Today wasn’t actually that bad, but there have been many days (and a lot of them in recent history) where I’ve wanted to sit down and have a temper tantrum.
I bought the new Barenaked Ladies album last night on iTunes primarily for A as it’s kid’s music, but I’m enjoying it as well. I really liked this song, so here are the lyrics:
“Bad Day” by Barenaked Ladies
I’m havin’ a bad day.
There’s nothin you can do or say
to help me thru this bad day.
I think I’ll just stay in my room.
They didn’t need to say
that they didn’t wanna play
I coulda guessed it anyway
that’s why I’m here in my room.
It seems like I’m the only one
who’s not outside an’ havin’ fun.
I wish this day had never begun.
I think I’ll just stay in my room.
(music)
Sometimes I wanna run and hide.
Today I wanna stay inside.
Tell my bike to take itself for a ride
I’m staying in today.
See the toys lyin’ on the floor?
I don’t want them anymore.
Think I’ll sell them back to the store
or give them all away.
It feels like I’m the only one
who’s not outside an’ havin’ fun.
I wish this day had never begun.
I think I’ll just stay in my room.
I don’t needs hugs and I don’t want food.
I want to stay here in this lonely mood.
I don’t care if people think I’m rude
I wish they would all go away.
(music)
Dad comes in and tells me with a kiss
everyone has days like this
brought my dinner, said that I was missed.
I think I’ll be ok.
I know I’m not the only one
to stay inside and watch the fun.
Thanks a lot, that helped a ton
tomorrow’s gonna be a better day.
A told me yesterday that she wishes we could go back to church sometime. Truth be told I don’t know that it’s “church” she misses, but rather the Sunday School glass with games and crafts. J is gone for a while longer at his boy’s gaming weekend so it’s just us girls this morning and we’ll likely get ready here shortly and trek off to church.
I grew up in a Roman Catholic family. My father went to Catholic school as a child and my mother was very very involved in our church. Looking back on it, my experiences with going to church every Sunday, CCD (Catholic religious teachings) classes every Wednesday after school, holidays, confession, etc etc make me wonder how much of it for our family was really about the faith and how much was about the perception in the community. Probably a deeper topic for another time.
At age 16 shortly before confirmation I decided I had too many questions to really WANT to say “yep, I’m Catholic” without having them answered. So I asked. My memory is a little murky here but I remember that the priest didn’t take very kindly to being asked questions–now as I was a teenager it’s very possible I may not have asked, but rather challenged. The result was that my mother agreed to let me go to any church I wanted on Sunday mornings so long as I still went to service with her on Saturday evenings. I think I went to almost every church in our small town.
I took away that a lot of them are very similar and I didn’t feel like I’d found what I was looking for. In college I began exploring Wicca. It felt more comfortable to me and I practiced as a solitary witch for 2 years. After that time, I still felt close to the Wiccan beliefs but didn’t really practice with any structure. Instead I started just “believing” in my own mish mash of Lelism. I’d say nightly prayers and just tried to be a good person.
Once our daughter was born, the topic of religion in our family came rushing to the front again. All of a sudden after 5 years of not really going to church or having a formal belief system I felt compelled to pick one for our child. I wanted to make sure she had some religious education and then she could choose when she was older what she believed. It’s strange though..I didn’t decide to start practicing Wicca again even though that was what I felt most comfortable with. Instead I started looking at the Christian community and we started touring churches, attending services to decide where we would go. We found a local church not far from our home that had a good children’s program and that’s where we had A baptized (Methodist). Soon after though we stopped going again.
We did keep up with teaching A a nightly prayer and encouraging her to pick one thing every day to add to her prayer to be thankful for. We taught her that when we’re done with our toys and want new toys that we donate them. We take her shopping with us for Toys for Tots, donations to the women’s shelter, or the angel tree at the beginning of the school year to buy supplies for a child. We read her Bible stories as well. She’s a very caring, generous little girl.
