND, but still I didn’t eat lunch because I knew I was low man on the totem pole when it came to money.
After a few months in Texas I became very suicidal. I couldn’t deal with the constant stress and anxiety, and besides, no one gave a damn about me as far as I could tell. I had a plan to hang myself in the shed where we were living, the only problem being I didn’t have a sturdy rope. On the weekends I would walk through the neighborhoods hoping to find a rope. After a few months, I finally decided that it didn’t matter how I killed myself, I just needed to do it. I was finally at peace because all the pain was going to end. That night when I was sleeping I had a dream that for me was a spiritual experience. I don’t know if I actually was visited by a Divine Being or if my psyche was just trying to save my ass, but this dream brought me an intense peace I had never known and it also brought me a knowledge that killing myself would leave me feeling more alone than my life did. Although the anxiety and the stress were still there, I had a little bit of hope that things would work out.
When we had moved to Texas, we had moved in the middle of a term, and as a result I had really poor grades when I started school again, so I was put in remedial classes. This didn’t help my thought that I was stupid. During the spring one of my teachers took me aside and told me how smart I was. Being a teacher I really respected, I thought that she might actually know something. Not long after, another teacher also told me that I was smart, and I opened up to the possibility, that I might just be smart.
My senior year my mother and I moved back to ND. For some odd reason, even though I had pretty muchly hated all of my classmates before, I decided that if I wasn’t going to get to graduate with my old classmates I wasn’t going to graduate. So, my mother let me move in with my father, and I attended my old high school. I don’t why, but that last year I was able to have some relationships with my peers. I didn’t turn into little miss popular, but some of the popular kids were actually hanging out with me, so I managed to get a little piece of group identity before I graduated. Having gotten a little encouragement from my teachers in Texas, I came into my last year with an attitude that I could actually learn something from school. I generally hadn’t gotten really poor grades, but my senior year I got almost all A’s. I wasn’t fully ready to believe that I was smart, but maybe that I wasn’t as dumb as I had thought.
During my senior year, I mainly lived alone as my dad worked “in town” during the week. We were leasing the ranch, so I got to go back to the place that was “home” for me. My father didn’t want to loose me, so he actually stayed sober when he was around me. When I first moved back with him we did all kinds of things that I had always wanted to do with my father. He taught me to hunt, to repair the saddles, to break a horse-all the things a good rancher needs to know. It was the first time I got to really know my father. And her regularly told me that he had wanted a boy, but he was so glad he got a girl because boys were nothing but trouble.
About mid-way through the winter, dad found one of my bottles of whiskey and that gave him permission to be drunk around me, and our relationship changed. He still wasn’t as bad as he had been, but he wasn’t as present as when he was sober either. On the good side, I thought, he started buying my alcohol for me. During the school week my day consisted of getting up at 5:30 to get on the bus at 6, riding the bus for an hour and a half, being in school all day, riding the bus for another hour and a half, getting off the bus at 4:30, doing the chores, having supper, having a couple shots of Jack Daniels, doing my homework, and falling into bed at 8:30. It was a hard life in some ways, but I loved it. I still struggled with bouts of suicidal ideation, but I knew there were some people who cared about me, and I ended my adolescence feeling a little more stable than when I had started.
“I grew up dreaming a-bein’ a cowboy, and lovin the cowboy ways”. These are the words of Waylon Jennings, and they are words that are imprinted on my heart and my soul. I grew up dreaming my dream on a ranch in rural North Dakota. I was the youngest of my mother’s children, and my father’s only child. My father was a cowboy through and through, and I wanted to be just like him. My father wanted a little boy to take over the ranch, and what he got was me, and I did my best to be his “little boy”.
Prenatal
Prenatally, I was to be my father’s first (and only) child, so he eagerly anticipated my birth. His father was also eagerly anticipating his first (and only) grandchild from one of his sons. I was to be the son that would carry on the Robinson name. As it turned out, my grandfather did his best to live long enough to see me born, but he passed away from heart problems a month before my birth.
My mother turned forty a few months before my birth, and she was getting tired of having babies and taking care of alcoholics. My mother didn’t handle stress well, and her coping mechanism to deal with stress was to smoke lots of cigarettes, drink lots of coffee, and not eat, which is exactly what she did through her pregnancy with me. As a result, I was born with a low birth weight (5lbs, 2oz), and have had chronic allergies all of my life.
