People on a pedestal will inevitably fall

October 29, 2009 at 11:23 am · Filed under Daily

I’ve noticed something in the recent months; one can pretty accurately measure the level of my happiness/level of content etc. with one look at  my apartment. Seriously. It’s almost hilarious in a sick sort of way. It wasn’t always this way. At one point I was maniacal about the cleanliness. My Kait used to be envious of the fact that I didn’t routinely have hair carcass in my sink, or on the floor, or anywhere else in the bathroom.

As of late I’ve noticed that when I’m unhappy about something…I clean. The intensity with which I clean is directly related to the intensity of my emotion at the time be it angry, sad, frustrated, what have you.

Right at this second in time my apartment is cleaner than it has been in probably six to seven months. I blame only myself for the extent of OCD-like behavior that has caused the cleanliness. There are a few reasons.

  1. Sometimes I don’t finish things when they maybe should have been finished (or should they have been?) mentally and emotionally. I have an issue with closure. A big red-flag issue with it. There are some things that I have not closed for whatever reason. Because I’m not done? Because I wonder if I made a mistake? Because I’m still upset? Because I’m still angry? Because I miss that thing? Because I’m resentful of what happened? I don’t know. For whatever reason (which probably doesn’t have anything to do with anything external as a matter of fact) there are things that I usually haven’t emotionally finished with, because I have a problem letting things go. This tendency makes it all that more difficult to ignore people when they happen to pop up again. I want to figure it out, I want to know why I can’t let something go…specifically when it pertains to old relationships and I’m in a current relationship position where marriage and all that entails has been discussed. That’s my issue. I’ll own it.
  2. When I have done my absolute best to always be honest with someone as it relates to information that they should probably know and that person still doesn’t trust me…there’s something wrong. And that something wrong probably doesn’t have anything to do with me.

That being said…I might have made a mistake in a current relationship by not saying something about something as soon as they may have wanted me to do so. At the time I thought I was making an okay decision by holding off for a few days considering plans that had been made. As it turns out…not so much.

Here are the problems. I realize that there was a different way to handle it when considering someone else…I get that. Had someone not violated my privacy prior to me being able to share what I was going to share anyways, they would have had an opportunity to express that to me. And I could have been more understanding than I was when things went down the way they did. However, all it took was one moment where something happened and someone took one action, to where I literally felt the same way I felt almost six years ago…like I had no right to my own space, privacy, or person. And I’m not sure how to get over that (in part because it has to do with my own issue). The other part of this whole issue is how does someone challenge me on ‘trust’ when they didn’t trust in the first place?

Not to mention that I may have, based on my history with relationships, placed someone on a ‘pedestal’, so to speak. This is probably its own blog in itself…but suffice to say that it’s my fault to have earmarked anyone as infallible so that I am that much more upset when mistakes happen. Because really, we all make mistakes. It just makes the whole situation that much more difficult when I try to place where that comes into play.

I don’t know what to do with it, I don’t know what to say about it.

And on a complete side note…I’m considering boycotting the holidays all together considering family fractures that have happened as of late. I’m not angry at anyone and I don’t resent anyone in particular. I completely understand people’s reasons for making certain decisions. I would likely have made the same decisions had I been in their shoes. What I personally resent is that I”m somehow in the same place I was when I was ten…that of feeling as if I have to “choose” between family members at important times, like the holidays that are fast approaching, and my birthday.

For some reason I always thought things would get easier as we got older. Every year I am proven dead wrong.

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Commitment.

October 9, 2009 at 8:23 am · Filed under Domestic Violence, Health, Men

I have commitment issues. I haven’t always had them; they developed to 100% fruition somewhere between my current relationship and the relationship prior to that. I haven’t yet put my finger on exactly why they developed (for the record, I don’t place the blame on anyone else) but sometimes, when the commitment issues rear their disfigured head I can’t help but try again to fully figure it out…usually to no avail. Although, today I may have hit upon a piece of the puzzle.

Today, in what began as a joking sort of funny conversation, an innocent remark was made that made my brain spin a little. It happened so fast that I didn’t really process it at all until I was on the way home on the bus (at a training this week and it’s just easier to avoid driving and spending a million dollars on parking downtown). It all started out during lunch while walking by the KCJ (King County Jail)…apparently it was their hour of ‘yard’ time; I learned this because I remarked about how it was possible that I could hear inmates whooping and yelling. Then I mentioned how glad I was that I had never done anything to land myself in jail. Then I took it further and mentioned how funny I thought it would be if my companion at the time ever had to actually bail me out of jail for something. Then he said that he hoped that if that was the case it would happen before we were married.

