By the way, Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar?  Bring it.  I love Tim Burton’s work, even when I hate the result (Big Fish, par exemple, even though it has the yummy Ewan McGregor in it as well as the yummy Helena Bonham Carter) or the ending (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I’m looking at you).   However, I have yet to forgive you for Sweeney Todd:  The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.  I was anticipating that movie so much (and I don’t usually anticipate movies at all).  I mean, Carter, Rickman, and Johnny Depp?  In a musical?  It’s like a wet dream come true for me.  What could possibly go wrong there?  Don’t ask because I still can’t speak about it without getting choked up.

Ahem.

Back to Burton.  He is creative and bizarre with more than a dash of disturbing. I have never cared for Alice in Wonderland, so I am looking forward to his rendition–as long as he’s resolved his father issues.   Again, it has Depp, Carter, and Rickman in it.  How could it possibly go wrong?  I am a bit worried about the 3D effect because I get nauseous from that, but I know they’ve vastly improved the technology in the last twenty years.

By the way, I just have to say one thing very quickly about the Oscars.  For some reason, despite my lack of interest in most pop culture, I watch awards shows.  I DVR them and zip through all the boring parts, but it’s still tedious.  I think this is the last year I will even do that.  Here’s my observation.  Every time a new presenter came onto the stage, I said (out loud), “Who the fuck are you?”  I had no clue who half of them were.  I haven’t seen a single one of the Oscar-nominated movies, and there are only a few that even tickled my fancy at all.  The Hurt Locker is one of them.  Up is another.  A few in the foreign flick category seem interesting as well.  That’s about it.  I like the idea of Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, but I can’t see it.  I have a hard time watching any movie with rape themes, especially if the rape is portrayed. Numb3rs, the one show I watch (though this will probably be the last season as it has lost its juice), had a child sexual abuse episode last week, and it wrecked me to watch it.

Anyway.  None of that is really related to today’s entry.  Except the child abuse part.

As I have stated before, I have a difficult time being nice to myself.  It’s easier for me to put myself down and to abuse myself, in part because it was what I was taught.  There is a small part that is cultural in that you say nasty things about your loved ones so no harm comes to them (from the gods thinking you’re being too full of pride).  However, when you get down to it, it just feels right to put myself down.  I have been doing it so automatically and for so long, it’s second-nature to me.  What’s worse, it feels wrong to be self-complimentary or to do something consciously nice for myself.

As my therapist has said, I am going to have to go with what feels wrong for the most part for now.  Which is disheartening.  Most of the conditioned responses I have learned are harmful.  I know that in my head.  I used them to distract myself from what was really happening, and physical pain was always preferable to emotional pain.  In addition, I felt that if I attacked myself first, it could preempt a more vicious attack from outside.

The thing is, there are now no longer any vicious attacks from outside–they all come from within.  I mean, yeah, my mom says shit and my father says shit and they aren’t exactly nurturing to my well-being, but…my father cannot molest me any longer.  My mother cannot force me to be her confidant without complicity on my part.  All the end-of-the-world shit that was so very real to me when I was a kid is now mostly in my head.

I have been in a shitty place lately.  Shittier, I should say.  And, I get tired of trying to fucking tread water all the time.   I feel as if I’m being attacked by friendly fire, so to speak (since the demons are inside my head), and it’s getting harder and harder to defend against them.

So.  I had the radical thought today:  What if I tried to friend them?  I am not saying that I should accept everything they tell me and give in to their demands.  That’s not friendship.  I am saying, though, that they might have some things worthy of being heard.  If I can strip away all the crap they usually attach to their attacks, I might actually be able to find something useful.  I mean, let’s face it.  I have done a piss-poor job of trying to eradicate them, so I might as well try to work with them to a limited extent.

How will that work?  Dunno.  Haven’t a clue.  What I do know is that trying to block out their words all the time is fucking exhausting.  In a way, it’s like how I feel about my mother.  I am exhausted from listening to her and trying to block out all the shit.  So, if I can find a way to strip her words of the heated charge, then maybe I wouldn’t feel so shitty after I talk to her.

Back to the demons.  They say:  You are a lazy fat ass who isn’t doing a damn thing with your life.

Instead of me trying to deny it or push it out or block it or whatnot, I could respond by saying:  I am at a crossroads right now.  I need to decide what I am going to do, and then I need to do it.

They say:  You are fat, ugly, and disgusting.  No one will ever truly love you.

I say:  I am working on being healthy.  I will focus my energies on things that make me happy and healthy.

In other words, I can try to redirect what they are saying.

Again, this reminds me of my mother.  For all the chatter she fills my brain with, I really only need to have one or two stock phrases to say back to her.  The thing is, I have to find a way to not become engaged with my demons or with my mother.  It’s a classic power struggle, and I cannot win by fighting head-to-head with either of them (the demons being a conglomeration and a single entity).  As long as I get upset by what the demons say or my mother says, I lose.  It’s easier said than done, of course, but what have I got to lose at this point?

Back to doing things that feel wrong.  There is a strong part of me that does not want to change.  Every time I try to do something positive, that part of me resists with all her might.

I have worked out a system in order for me to actually do something.  I think it’s sad that I have to go to such lengths to–well, let me explain.  When I start thinking about something, say, getting a cat (since it’s a fairly harmless example), I think about it all the time.  I think about the reasons I want to do it and the reasons I should do it.  Then, I write about it.  I talk to friends about it.  I do this for a long time.  After I flesh out all the possibilities, I make a decision that seems like a snap decision, but is actually a decision I have spent a year making.  Once I make up my mind, I fly into action.  With my boys, I spent a month looking at cats on Petfinder.com.  I spent hours looking at hundreds of black cats until I found the pair of brothers that I thought were perfect for me.  I decided to call the shelter about them.  This was a Friday night.  I saw they were going to be at an animal adoption fair the next day.  I went.  I had them in my house Monday night.

I was mentioning to my therapist that it bothered me that I had to go through so many machinations just to make a decision.  The last time I looked for a job, I had to tell myself, just update your resume.  You don’t have to send it out.  Then, it was, just look on job websites.  You don’t have to apply.  I had to talk myself into every step of the way.  My therapist said she actually liked that because it meant I had to make a decision, a choice, with every step.  Since I tend to be an all or nothing gal, it was helpful for me to slow down and realize that I could say yes or no at each point.

So, what’s brewing in my mind?  A schedule.  I work better with deadlines, though I tend to resist them with all my might.  I am a big fan of setting hour blocks because I can do most anything for an hour.  I also know that once I start something, I will usually exceed the time-limit I have set for myself.  So far, I have an hour block for writing fiction, an hour block for cleaning the damn house (it’s past even my lax standards), an hour for looking for a job, and an hour for working out.  Hour and a half on the day I do weights.

In addition, I really need to stick to a sleeping schedule.  I am so tired, I can’t think.  I don’t know if a sleep schedule will fix that, but it can’t hurt at this point.

My therapist has repeatedly reminded me that I am not my thoughts, that I am more than just my intellect.  I have a hard time grasping that because for so long, I have based much of my persona on my brain.  It’s the one thing I know:  I am smart.   No matter what I hate about myself at any given time (I’m fat, lazy, neurotic, cynical, paranoid, OCD, enmeshed, thin-skinned, grumpy, negative, pessimistic, etc.), I have always been proud of my intelligence.

However, I am not my intelligence.  It is not me.  I can’t think my way out of my problems, though I can certainly put thought into how I am going to change my attitude and behaviors.   This is really difficult for me because I want to be able to batter my way through my shit with the force of my brain power.

It doesn’t fucking work that way.  In addition, I tend to get caught up in thinking about things so much, that becomes a distraction in and of itself.

