Pessimism

I'm sick of being crabby. I've been tired, grumpy, and pessimistic. I've been trying to force myself to count my blessings, as they say, and they are many. Unfortunately, they have come riding on the backs of dumb and even horrible things which could have gone much worse (there is the blessing) but which speak louder to my tired mind than the good parts.

What can I do? I wish there was an obvious answer. I can, though, list what my sister, my daughter, my husband, my mother and others would tell me.

1. Eat better. Think about what you are feeding your body and you will not wonder why you are grumpy.
2. Exercise. Endorphins, endorphins, endorphins.
3. Cut out negatives. Friends who aren't, etc.
4. Relax, read, play with your camera, write. Do something creative.
5. Go outside.
6. Make a plan.
7. Play

My self talk usually goes like this:
1. You are so unorganized.
2. You haven't done that yet?
3. You lost it?
4. You're getting old.
5. You're gaining weight.
6. You never remember anything that's important to anyone else.
7. You can't get anything right.
8. You exaggerate everything you say.

Hmmm... I see a pattern here.

So what can I do? For starters, one call to find a new eye doctor will help with... at least three of the 15 things on my lists. My second goal, for now, will be to start being more exact with my speech. I've been called out on that a couple times in the last few weeks, and maybe if I can manage to stop exaggerating, my anxiety will go down. I don't, of course, exaggerate EVERYTHING I say. :)

Hey, Thanks

To Whom it May Concern:
Thank you for your jealousy. I will take it as a compliment.
Thank you for pushing until you caused a rock bottom situation from which up was the only direction to go.
Thank you for your constant drama, egocentrism, pouting, tantruming, self-pity and sense of entitlement. It's because of you that I don't need cable. Besides, the NBA is on strike anyway.
And finally, thank you for being so awful that I just keep looking better and better.
Sincerely, A Friend

In a dream, I was walking with the one I loved. I was chatting. He was holding my hand. His hand became moist. I thought it was the heat. His grip loosened. I thought it was the sweat.

He dropped to his knees. I turned to gaze upon his face and saw that he was choking. He had been choking... I tried to help. I was not able. My efforts were not successful.

I called for help.

I asked him to tell me how to help him. He could not answer.

I asked him what was wrong, though I  knew he was choking. He could not answer. I asked him what he was choking on. He could not answer. I called again for help. Help was already on the way.

I panicked. He choked. Help traveled.

I asked him how he felt. He could not answer. I tried again to fix him. Nothing.

I knelt and comforted him and held his head in my lap as he choked. I cried. He choked. Help traveled.

I asked him why he was choking. He did not answer. I asked him if he'd ever choked before. He could not answer.

I begged him to tell me how to help him. He could not answer. He wrapped his arms around me for comfort. Still, I asked away.

Maybe I fell and hit my head. It hurt. But it also was screaming at me, finally, even when he could not speak.

Step back. Look at this situation from outside yourself. This man is asking you to help him. He is clawing at your arms, trying to climb inside your body and receive comfort. Shut up. You are not able to stop this man from choking. Proper help takes time. Help comes in stages. Help sometimes needs to practice. To reposition, to mold to the situation. That help is coming, slowly.

Look into his eyes. Tell him help is coming. Disregard his panicked gasps and hold him. If you are scared, look up into the crowd of people who have assembled to help you and ask them to step forward. Ask them to remind you to breathe. Breathe for both of you.

Tell the man you love him. Tell him you're scared too, but that everything will be ok.

Stop spinning off his panic. That is not what he needs. Do not be offended by his inability to tell you how to fix things. He's choking. Love him in the only way you can.

In my dream, there was fog, and I was awake.

What is dangerous?

What is dangerous? What is good?

Writing is good. Thinking, talking, questioning, realizing, challenging, growing, understanding. Loving. That is good.

What is dangerous? Spiral notebooks and plastic wrap? Sometimes. Silly putty? So they say. Becoming complacent? Yes.

Cherish what you have.

Homework

All for one and one for all. That's a saying from some movie. The Three Muskateers? I don't know.

I'm doing this for homework. I'm supposed to examine interactions; communications. I like to write and it helps me to work through things when I write, so I write. I set up an iPhone app for Blogger, but I hate the keyboard on my phone and it gives me a headache anyway. Not so bad that I can't play Tap Store or Whirly Word, but maybe you get the picture. Now my house is empty of children, so I have no excuse. No little girl sauntering up and signing her invented sign for The Wiggles, etc., in which case I would be forced to turn over the computer. No matter where I go in the house it's 100 degrees, and so I might as well sit here and do my assignment. I have to share about it tomorrow, too, so now's the time.