Infancy (Birth to 2 years)
‘Mutuality with the caregiver’, is the central process in this stage of life. My mother suffered from depression all of her life, and was always withdrawn as a result of her inability to deal with her ‘issues’. My mother was not the doting mother. My father, who had eagerly anticipated a boy, had to deal with the grief of getting a daughter instead. I know that he loved me, but he was still disappointed. The core pathology of this stage is that of withdrawal, which is certainly a pathology that I can relate to. I have known since before I had a verbal conception that I could only count on myself and no one else and that it was my job to entertain myself.
Toddlerhood (2-3)
I don’t a whole lot about my life in this stage. The little bit I remember is from the latter part of this stage. I remember being in the house a lot in the winter with my mom, playing by myself. I also have a distinct memory of one of the few times my mother left the house. We went to a neighbor’s house, and I remember her telling the woman “Lu Annie is such a good girl. She never bothers me and she always plays by herself”. Toward the end of this stage dad started taking me into town with him to “get parts” (read: go to town to pick up booze). Again, I was expected to be a good little quiet girl and entertain myself. I don’t actually remember it, but I have had several of dad’s old bar tenders tell me that he would always order a “shot of rye” for both of us, which I would drink. I guess that’s why I was such a quiet child.
I don’t remember any specific incidents that would relate directly to “autonomy vs. shame”, but what I do know is that I came out on the shame side. Even when I was very young I can remember always having feelings of shame. I was also incredibly shy. Whenever we did leave the ranch and I was around strangers, I was basically terrified of interacting with them; not in the sense of being afraid they would hurt me, but afraid that I would do something to embarrass myself.
Early School Age (4-6) Newman and Newman tell us that, “The lessons from early childhood about what it means to be a good person, to be a “good” boy or girl…to be cherished or despised are established at a deep emotional and cognitive level. These ideas are intertwined with feelings of being safe, loved, and admired or neglected, rejected, or abused. As a result, the basic beliefs about oneself and others that are formed at this time are often difficult to review or revise” (p. 230). If we revisit the line from my mother in the last stage about what it means to be a “good girl”, we can make some conclusions about why it is so difficult for me to have or state my needs.
The part about this stage that struck the deepest chord with me was the section on gender identity. The book speaks of how we learn what it is to be a boy or girl from community and from family. By this stage, my father had neutralized my gender by referring to me as “Pup”. I ceased having a gender in his eyes, as far as I could tell. Personally, I didn’t want to be a woman, because the only women I really interacted with regularly were my mother and sister (there were never women in the bar when dad and I went in the early part of the day), and as a result I didn’t have a very good picture of what it meant to be a woman. My mother was fragile and weak, my sister was, well, nuts. I couldn’t identify with either of them. My father on the other hand, in spite of his drinking problem, was still a hard worker, and by this time gave me the only attention that I got in my immediate family. My distinct thought was that I wanted to be a boy, not, however, that I thought I was a boy, and I certainly had no intention of meeting the social expectations for a girl.
Newman and Newman speak of some of the factors that influence gender preference. First is how “closely one’s own strengths and competencies approximate the gender role standards” (p. 237). Granted I did have a distorted idea of what it meant to be a woman, but even if I had the right information, I still wouldn’t have wanted to fit the female role. I was always more comfortable do the “man’s chores” and playing the “boys’ games”. Another factor is “liking the same sex parent”. At this point I had definitely identified more with my father. An important event that happened in this stage involved my mother. One cold winter day I awoke from a nap to my brothers’ distressed voices. I couldn’t make out what they were saying but it was something about “mom”, “left”, “note”, and “freeze to death”. By the time I got out to the living room, my brothers and dad were in the car speeding up the hill. I didn’t know what was happening, but I could still feel the tension and fear in the house. I waited in front of the window alone for what seemed like hours. Eventually the car came back into the yard, and I could see my mother sitting in the back seat, her face drawn, eyes empty. My stomach clenched, I knew there was something very wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. I was afraid so I went and hid in my bed. I listened quietly to everyone’s voice to try to figure out what was happening, but it was time for everyone to pretend nothing had happened. I learned later that mom had basically left a suicide note, her intention to go out and freeze to death. Another thing I learned about my mother later in life, is that she likes to orchestrate fake suicide attempts to get attention. The point being, I didn’t want anything to do with my mother’s gender role.