Another thing.  My sleep has been off-the-charts horrible this week–which doesn’t help in the thinking department.  My brain is slow, thick, and sluggish because of my fucked-up sleep.  Earlier in the week, I almost got into an accident, and it was completely my fault.  Then, today, as I was pulling out of my driveway, I did not see a car that was driving down the street–though I looked both ways before I pulled out.  Fortunately, the driver of the other car saw me.

Back to taiji.  I have not being doing meditation for awhile because of the flashbacks.  However, I would intermittently have them during the time we did meditation, and I finally decided that I couldn’t avoid the flashbacks any longer.

Have you ever been in a place where you simply cannot do the same old thing you’ve always done?  Even though you have no idea how you’re going to go forward, there is no option of going back.  That’s how I feel right now.  And, because I have difficulty with change, it’s scaring the shit out of me.

Back to taiji.  So, I decided I had to do the meditation.  I trust Julie, and I would feel better experiencing the flashbacks under her watchful eye than if I just had them at home.  She taught me a new kind of meditation–one that distances oneself from one thoughts.  When the thought (or in my case, image) comes into my mind, I have to look at it straight in the, er, face, and say, “You are not me.”  Then, I let it go.

So.  We reach meditation.  I took a few breaths before we started.  Later, Julie told me that she had surrounded me with a white light during meditation–she’s got my back.   We started.  The images immediately flooded my mind.  To be more precise, the image.  The image of me as a little girl, pressed against the wall by my father, his hand on my neck.  He is saying, “You don’t ever say no to me.”  Over and over again, this image.

In my mind, the adult me (in my late twenties), all dressed in black (of course), is standing in the middle of the screen (and yes, my mind is often a screen) and moving the image out of my mind with her hands as I think, “You are not me” or “You are not a part of me”.

After a few minutes, a new image emerges.  It is of me on my bed with my father kneeling on top of me, his knees on either side of mine.  He is looking down at me.  During this image, the seven-year old me sits up in the bed and shouts at my father, “You are not a part of me!”

Then, meditation is over.  I have forgotten to breathe.  I have tears in my eyes, and I am shattered.   No matter how hard I tried to let the images go, they stayed with me.

See, my demons are especially insidious this week as well.   They are telling me that no one will ever be able to tolerate me in a relationship, let alone love me–see above negative qualities as reasons why.  I mean, I hate being with me all the fucking time, so why would anyone else?  My two most serious relationships ended because the other person found me tiring.  And, I can’t really blame them as I find me fucking tiring.   As I have said, I would never be in a relationship with me, so why should anyone else?

I find my training runs deep.  A rather unfortunately-stubborn part of me clings to the belief that I am nothing but what I was made to be–a sex doll and a whore.  And, admittedly, I’m damn good at it.  It’s another reason I’ve often thought of working  in the sex industry.

Because of my history, it’s not always easy to tell when I’m being sex-positive and when I’m just doing what my training tells me to do.  Again, there are extremes on each side that are easy for me to distinguish from the other.  However, there is a whole gray area in between that I am not quite so sure I can tell apart.

Forgive me.  My brain is scrambled, and my thoughts are not completely coherent.  I know that I am not making the best of sense in this entry, but I needed to get it down on (virtual) paper, anyway.

I feel burdened by all the things I need to do.  I am overwhelmed by all the things I need to change about myself.  I am panicked that I will be stuck in this damn rut forever.  I can’t go back, but I am so fucking terrified of moving forward.

I know some of the things I need to do, but I can’t kick my ass enough in order to do them.  I spend way too much of my time trying to force myself to do something, anything, rather than actually doing anything.

I got an email from my mother today.  I thought it was from Kel, so I opened it without thinking.  My mom had included pictures from a trip she and my father took, so there were pics of my father.  This was before taiji class.  A flood of emotions crashed through me as I saw the attachments.  I didn’t even open the pics, but immediately closed the email.

They don’t even feel like my family right now.  That’s awful for me to say, but it’s what I feel.  I read her words, and I wonder, “Who is this woman?”  I see the thumbnails of my father, and a surge of anger courses through me before I can tamp it down.  This is not my family, is it?  I talked to my brother yesterday, and he seems like the only one in my family who is actually related to me.   We have a shared history that is unique to the two of us.  One day, I need to sit down and ask him what he remembers from our childhood–but not yet.  Quite frankly, I don’t want to deal with it right now.

I am grieving.  The loss of the illusions of my family is hitting me hard.  I don’t know why, exactly.  My therapist probed this matter because it’s not as if I haven’t known this for a long time.  I’ve known that I can never live up to my mother’s expectations of me.  I know that I am a freak in my family and that they will never ever understand me–nor really want to understand me.  So why is it especially hard now?  Because the knowing has transmuted into a bodily feeling.  It’s no longer a head thing–it’s a heart thing, too.  I can no longer try to talk my way into believing that my mother and I will have the ideal relationship that I always wanted us to have.

I am not dealing well with this transition.  I have been self-harming in the last week.  I am trying to wean myself off of it, but I have to admit that I have given in more often than not.  Then, I feel soothed for a minute or two before the guilt sets in.

My defenses are all out of whack.  In the long run, this is a good thing.  In the short run, it sucks.

I am so fucking weary.  Emotionally, as well as physically.  And, yes, I know that I should be on a regular schedule and go do a sleep study and other stuff.  I really do.  I will try my damnedest to do so.

For the last ten years, I have thought on-and-off about being some kind of sex worker.  It’s mostly been a joke, but once in awhile, I couldn’t think of a real reason why I shouldn’t at least look into it.  Now, I’m too old and fat to be an expensive call-girl.  I’m not so sure I would want to do actual sex for money, anyway.  However, there are plenty of other job opportunities for a sex enthusiast.  I have a couple of reality shows floating through my mind (would have to go to cable for them).  I could open an online whorehouse with rooms for different fetishes.  But, realistically, I narrowed it down to two choices.

One, I could be a professional domme.  Mistress Minna.  Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?  I look good in black leather, and I can wield a mean whip.  Yes, I am a sub in real life, but I have switched before, and I am a very good top as well.  There is a dungeon in NYC owned by three women, and they have training sessions.  I saw a website of a local dominatrix, and it was so Minnesota-nice.  The whole idea of being a domme was interesting, but kinda tiring.  I mean, it’s a whole performance thing, and it would most likely give me an even more-skewed view of men.  In addition, I would have to actually meet these guys in person.  I’m really not a good people-person.  However, my house would be spotless, and I would get paid to make someone clean my house.  That, admittedly, is tempting.

However, in the end, it’s not enough.  Kel suggested phone sex operator, and I looked it up on teh Googley.  Love Google.  I read a few articles on how to become a phone sex operator, and I found two legit sites.  I am also toying with the idea of just doing it on my own.  I already have one friend expressing interest (ok, she probably was joking) in being one as well.  We could be start our own small business!

I know it sounds off-the-wall, but really, it would be a perfect job for me.  I can do it from home.  I don’t have to meet anybody face-to-face.  I can set my own hours.  I can make up stories to my little heart’s desire.  I can talk about sex.  I can still do the domme thing.  Mistress Minna still has a nice ring to it.  Or, Mistress Stiletto (h/t, Choolie).  It actually seems tailor-made for me.   I will keep you updated on the situation.

Switching topics, sort of, I had a meeting with my banker today.  He’s really fine, but he has one flaw.  The first time we met, he noted that he mispronounced my name, and I gave him the, “I was named after MN” spiel.  When he called and left me messages to set up an appointment, he mispronounced my name again.  I left him a message and pronounced my name correctly twice.  He left me a message and mispronounced my name AGAIN.  Now, I am used to people mispronouncing my name (Mee-na, which is actually the Asian pronunciation), and I normally don’t bother to correct them.  However, my banker specifically noted that he had mispronounced it and was eager to correct himself.