Wait. Just, a, minute…is what my brain did.

My mouth did better than my brain because I just asked why that would make a difference and the conversation went on from there.

To fast forward from there (through many poorly drawn stick figures and such for the training that we’re doing) I revisited the conversation on the bus. Specifically I mused about my silent emotional reaction to it. Then I started thinking about all the significant relationships that I’d had. Specifically for some reason I thought about how healthy or unhealthy each relationship was in relation to my level of commitment to it (really instead of commitment, at the time I was thinking about how much I felt I needed the relationship/person at the time I was relating to them). An interesting correlation took shape in my brain. It is best demonstrated in graph form:

Silly relationship graph

I think this makes me look crazy…but let me explain if I may.

I took all of the relationships that I consider significant as far as longevity, closeness, etc. and gave them all two different number values (scores, if you will). One score represented the level of how healthy I felt the relationship was/is; 1 being incredibly unhealthy and 10 being significantly healthy. The other score represented the level of need I felt for that person/relationship; 1 being the most unhealthy level of need ever and 10 being a feeling of not “need”ing at all (as clarification, in the brain of Kelly “need” = “unhealthy”). If I really wanted to delve deep into the motivations of my relationships with people I could have labeled “perception of need” as “codependent” (on my part at least), but anyway…

As you can see it starts out representing a relationship where I felt I needed the person sort of a lot and therefore the relationship was fairly unhealthy (for details I won’t go into here). It improves some with the second relationship where the level of need felt was not high at all and the relationship was fairly healthy (in terms of how someone treated me, honesty, etc.). Something important I need to add here…though the relationship was fairly healthy my level of commitment to it was not very healthy and not very high (come to think of it I should have added that line to the graph too, but oh well). Then you can see that it dips a bit with the next one in terms of both needing the person more and the unhealthy nature of the relationship. Then the outlier appears in the data and his name is George. That isn’t something that needs to be detailed at this time. Suffice to say I was malfunctioning at the time and felt that I needed him in order to breathe and the relationship was terrible…but eventually I got over this.

The rest of the data steadily improves and eventually demonstrates how I feel about my current relationship. It’s very healthy in terms of trust, kindness, friendship, love and all that stuff. In fact I can honestly state that I have never been treated better by anyone else. But the commitment thing still causes my internal thoughts to go a little haywire. After making a crazy relationship graph I think I understand why.

As we’ve already discussed my brain equates need with unhealthy because when I think of need I think of codependent, which has clearly been an issue for me in the past. Intellectually I realize that the most important part is “wanting” someone (for a myriad of different reasons) but this is where I get screwed up.

I don’t trust my sense of “want” and I think that’s where the problem lies. Having been used to operating on a “need” basis and then getting to a point where I vehemently throw that out the window after a number of poor experiences (one in particular) I’m just not used to basing commitment on “wanting” to do it. I don’t trust myself.

And I remain unsure of how to get to the point where I fully do.

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Fear is the mind killer…

August 7, 2009 at 12:24 pm · Filed under Fam, Health

‘Tis true. It’s something valuable I picked up from my P-that quote from Mr. Herbert. I think of it often. Specifically just that first phrase is what runs through my mind. Recent events have increased the rate of fear-based thoughts. Odd considering that recent events have been pretty wonderful.

Today when I got home I. Was. Tired. Tired, tired. So, even though I was expecting company in the very near future I laid down, read for a bit, and was passed out (complete with drool) within minutes. When I woke up it was almost 5:30 and I was under the impression that the person I was expecting would have been there almost an hour prior. The MO of my imagination is to always default to the worst possible scenario. The absolute worst (obviously I cause myself a lot of undue stress sometimes). To be fair though, when under the impression that the person you have fallen ridiculously in love with (again, which is its own long story) is an hour late and it’s a guarantee that they would call if they were later than they expected to be in the first place…you tend to worry. Couple that with my default imagination thing and it equals panic.

