Three Shoes

One. There's a theory that some children identify with a neglectful or abusive parent too much. And place their badness on themselves. Bad. Wrong. Evil.

Two. Experience of other relationships: specifically the experience of voicing frustrations with them. Shortcomings. Disapointments. And having some other experience than had growing up.

Three. Choice. Choosing to fully engage a new life and be a new person. Rewriting that identity with pain and wrongness into a new narrative of emotional life. Not letting it determine choices. Choosing otherwise.

Three shoes the therapist had today. And he let them drop. And they're a tight fit.

Shoe one. Growing up wasn't easy, although I must say I admire the rents more than almost anyone else. Maybe more than anyone else. And it isn't that I was abused or neglected. I was neither abused nor neglected. But maybe it was a poor fit and I took it hard.

Still, the experience of shoe one seems to fit.

Shoe two. A positive and a negative example.

I recently let my therapist know I was disapointed with the crisis-aversion modle of therapy we've been following. I hold back my pain from him and it needs addressing. He responded that he wanted to know that part of me, and that there was somethings we can do to keep on issue. maybe it was a combination of our own pathologies that led to this. No anger at me for it.

Shoe three: Choice. This one is the hardest. Giving up and changing my relationship to myself. To this pain and wrongness. Changing it into another way of being. Another way of relating.

It's scarey. It feels like tempting fate. Like something bad around the corner will happen if I do.

But what could be worse than what's already happening.

Confessions of a Drug Addict

On my way to the therapist, five days off Lamictal. Not by my choice, really. just drug problems. Ran out and thought I could just pick some more up with the new insurance. Not so simple.

It seems that the new insurance does drugs by mail order. So I'm waiting on the mail for my drugs.

It's absolute torture.

I feel jumpy almost all of the time. I can barely eat. It's like they're's a giant battery within me. And it gets worse if I drink. That charges the battery up.

So, I stay away from drink.

At times, it's tollerable. Sometimes I even forget. And it makes writing easier. I've caught up on some correspondence.

But it takes tremendous energy. Too much, really. Too much energy into control. Keeping sharp, judging when to try certain things and when things might send me into a tailspin.

I'm a drug addict. And I need these drugs to maintain some sort of sanity.

Jumpy. Bouncy. Nausious. Prone to fits of paranoia. Racing thoughts. Anhedonia. Impatience.

The Abilify helps with the racing thoughts. I decided to try going off that for a couple of days. A sort of drug-free holiday. Not a good idea. The racing thoughts got hard to control. Things are easier with it. I see what it does for me. Things are generally quieter.

But not quiet enough.

Things are saner than previous drug-free holidays. I feel like I've made some decisions and worked within certain perameters to help keep safe.

For instance, while drinking I called the suicide hotline. Not that I was feeling suicidal, but I know that drinking off medication can lead me to such things and I know if my judgement is off while drug-free, then "off" doesn't even begin to cover it when I'm drinking. Drinking makes it an entirely new game.

But I'm more impulsive off medication, which, with some caution, isn't the worst thing, I'm afraid to say. While on meds, the caution gets the upper hand. And it turns into inability. I become ponderous, full of doubt. But drug-free, it's no sooner thought than done. I don't have time to doubt a sentence beginning, I'm already at the end and going back would require more than going forward.

But I know I'm avoiding my problems. Avoiding things I should be doing like checking my ballance. Which I may do now, since I'm on my way to therapy.

Maybe things are ok. Maybe not. Still have to do it and it will be good to get support afterwards.

Still I don't want to do it.

Why must everything get so fucked?

The great moment of hesitation. When I take up the pen, as it were, to say something.

It's an interesting sensation. Kind of like when words seem to fail me. Like I'm afraid of getting too close to something. Letting too much go, letting too much of myself show and there is the danger.

Maybe it has something to do with the things I believe about reading. That reading carefully enough, you can see into the hidden meaning of things--meanings that the writer didn't even know.

This was taught to me in college and is a cornerstone of my former field, literary interpretation.

But there is, as always, something more personal to it. Somehow I feel as if I can pass through a phone or in-person conversation and "pass" as it were--can intuitively put up some kind of smoke-screen.

But that's not quite it.

It's not like I'm some kind of sociopath like that tv show Dexter. But that there's a secret part of me that just isn't that attractive. That might be revealed to me and to others.

In my head, I know this to be somewhat foolish. People like me, and they've seen me at unattractive moments. Seen me do bad things and let them down, yet still, we've managed to come through.

And to bring it back to writing--there's no reason this should be a privileged field, should somehow reveal the dark corners of the soul...

Still, sitting down to write isn't all that much fun.

Wake Up, Be Clark Blaise

I've thought about this far too wrong and long.

There's a chance to be anyone here. Anything at all.

Totally free to be. And far be it from me to put this anyway near the titular character, easy to choose to be wrong.