So, needless to say, I was irritated when I went into our meeting.  No matter how hot he is, his refusal to pronounce my name correctly was not very attractive.  Until I saw him.  Damn it, but he is fiiiiiiine.  I don’t want to date him–just fuck him.  I have decided that he can call me ‘baby’ in bed so we can dispense with names altogether.  Have I mentioned how fine he is?

I have had really bad dreams lately.  I mean, I have them most of the time, but they have been fast and furious as of late.  I hate sleep because I get more exhausted after.  Then, I need to sleep more, but that doesn’t help.  I almost got into an accident today, and it was completely my fault.  My judgment was shot as were my reflexes.  I am a danger on the roads, even more so than I normally am.

My mother:  She wants me to reply to her letter.  I haven’t done it yet.  I told her that I felt most of the issues should be dealt with when she comes back here (end of May).  She said, fine, but she would still like to hear my opinion now.  See a theme here?  Yeah.  ”OK, Minna, but here’s what I want from you, regardless.”

One thing, though, my mom did get the message about the airplane tickets.  She apparently still had a little difficulty booking her flight online (even after getting the new flight information from her colleague), so she called my brother and asked him.  Ha.

I hate that I still feel like I have to jump to her beck and call.  I am still engaged with her, regardless of  my knowledge that I have to find a way to separate.  I think about what I will tell her if I actually do become a phone sex op, and then I quickly shove it to the back of my mind because I don’t want to deal with it.  The first thing I thought was, LIE!  It’s my first reaction to her.  Sad, but true.  I have a deal with a friend of mine that if I die before my parents do, she will come in and take all the sex-related stuff from the house–including all my writings.  Anything related to sex has got to go.  Sex toys, gone.  Erotica, gone.  Sexy clothes, gone.

I might rescind the pact because I’m a fucking grownup, damn it.  It’s about time I act like it.  I know, I know, I am supposed to be celibate because I am not married (so says my cousin), but my family knows that I have sex.  I am not that dissimulating about my life, though they do not know the extent of my sex life.  I don’t think they need to know all about it, but I also am realizing that I am tired of hiding myself from my family.  There is an unspoken agreement that I don’t say or do anything that will make anyone in my family uncomfortable in any way.  This underlines my feeling that who I am is shitty and worthless and should just shut the fuck up.

Kel talked in the comments on the last post about the veil slipping.  I’ve always thought of it as my mask.  I used to have it firmly affixed to my face.  It was staple-gunned to my face, and I had a hard time taking it off–even when I was home alone.

Now, though, it’s two-sizes too small.  Even when I try to slip it back on (such as for the infamous trip back to Taiwan), it doesn’t fit quite right.  Before, I put it on automatically and never even noticed it was there.  Now, I can’t put it on without it pinching me in all the wrong places.  I can’t do it any longer.  And yet, I don’t have anything to replace it with just yet, either.  I’m caught in the inbetween, and I fucking hate it.

It comes back to the faith thing my therapist and I talked about when I was waffling about moving to SF and getting my MA.  I kept saying I didn’t have faith that things would work out.  My therapist finally said, “You act first without knowing how it’ll work out.  That’s faith.”  In other words, act first and the faith will follow–not the other way around.  It was revolutionary to me, and it still resonates within.

I got an email from Glimmertrain announcing their upcoming contest.   I used to submit to them all the time back when I was in SF.  For the first time in a long time, I felt excited as I thought about submitting pieces.  That is going to be one of my goals.  Submitting one piece a month (I like to set my goals either insanely low so I can exceed them or insanely high so I can meet them).  That’s more than doable considering how many pieces I have written.  GT’s current contest is the fiction open, any theme, between 2,000 words and 20,000 words.  No novels.  I can do that.

The thing is, most of the literary mags I’ve read (and granted, this was many years ago) don’t care for explicit violence/sex in the writing.  I have lots of the latter and some of the former in most of my writing.  I have thought about writing pieces minus the sex and/or violence, but no.  It’s how I write.  I am not going to tailor my writings to fit the literary journals.  Not to that extent, anyway.  I once had a journal respond to my submission by saying, “The violence is disturbing.”  It should be.  Violence is disturbing; I don’t use it as simple entertainment.

The last thing is that I would like to get back into theatre.  However, I will have to tackle that another time as that is an entry in and of itself.

I am allergic to alcohol.  It’s an Asian thing.  It’s the worst with wine and beer, but it’s also prevalent with hard liquor.  Over the years, I have realized that I can drink one mixed drink over the course of an hour and not be too badly affected by it.    The few times I have exceeded that limit, I have paid for it dearly.   I turn bright red all over when I drink too rapidly.  I start feeling flushed; my head hurts like hell; I have a hard time breathing.

Normally, I am fine with this.  In fact, I welcome it because it makes it very difficult for me to drink too much.  I am a cheap date, and I don’t like alcohol enough to mourn the fact that I drink so little of it.  Tonight, though, I wanted the oblivion that only drinking can bring.  Now, I am mad because I cannot attain that.  No wonder I do other self-harming behaviors instead!  The most socially-acceptable one (drinking) is extremely unpleasant for me.

My mom called tonight.  We didn’t have any arguments because we mostly steered clear of any incendiary topics.  She was able to book her flight with a little help from my bro.  However, and I know this is common with older people, she spent a great deal of time detailing her various ailments as well as those of my father and all their friends/relatives.  It seems like since I visited Taiwan, she has really become focused on dying.  She said she prays for a painless death (such as dying in her sleep.  Though, for me, it probably would be filled with nightmares that would literally kill me in my sleep.  I have died in my dreams before.  I do not recommend it) and then told me about a father of a friend of hers who died that way.  Apparently, he kept saying he saw Jesus Christ (a figure in a long white robe) even though he (the old guy) was not a Christian.

I have a hunch that my mother will redouble her efforts to save my soul before she dies.  Good luck with that.  My soul is pretty much past redemption.   She talked about how my father was sick over the New Year holiday and how worried she was about him.  She would pause as if she wanted me to voice my concerns, but I said–nothing.  Quite honestly, I simply don’t care.  I am not wishing him ill.  I don’t wish he would DIAF already.  I just…don’t care.  I feel guilty about it, but there isn’t much I can do.

I realized that the flashbacks in and of themselves are distractions.  I am not denying that they happened (though I am still not a hundred percent convinced), however, since I don’t have any illusions about my relationship with my father and what it might be, I don’t want to be bogged down by the flashbacks.   I have been avoiding meditation in taiji because I didn’t want to deal with the flashbacks, but they came anyway.  What I need to do is find a way to allow them to surface, feel them, and then let them go.   By avoiding them or dwelling on them, I am giving them–and my father by extension–to much power.  I have realized in the past few years that physically, I have nothing to fear from my father.  He is older and not in the best of health.

Which, as an aside, is kind of funny.  Despite being grotesquely fat, I am the only one in my family who doesn’t have high blood pressure.  OK, maybe I’m the only one who finds that funny, but this is my blog, after all.

Anyway, back to my therapy session.  I have been grieving this week.  The illusions I had about my relationship with my mother and what it could be were stripped away.   I had no illusions about my relationship with my father, and I have no inclination to try to forge any kind of meaningful relationship with him.  It’s simply not worth my energy, and more to the point, I have no desire for a real relationship with him.  More on desire in a bit.

So, I’ve been heavily grieving this past week.  What my therapist helped me realize, though, is that in addition to being mournful about the state of my relationship with my mother, I was…disappointed in her.  It’s hard to admit, even to myself, so it’s doubly-hard typing it.  All my life, I have been keenly aware of what a huge disappointment I’ve been to my mother.  Well, to both my parents, but again, I don’t care about my father.  It was my mother’s disappointment that fell heavily on my shoulders.  Not married.  No kids.  Not a Christian.  Bisexual.  Sexual at all.  No PhD or white collar job.  I felt so damn guilty that my life seemed like a repudiation of hers.  Even though I now know that nothing would be enough for me to live up to her expectations of a Good Daughter, I still yearn to find a way to please her.