The core pathology of this stage is inhibition. On page 269 the authors state that mothers who are “very depressed or psychologically unavailable, may be unable to engage in the kinds of consistent, rhythmic behaviors that produce early experiences of cause and effect…as a result some children have a very passive orientation toward play and social interactions…(caused by) a lack of basic early structures or schemes for the positive process of initiation”. The authors continue, “inhibited children are likely to emerge as shy, withdrawn, and often lonely during the subsequent period of middle childhood…they become increasingly withdrawn, not knowing how to impose their ideas into the ongoing activities of the group, and not experiencing the confidence-building effects of making suggestions and having them accepted”. Interestingly enough, this is a dynamic I continue to repeat in my adult life, particularly in my work life.
Middle Childhood (6-12)
By this stage, my father’s alcoholism had accelerated to the point where he wasn’t at all cognitively or emotionally present. My mother too was a walking emotional zombie. I knew that I was alone in this world, and I was terrified. By the time I started first grade, I woke up everyday with a knot in my stomach. I hated being around other people, and the constant shaming I got from my teachers and my peers reinforced that hate. My teachers told me directly and indirectly almost daily that I wasn’t smart and that I was lazy. In grade school I experienced every form of abuse at the hands of the older boys, as well as constant ridiculing from my peers. The few times I told on the older boys for hitting me, I was informed that, “If you would stop fighting back, they would leave you alone.” I didn’t care much for my teacher’s solution, and things continued on as they had until I was 15, and big enough to adequately defend myself against any of the older boys.
It would be safe to say that in this stage I experienced a fair amount of feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. I certainly had an eagerness to acquire skills and learn meaningful work, but to me that meant staying home and working the ranch, not going to school to be humiliated and abused every day.
By about age 8 I had also developed a strong sense of Learned Helplessness. The primary lesson was that no matter what I did I couldn’t stop the bad things that were happening to me, and I surrendered. I surrendered my hope that anything would ever change in my life, I surrendered my hope that my life would ever be anything but painful, and I surrendered my will to try to make anything different. It was also at this time where my drinking went from the stage of drinking just because dad offered it, to pursuing alcohol because I knew it was the only thing that would change the way I was feeling. Let’s check off inertia as another core pathology for Lu Ann.
During grade school, my mother started having “nervous breakdowns” that would land her in the psych ward at St. Joseph’s Hospital 80 miles away. My siblings were gone by this point, so it was dad and I alone at the house when she would go away, and it was my job to take over the household duties. And once she got home, my brothers reinforced something I had already internalized: It was my job to take care of mom. Part of taking care of mom was not stressing her out by telling her anything that was going on in my life. When I was 11 or 12 and it had been a while since my mother’s last hospitalization, I got fed up with being my mom’s keeper. Everyday since the first trip home from the hospital, I would ask my mother how her day was when I got home. And my mother would tell. And everyday I would want her to ask me how my day had been. So I decided to do an experiment at the beginning of the week. I would ask her as usual how her day had been, and after she had told me every detail of how bad her day was, I would wait expectantly for her to ask me, figuring she would pick up on the subtle hint. By the end of the week, she hadn’t taken the bait. I couldn’t confront her directly, so I wrote her a note pointing out that she spent all this time growing a jungle in our house of exotic plants, and she always had time to groom her dogs, but she never seemed to have time for me. Her response was to run through the house picking up every planter she could lift, carrying it outside and smashing it in the front yard, all the while screaming about how her plants were the one good thing in her life, and I wouldn’t even let her have that. Once again I was reinforced not to have needs.
Fortunately, for the first nine years of my life, I had my grandmother. She was the one person in my life who was really interested in me, for me. She showed me unconditional love, and she was the only person in my life who gave me physical affection. After she was gone, I eventually developed an aversion to touch, which I relate in part to the lack of receiving any ‘safe’ touch.
Early Adolescence (12-18)
On page 335 the authors state that, “having a depressed mother increases the risk of depression during adolescence. Teens whose mothers are depressed are characterized by more anxious attachments, more suicidal thoughts and more frequent episodes of depression…”. I can certainly say that this statement rings true for me. By junior high I constantly had a stomachache from anxiety. Even in the summers I was anxious because I knew I would have to go back to school in the fall. I had experienced depression while still in grade school, but as I got older, the symptoms and severity progressed. My one saving grace was that I was going to quit school as soon as I was legally old enough and work the ranch full time. It was a good plan until we got foreclosed on when I was 13, and we lost the ranch. I was completely devastated because not only was it my refuge from people, but it was also the only place I ever wanted to be. I had no plan B for my life.