About 2 and a half years ago I felt like we should try this again and so we went through the looking process another time and found a Presbyterian church we liked. Good children’s program, nice community, and a dynamic pastor. We went faithfully for a year and became members of the church. I helped out in the Sunday school room as needed and J ushered from time to time. Soon though we fell into the same trap of no longer going. I think it started with one or both of us being really sick for a couple weekends in a row followed by being out of town and all of a sudden it had been 6 months since we’d gone.
So today I’ll take A. I feel like I’m missing something in the spiritual belief arena. I’m not sure that this church is what I’m missing, but I know there’s a gap. Maybe I’ll stop by the used bookstore after and pick up a couple of the books that I used to rely on when I practiced witchcraft. Something I need to remind myself is that in filling this gap, I don’t necessarily need to “play by the rules”. I can go to church on Sundays to help provide the nurture my daughter needs in that arena and also say my own prayers or have my own small rituals to fulfill mine.
As children we start to build a set of rules and beliefs based on our observations of the world and what we are taught by others. I remember Christmas when A was 2 years old. She started to piece together that when she opened the paper on a box that there was actually something IN the box and it was for her. The rule she built from that was “anything wrapped in a box must have something in it for me.” That rule had to be shaped as she got older and began to realize that not everything that came in the mail or was wrapped was always for her. By her 3rd birthday she had it figured out.
My personal rule set is rather skewed and has been for a long time. I built rules based on my observations of the world and what I was taught, but I never really completed the modification process. My set of rules that I apply to the rest of the world is a much more fair set than those I apply to myself.
Lel Rule: Lel is not allowed to be angry. Lel doesn’t deserve to be angry because Lel has it pretty good, so it’s selfish and wrong for Lel to feel or express anger. Lel can be angry about something that happens to someone else, but not anything that happens to her. If Lel feels angry about something that happens to herself, then Lel should immediately rationalize why it’s not ok for her to feel angry and promptly feel resounding guilt about the anger.
A concrete example would be the car accident at the end of last year. After the accident J was angry. He expressed this primarily in words, but he definitely was angry. I didn’t have any problem with him being angry. Actually I completely understood it and didn’t try to talk him out of it or make him feel bad about being angry. On the other hand, I wasn’t angry. Or at least I didn’t allow myself to be. I was frustrated at the inconvenience, but what I remember from that incident was that the whole time I kept telling myself and others when I talked about it how lucky we were, how it could have been much worse, that thankfully we had insurance, that everyone walked away. I never once expressed anger at the stupid action of the woman who started the chain of events resulting in the crash.
The same thing happens when I’m talking to C about something that is causing me anxiety. The first thing I do either out loud or in my head is tell myself that I really have no right to be upset or anxious because I have a family, a job, a home, etc etc. This is one of those things that we’ve come back to several times over the past two years.
We came back to it again yesterday. The root appears to be that honestly I just don’t have much empathy for myself. I have oodles of it for other people, but when it comes to cutting myself any slack it’s just nonexistent. Apparently I’m filled with bottled up anger and a lot of it is bubbling to the surface as J and I go through our marriage counseling. 12 years of resentment and anger are wreaking havoc with my body right now in fun constant panic attacks.
I think over the years I’ve managed my pent up anger by keeping myself busy. I’ve built myself an endless to do list and just kept the anger on the back burner because I’m in constant motion and don’t have to acknowledge it if I’m busy busy busy. As part of our couple’s work we’re starting to strip away some of the Lel daily duties list which is supposed to make me less tired and hopefully more interested in intimacy with my husband. The theory is you can’t be interested in sex if you’re too tired. So we now have a housekeeper coming in every two weeks and J has started to actually pick up some of the tasks in our daily lives so the shift in responsibilities is supposed to move closer to a 50/50 versus a 90/10. The problem is that now that I have “time” I don’t have my coping mechanism any more and I’m now struggling with trying to manage the emotions that are pouring out..mostly pent up anger which results in guilt and so on.
So the outcome from my appointment yesterday was that I’m supposed to try to play by the rules. Not the rules that are all mucked up and apply only to Lel, but the rules I apply to the rest of the world. I’m supposed to try to see myself and my emotions as I would see similar emotions in my daughter and allow myself to feel them and to feel that I’m entitled to them.