This is when my therapist pointed out that as much as I have disappointed my mother by not being the daughter she wanted me to be, my mother has disappointed me by not being the mother I wanted her to be, either.  She did not protect me when I was a child from my father; she provided me with a piss-poor role model in the relationship department; she didn’t know how to nurture the freakiness that is me instead of try to mold me to fit her idea (and society’s) of who I should be.

She didn’t protect me.  She didn’t believe me when I spoke my truth.  She chose my father over me (and continues to do so).  SHE disappointed ME.

Why is it so difficult for me to admit that?  Because all my life, I was implicitly told that my wants, needs, and, yes, desires didn’t matter.   I wasn’t supposed to have any because it would be ungrateful for me to express that I wanted, needed, desired something other than what I had.  I believed that  I had no right to ask for anything other than what was given to me.    So, for me to admit that my mother disappointed me means that I actually dare to think I have the right to expect or want certain things from her.

Desire.  It’s a word my therapist brought up in my session, and it made me exceeding uncomfortable.  She said that I did desire certain things–a house of my own, a relationship of my own making, etc.  I desire a life that means something to me.  It will bear little resemblance to the life my mother wants me to lead (and, indeed, that is one of the issues at hand.  She wants me to be self-sufficient according to her), but it will be the one I desire.

Shit.  Just typing the word makes me nervous.  I am completely comfortable with desiring sex, but not with desiring anything else.  I still have it thrumming in my head that I don’t deserve it.   Deserve what?  Anything, really.  A house.  A relationship.  A life.  Putting voice to those desires means that a little part of me is saying, “Fuck that shit.  You do deserve to live a life of your own.”  It’s the same thing that is triggering my demons so badly right now.

Back to my mom.  Just as I cannot be the daughter she wants me to be, she cannot be the mother I want her to be.  I want some kind of relationship with her, so I have to let go of the illusions of what I think she should be and accept her as she is.  She is not going to be the one I go to for emotional support.  She will choose my father over me time and time again.  She will base everything she does on her relationship with Jesus/God, and she will try to convert me back until the day she dies or the day I do, whichever comes first.  She will try to wear me down into doing whatever it is she wants me to do.

For us to reach a detente, one of us has got to stop playing the game–and it’s not going to be her.

As for my demons, I have to learn not to be distracted by them, either.  They may have some truths on their side, but I have to decide to not let them twist the truths to suit their purposes.  In other words, I can acknowledge the truth of what they say (i.e., I don’t have a real job) without buying into their conclusion (i.e., I am a worthless piece of shit because of the aforementioned).  Well, when I’m not wracked with self-doubt, that is.  It’s not easy for me to shut out their voices as they are inside my head.  They know me better than anyone in the world, so they know how to turn me against myself.

As I talked with my mom tonight (or, more accurately, listened to her as I didn’t tell her anything of substance), I felt so much sadness, impatience, anger, and grief.  I have a lifetime of shit to unravel, and I am not a happy camper about it.  Not that I am ever a happy camper.  I hate camping.

I really really really wish I could get drunk without the really nasty consequences.  I crave oblivion right now.

It’s evident in my writing as well.  My blog entries contain an average of 1,500 (fair warning.  I completely made that up, but it seems about right) words each.  That’s a shitload of gabbing on one subject.  And, I usually have a main thesis for each entry, but from there, my thoughts diverge.  I don’t really have a problem with the way I think or talk or write, but it does lead to the main point of this entry.

Getting distracted in my blog entries is fine.  Taking a side road when I’m having a discussion with a friend about politics or what’s going on in our personal lives is also fine.  However, now that I am struggling to leave the old me behind and find a new way of being, I can’t afford to get bogged down with extraneous shit.

For example, my mother.  In my last therapy session, I was talking with my therapist about my frustrations with falling into the same patterns when talking with my mother.  In fact, it’s the last thing I blogged about as well.  I explained how the interaction would typically occur, and I concluded by saying how mad I was at myself for caving so easily.  My mother wears me down by her indefatigable vigor in complaining until I give in.  I know that the longer I argue, the harder she’s going to push for me to do whatever it is she wants me to do.   It’s the same damn thing every fucking time.

My therapist thought for a minute and said, “What prevents you from talking about the process rather than the content?”  In other words, why didn’t I say, “Mom, I know you would prefer I do it for you.  However, you are not hearing me when I say that I choose not to do it.”  It’s even better if I can say it without shouting it, but I’m not holding out hope for that just yet because I get so frustrated when talking to my mother.

I get so caught up each time in the specific argument, I don’t see that each argument is actually besides the point.  What matters here is that my mother and I have an amorphous business relationship as well as an amorphous personal one, and we need to clearly define both of these relationships so these kind of issues don’t need to be fought time and time again.    Otherwise, we both hunker down on our respective sides, dig in, and fight the same fucking fight over and over and over again.

One amusing anecdote.  My mom tried to book a flight online for a conference in Colorado.  She wanted to be on a specific flight because one of her colleagues was flying on that particular flight.  She couldn’t book the flight (it kept getting denied), so she emailed me and asked me to do it.

I didn’t want to do it.  I mean, I had been bugging her for ages to learn how to book flights online, and she had resisted for some time.   I admit, I thought she had fucked something up, and I just didn’t want to do it.  However, I finally took a look.  She had given me the times and the dates (Northwest/Delta), but I couldn’t find the flights she wanted.  I asked if she was sure, and she forwarded me the email from her colleague, and I went to Delta to try to find the exact flight.  The problem was, it was flying to Phoenix, not to Denver.  After I did some Googling, I remembered that the merger had just gone through.  The flight her colleague had booked most likely got changed.  I emailed her to explain the situation and to say that she could book the flight herself once she received updated flight info from her colleague.

It’s funny, but it’s also somewhat sad to me that she is a successful professional, and yet, she has to have a flight-mate to go to the conference.  She is a successful professional, and yet, she can’t do a simple thing like book a flight for herself.  When faced with a problem, she can’t problem-solve and come up with a solution.  It took me maybe fifteen minutes to figure out what had most likely happened; it never would have even occurred to her.

So, I am slowly starting to see that while they help me out a great deal monetarily, I help her out in many other ways.  She expects me to do these things in part because of the monetary aid, but she doesn’t truly realize how much she relies on me to do this kind of thing for her.  She is more cognizant of the fact that my brother provides tech help to her, but the day-to-day shit I do for her is not as noticeable.   Like, she will email me to look something up on Google or to ask what a word means.  Easy things for you and me to look up, but somehow beyond her ken.

I try to be charitable and say that she’s older, so the computer thing is not a part of her natural skill set.  However, it’s not part of mine, either.  I didn’t use a computer until I went to college, and I taught myself much of what I currently know.  My brother has helped me (he is invaluable as a techie), but I taught myself perhaps ninety percent of what I can do on the computer.  My mother is a smart woman; she simply chooses not to learn to do this kind of shit–in part, because she knows I can do it easily.

She wants me to be self-reliant.  We agree on this point.  However, I am not sure if she really realizes what it would mean if I became self-reliant.  It would mean that she needs to be self-reliant as well.  I don’t want to hear about her relationship with my father.  I don’t want to feel as if I’m responsible for her happiness and well-being.

In addition, she wants me to be self-sufficient in a way that she deems appropriate.  PhD, marriage, kids, white-collar job, God, cooking dinner for the family, etc.  She doesn’t want me to be self-sufficient in a freakish way, which is the only way I know how to be.  Let me correct that.  It’s the only way I want to be.  Of the things I listed that she wants for me, the only one I could see desiring anytime in the future is a PhD.  And, honestly, even that is a long-shot right now.