I also had to deal with puberty in this stage of life. I was dreading developing breasts and getting ‘the curse’. I wanted my body to stay as close to a boy’s body as possible. More than ever I was much more inclined toward the male gender role. My mother wasn’t exactly the type to discuss puberty, so everything I learned, I learned from my friend Charlene.
I didn’t date in high school. I was one of the losers; no one was certainly going to ask me out, even though I hadn’t come out as a lesbian yet. I wasn’t particularly attracted to any of the boys, but not dating certainly added to my feelings of being an outcast. The authors tell us on page 354 that some degree of alienation is important for development, however, “in the extreme…the lack of social integration that may result from negative resolution of this crisis can have significant implications for adjustment to school, self-esteem and subsequent psychosocial development”. The authors also tell us that alienation-related problems “occur when adolescents are unable to form interpersonal ties that provide feelings of acceptance and emotional support”. If parents are distant or neglectful, “children find that they cannot count on the family to serve as a source of emotional or instrumental support. They lack a template for experiencing the foundational benefits of belonging that are associated with group identity.”
Emotionally I wasn’t particularly stable as a teen. On page 338 the authors state “youth who are exposed to violence experience higher levels of symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder including difficulties regulating emotional reactions, difficulty concentrating, and difficulties inhibiting aggressive impulses”. Although I never threw the first punch, I was often doing things that I knew would start a fight with the older boys, because I wanted to get my ‘aggressions out’ so to speak. I constantly flew off the handle and had little ‘flip-outs’ because I couldn’t deal with stress…or anything really. My grades suffered because of my inability to concentrate, combined with learning disabilities that weren’t diagnosed until I was in college, as well as my belief that I was truly stupid. To make matters worse, it was more and more difficult for me to get alcohol, so I spend most of my adolescence being a dry drunk.
My one saving grace in adolescence was after we moved into town. I started hanging out with another girl whose father was alcoholic. We were able to bond over our dysfunctions and she brought me along to the Dungeons and Dragons group she belonged to. Our group totally accepted me and I finally got to be a team player, and I got to leave the reality of my life behind for one night a week. In the group I was able to really feel like I was a contributing member, rather than someone who was just in the way. My Dungeons and Dragons group didn’t totally cure my social problems, but it certainly gave me an outlet to do some healing and to feel like a part of something.
The summer I was fifteen my mother decided that, because of my dad’s delusional behavior as a result of his progressed alcoholism, we would move out of state before he actually shot her. We moved to Wyoming for a few months, until she informed me that “because you’re so unhappy here, I’m going to have to quit my good job and we’re going to have to move to Texas” (I learned later that we actually moved because she needed to get away from her other ex-husband). The move to Texas was a difficult one. We were in what was for me a very large city. I was surrounded by strangers and paralyzed by anxiety. During our time there my mother was constantly telling me how we didn’t have enough money, so to help out I wouldn’t eat lunch. At the time I didn’t eat breakfast either because my stomach was so upset from anxiety that I couldn’t eat, besides I was convinced I was a “fat cow”, so I needed to eat less. Even though we didn’t have enough money, mom kept sending expensive leather vests, jackets, and Harley T-shirts to her boyfriend back in ND, but still I didn’t eat lunch because I knew I was low man on the totem pole when it came to money.
After a few months in Texas I became very suicidal. I couldn’t deal with the constant stress and anxiety, and besides, no one gave a damn about me as far as I could tell. I had a plan to hang myself in the shed where we were living, the only problem being I didn’t have a sturdy rope. On the weekends I would walk through the neighborhoods hoping to find a rope. After a few months, I finally decided that it didn’t matter how I killed myself, I just needed to do it. I was finally at peace because all the pain was going to end. That night when I was sleeping I had a dream that for me was a spiritual experience. I don’t know if I actually was visited by a Divine Being or if my psyche was just trying to save my ass, but this dream brought me an intense peace I had never known and it also brought me a knowledge that killing myself would leave me feeling more alone than my life did. Although the anxiety and the stress were still there, I had a little bit of hope that things would work out.
