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just got back from a walk - feels good to be able to do that again.  i have to get some in during the next few days, cuz on mon. i'm getting my 2 final vaccines, and i know i'll be laid up for at least a week, if not more.  still, it feels so good to be able to sleep again.  dang, what a difference it makes.

happy holidays.  carry on.

and i thank you right back, chart.  hope your holidays are peaceful and joyful, and so glad to hear how well you're doing w/ your kids.  wonderful.  love and hugs

yeah, marcine, what a messed up idea of love we got.  i can also add love was staying, absorbing, enduring all the crapola that was sent my way until i broke in new and different ways.  i hear you.  it's been so messed up. as DF said, none of that was love. and thank the stars we are learning differently, acting and saying differently, or at least beginning to do so.  we'll get there. infinitely grateful you're here, too.  love and hugs

that was indeed beautiful, chart.  thank you for that, too.  as one who has lived in the desert, i know the intrinsic value and beauty of those flowers, and DF, you are one with them.

i don't know that i can add to that, except to say that i hope you have a lovely time at your cabin w/ your favorite family members.  love and hugs

DF, yep, i will continue to take next steps.  for some reason, i can't not.  my spirit won't allow it.  sorry, tho, that you could relate to getting so upset.  that sucks, but thank you for your support. 

hey, chart, i think i'm just so on the edge right now that the prospect of getting therapeutic help may be blinding my good sense.  or stirring up my anxiety greatly.  or both.  but thank you for your kindness and care.  much appreciated.

my D is helping me find a T on a different site, and this morning she showed me 2 possibilities, one of which emphasized mindfulness, and my anxiety kicked in full bore at the idea of asking her to call me, do an evaluation.  my chest got tight, my hands began wringing, i stiffened up.  my D noticed it all and reassured me she would make contact, set up a phone call for me.

i think when i had my mini-breakdown the other week, told her about never having anyone help me, having to figure it all out by myself, that she decided she wanted to help me w/ this.  which was a little strange to me, cuz just a few days before she told me she wanted to help but was so stressed out herself she just didn't have anything else to give out. at any rate, she's showing me in real time that she's got my back, which is weird.  feels weird. 

and there's a little voice in the back of my head from when she once told me that she wouldn't be able to take care of me if i needed that certain level of care-giving, and she'd put me in a home and would visit every week.  and i think that reminds me of when my F told me that if i got pregnant by my boyfriend, he'd send me away to another city in this state that had a home for girls 'in trouble'.  at that time, i asked a friend's mom a few weeks later if i could stay w/ their family if that happened, and she immediately said of course.  (the kicker of this is that when my S and i were older, and i told her this story, she said he told her the exact opposite, that if she got pregnant, not to worry, the family would be there for her.)

so, people wanting to get rid of me if i'm too problematic is a theme both past and future.  thinking about that, is it any wonder i can't let go, can't take the time to just be, must keep moving ahead, stay productive?  not get in anyone's way, not be a burden, worry about my body breaking down, hospitals, surgeries, all that jazz, not only financially but what it might mean for my future way of life? on my own again is what it feels like. 

hey, SO,

when reading your post i thought about an exercise i used to do w/ couples - what did one say and what did the other hear?  it was quite amazing how mis-heard we might be based on triggers from tone or word usage.  an example my D discovered was when she lived w/ 2 other people, and she asked one the, supposedly, simply question - 'do you want to take the garbage out?'  this lead to an extreme discussion from the other about how manipulative that question is, passive-aggressive way of mandating something in the form of a question.

when she brought it up to me, totally confused about what had been said to her, i explained that a lot of people are brought up with the idea of a question hiding an order.  do you want to do *whatever* is often used in the workplace, in relationships of all kinds, by teachers, in churches - i don't know of a place where it isn't used regularly (from my limited perspective).  she didn't know that at all (i'd never used that on my kids) so she was unaware that it is prevalent in the world, and many many people are familiar with it.  to her, it was a simple question, and if you don't want to, just say so and someone else will.

so, perspectives being created by background, learning, teaching, yes, i totally agree.  and i think emotions extend from those perspectives, ultimately from what we learned and were taught.  trigger emotions based on our original experience that are still hanging around, waiting in the wings, so to speak, for that perspective to rear its head. 

when i lived in mexico, i learned about the culture of poverty.  since i'd always had a roof over my head and food on the table, it wasn't something i was familiar with.  living there, tho, in the midst of it (i didn't live in an american compound/gated community, but in town w/ my mex. husband) was eye-opening.  and mind-opening, for that matter.  here were people who existed on beans and corn tortillas, literally.  many lived in a flood zone in town, and the powers that be determined that providing electricity for them would be useless, so they lived without every day. (i think of this when i hear about disasters and people having to go w/o electricity for several days, and how awful it is for them)

and i'm not putting anyone down here, but due to life experience, teaching, learning, their perspectives have been formed far differently than mine were.  the idea of long-term planning doesn't exist. there is no 'vision' for the future. these people worry about getting enough beans and corn daily to feed their kids.  they kill the golden goose cuz they see something bright and shiny in front of them and can only think how it will relieve the pain in their bellies for a few days.