For me, I have to try to set aside the annoyance of my mother because that is blurring the main issue for me.  I have to become self-supporting for my sake.  As long as I remain in this enmeshed, blob-like relationship with my mother, I will think I’m worthless and unable to be a real person.

One other thing I discovered in my therapy session.  I am having a hard time letting go of who I was because I don’t want to ever forget what happened to me.  I feel almost as if I’m betraying the little girl who was abused by changing my beliefs and my actions.  It’s not a rational thing, but it’s there.  I have to find a way to honor that little girl without allowing her to keep me stuck in the past.  In addition, I tend to think of my identity in concretes.  ”Oh, I don’t like groups.”  ”Oh, I can’t be in a relationship.”  ”Oh, I am a night person.”   I see pieces of my identity as immutable, in part because I often feel like I have no core.  Yes, it sounds like a contradiction, but it’s my way of trying to convince myself that there is a coherent being inside me when I feel as if there is nothing there.  And, I sometimes put all my eggs in one basket.  The one thing I have always known about myself is that I am fiercely intelligent.  So, when I can’t make myself do something (like, say, change my thought patterns) through the sheer force of my intelligence, I beat myself up for it.  If I know I am like my mother in that I make up worst-case scenarios in order not to do something I don’t want to do/fear to do, why can’t I change that?

My therapist reminded me once that knowing something is true doesn’t guarantee that one can change it.   Intelligence isn’t everything.  Shocking for me to hear, and I don’t want to believe it, but it’s true.

However, she did say that I can use my intelligence to work for me instead of against me.  I can also use my obsessive nature to a good end (finding a job) rather than to my detriment (continuously thinking what a worthless fuck I am).

I am exhausted.  I am desolate.  I am emotionally-devastated.  My demons are having a grand time of it right now, and I’m having a hard time not believing what they’re telling me.  This is a shitty time for me.  I know I have to change.  I am already changing.  Going back is not an option because going back is choosing to die.  However, I am at a loss as to how to go forward.  I am stuck in between lives, and it’s so fucking hard.

I had another flashback in taiji yesterday.  It wasn’t a completely new one, but it was still not difficult–in part because it didn’t happen during meditation.  I know I have to deal with the secrets of my childhood even though every fiber in my being is telling me to bury the shit even deeper.  My emotional and physical reserves are at a low, and I have the impulse to freeze the flashbacks again.  I know, though, that it is time to deal with them.  I could disappear them if I expend an enormous amount of energy in doing so.  However, that, too, would be choosing to go back instead of choosing to move forward.

My mantra right now is, “A part of me wants to move forward.”  Unfortunately, a part of me wants to go back, too.  I know I have to let go of who I was, grieve for that incarnation of me (and for the childhood I had) in order for me to become the person I need to be.   I just wish it didn’t hurt so fucking much.

Obviously, this is a time of great change for me.  The problem is, the old behaviors no longer work for me, but I don’t have anything with which to replace them yet.  There was a glitch with my mother’s credit card for an auto pay (for, ironically enough, auto insurance).  I was pretty clear that she needed to take care of it because it’s her credit card, damn it.   She, however, has a thing about doing this kind of thing.  She says it’s because of the time difference, but I know it is more than that.  At any rate, she called last night to talk about it, and I–oh, wait.

I had my therapy session yesterday morning.  I wrote a letter in response to my mother’s letter (while studiously ignoring my father’s letter).  For the most part, I am going to tell my mom that we should talk about it in person the next time she is in the States.  Then, my therapist and I talked about my mother’s reaction to any problem (playing out the worst-case scenario and coming up with a zillion reasons why she positively, absolutely cannot do anything about it).  My therapist said that when my mom starts going into her programmed response, I need to think to myself, “Oh, this is my mother’s issue.  It’s how she deals with things.  It’s not personal.”  Now, this is a great thing to observe.  It really is my mother’s way of dealing with problems, and she is consistent in that she responds that way every damn time.

Back to the phone call.  We started talking about who should take care of the problem.  The problem being that her new card has a different number than the old one.  She knew that because she had problems with it before, but she didn’t think about how it would affect her auto pays.  She has many bills on auto pay, so it was a potential nightmare.  I said because it was her card, she had to take care of it.  She started whining (yes, whining) about why she couldn’t.  First it was the time difference (I said to call the toll-free number at any time).  Then, it was how she didn’t have time to sit on the phone and wait for fifteen minutes as she got transfered from person to person to person.  I said she was pulling out the worst-case scenario, and I started getting angry.  All thoughts of how it’s her issue and the way she deals with things flew right out of my head, and I fell back into my own habit of becoming stubborn, sullen, and recalcitrant.   Then she talked about how she hurt this and hurt that and how it was hard to blah blah blah.   She wanted me to call and then if I couldn’t handle it, she would see what she could do.  That seemed backwards to me as I thought she should try first and then I would handle it if she couldn’t get it done.

I tried to stand firm, but she fucking wore me down, as usual.  I agreed, grudgingly, that I would see what was up with the bank and then call the auto insurance first to take care of the problem (stanch the bleeding) and then take it from there.  I said if worse came to worse,  I could write checks for any overdue bills and then she could take care of the mess when she returned to MN.  The weirdest thing is that after I explained the options, my mom repeated them back to me almost verbatim as if she hadn’t heard me.  I kept saying that I had just said that, but she wouldn’t stop.

After I caved, she thanked me and said she was grateful for my help.  I didn’t say anything because I felt as if I’d been battered into doing it.  Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she said my father wanted to talk to me.  When she handed the phone to me, he started talking about the weather (it’s “very cold” there–around sixty).  I was still seething at that point, so I didn’t say much.  OK, to be honest, I also just did not want to talk to him, either.   The strange thing is that he did not hear what I said, either.  I mean that literally.  It got me thinking that perhaps both my parents are so used to being in their own little worlds, they don’t know how to interact personally any more.  I know both of them are losing their hearing to some degree, too.   And, English is the third language for both of them, so there is that barrier as well.  Still, I have to wonder if some mental faculties are slipping as well.

After the phone call, I was fuming at my mother.  I hated the way she infantilized herself in order not to do something that made her uncomfortable.  In addition, she refuses to use her credit card online, which makes things more difficult, indeed.  So, she dismisses real solutions as well, which is frustrating, too.  The thing is, I don’t like the fact that I recognize that I do a similar thing when faced with something unpleasant.  I think of the worst-case scenario, and I let it freeze me.  I dismiss one solution after the other, coming up with eleven-billionty reasons why I cannot do whatever it is in question.  Oh, I was also pissed because I have asked my mother to give me power-of-attorney for situations such as this, and she never has.

Plus, I was discouraged because I fell so easily into old behaviors.  Yes, I know that they are pretty ingrained and that I have had them for a lifetime.  Still.  Now that I have some awareness, I should be able to at least hold out for a minute before sliding right back into the old interaction patterns.

A few minutes later, my phone rang again.  It was my brother.  My mother had called him and asked him to help me with the problem.  My brother suggested we set up online access to my mother’s account.  Then, I could set up Bill Pay so the money would be drawn directly from the account rather than rely on a credit card.   My brother is very good with pragmatic solutions to situations like this.   He was going to set up the account, but he couldn’t because we don’t have the PIN for the account.  So, I called the bank, pretended to be my mother, and set up the account.   It turns out that the auto insurance is the only one done with the credit card, so nothing else was overdue.  And, I took care of the auto insurance this morn–um, afternoon.  It went very smoothly.  In fact, dealing with the insurance company was a best-case scenario.