Why am I stalling? I love to write. This is a good assignment. I even ASKED for assignments. I should just get to it.

So, back to the Three Muskateers, if that's where the saying came from. And to communication. Interchanges. Exchanges. While we're at it, bring in noise. Baggage. Anxiety. Yeah, I'm starting to understand why I was stalling. And AM stalling.

The prompt deals with my communication patterns with one specific person; recall one successful one and one not successful, or one you were pleased with and one not, etc. I forget the exact wording and it probably doesn't matter. Being global, though, I have to start with the big picture. I'll get down to specifics in a few minutes.

I'm a teacher, but also an introvert. That means that I have little problem with speaking in front of a group. Yes, I can get a little anxious depending on the topic and the audience, but it's not difficult and it doesn't overly stress me out. It also means that all of these dog and pony shows wear me out. Speaking to a large or small group, or even just multiple individuals throughout my day leave me wanting to be somewhere quiet. Maybe that's why I like to write, especially when I'm stressed. Writing and speaking are almost totally mutually exclusive.

Ok. So, we have the generalization. I don't mind speaking, even in front of a group of peers, students, or strangers, but I have to balance that with quiet.

More specifically, how do my communications with individuals go... Well, I think they're fine. One thing I wish I was better at is my entrances. I tend to walk into a co-worker's office, for example, and just start talking about what's on my mind even if it's first thing Monday morning and we haven't really even greeted each other. It's like I just walked out and came right back in to say something I'd forgotten. It's not that I'm trying to be rude. I think it's partly my ADD. I'm usually trying not to forget what I want to say, so the chit chat is skipped.

Sorry about that, everyone.

I also think I don't reach out as much as I'd like. Sometimes I don't ding my family just to chat, and I should do that more. I think that when I think about them, I'm counting that as communication and of course, it's not.

Sorry about that too.

So two things I'd like to work on. What else... as I said, I think my verbal communication is ok. I try not to be confrontational, but I try to say what's on my mind if it's important. I think people understand what I'm saying when I'm speaking, etc. I try to remember to ask questions and not just blab on about whatever the person reminded me of when they had their turn to speak.

At some point I will have to get to the actual prompt and I think I'll go for it now. When I'm done, I'll try to figure out what it was so hard.

It's easier for me to talk about what I'm not good at, and I have two ideas for this part of the homework, so I'll start there. One, I don't like when I just stop communicating when I'm pissed or frustrated in some way. It doesn't get anything accomplished, except maybe it allows me to cool off and reflect on what's going on. I'm afraid that, later, I'll wish I hadn't said something or other so I say nothing. But I always end up wishing that I hadn't clammed up - it just makes the not-that-big something seem bigger and take longer to put to bed - so doing so isn't really helping.

My father used to clam up and it was most unbecoming. When I was married I would clam up, sometimes for days. Then I'd get tired of that, or more truthfully, arrange things in my mind so that whatever I was mad at went into the "whatever" pile, ie, not important enough to stress about, and slowly reinitiate conversations again, though never about the original problem. That DEFINATELY does not work, especially when your pile of really small things gets really big. I also never got to practice talking about frustrations so that it was easier when they were not really small. (That was the baggage part.)

Clamming up is also cheating. If I'm texting and get upset about something and stop texting, the person I'm ignoring is just left hanging. I did it today, about something... well, I was going to say "really dumb", but it wasn't dumb. It was very important to me and because I didn't word something right (I didn't take into consideration the noise happening on the other end), I didn't get the response I was expecting and my happiness was dashed. So what did I do? I shit-canned the whole thing. Maybe next time I will be able to set emotions aside and just rephrase my opening so that my message is received as intended. Duh. Sounds easy now.

For my second unsuccessful example, I think I'll skip to my third-on-the-list item because it involves something I have significantly less control over. When someone (yes, the object of this writing prompt) is hurting, I want to help. Somehow. I want to do what will help. Sometimes, though right now I can't think of a specific time this has happened in the last few weeks, I ask what I can do to help and the response is just a shrug. Should I say something or be quiet? Should I leave the room or stay? Should I distract, reassure, what? What, already?! (This is the anxiety part.)

Ok. So the message here is, he doesn't know. Maybe. Or is it that he won't say? (I'll repeat "anxiety" just for emphasis here.) Does he think saying he wants some space for a few minutes will hurt my feelings? Because it won't. Do I trust him to advocate for himself? Am I making things even worse by pummeling him with questions?!