I’ve never been good at playing by the rules….
It’s been a long time since I’ve written. I think about writing daily, but then it’s easier to avoid trying to put thoughts on paper (or screen as the case may be) and I convince myself that I’ll take time to do it “tomorrow”. A LOT of “tomorrows” have passed since January.
I think I need to start writing again. I have this habit of withdrawing more when I’m not writing and falling back into the habit of just burying my feelings and planning to deal with them “tomorrow”. Then eventually after enough “tomorrows” they bubble up and I’m overwhelmed. Often when I’m in withdrawl mode I’m also just in autopilot survival mode. “Just make it through today” becomes my mantra and again I’m not really surviving anything, just putting it all on pause instead.
So at a high level here’s what has been going on the past 5 months:
A was accepted into our school of choice, then district budget changes forced the closing of that school. Now we’re on a waiting list for our second choice and have not heard yet.
J and I have started marriage counseling. He made the demand that if things don’t improve in our bedroom that our marriage is over. We’ve gone twice individually and three times now as a couple to a therapist who specializes in intimacy issues. I didn’t feel comfortable with us seeing C as a couple. I am still seeing C for individual therapy every 2-3 weeks.
The new job has been a rollercoaster. The people are nice for the most part (I had one personality conflict that I’m working through with the other individual and I think it will be fine). The work is different than what I did at my old job, but it’s good. I find I miss aspects of my old job and am constantly questioning whether or not this is really a good fit or if I need a complete and total career change–mid-life crisis anyone?
An old friend from college is going through a divorce and ended up coming here from KS on a bus with just two duffel bags of belongings. He’s been staying with us for the past 3 weeks and will be with us through June until he can save up enough to get his own place. I was able to help him get a job doing contract work for the company I work for.
We got a dog this past Monday.
Ok, I think those are the high level bullet points. There are obviously more things going on mostly as a footnote to the above items. I’m in a rabbit hole today that I fell down yesterday. Today is a little better, but the tears are persistent, which irritates me. It’s like I have leaky eyes. Thankfully I think most of the day I can just stare at my computer screen and write requirements docs. I only have a few meetings scheduled. Yesterday I had massive panic attacks and even with the help of a couple lorazepam, I couldn’t get my breathing or tears under control so I had to take a personal day off. I ended up going home and taking an ambien to just force myself to sleep for a while. The breathing is better today at least.
All right, I’ve posted. Now to keep myself posting on a more regular basis.
I’m drained so tonight’s official post is very random.
There’s a new rule in our family: If you had socks on when you entered the car, said socks stay on in the car. Period. This ranks among those things I never imagined myself saying let alone imposing a rule on.
Dear reader, I will let you only imagine what situation could have possibly resulted in that rule being created.
I’m in a bit of a panic. I did write some yesterday as I fought back the self-doubt and just pure unadulterated fear of the unknown. Did I mention that Change sucks and currently scares the crap out of me?
So anyway I looked back at my notes from yesterday and was going to type them in tonight in the spirit of the Blog365 challenge. Honestly, they really look rather like those of a crazy woman and amount to just straight out fear of change, fear of what will happen in my relationship when I’m no longer commuting with and working with my husband, how I will survive without the support of friends who are coworkers, if everyone in the new place will hate me, if I’ll hate the new job, if I’ll be able to do the new job, and the never ending to do list that is still hanging over me in my current job not to mention the to do’s left for the car and the house cleaning for the weekend and A having a sleep over tomorrow night and shopping for clothes that I will simply look fat in for the new job…and and and and
So if you suffered through that ramble, I apologize. Thus ends the offline post recap from yesterday.
It’s 2008. I’m not even sure where the last year went and reflecting upon it really hasn’t done much for my mood today very honestly.