I’m discouraged at how enmeshed I am with my mother.  I felt like I had no choice but to take care of this issue.  This is another reason I have to be self-reliant–so I can choose whether I want to do something for her or not rather than feel forced into it.  One thing I did choose to do for her was write a poem about the dragon for her book.  See, her symbol is the dragon.  It was the section of the book (her symbol paper) that gave us the most trouble.  I have always liked the dragon, but I stayed away from it because it was my mother’s symbol.  After receiving the quilt from Kel (which had dragons on it), I realized that I could reclaim the dragon.  It means something completely different to me than it does to my mother, and that’s just the way it should be.  She wrote her very first poem for her book, and it was about the dragon.  She asked me from the start to write one of my own, but I refused.  In the revisions, we had to pull a bunch of poems about the dragon due to copyright issues.  I had been mulling over what the dragon meant to me, and I decided to write a short poem for my mother’s book.  She liked it a lot, so it’s going to be published.

I chose to write the poem.  I didn’t feel like I had to write it or that I couldn’t write it (the two extremes),  and that is where I want to be with my mother for the most part.  She is not going to change.  Or, as my therapist said, I can’t expect her to change.  I have to change my own behavior for my sake and deal with whatever fallout happens as a result.  I’m having such a hard time with this because I am changing my identity.  Many things  I have taken to be written in stone are being erased with one fell swoop.  I don’t deal well with change in general, and everything is changing now.    I really am at a loss as to what to do.

That is me in the picture in the above right.  I am lying on the quilt that Kel made for me.   I took this picture maybe ten minutes after I opened the box.  As you can tell, I am very happy with the quilt.   So are my kitties, but that’s another story.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I have had something of a shitty…well, month, really.  The last few weeks have been really bad, though, even by my own standards.   One of my main problems is that I don’t sleep well or enough (usually).  When I DO get sleep, I usually sleep too much and/or the sleep is filled with nightmares.   I email Kel throughout the day, so she’s been the one to hear most of my woes.  She knows than sleep is ever-elusive for me.

She also quilts.  I have been envious of her quilts for quite some time.  She would show me pictures of quilts, and I would ooh and aah over them.  She usually told me for whom she was quilting and what she was doing with the quilt.   This time, she talked about a quilt, but she didn’t say for whom she was making it or what it looked like.  That led me to suspect that she was making it for me, but I kept quiet about it.  When she talked about a Sekrit Weapon to help me sleep, I was pretty convinced it was a quilt, but I didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

Which, in and of itself is odd as I don’t normally like surprises.  When Kel asked if I wanted to know the surprise, however, I said no because I trusted her.

Anyway, the post office has taken to just leaving a slip saying, “Sorry we missed you, come pick it up” rather than actually trying to see if I’m home.  Or, the doorbell is broken, and they don’t want to knock.  Whatever the reason, I got the notice yesterday that I had a package.  I knew it was from Kel, so I couldn’t wait to go pick it up today.  I got it home and carefully opened the box.  I pulled out the quilt and was stunned into tears.

When I picked up the package, I knew it was a quilt.  I had seen pictures of Kel’s other quilts, so I thought I knew what I was getting.  I did not have a fucking clue.  Kel included a voodoo goddess that I love as well and a letter talking about how she came about the idea.  She said something about the flaws, but all I could see was the love that went into every stitch.  I am getting teary just thinking about all the time and planning she put into the quilt.  She downplays her talent, but anyone can see that to receive such a quilt is such a precious gift, indeed.  And, I don’t know how she did it, but she created the perfect quilt for me.

My last ex composed a piece for me.  It had two parts–the piano part and the clarinet part.  I was a bit disappointed that he hadn’t included the cello (my favorite instrument, the one I played).  He told me it was called Violence in Her Mind, and then he played it for me on his keyboard–through the phone.   I was stunned at first and then reduced to sobbing by the end of the piece.  Somehow, he had managed to capture the essence of me in that composition.

Kel has done the same with this quilt.  The colorful squares are from Bali, so they represent her (she’s Island Girl or Hibiscus Girl) whereas the black squares and the dragon squares represent my soul–not because my soul is black, but because it’s my favorite color.  So, our souls are touching on the quilt, as they have in real life.   Red is my second favorite color, and the red, orange, yellow edging of the quilt reminds me of flames–and fire is my favorite element.

I have been toting the quilt from room to room, like Linus and his security blanket.  I have it covered with another blanket because the boys really really really liked the quilt–to sharpen their claws on.  Kel put ‘To Minna’ in one corner, which I read as “Go Minna”, which works, too.  I feel secure and safe when I have the quilt wrapped around me.   Kel made it to protect me from my demons, and so far, it has worked.

The dragons.  I have always felt an affinity with the dragon.  I haven’t really said it before this because it’s also my mom’s symbol.  However, once I saw the dragons on the quilt, I realized that I could claim the dragon as my own.  It means something completely different to me than it does to my mother.  So, in a way, Kel has helped me in my separation process without even realizing it!

Here is the thing.  I am touched, blessed, and humbled that someone would do this for me.  I can’t tell you how much it means to me.   I have a hard time believing that I’m worthy of such a quilt, but I accept it.

In addition, it has made me realize that I take for granted all the wonderful, amazing things my friends do for me on a daily basis.  When I am depressed or sad or just down in general, I start thinking that nobody loves me, blah blah blah.  I forget all the emails, FB posts, comments on my blog, phone calls, etc., that my friends make to me, some on a daily basis.  I forget that my best friend wants me to live next door to her and that Natasha will take care of my boys for me when I am out of town.   In short, I forget that I have a support system who love me with all their hearts.   Now, I have a tangible expression of that love to remind me that I am not alone.

I will write more about that in the next entry, but right now, I just have to thank Kel from the bottom of my heart for this precious gift of love.  It amazes me that she gets me even though we have yet to meet in real life just yet.  I thank the heavens that she reached out to me on FB (through a mutual friend) because in her, I have found a kindred spirit.  We call ourselves twins because we have gone through similar things in our lives and because we have similar sensibilities.

She has enriched my life in so many ways (including introducing me to three fabulous kids, know in the blogosphere as The Professor, The Artist, and The Ambassador).  I can’t thank her enough for her presence in my life or for her–MY quilt.  I love you, Kel.

P.S.  For those on FB, look at the quilt, not me!

I told her about my suicidal thoughts.  I told her I was thinking more about suicide.  We talked a bit about that, and then, well, let me back up.  I first talked about how me being depressed for the past umpteen years had served a purpose in our family.  If my family could focus on what’s wrong with Minna, then we never had to look to see what was wrong with the family in general.  And believe me when I tell you that there is a lot wrong with my family.

So.  I bought Ballboy on Thursday.  I will post a pic at some time, but not right now.  This was a tangible step for me, a way to assert that I have tastes that I will now openly express.   It was, if I may say,  a bold step for me, and I felt good about it.  Almost immediately following the purchase, I was filled with sorrow, grief, and the suicidal ideation started.

This is what my therapist said.  I have substituted suicidal ideation for my depression.  She validated the grief and sorrow I am feeling, but she added that if I start obsessing about being suicidal, then I can say, “I can’t possibly think about getting a job because I’m suicidal.”   whabs actually hit it on the head when she said that I want people to call me crazy.  I’m not doing it on purpose, but that’s the underlying rationale.  If I can label myself as the patient, then I have to be taken care of, and I don’t have to take care of myself.

This may sound harsh, but she was saying it from a loving place.  See, like many of my friends, she actually has a higher opinion of myself than do I.   She gets impatient when I come up with excuse after excuse to not move forward.  She doesn’t expect me to leap forward, and she wants me to honor my grieving.  She just doesn’t want me to substitute one crutch (suicidal ideation) for another (depression).