When we had moved to Texas, we had moved in the middle of a term, and as a result I had really poor grades when I started school again, so I was put in remedial classes. This didn’t help my thought that I was stupid. During the spring one of my teachers took me aside and told me how smart I was. Being a teacher I really respected, I thought that she might actually know something. Not long after, another teacher also told me that I was smart, and I opened up to the possibility, that I might just be smart.
My senior year my mother and I moved back to ND. For some odd reason, even though I had pretty muchly hated all of my classmates before, I decided that if I wasn’t going to get to graduate with my old classmates I wasn’t going to graduate. So, my mother let me move in with my father, and I attended my old high school. I don’t why, but that last year I was able to have some relationships with my peers. I didn’t turn into little miss popular, but some of the popular kids were actually hanging out with me, so I managed to get a little piece of group identity before I graduated. Having gotten a little encouragement from my teachers in Texas, I came into my last year with an attitude that I could actually learn something from school. I generally hadn’t gotten really poor grades, but my senior year I got almost all A’s. I wasn’t fully ready to believe that I was smart, but maybe that I wasn’t as dumb as I had thought.
During my senior year, I mainly lived alone as my dad worked “in town” during the week. We were leasing the ranch, so I got to go back to the place that was “home” for me. My father didn’t want to loose me, so he actually stayed sober when he was around me. When I first moved back with him we did all kinds of things that I had always wanted to do with my father. He taught me to hunt, to repair the saddles, to break a horse-all the things a good rancher needs to know. It was the first time I got to really know my father. And her regularly told me that he had wanted a boy, but he was so glad he got a girl because boys were nothing but trouble.
About mid-way through the winter, dad found one of my bottles of whiskey and that gave him permission to be drunk around me, and our relationship changed. He still wasn’t as bad as he had been, but he wasn’t as present as when he was sober either. On the good side, I thought, he started buying my alcohol for me. During the school week my day consisted of getting up at 5:30 to get on the bus at 6, riding the bus for an hour and a half, being in school all day, riding the bus for another hour and a half, getting off the bus at 4:30, doing the chores, having supper, having a couple shots of Jack Daniels, doing my homework, and falling into bed at 8:30. It was a hard life in some ways, but I loved it. I still struggled with bouts of suicidal ideation, but I knew there were some people who cared about me, and I ended my adolescence feeling a little more stable than when I had started.
sorry no pictures
Wow. It's almost been a week since my last day of work. I've been busily trying to catch up on papers and catch up on rest. I had expected my boss to pay out my sick time/vacation time since he had done that for previous employees, but not so much...he wiped his butt with 40 hours of my sick time. I'm trying not to be resentful but it's hard, especially since there were many times I really needed to take sick time, but I sacrificed my health for my job. My bad.
On the happy, a rep from my favorite company asked me to do demos, and I will be doing my first tomorrow. I've also had a nibble on 2 other demo jobs, which is way cool, cuz you basically set your own schedule and get paid fairly well.
On another happy, I am really happy with my new gf Chris. She has been on vacation for the last week, but we have talked everyday like sappy new lovers do, and I've enjoyed my time alone as well as my time being sappy. Ain't love grand?
Oh, and that cheap ass camera I got before my ND trip, I broke it. When I actually looked at it in the light, I somehow managed to fracture the viewing screen. Oopsie.
On the happy, a rep from my favorite company asked me to do demos, and I will be doing my first tomorrow. I've also had a nibble on 2 other demo jobs, which is way cool, cuz you basically set your own schedule and get paid fairly well.
On another happy, I am really happy with my new gf Chris. She has been on vacation for the last week, but we have talked everyday like sappy new lovers do, and I've enjoyed my time alone as well as my time being sappy. Ain't love grand?
Oh, and that cheap ass camera I got before my ND trip, I broke it. When I actually looked at it in the light, I somehow managed to fracture the viewing screen. Oopsie.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Life is good
I was stressed about all that paperwork for naught. All is well, I am once again covered if I get hit by an uninsured bus. I had a lovely workout this morning, had a nice chat with my gf on the phone, and am now spending some time with my best friend Sheila. Damn, I could make a beer commercial I'm so frakking content. It's all good! ...now if I can just get caught up with my homework!