As I said, this has been happening less often now. Or has it happened at all since... Maybe not. But I'm afraid it will happen again. And I'll feel helpless again. And useless. In those situations I had to rely on my own instincts to guide me. With no direction from him, I have to decide on my own. So I should be asking, what do I need? For me? But here is where I'm stuck.

I need to feel like I'm helping, and without knowing what will help, I can't get what I need. So I need to get unstuck. "Self," I should say, "you can not help him right now because he is unable to ask for what he needs. What do YOU need?" Logic tells me that if I can't help him, and if the question is whether to stay in his face trying to find out which question he CAN answer or to give him a few minutes, I should take a few minutes for myself and leave the room. Yes, yes, don't get stuck in the quicksand - get out even for a few minutes. But what if I had done that that fateful night... I could have lost him. But that night I also did not wonder what I should be doing. I did not panic and beg him to tell me what he needed. I never pondered the option of leaving the room or staying. Maybe my instincts are ok afterall.


Why does this bother me? Why do both these examples have to do with me trying to help him feel better and not being successful? What am I suppsed to do? I have no idea. I know I can't fix him. I can't help him if he doesn't provide some kind of direction or clues as to what's happening. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety.

Example two was going to be the smattering of short conversations that provoked illogical responses from him, which resulted in complete confusion on my part. Now I know that those are linked to the awful things that happened long ago. There may be more of them in the future and I will certainly be startled again if it happens but I know I will quickly remember their origins and recover my equilibrium.

Part two of the prompt: which conversations went well? Well, the rest of them. But maybe that's too broad. Most of our conversations go well. We are very-well suited for each other. We can talk about cereal, hay, or the library and have a good time. I think the prompt is asking me to consider conversations that could have good poorly and examine why they did not.

Right now, though, reflection is in order. My mind is scattered. I will continue later.

Please (stop needing everyone to) be quiet!

My father used to yell when we were being loud.

"You're making so much noise!"

Well, it was more like a loudly-expressed, exasperated observation than yelling, though he did yell about other things.

I didn't get it.

Now, I have the same issue. The louder things are, the more stressed I am. (Unless it's Queen on the car radio.) I'm not talking about kids being loud in the car when I'm trying to drive in pouring rain. I'm just talking about normal loudness. Like the TV being loud, or the radio, when someone is trying to talk to me. A half hour in our van, in summer, when the only way to keep cool is to have the windows all the way down, is awful. I sometimes want to talk to someone, but I'd just have to yell and then probably repeat myself.

Why does this bother me? Is it my father's legacy?

Years ago, a friend and I did a learning style inventory which promised to tell whether we were kinesthetic, auditory or visual, only unlike others, it didn't just tell which area we preferred; it told which was our primary modality, which was hidden and which was sacred. I was KAV. I am kinesthetic in the front, which for me means that if my overtaxed bra is too stretched out or my sock seam is over my toe the wrong way, an immediate rectification is the only way I can keep functioning. I am visual in the back. That is my sacred modality. Anything visual either needs to be perfect or catgegorized as unimportant. In other words, if I purposely create something visual, like the color of my kitchen, it must be perfect, or if something's purpose is to be beautiful, like our garden, it bugs me if something is awry. However, the color that had already been in my kitchen before I painted it was not offensive to me, it was just off my radar.

My hidden area, the "middle", is auditory. The middle area is critical; it's a person's makeup. So if something auditory does not jive with my... rhythems, is a good way to describe it, it could potentially shake my very bones apart. This is why my daughter's screamo music lasts mere moments on the car radio and why my ex-husband knew when to start counting seconds until the jam session at the end of Free Bird would be shut off.

So can I draw an imaginary line in my soul from my annoyance with some kinds of loudness to my father (that's my real father, if you read my first post) and then dismiss this along with the other crap I inherited from him? It would be much easier if I could handle lots of noise without my bones shaking apart (yes, that's a repeated image but that's how it feels to me), especially until screamo is out of vogue and my boyfriend's four kids, three of whom are boys, get a little older.  When I overload on noise, I need quiet AND stillness to come back to center. Quiet AND stillness together are very hard to come by around here.

So I'll try it. As the little boy in Angels in the Outfield says, "It could happen." And if it doesn't, please be quiet!

Sorry I punched you

Several years ago, my grandmother passed away. Well, she was my step-grandmother. I hadn't known her since childhood. But she had been pretty good to me. Starting when I met her as a teenager, she would take me Christmas shopping so I could pick out my own present. We always went to Weathervane. The first year, I tried on lots of clothes and liked most of them - a first for me. To my dismay, she tried to insist on buying me everything I liked. In subsequent years, I tried on one thing at a time.