We talked more about Ballbaby standing on the bridge and crying.  She said it was like me.  I am a baby, really, crossing the bridge from the known to the unknown.  Thinking about suicide all the time means that I don’t have to look to the other side of the bridge.  I have a tendency to play out the worst-case scenario in my mind and then take it as fact that said scenario will play out.  In this case, I fear that if I start slowly expressing myself more and more, then my family will have no use for me.  No, really, my deepest fear is that they will not love me.

Is it possible?  Yes, but it’s equally possible that they will just shrug their shoulders and say it’s Minna being Minna.   Taiwan sucked, but it did one thing:  it made it crystal clear that me stripping myself of every possible offensive aspect of my personality in order to appease my family does not work.  It doesn’t appease them, and more importantly, it doesn’t work for me.

Back to Ballbaby.   Well, back to me, actually, crying on that bridge.  There are valid reasons for me to be crying.  My grief is legit, and I need to feel it.  The more I try to stuff it back, the more it hurts.  And, I’ll be honest.  It fucking hurts a lot right now.  The grief is heavy in my body, which is unusual for me.  I have spent much of my life living in my brain.  Now, my body is reminding me that it’s not merely a vessel in which my brain is carried.

Back to suicidal thoughts for a second.  My therapist said that she didn’t want me to think I was just a passive receiver of the suicidal thoughts.  She wanted me to interact with them and say, “Oh, this is another way of obsessing so I don’t have to face the unknown.”  I asked her what I should do when I couldn’t interact with the thoughts because I was overwhelmed by them.  She said that for those moments, I needed a list of things to do when I was truly feeling suicidal.  Call a friend.  Go to said friend’s house.  Stay there.  Call the crisis center.  Call her, but not in the middle of the night.  She said I needed to post this list in every room.

The other thing we discussed is how I have a set idea of who I am, and I tend to see my traits as impermeable.   “I am moody”.  ”I am a dork.”  ”I hate tradition.”  ”I don’t want to be in a relationship.”  ”I am a freak.”  While there may be truths in all these statements, they aren’t the whole truth.  So, when I think about becoming self-reliant, I have to shed many of my preconceived notions about myself.  In other words, I have to stop getting in my own way.

My therapist also said I needed to parent my own baby (the new me, as it were).  I wouldn’t be perfect (no parent is), and sometimes, I wouldn’t want to do it (no parent does all the time), and that was OK.  She asked me what I wanted to say to Ballboy before we ended the session (she gave me extra time, too).  I said that I just wanted to tell him it was OK to cry.  She asked me gently if I could hold him as he cried.  I said I could try.

My brother called me tonight to talk about work.  I mentioned a house I had my eye on, and that expanded into him sending me an email with other houses from my target neighborhood (right next to Kiki!).  There are some really cute houses for very reasonable prices.  The biggest problem is going to be standing firm with my bro because he and I have very different ideas of what makes a house great.  (He’s my agent).  As I keep telling him, “It’s my house–not yours.”  Again, it’s the issue of my needs, wants, and desires being heard.

I am not very good at nurturing myself.  I am much better at abusing myself.  That has to change.  Buying Ballboy was a step in the right direction.  Buying bagels and the cheesy cheesy cheesy creamy cheesy cream cheesy cheese was another.  Right now, I have a Raven cat in my arms, snuggling and cuddling ‘his’ breast (the right one) while resting his head on my right arm.  I went shopping at the co-op right after therapy, so it’s been a good eating day.

I feel like I’ve been through the wringer.  I have to accept, however, that with living comes pain.  I’m going through some major shit right now.  One foot forward at a time.  That’s all I can really do.  Right now, that’s enough.

P.S.  I love Leonard Cohen.  That is my reason for embedding videos by him.  No relation to my entry at all.

#1 (OK, this is the second paragraph.  I lied.  Deal).  My mom’s magnum opus went through the process at a very fast-pace and is now accepted to be published.   Why am I patting myself on the back for this?  Because I worked my ass off on it, and that shit looked good.  I had an interactive (or whatever it’s called) table of contents (if I updated the chapters, I could automatically update the TOC, too) and everything.  I mean, damn.  That was some of my best editing work ever.  I really hit the ball out of the park with this one.  Yes, a second round of edits is coming up, and yes, I made a few mistakes, but overall, I did a kick-ass job.  Pat, pat, pat.

#2.  In the last three weeks, I have lost an inch-and-a-half around my waist, which translates to 7.5 pounds.  This is exactly how much I lose each week whenever I start losing weight.  I had forgotten how…not easy…steady the loss is in the beginning.  I won’t say easy because it’s been damn hard work.  Still.  It’s been a nice little boost to pull out the tape-measure (I don’t do scales) and see the steady loss.

Now that that is out of the way, I would like to say that once I am done with my mother’s magnum opus and a couple other things I am doing for her right now (including booking her flight to Colorado because apparently the interwebs is too tough for her, and no, Mom, I do not want to go with you to your conference), we will be setting some very clear delineations between what is my job and what isn’t.  When we started working on her magnum opus, we just said I would edit the thing.  That was it.  Oh, it also included re-typing her thesis because that was lost in the Great Hard Drive Crash of Aught…Something.  We only had hard copies, so re-type it I would.  That was part of the deal, and it was only seventy-some pages, so whatever.

Then, she had problems with the pics.  My brother took care of that.  He also did the tables.  I am not a whiz at the Excel, though I can use it if need be.  Then, it was layout.  The publishing company sent a PDF with all the things they required in their manuscripts.  OK.  Not exactly my purview (and I didn’t get it until after I started), but whatever.   Then, for some reason, we kept having problems with one chapter.  It was a chapter on her symbol paper (as a sandplay therapist, she had to write a paper on a symbol.  She chose the dragon), and I nearly ripped my hair out over that one.  When I do an edit, I name the paper Dragon Copy Whatever.  1, 2, 3, etc.   For some reason, my mom could not get it in her head that I was labeling them in chronological order.  She kept saying I hadn’t included her changes for the dragon symbol chapter.   I would look at the latest version and include whatever she sent.

The last straw was when two days before deadline, she complained about the section again and said I had gone backwards in the editing.  Well, that’s because she sent me an old copy.  So, I had undone the editing I had previously done, and then had to listen to her bitch about why the changes she had made weren’t in the section.  I yelled at her for that one because I had wasted many hours on that fucking chapter due to her stubbornness to really learn how to use computers.

The absolutely worst part, though, was that she was supposed to turn in the manuscript from Taiwan.  The publisher is in England.  She started whining about how difficult it was for her to print in Taiwan (she doesn’t have a car, but still.  Take the damn bus to the print shop), and it would be so much easier if I just sent it.  They needed two hard copies as well as two disks.  Don’t ask me why because I do not know.  Well, I do.  They didn’t want to print the copies, that’s why.  Anyway, I agreed to send the hard copies to the publisher, but I was disgruntled because it’s not that much easier for me to send it than it is for her (in fact, it turned out to be a nightmare, but that part was my own fault).  Then, again, two days before deadline, she wanted me to add another whole…how do I explain?  She administered tests to her clients.  They are called protocols.  She wanted to include one more set of protocols.  HELL NO.  I was already busting my ass to finish the damn book on time.  I was not going to add more protocols!

I did put my foot down to that.  We might be adding them now if the publishing company can find money for it.  Oh, then my mother wanted me to bring a hard copy with me to Taiwan.  The sucker was three-hundred pages.  No fucking way.  She could print it out her damn self.

The point to all this ranting is that because we did not have a clear contract, she kept pushing the boundaries of the definition of my job.   I went from simple copy editor to all-around Minna-of-all-trades.

The above example actually ties in nicely with the main point of this entry (thus, the slow reveal).  Awhile back, I wrote about how I’ve been trained to be the perfect sex doll.  I was taught that my needs, my desires, my wants weren’t important; my only function was to satisfy the needs of my partner.  Well, I have realized that I have been trained to also believe that I am not important in my family.  The real me, I mean.

