Things creep in from the edges
Mar. 2nd, 2018 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fandomonymousTrigger warning: A pair of alcohol mentions, more extensive family bullshit/emotional abuse/someone else's severe mental health troubles.
Speaking of college, I've booked a flight to Florida, April 18-25.
Reading: finished Disappearance Diary which got weird but kind of wonderful at the end; barreled through Toxic Parents by Dr. Susan Forward, which was hard but good and I should hold onto some of the notes I took. ...all of my reading this year has been about navigating tough mental landscapes, hahahahhahahauuuuuuuuugh. It's like I've forgotten how to just enjoy life or something. If you have advice on how to fix that, well, that'd be appreciated.
Hope you're well, friends.
f o o t n o t e s
[0]It is not my job to make sure he gets help, but she's not going to do it, and the fact that I'm far less anti-psychotherapy than she is means I'm technically more equipped for this. Which is a thing I hate, and don't know what to do with, and...I dunno, guys. I know I need to spend some time in therapy unpacking these feelings about my role in the family. I was technically an adult when I was put in the role of physical basically-full-time caretaker for my dad in 2013, but I sure as hell didn't feel like an adult. Some of his issues are adjacent to ways he treated me really badly in my childhood, to, which is hard. But now she's the one manipulating and maybe-accidentally-hurting me to try to "make him better" because she can't emotionally do it. (At least last time, she couldn't physically be there to help him, because someone had to earn the money to keep a roof over our heads. Why am I more comfortable with physical limits than emotional ones? Oh right, {other long history of trauma elided}.)
[1]I went to the PB's parents' house a few weekends ago for a fancy party celebrating his dad's nth birthday for n large and significant. I'm not usually great with strangers, but I was weirdly able to keep up with patter for longer than I expected. And generally folks were kind, if in that odd older-person not-sure-what-to-do-but-smalltalk-about-work way. But I could feel the bits of pressure about "you've been dating almost two years[2], what's in store for you two?", and apparently when I wasn't in the room he got that explicitly a handful of times. Plus my usual bristling about class markers - the Beasts are distinctly richer than my family, though PB insists they're upper middle class. Bluuuuuh.
[2]Christ, that's longer than any relationship other than the ex-Fluffhead. That's really bizarre. The fact that I've been in New York for almost three years now is also bizarre, as is the fact that I've been at my current job for nearly nine months, as well as the fact that one month of twelve has passed for my lease. (The shortest month, but still.) WHAT EVEN IS TIME. I feel like I just got back from Florida, but I also know that's deeply untrue, and fuck, this is weird.
- Yup, I still like living here. I am less drowning-in-boxes-y than before and everything I own has been built (and my wrist has recovered from doing all the building, phew); the sofa comes in a few weeks. I'm cooking a fair bit, I made myself an Old Fashioned for the first time and it was Really Good, my closet is orderly, I'm getting routines down for shopping and laundry, and like I dunno, it's good. I think I've picked out the bar I'd like to become a semi-regular at, too; it's fifteen minutes walk away and not on my way home from the subway, so I won't be tempted by it constantly, but the drafts are all local, the bartenders are super kind, and they keep the TVs off by default.
- Being a human who relates to other humans is hard. Living alone means having the choice to just not interact with people, which has been my default state lately. That isn't necessarily bad, but not necessarily good, either. But then again, the following is what happens when I try:
- My mom came to visit Kawa Arena briefly yesterday, which was somewhat less hard than I had been expecting. I was really bracing for the worst and it didn't happen. She is not very good at upholding the "don't give me the gory details of how your marriage is falling apart" boundary, but I can see she's trying. (And fuck, it is falling apart, my dad's depression/anxiety/probably-PTSD is getting worse and worse and she is Not Equipped For This holy god.[0] ) She accidentally was good at the "don't stay over at Kawa Arena unless you really have to" boundary (she wasn't feeling well and chose not to, and I was too exhausted to feel inner glee, but YES THANK YOU), which like...I'm glad I didn't have to enforce the boundary, but also, I probably should get some practice enforcing that boundary.
- My best friend since middle school will finally get to see the place this Sunday, and together we'll go to a Dessa concert! HELL YEAH. PS: the new album Chime is great and I have it on repeat and <3 <3 <3.
- Not a great girlfriend to the PartnerBeast but okay? I was bristling at the systematic ways we are not compatible, which, like. He's working on his shit, I see the progress, but yes it's A Process. My patience wavers, but I see the work he's putting in. My buttons got pushed doing a pile of emotional labor for him that exposed me to others' expectations of us[1]. I dunno. I'm trying, he's trying, we are deeply imperfect people and probably imperfect for each other but that's just life, right?
- I'll be seeing Andy and Ty in three weeks - and going to a play party I was invited to by a friend from BiReq! Hell to the yes.
