Living As All of Me

[HannahOne]

I just stumbled on an Alanis Morissette duet with Brandi Carlile.

Flashback. I could feel myself in the late 90s, Y2K I was so full of myself, stomping around graduate school, heels clicking around my office, all my papers (we still used a lot of paper back then!), my special red pen, my computer my chair. So young. So much energy. So much hope. Such big plans. So sure I would make it. It was a belief with eyes closed, sheer willpower, immigrant bravado. Give the firm handshake, look them in the eye, make the deal. Who was that person!?? I feel a million miles from that now.

But that was me!  "I'm broke but I'm happy, I'm poor but I'm kind...I'm young and I'm underpaid, I'm tired but I'm working... and what it all comes down to (ooo-ooo!) is that everything is gonna be fine, fine fine..."

And it is. Weirdly. I mean, horribly, at times. I lost two jobs. $50,000. A book. A future. A house. A fetus. 1/4 of a lung. My mind. My career. Hung onto the man, barely. We can still see the whites of each other's eyes, at least. We're in another house. We had more babies. Made another $50,000, and another and another. Made new arteries to carry oxygen around the dead spot. Wrote another book. Made a new future. I got another job, kinda. Here we are.

What a ride.

I want to bring that me... she'd be depressed by my present, LOL, so I won't bring her here.... I want to bring that me, her energy, her fearlessness even as she was in fight/flight, her vision...bring that me and this one together somehow. She was blind to a lot and took some big risks, not all of which worked out. Had some terrible luck. But she was honest. And overall, it worked out fine, fine, fine.

Even then I knew the upsides had a down. I knew I was going against the grain of generational trauma and dysfunction. I was walking a tightrope without a net, in heels and an ill-fitting suit. Alanis, "Isn't it ironic, don't you think? It's like rain on your wedding day, a free ride when you've already paid, the good advice that you just didn't take....it's like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife. Meeting the man of my dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife...."

This is all part of me, part of All of Me. I don't want to forget. When I get down on myself for how some things turned out, I have to remember what I went though to get here. And that was just my 20s and 30s, LOL. We aren't even talking about the toddler years, the teens, Frank have mercy.

New playlist unlocked. My teen has never heard of Alanis Morissette. WHAT?! Where have I been all her life? ALEXA, PLAY ALANIS MORISSETTE! ALEXA, LOUDER! ALEXA, VOLUME TEN! I taught her how to head bang and we are having a mosh pit in the kitchen. Luckily dinner was light so we can stomach the jumping and hair-whipping. Here we are. Still here, still alive.

[sanmagic7]

Here we are. Still here, still alive.

we are indeed, hannah1.  and that's a lot.  sometimes more than expected.  keep going - you're doing great!  love and hugs

[HannahOne]

My follow up scans just got pushed to October. They are going to try to get them moved sooner again. I would really like to know the results thank you very much. Another month to wait is a bit tough. The whole process is exhausting and part of me just wants to pretend it's not happening and carry on with my life. I'm sick of it. Luckily my partner works at the hospital and he will lean on them. I am lucky lucky lucky, I have insurance, I am safe. It just feels like I'm unwillingly on a leash going I know not where.

I have a cold. I want to go to the beach but turned back after a bit into the drive. Still I was up all day, walking beasts, and working on my space in the bedroom. I brought in a child's desk for my shrine to what I want to remember and my tiny jewelry collection I just have two bracelets and a few necklaces but I Wanted them to have their own place. Jewelry is like makeup, I really can't wear it. Cooked some meals, washed some clothes. Threw out a good bit more stuff in the Swedish Death Cleaning process. I am really loving having less, letting go of so much from the past. It feels good.

I played with my clothes. I have navy pinstripe trousers to try to figure out, what the heck goes with those?  a light grey fuzzy sweater, but that's too hot. A white blouse, but that's boring. A chartreuse sweater, good... and a burgundy sweater to experiment with. What goes with it? the navy pinstripe pants ok. A bit boring, what for the shoe? polka dot Mary janes?  In survival times, all the non-essentials are stripped away. Makeup, jewelry, clothes, style of shoes. But now I want to learn how style can help me be present. Without words. My body within the clothes speaks and clothes can accentuate that, my face has expressions, and makeup can accentuate that. I am still taking it all in. I am thinking of my former therapist, she was very expressive in such a natural way. Imitating it wouldn't be natural. I have to find space within myself, space between my face muscles. I have to figure out how my hands want to talk. How my eyebrows might want to move. How to allow all of this to happen without monitoring and worrying.

I still often struck by severe social anxiety or shame EFs. If someone doesn't understand me at first or if communication isn't instant and easy, I feel like my father is looking at me like I'm nuts. I ran to him during a beating and he acted like he had zero idea what was going on. I left his room and went back to my room and the beating resumed. I mean, whatever. That look on people's faces is so triggering and I'm not sure what I am doing that causes it. Sometimes I think I talk too much, other times I think I don't talk enough. Sometimes I seem to talk in riddles and I don't make sense, other times I seem too blunt. Sometimes I am too much about the other person, asking questions, focusing on them and other times I am too much about me. I guess balance is falling and getting back up again. I want to have shared knowledge, a shared world, a shared understanding, some overlap in experience. I don't always know how to get on the same page as others, or maybe it's how to stay on my own page and still be able to see theirs. I tend to lose either mine or theirs. Usually mine. Then I get that look. And try to find where I went.

I feel too old to learn. I do some regular zoom meetings and one of them is full of people in their 20s, 30s and they seem so natural. I find zoom still a little difficult to know when to jump in, I'm either never jumping in a dn people ask about it, or I jump in but talk at the same time as someone.... it's partly the nature of zoom but I also still feel like I was improperly socialized, raised by wolves. I just don't find it natural or easy, and that itself can lead me to feeling wooden, or ashamed, which then makes it all much more unnatural...

Tomorrow to the city I am deciding between track pants with white loafer and a pinstripe top, vs navy pinstripe trousers and a chartreuse thin knit sweater, with gold/orange velvet Mary janes. the energy is behind the pinstripe and chartreuse but it may be a bit too warm for that. I will see the city therapist and we will see if I talk too much or too little, if I am confusing or clear, if what I say is connected to what she just said or not, if I refuse to talk about myself or relate everything to myself, if she can make any sense of me. At least in that relationship I don't have to worry quite so much as she's getting paid to put up with me.

One thing I like about the forum among many other things like all you lovely people here, is that I can be honest. I can just say it like it is. This is something I am practicing elsewhere. In real life I rarely speak because there's not much I can honestly say that isn't totally weird. Here I can be weird. So I can talk. I would like to learn to be better at conversation IRL. I can do it around work easily. But in any context that's not work, I flounder. I have to see a bunch of parents Thursday and I will be so awkward! My clothes will be saying, "I'm in chartreuse, I am here to be seen!" but my mouth will probably be full of cotton and I may not make any eye contact. I want to be more congruent. Sometimes I still feel very broken, very irregular, very uneven. Bent out of shape.