I have written many times about muting my personality around my family until there is no me there.  The reason is because I feel as if I’m allowed into my family on sufferance.  I am tolerated as long as I am useful.  Therefore, my mom loves me because I do shit for her and because I give her emotional support.  My father loves me because…well, I don’t think he actually does love me.  However, he tolerates me because I’m his daughter and…I don’t rightly know.  He actually doesn’t really tolerate me as I only see him a few days a year, the vacation to Taiwan, notwithstanding.  As for my brother, he likes me because I listen to him and I allow him to unwind.  He can be more relaxed around me than he can be around his wife.  To be fair, I rely on him to be my tech support, so there is some mutual sufferance occurring.

In other words, I had to make myself useful to my family in order to feel as if I were acceptable.  There are so many things about me that they dislike or of which they disapprove.  In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to say something about the essence of me that anyone in my family really liked. Therefore, this separation thing really feels like I’m about to test the hypothesis that I’m expendable to my family if I don’t do what they want me to do.

Love on contingency.  This belief has permeated my other friendships.  I don’t call people because I don’t want to intrude.  For years, I have downplayed my depression and self-destructive behaviors because I didn’t want to worry anyone.  And, more to the point, I didn’t feel worthy of having anyone worry about me.  I tend to be very ‘up’ when I am around other people because again, I feel my worth is in how entertaining I can be.  And, let’s face it, I can be pretty damn entertaining.

My whole life, I have believed that my worth is wrapped up in what I do for others and not in who I am.  In my family, this may very well be true.  Outside of my family, it’s only true with people who aren’t really my friends.  My true friends are nonjudgmental, supportive, and love me for me.  I know this even if I don’t always feel it.   My family, not so much, and that’s why I’m having such a hard time with the idea of being my own person instead of who they want me to be.  Will I still be welcomed in the family if I start standing up for myself and being myself?  I simply do not know.

Today, I made the promise not to kill myself.  I realized that while I balk at making a blanket resolution to not kill myself at all, I am comfortable with mayhaps making the promise every day.  We shall see.

With that off my chest, way to go, Saints!

OK.  Enough sports talk.

I met up with my best friend, Kiki, last night.  I love hanging with her because we are like two peas in a pod, only she’s much more positive than I am.  We are soul sisters.  We can go for months without talking, and when we see each other again, we pick up right where we left off.

When we talked about the letters my parents sent me, she got mad.  It’s been gratifying to see the responses of my friends because I can’t summon up anything other than grief, guilt, shame, and a teeny bit of anger at my father for throwing in the bit about how much the trip cost.  For the most part, though, I am weighted down by the crushing sadness.

I look at my hands, and it’s as though they are dissolving in front of my eyes.  The visage that I have created, the 3D hologram of me is crumbling–and I can’t do anything to stop it.

Kiki couldn’t believe that my parents would send me those letters so soon after the trip to Taiwan and that they specifically linked it to the trip.  She said, “Don’t they know how much you sacrificed to go?”  That hit me hard because it underscored the whole fucking dynamics of my family.

The answer is, of course, no.  They do not know what it took for me to get on that plane and visit them in Taiwan.   They do not know how much it cost me to go through each day while I was there.  They know none of this because I tried my damnedest not to let it show–as I have for all my life.

The other thing we talked about is how my mother is not going to change.  Her ability to look at herself is very limited, and I don’t see it happening at this point in her life.

A disclaimer:  I have no interest or desire in building any kind of real relationship with my father.  I feel shitty about it because it has been drilled in my head since day one that family trumps all, but I can’t pretend to have feelings for him when I don’t.  Besides, he has no interest in having a real relationship with me, either, though he would never admit it.

So, I am not answering his letter.   Quite frankly, it’s not worth my time.

But my mother, on the other hand…I still hold out hope that she and I can carve out a semblance of a real relationship.  One that is based on a mother and daughter interacting in a way that is healthy to both women.  The problem with that, of course, is that I have no reference to how a mother and daughter should act towards each other.  My mother had a shitty relationship with her mother (who was a lot like my father), so she also has no basis as to how a mother and daughter should interact.

A dead feeling enters my heart when I think about it, however, because our relationship is so fucking entwined and messed up.  I don’t know where to begin trying to unravel that nightmare.   And, let’s face it, my mother and I have thirty years of shit that we would have to wade through in order to have a viable relationship.  Which, would mean both parties admitting that something is drastically wrong and in dire need of a change.  Take a wild guess as to which party might not be so sanguine about turning her eye inward.

Kiki was saying that I should ask my mom just what she does love about me.  That hit me even harder because outside of the things I do FOR my mother, I can’t think of anything about me, personally, that she loves.  And that made me even sadder.

I hurt.

My whole being hurts.

I can’t sleep.  Oh, I know, I’m infamous for my lack of sleep, but it’s even worse right now.  I find myself nodding off as I’m driving, and I haven’t done that on a steady basis in many years.  In fact, I am slipping in many ways, and I am not very happy about it.  The self-abuse thing, for one.  The only one I haven’t done (yet) is cut, and it’s partly because I feel like it would be the last straw.  The funny thing is, though, that for years I used throwing up as the barometer for the last straw.  Yet, I have done that in the past few months more times than I’ve done it in the last…five years or so.  Again, I have justified it by saying, “Well, I only do it when I feel nauseous” which is true, but for someone like me, that’s the first step down a very slippery slope.  As for the burning, well, yeah.  The less said about that, the better.

I hate the fact that I have reverted to using these coping mechanisms.  I hate the fact that I automatically reach for them, rather than, say, calling or emailing a friend.  At the same time, I obviously don’t hate it enough to stop.  Although, to be fair to me, I really am only burning.  I stopped the throwing up bit.

My friends tell me that I am stronger than I think I am.  They say that I can do this, that I can get through this, that I can be a viable human being.  OK, OK, they think I already am a viable human being.  The thing is, I don’t feel strong; I don’t have faith that I can actually do the things I need to do in order to support myself; I most certainly do not feel viable.

I feel like I can’t even tread water right now.  Every little thing that crops up now only adds to the burden.  Things that would normally be irritating, but manageable, now seem like impassable obstacles.

When I was depressed, I was too deadened to do anything other than think about killing myself and numbly make it through each day.  Now that I am not depressed any more, I realize that simply surviving is not enough.  The problem is, I do not see a way to do anything other than grit my teeth and plod onwards.  My life fucking sucks right now.  Dealing with all this family shit is killing me.  And, I have to be honest in that I don’t know if it will be worth it in the end.

OK.  I’m skirting around the issue, which isn’t like me.  For the first time in a long time, I am actively contemplating suicide.   I feel like I’m caught in a net, and I can’t cut my way free.  I am too tired to struggle any longer.  I don’t have any fight left in me.  In part, I can’t face what I need to do to my family if I am to break free from the dysfunction.  In part, I am just so fucking exhausted that I can’t think.  But mostly, I just can’t imagine living like this.  It hurts so goddamn much.

The whole family mantra was a lie.  The family facade was simply that–a facade.  We are connected by blood and name only.  The dysfunction and the deceit..I will be taking a hammer to all the illusions and smashing them into smithereens.   I know the ramifications from it cannot be good.  I don’t know if I have the strength–but I know I cannot remain where I am now.

In addition, there’s a little voice inside my head saying that my family is right, that I have no place in this world.  I feel guilty for existing when I am contributing nada to society.   And, I feel the real me slipping away.  I wrote a while ago that I had to choose between life and death if I didn’t want to remain stuck in the inbetween.  I couldn’t keep one foot in each camp, as it were, because then I really wasn’t a part of either.  I still believe this to be true; I am just not sure I can bear to choose life.