- I've been vaguely tempted to open up my OK Cupid again, but gah, I dunno. I'm not exactly feeling like "oh I have all these wonderful emotions to give", but I also feel a pull to expand my emotional circle, and getting different kinds of affection would probably help me have more wonderful emotions to give? Who even knows. Also, you know, HOW DOES ONE MANAGE TIME. But we'll see.
- One of my dearest friends from college just had her second kid last night, so that's neat.
- My mom came to visit Kawa Arena briefly yesterday, which was somewhat less hard than I had been expecting. I was really bracing for the worst and it didn't happen. She is not very good at upholding the "don't give me the gory details of how your marriage is falling apart" boundary, but I can see she's trying. (And fuck, it is falling apart, my dad's depression/anxiety/probably-PTSD is getting worse and worse and she is Not Equipped For This holy god.[0] ) She accidentally was good at the "don't stay over at Kawa Arena unless you really have to" boundary (she wasn't feeling well and chose not to, and I was too exhausted to feel inner glee, but YES THANK YOU), which like...I'm glad I didn't have to enforce the boundary, but also, I probably should get some practice enforcing that boundary.
- I unfortunately wasn't able to quite afford to stop in Atlanta on the way back to see a romantic-ish person who lives elsewhere in Georgia. This sucks hard, and hurt to admit; I worked a shocking amount on that relationship in these last few years, all things considered, and to not be able to do something I had promised to was rough.
- I will be able to stop in Orlando to see another romantic-ish person (actually an ex-cutie who lived in NYC in 2015 who moved to Orlando for grad school and money reasons), so that's lovely. <3
- It'll be good (though perhaps a bit weird/fraught) to see my friends again and meet the kids. It's hard to remember it's been a few years since I've seen folks in person, and well, people do change subtly (or not so subtly) over time.
- It'll be good to feel Floridian warmth and humidity again. I'll have to write out a list of the places I feel I need to experience again.
- Also: noun management, since I left a pile of stuff in the house there. If you have ideas of how to get an Appalachian dulcimer on a plane or shipped, let me know. Also an unseemly amount of nail polish, and books, and other random nonsense. There's also a bunch of emotionally charged nouns I'll have to figure out how to deal with; hmm.
- Also neat: I'm "working from home" the whole time, which means I get to hold onto my PTO until the Europe trip in June, so the Europe trip will probably be 3 weeks long. Aww yeah. I scheduled the trip specifically to be at a lower-stress time in my monthly work cycle, so there may not even be that much for me to do other than check email during the day and call into a meeting or two. Sweet.
Hope you're well, friends.
f o o t n o t e s
[0]It is not my job to make sure he gets help, but she's not going to do it, and the fact that I'm far less anti-psychotherapy than she is means I'm technically more equipped for this. Which is a thing I hate, and don't know what to do with, and...I dunno, guys. I know I need to spend some time in therapy unpacking these feelings about my role in the family. I was technically an adult when I was put in the role of physical basically-full-time caretaker for my dad in 2013, but I sure as hell didn't feel like an adult. Some of his issues are adjacent to ways he treated me really badly in my childhood, to, which is hard. But now she's the one manipulating and maybe-accidentally-hurting me to try to "make him better" because she can't emotionally do it. (At least last time, she couldn't physically be there to help him, because someone had to earn the money to keep a roof over our heads. Why am I more comfortable with physical limits than emotional ones? Oh right, {other long history of trauma elided}.)
[1]I went to the PB's parents' house a few weekends ago for a fancy party celebrating his dad's nth birthday for n large and significant. I'm not usually great with strangers, but I was weirdly able to keep up with patter for longer than I expected. And generally folks were kind, if in that odd older-person not-sure-what-to-do-but-smalltalk-about-work way. But I could feel the bits of pressure about "you've been dating almost two years[2], what's in store for you two?", and apparently when I wasn't in the room he got that explicitly a handful of times. Plus my usual bristling about class markers - the Beasts are distinctly richer than my family, though PB insists they're upper middle class. Bluuuuuh.
[2]Christ, that's longer than any relationship other than the ex-Fluffhead. That's really bizarre. The fact that I've been in New York for almost three years now is also bizarre, as is the fact that I've been at my current job for nearly nine months, as well as the fact that one month of twelve has passed for my lease. (The shortest month, but still.) WHAT EVEN IS TIME. I feel like I just got back from Florida, but I also know that's deeply untrue, and fuck, this is weird.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-02 10:28 pm (UTC)For time, I use Google Calendar combined with to-do lists. Not fancy, but things are getting done.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-05 03:38 pm (UTC)The noun management solution will probably be "lots of shipping boxes and hard decisions on what's worth shipping". Thank goodness Media Mail exists.