Sunday, July 13, 2008
paperwork
Yesterday was my last day at the VT. Now on to bigger and better things. Like trying to catch up on my homework and trying to get my paperwork together for my appointment for financial assistance at the hospital. Last year when I had my appointment, they only needed about half as much as usual paperwork...this time they need 10 times as much...like who the hell holds onto their last 4 check stubs? Not me...just because of laziness, I happen to have three, and just out of luck I actually found them. Then there is the whole craziness of proving that the money in my banking account is student loans, that have to go to pay for SCHOOL...not extra money I had hanging out in my underwear drawer that I was going to use to go to the Bahamas. Oi. I hate paperwork. I hate it. I can not be Zen about it. Not at this point in time anyway. But fortunately, I no longer have a real job and I can concentrate on arbitrary paperwork and on my studies.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
life sucks
My therapist was reminding me of how our sessions used to go..."You would stretch out in that chair, look up at the ceiling and tell me 'life sucks'. And I would as you why and you would say you didn't know." And I would, and I didn't...I mean there were plenty of sucky things I could point a finger at, but nothing stuck out as suckier than anything else. But these days I'm happy. I am tired as shit, but I am Happy. And the sucky stuff is pretty insignificant. Every now and again, I trip over it, but fairly infrequently-and when I do, I don't carry it around until I find something else sucky to carry, until my arms are too full and I have to put something down. I am seriously getting used to being happy. no apologies.
Monday, July 7, 2008
all ya need is love...
OK, so I admit it. I'm in Love. I know there are those who will scoff. And there are those who will warily be happy for me. And those who can just be happy for me. But I don't think it should really matter what anyone else thinks (but it still creeps into my head).
I am Happy. I am having fun. I am feeling Comfortable. This is Different. Instead of Need (which is really just a Compulsion to feel different), there is a Want (to be in the company of someone who is greatly enjoyed). Instead of feeling like I have to Hide my True-Self, I get to Be exactly who I am (and still enjoyed by someone). Instead of Worrying about the future with this person, I am living in the Moment. What the hell Better could a Zen wanna-be ask for?
I am Happy. I am having fun. I am feeling Comfortable. This is Different. Instead of Need (which is really just a Compulsion to feel different), there is a Want (to be in the company of someone who is greatly enjoyed). Instead of feeling like I have to Hide my True-Self, I get to Be exactly who I am (and still enjoyed by someone). Instead of Worrying about the future with this person, I am living in the Moment. What the hell Better could a Zen wanna-be ask for?
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Moving forward
Clearing the clutter. It's a task I know that needs to be completed in order to let new stuff in, but sometimes complacency and/or fear take over. Recently I have been working on clearing the clutter...my family and my job, namely. Besides not having that clutter to trip over, it has allowed me to get to know this groovy new chick, who I'm probably falling a little too fast for, but damn it feels good. I am comforted by the fact that a couple of people I think highly of happen to think highly of her. I'm off to vacuum my cranial floor...
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Check
So I've been thinking about The List. You know the one. The list of things you want in a partner (or sometimes, the list of things you don't want). My current list goes something like this:
1. If she mentions the words "my issues" on the first date, Run away. Fast.
2. Must be attractive to me. (seems obvious, but it took me a while to get there)
3. No Narcissists. (although they are sometimes hard to spot off the bat)
4. Smart
5. Funny
6. OK with my irreverent sense of humor.
7. Cowgirl (although, I've given up on this one)
Recently added to the list:
8. I need to feel comfortable being myself with this person. (obvious, I know)
8. I need to feel comfortable being myself with this person. (obvious, I know)
9. Sexually compatible.
Lets talk about that one. Sometimes ya just don't fit, and if it isn't good in the beginning, it's not going to get any better. Now I'm not talking about that early awkwardness of finding out what a new person likes, I'm talking blatant, "Wow, that really sucks, and I wish we'd never done this". But it goes deeper. It's liking similar things, similar touch, similar amounts of touch, and it's also about being open to trying new things. And most importantly, it's about being comfortable enough to say "I like this" and "I don't like that", AND being respectful enough to take direction when it is so graciously offered.
10. Likes guns (just because I can)
Walter Slovotski's Law: Number 36, There's no need to freak
So, here I am with only two more weeks of work. I just scheduled some 2 motorcycle safety classes for august (something I haven't been able to do in years), I'm planning on going to Bubonicon the Whole Damn Weekend, and I might even take a writing class. For a change, it feels very freeing to be quitting a job, rather than "oh my god i'm not going to have enough money and the world will explode"....granted it does help that I have student loans to fall back on, but still, it's a nice change. I just have to keep training my mind not to catastrophize about money. I could get used to that.
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