I know it sounds insane to mentally go from 0 to 60 within a few seconds but trust me, I’m capable of it. The worst part of it really was that split second crazy thought of what if something happened to him and I never see him again. It’s possible that it’s not just my imagination that caused that kind of thought today. There’s a part of my mind that finds things ‘hard to believe’ when it comes to relationships and matters of the heart. Sure, it’s a cliche…the whole ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’ thing but it applies to me. Thinking that I’ve possibly found that person that I never want to part from is a little hard to swallow for me. Is it really possible? Are they going to change their mind for some reason at some point so that everything that’s been said is all of a sudden non-applicable? Are they going to do something that’s murderously hurtful at some point? Worse yet, am I going to do something to ruin it at some point?

Here’s the thing…when it really comes down to it I have full confidence that he wouldn’t do something to hurt me and that the things that have been said come from an incredibly genuine place. It’s just the nagging ‘old tapes’ that play sometimes still that remind me, you’ve thought similar things before and look where it put you.

Here’s the other thing that has zero to do with any of my weird issues…loving someone that way is exciting, refreshing, and brilliant while at the same time being a little scary. Scary, not necessarily because of what one or the other person might or might not do, but because of what life might do or not do. Thinking about committing to someone the way it’s been talked about recently means taking a lot of chances in general. Hopefully this comes across as a tad bit of realistic thinking (in a blog that’s been taken up with a lot of crazy thinking) rather than demonstrably negative…because really, stuff happens. We can imagine scenarios where dreams come true and all that jazz but sometimes dreams don’t come to fruition precisely the way we wanted them to; sometimes they’re scant ideas of what we wanted or even altered realities of what we wanted. What if I spend my life with someone only to lose them to something that was beyond their control? What if I have kids and something happens to me that’s beyond my control so that I have to leave a family that I’ve created? Sure, this gets all muddied with issues of mortality and all that crud, but it’s reality. I’m probably not even making sense to be quite honest…it makes sense in my head.

Truth be told though, if given these two choices…to either be a part of (uncertainty be damned) or choose not to be a part of something (out of fear) I’d rather be a part of something. God knows that I don’t want to live a life ensconced in fear, afraid to take chances; because if I have even an inkling of a chance to have even more happiness than I’m having now by continuing to write the story regardless of what happens, then I choose to write the story.

Oh…and as it turns out I was incorrect regarding timelines today so no one was late after all-again, I worried for nothing. But at least I got to sort out some thoughts here as a result.

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“Rights”

July 21, 2009 at 10:32 am · Filed under Abortion, Feminism, Governmentish, Health, Reproductive Rights

Today while eating lunch in my office I was perusing blogs and after a few links came across an entry about “reproductive rights” and how it relates to a 69 year old woman who has unfortunately passed away recently, leaving behind the two twins that she gave birth to three years ago. It kept me agitated all day, and I’ll tell you why (probably in the most long-winded way possible unfortunately).

The writer of the entry (blog: The Pursuit of Harpyness-I could write for an entire day about that choice of title alone) made arguments that women of any age should be allowed to undergo fertility treatments in order to conceive. That it is a “reproductive rights” issue. On the contrary, I feel that it is certainly not a reproductive rights issue…it’s a moral issue that centers around the well-being of children that have absolutely no choice as to what they’re born into. I encourage you to read the original article via Fox News; especially since it details how Maria del Carmen Brousada deceived a fertility clinic about her true age in order to even be considered for fertility treatment.

The most significant point of disagreement the blog author had about the content of the Fox article was the quote from Allen Pacey:

Allan Pacey, secretary of the British Fertility Society, said the organization recommends that assisted conception generally not be provided to women beyond the natural age of menopause.

“The rationale for all that is that nature didn’t design women to have assisted conception beyond the age of the natural menopause…once you get into the mid-50s, I think nature is trying to tell us something,” Pacey told The AP.

He added: “I think many people would worry about providing fertility treatment to women in their 60s. I think as a general rule, to embark on pregnancy when you may not see your child go to university is potentially a very difficult situation.”

I agree on both counts, simply because what he said is true. Nature did not intend for women to give birth after menopause…if it did intend for that then most women would be able to conceive until the day they died. Pure and simple. And yes, having a child when your life expectancy after a certain age is decidedly up in the air is a potentially difficult situation…for the child.

Bullshit was called in that entry on both reasons and I’m calling bullshit on the bullshit that was called.

Yes, nature didn’t intend for a lot of things to be possible that our medical knowledge now allows. Does that mean we have carte blanche to do whatever we want? No. We have the science to clone people and nature clearly didn’t intend for that to be possible but does it mean we should? No.