Anyway, she died. On Christmas Day. With a load of Christmas presents in her arms. As we all sat at the dinner table, having Christmas dinner.

Needless to say, things got rather hectic after she fell to the floor. The house was full of great grandchildren. My parents were EMTs and so worked on her diligently until the ambulance (full of close family friends) arrived. My sister (my step-sister, really, and also a former EMT), was very upset. Unlike with me, this WAS her real grandmother. She HAD known her since childhood. And there she was, chest exposed for the defibrilator leads, lying prone on the kitchen floor.

I had two important tasks in this situation. First, I had to fetch the scissors so my parents could access gram's skin for the machine. This task included cutting her clothes. My father (technically, step-father) gave me this task and I did it sufficiently.

My second task, one I took on all by myself, was to keep my step sister out of the kitchen. As I said, she was very upset and probably much better than I will ever be at expressing her feelings as she's feeling them. In this situation, though, she also was not really helping with the effort to revive her beloved grandmother. She had to stay out of the kitchen.

Oh, there was another important task being carried out at the same time. Our children wanted to know what was going on, and they instinctively knew that they could find out by going into the kitchen. That would not have helped anyone, so they needed to be kept out as well. My sister (so as not to confuse things, this one is my biological sister) took on this responsibility. My efforts to keep our sister out of the kitchen conflicted with her secondary task, which was to keep our children somewhat calm. I don't know how she did that.

Soon the ambulance arrived and gram was loaded up for a short trip to the hospital. Here my memory gets fuzzy. My father and his daughter must have ridden in the ambulance. I know that I drove my mother to the hospital. I am pretty sure that my sister stayed back with the children, because I think I told her the news of gram's passing over the phone from the family room in the ER.

Gram was over 90 years old, so there was no autopsy, but my mom thinks a stroke took my borrowed grandmother. She had driven herself to my parents' house for Christmas that night, wrapped presents in tow, and stayed with us long enough to deliver them and wish us "Merry Chri-". We knew what she meant.

Sometime during the days and weeks afterward, my step sister approached me with something she wanted to say. She told me, "I'm sorry I punched you." Being a non-confrontational girl with a low pain tolerance, I had never been in a fistfight before and would have remembered being punched. She had not punched me, and she seemed surprised that I denied the event. I figured that that meant she had WANTED to punch me. I was ok with that, too, though I'm really really glad she hadn't actually done it. She was upset. She wanted to be with her grandmother, who was in distress. I was in her way. I understand. If I remember right, we discussed her understanding of why I kept her out of the kitchen. It wouldn't have helped for her to be in there, and after she had time to process things, she knew that. No hard feelings.

But now I have lots of questions. How will one react in a stressful situation? Do you go into panic mode? Do you become regimented and business-like? Do you become hysterical?

And what is stressful? Certainly that answer is not the same for everyone. Does something have to happen to YOU in order for you to become stressed, or can you watch someone you love in a crisis situation and become stressed yourself? (I'm guessing the latter is one of the easier questions to answer.)

What factors contribute to the level of stress experienced by individuals during any event? I have a student who, when asked "What should this girl's parents... boyfriend... next door neighbor do?" leads EVERY time with, "How old is the person?" This young lady would certainly say that the age of the people involved would be one of those factors. What are others?

At first, on that Christmas night so long ago, I froze. I heard gram's voice trail off. I saw her face freeze. I saw her become still. I saw her start to lose her balance. She was Lithuanian, very tall and big-boned, not a frail old lady. She was right in front of me. I could have reached out to try to steady her. I remember my now-ex-husband shoving me out of the bench so he could get past me and try to catch her. I just froze. Then I was ok. I got the scissors. I cut her shirt open. I had to be prompted, but I cut her undergarment too. I struggled with my sister. I drove to the hospital...

If someone had asked me, before that night, what I would do in that kind of situation, I would not have known for sure. It hadn't happened yet. Maybe I would have guessed that I would have run off down the street, screaming. I know little of how my sister dealt with our children or with her own perspective of the situation. My other sister, beginning that night and for a long time after, focused on her emotions. Three sisters, three unique reactions.

How do we know what will be stressful? How do we know what our reactions will be?

All these questions. I always have more questions at the end of a blog than at the beginning. But of all these questions about stress, about crisis, about reactions, none of them compare to these:

"When you are very stressed, how will you recover?"

"When you are in pain, how will you heal?"

"When you need help, will it be there?"

Know this. If someone loves you, they want to help. If you need help, you must tell someone you love. If you love someone who is hurting, both of you will feel better when you lend a hand.