I had to go clothes shopping today in anticipation for the new job which starts next week. I don’t think I ended up blogging about that..it’s been a whirlwind. I interviewed for the job that’s 5 minutes from home and was passed over initially then called back to interview for another open position that they had at their home office which is just a little further away. In a nutshell the day before that interview they called me and offered me the position for which I initially applied as the guy who had accepted backed out at the last minute. After some back and forth and discussions on why the guy had declined as well as what had made me second fiddle (just in case I’d be walking in to a bad situation) everything worked out and I accepted. So now my last day at the current job is Friday and I start on the 7th.
So back to today, I have been working in a street casual office for the last 3 years. Before that I worked in business casual and business professional but honestly most of those clothes either no longer fit or have long since been donated to charity for lack of wear and limited closet space. So I had to go shopping to buy some slacks etc. Wow. Nothing like looking in a mirror and trying on clothes to blow your self esteem to little bitty bits. So in the spirit of sounding cliche and making a New Year’s resolution, I will actually commit to USING the onsite fitness center at my new place of employ. I will stop eating as much junk and plan meals out. After all I’m gaining back the commute time so I can use a small part of it to start getting healthier and be able to face myself in the mirror in 2009.
In other news, the car situation looks to be working out. They declared the vehicle a total loss, but between the payment and the GAP insurance I took out when I bought it the lien should at least get paid. I also was able to make a really good deal with year-end with the salesman who sold me the original vehicle to get the same car except in the ‘08 model for only $200 more than I spent on the other car. He was really desperate to make the sale..apparently he was only one car away from the salesman of the year and me calling him in the eleventh hour so to speak made him very happy and very willing to cut me the best deal right away.
I’m tired and feeling beat down. I knew the anxiety this week would be bad…change for me is never a fun prospect and between the job and car I just want to curl up in bed and stay there.
I did buy myself the first season dvd of the show “Bones” at the day after Christmas sale at Target and have started watching it. It’s a good show and it’s a nice little escape right now. I think I’ll go watch another episode while A is happily playing and before I need to put her to bed.
We always knew that it would eventually happen. J and I commute to work together daily and it’s one of the reasons that I was seeking a job closer to our home. The commute ends up being about 30-45 minutes each way. What did we know would happen? We knew that with as many stupid drivers as there are on the road and with the amount of time we spend there that we’d eventually get into a serious accident. The fear was that both of us would be in the car and if something happened that both of A’s parents could end up in the hospital or worse at one time.
We walked away from it, but I’m pretty sure the car is totaled. We’ll know more about that piece of things probably Monday. With the snow, the adjuster is pretty backed up and wasn’t able to get out to look at the car yesterday.
On the way to work yesterday morning traffic was actually pretty light so we were able to go 55-60 on the highway we take south from home. We were in the left lane about halfway to work when out of the corner of our eyes we saw a white vehicle merging onto the highway and trying to cross three lanes of traffic. We could see that she looked like she was either going to hit or near miss the red car in the middle lane just ahead of us. She hit him. He spun and hit the front right corner of our car on the passenger side pushing us into the guard rail. His vehicle ran along the length of our car on the passenger side going backwards while we continued going forwards running the driver’s side of the car along the guard rail. I think the only pieces of the car they could get away with not replacing would be the hood, roof, and hatchback.
Two firetrucks, an ambulance, two police cars, and two tow trucks later we had the highway reduced to one lane. Both the red car and ours were towed and the lady in the white car was able to drive hers away. Probably a good thing she ended up on the opposite side of the highway so that we weren’t able to talk to her.
I don’t know if she was on a cell phone or not or what made her think that driving across three lanes at one time going an insane speed off the exit ramp was a good idea, but I hope she got an awful lot of citations.
I’m thankful that A was not in the car with us and that we did walk away. We’re both really sore today but nothing appears to be broken, concussed, or otherwise damaged. I suppose it speaks volumes to the work I’ve been doing with C in that I’m really not panicking about what will happen next. Honestly, there’s nothing I can really do about what happens next until I find out what the insurance companies are going to do to sort everything out.
So me and my muscle relaxers are going to go take another rest. 
Ok, I must be crazy or on way too many pain killers. Some strange compulsion made me sign up for 365 days of blogging. See the snazzy new badge on my sidebar for more details.
2008 is shaping up to have some major resolutions!