i saw my husband work 10 to 12 hr. days, 7 days a week.  if you don't work, you don't get paid.  there is no sick leave, no vacation days, no mental health days.  nothing about self-care.  so, their perspectives are completely different from someone like me, w/ pale skin, a minority person in their country coming from across the border - a border i could cross at will but my husband wasn't allowed.  they have no sense of personal power, no agency, as it were, are dictated to by the catholic church - which means no birth control - and make it thru each day as it comes.  their emotions are often tied up with despair. there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

this experience changed me profoundly.  i made many friends while i was there, good, decent people no matter their financial status.  all they want to do is make enough money to feed their families, literally in many cases.  so, the idea of perspective being different for each individual rings true to my mind. we are all products of not only our learnings, but of our race, our religions, our educational levels, and each has its own perspective.  we hear other people thru our own perspective filter, which can make communication go off the rails from a different experience with a word, gesture, tone of voice, eye contact. 

and that's why i think learning about cultures is important, learning about perspectives is important, learning how individuality is important.  whew!  i guess i kind went off the rails there, but i've witnessed the assumptions, had a lot of them myself until i moved into a different culture and learned differently.  it's a wonder any of us can be made to understand each other at all!

why not, indeed!  it sounds like you discovered a life w/o cannabis, and you survived it, maybe came out of it for the better, bach.  you've got that experience under your belt.  you know you can do it and make it thru a day, then another.  one step at a time, ok?  love and hugs

i love the phrase 'morally upstanding social menace' - it resonates in my soul.  be who you are, say what needs to be said, walk in your own love - i love those ideas, and your phrase actuated them from somewhere inside.  thanks for writing this, marcine, and glad you're here.  you've taken some huge first steps.  sending love and hugs (if that's ok)

it's quite a good list, too, hope.  well done on so many accomplishments this year.  keep up the good work and enjoy the holidays.  love and hugs

the inexplicable feeling of fighting against being disintegrated is unnerving, in my experience.  losing self while self is feeling threatened is, as you say, like finding ourselves at the bottom of a nasty cocktail.  it's very much a battle to stay regulated, present, and whole.  i often can't keep up.  love and hugs

SO, thank you for all you said.  you helped normalize my feelings for me.  labeling machine.  yes.  he also threw in 'avoidant attachment', which when i looked it up, had nothing to do w/ me. or my parents.  so, all this stress, and now, hopefully, i can calm down today.  thank you so much.

thank you, NK.  i hope so, too.

Marcine, i so appreciate that you wrote that.  thank you very much.

i could not settle at all last nite, couldn't get to sleep till sometime around 3 or 4.  i can't believe how much this disturbed me.  it was just weird that he kept trying to guess at and label what i was talking about.  i really appreciate what everyone said, cuz this obviously hurt me, and i only spoke w/ him about 20 min.  hmmm . . . i didn't think about that before, but, yes, feeling so agitated, disrupted inside, unable to settle are things that are not good for me.  i can't say how much i appreciate you bringing this forward for me.  i didn't quite get it, but you all helped fill it in for me.  thank you again.

thanks for all the hugs and cheers, NK, but unfortunately all the good feelings didn't last very long and i'm in a very bad place tonite, crying, afraid, worried, anxious.  talked to a potential T today, he sounded gentle but he loved putting labels on everything i told him, and i hate those kinds of labels, don't care about them, just want some help from someone who's not going to hurt me anymore. 

i'm in a new mind place again, which marks the next step for me.  i have a doc now, one, which i haven't had in i can't even tell how long.  maybe not since i was a kid.  for some reason my memory of doctors in my past has been being shoveled from one to another.  even the ones i thought were going to be the ones to take care of me - 2 that i remember, one for childbirth, one for general - both were called away at a crucial time in my medical history, and i had strangers, once again, doing whatever procedure was important at that moment.

so, i never felt like i could say 'my doctor said or did this or that', or had one who knew me and my history.  and in mexico, unless you paid out of pocket, which i couldn't do, the health service was a series of revolving doctors in training (they were sent to our small town to do their internship, so to speak, but it wasn't supervised, nothing like what we have here in the states, they spent a year in our town, then would move on to the big city).  so, health care there was spotty at best.  i mean, the cancer which continued to crawl across my head for over 15 yrs was diagnosed alternately as eczema or psoriasis.  it wasn't till i got back to the states that a doc took one look and gasped in astonishment, too biopsies on the spot.  turns out it was 2 types of cancers, and he saved my life, literally.

at any rate, i'm now here, planning to stay here, and have an established doctor for the first time in a very long time.  it's a new feeling, kinda good, actually, settled, strong, reliable.  that's nice.

and another next step is getting a new T, which i'm in the process of doing.  that will feel nice, too, especially if i can find one i work well with.  we'll see.  so, step by step . . .

thanks, SO.  it is, indeed, but the more i think about it, the more sense it makes to me.  those messages that were already established by the time i was 4? 5? had to have started quite a while before to be so firmly ingrained in my little mind that i couldn't go to my M w/ a question.  hmmm . . .

just realized i'm over my self-imposed limit of 25 pages for a journal, so i'll go start a new one now.

dang, chart, that makes a lot of sense to me. at least, the idea that sleep was a protective agent for you so you didn't have to hear what was going on, which, i'm assuming, was pretty scary for a kid.  and mornings being so terrible for you, well, that's when the screaming would be happening, right?  sounds like real-time triggers, over and over.  how awful for you!  so, if sleep and the aftermath of sleep, which would be mornings, trigger the awfulness of what you went thru, it also makes sense to me that coffee would kind of block all that and put you on your way to some sense of normalcy, it being a trigger of your own to get you out of the feelings of the past. 

and if none of this makes sense to you, please ignore.  just thinking out loud.

at any rate, i'm glad you have coffee to stop the effects of the past.  it might not have to be forever, but for now it seems to help a lot.  love and hugs