Secondly, to completely dismiss the issue of what it means for a child and to do so in a sarcastic manner is completely narrow-minded. And I quote:

Secondly, the whole “Oh, what about teh babeez?” cry doesn’t take into account that parents die all the time and leave their children behind.

Truth be told the whole “Oh, what about teh babeez” comment is what really got me sideways today. Yes, parents die all the time before they thought they might and they leave children behind and it’s a sad situation. But it is simply selective thinking to banish the fact that statistically a parent bringing a child into the world that is say 30 or 40 has a much better chance of being around for that child than someone who is 63. Yes, people with various illnesses and longterm ailments also conceive at younger ages…I would wager that most likely someone that had battled cancer at the age of 30, or 40 even, probably has a better chance than someone at the age of 60+ of being around for the duration of what that child needs. So, yes “what about teh babeez” is exactly right. The slippery slope idea applies to both sides of the argument. Sure, it’s a “slippery slope” to get involved in who shouldn’t be allowed to conceive. But it’s also a slippery slope to argue for who should be able to conceive based simply on an ideal. I would be shocked to find anyone in their right mind who would argue that on the basis of reproductive rights a mother in active heroin addiction should be able to receive fertility treatment. That’s what the flimsy “slippery slope” argument can get you.

The online dictionary gives 62 different contextual definitions for the word “right”. Clearly as it pertains to this not all of them apply…some of them do:

1. in accordance with what is good, proper, or just: right conduct.

Is it good, proper, or just to pay for treatments that allow for birth at the age of 63, or 70, or 75? I think most people would probably agree that it falls on the side of “not”, otherwise it would be neither an anomaly nor newsworthy when we heard about someone doing so.

2. in conformity with fact, reason, truth, or some standard or principle; correct: the right solution; the right answer.

Is it in conformity with some current standard or principle that people should have children regardless of what those children will have to deal with…simply because they feel they have the “right” to do so? I don’t think it is.

4. fitting or appropriate; suitable: to say the right thing at the right time.

Is it appropriate or fitting that we reproduce with no thought to the consequences, simply because our “wants” are seen as the most important? Many people can afford to pay for fertility treatments. Does that mean they should? Not necessarily. Many people can naturally conceive children. Does that mean that they should? Not necessarily.

It doesn’t escape me that putting legal limitations on the conception of babies is certainly a precarious arena, especially in light of what we still go through today to exercise what is actually our reproductive rights as they pertain to the sovereignty of our bodies. But at the same time it also doesn’t escape me that choosing to bring a child into the world is an incredibly serious matter. I don’t have children and I’m sure it would be easy for someone to say that since I don’t how could I possibly have the right to weigh in on the matter. I’ve been in a position to make the choice of whether to have one or not and I chose not to. My choice was not made on the basis of what I wanted or didn’t want. It was made based on what I didn’t want to put a child through considering the situation it would be born into (as a disclaimer I wouldn’t ever judge a woman that chose not to have a child based on any other reasoning). And anyway, people that have never even been in a position to have a child have no less of a reason to feel one way or another about the issue, because we’ve all been children.

And that’s what I have to say about that.

 

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Crisis

June 29, 2009 at 12:48 pm · Filed under Domestic Violence, Fam, Violence

There’s one reason that stands out to me as to why I’ve lasted as long as I have with the job that I do. I have what I would consider a somewhat admirable ability to remain relatively okay and keep it mostly together in a serious crisis. Only when it’s serious though. Put me in front of something seemingly small and it’s usually enough to derail me. I’ve done a lot of thinking as to why this is (because really…it’s pretty backwards) and I’m grateful that my P was able to put it in words for me that I agree with. It’s a product of growing up in a household where crisis was sort of routine. You eventually learn to cope with it in somewhat of a stride because if you don’t you end up crashing every single time someone gets hit, or hurt, or abused. Sometimes as a result, it’s the seemingly small stuff that can tend to cause abnormal anxiety and distress (which needless to say, can be incredibly frustrating on a daily basis).

This is not to say that I don’t cry if, for example, a family member ends up in the hospital; but truth be told the malfunction of being used to crisis seems to allow a grace period of getting through it without breaking down. This is good in its own way, but also bad. What it really means is that the breaking down doesn’t come until later…sort of like a rubber band that has been stretched for days and is finally allowed to give way.

I’m still on the fence as to whether this is good in the long run or not. Is it better to just initially break down and get it over with? Or is it better to hold it all together in crisis mode only to end up completely drained and in tears when things calm down?

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