Here goes: I'm drunk, off medication and grumpy.

Stunning, I know.

I've treated this thing far too long as a journal I've decided to make public.

Maybe that's what I should have started out doing.

But that's what it is.

Getting things done (insert trademark here) is a secondary concern.

If i ever get back to it.

I have this wish that I could talk to someone (specifically, not just anyone) and they could help me make things go my way.

Give me permission.

If only I could buy three hits of Lamictal. End this pain.

But money; legal problems.

No medication. no solace for the wicked.

Pain and power through.

Patience and mania seem difficult.

The hardest thing in the world is to wait when the mind is racing.

Why wait? You don't.

An hour--what are you going to do with that. A million things will go through the mind before the hour is up.

Try spending an hour manic and not doing anything aside from waiting. Hell. pure and simple.

Therapy again

Just hanging in there.

The therapist said some interesting things about honesty and resistance. Resistance I'd not dishonesty. Without resistance we'd be too raw, too damaged. It's protective.

I feel like I let down my resistance pretty far today. I do feel raw, like a nerve.

But it's better to feel this way than to feel nothing at all. To live like a zombie like I sometimes do.

But I am also tired. It's exhausting to go through this. Maybe the heat, the lack of drugs and food is catching up with me. And a little too much sleep.

I took some chances, expressing my frustrations at therapy--that it seems too much like addressing the symptoms and not enough like addressing the core.

And even sharing with him the pain that I feel and my understandings of it.

But mostly, I feel the withdrawl from medication.

It sucks.

I'm still in pain

I always said I wanted to do this, try and get into the right head space before therapy, but I don't know if my head right now will comply.

I'm going through Lamictal withdrawl. I thought I could just go to the proper pharmacy and get my perscription filled, but it's not that easy. They want me to see a doctor there first.

And the earliest I could see one is this afternoon. So, two days off the sauce.

Still, I have this piece of writing I did after the last round of therapy and I would like to look at it so I can bring it to the therapist but... But nothing. No more or less embarassing than anything else.

I feel numb.

That's one of the perverse benefits of withdrawl, not feeling anything except the lack of drugs. Withdrawl serves its own purposes and escapes.

I spend too much time this way.

Still, the pain I felt the other day was extreem. Prolonged and sharp. And I don't know if I will ever be consoled. Healed.

That would require coming out of my shells--being more authentic more of the time. One of the suprising things that happened to me was this: when I interacted with Bridy or someone else, I was more authentically happy, though bracketed by pain.

I don't know much about this resentful wound at the heart of so much of my experience. I know it's resentful. It resents the idea of explication or glib expressions of consolation. I know it likes to hole up in miserable conditions and pass the time in escapism. I know it likes to express itself alone. Never with others though they sometimes see it.

I can feel some of it now.

It's not like I want to feel this way, but I don't want to sweep it under the rug.

I don't need cosmological comfort. I'm good being alone if only there wasn't so much pain.

I wonder about bringing this up. Where we can go. What that experience will be like.

And how do others deal with this feeling? How do they make it through the day. Through life?

Continued from the previous post

I suppose it is too dark even for blogger to allow me to edit it... I
encountered an error when I tried, so no editing, just going.

It is also pain. Excruciating pain. Teeth coming in.

It is also fear. I don't know if it's fear that I am pain, or fear of
revealing the pain, of embodying it, expressing it, being honest about
pain itself. That life is pain. Perhaps it is also the fear of living
pain as well. That my bearing witness to the pain inside, the hurt,
the wound at the center of my being... I'm deeply in pain. But that's
the wrong expression. I am deep pain.

That's what my apartment is saying. And I am afraid for anyone who
cares about me to see it. To take out the trash is to express that
pain, that suffering.

I want no one to feel sorry for me, because that plays into all the
means of expressing the lies that I am in no pain. And I express those
lies to protect them from the pain I feel. The last thing I want is
empathy. I don't even want them to bear witness to my pain. That would
be to trivialize it.

And I'm afraid if the apartment is clean, then I'll have no other way
of expressing it and I'll feel this pain all the time. It's stressful
to be in pain.

The heart of the inside

There's an experience I have when I'm home, outside of therapy. That there are two selves. One is the outside and one is the heart of the inside.

This core, this self is the reality and the outside is a carefully articulated performance.

But I know the inside speaks. I ultimately do what I want, eventually. Like leaving school. That was an authentic expression, fuck what anybody thinks.

But the inside must be protected. It can't speak directly. It can't take the place of the outside because it's too valuable, too precious, too much at the core of my existence to be put there and be in danger.

It's the raw nerve. It's the lump in my throat. It casts off shells ot itself in the illumination of being articulated. It is resistant, it uses resistence to protect itself. It is negativity. It says no. That's why I try to appear to say yes on the outside because on the inside I say no. Not enough. Not full enough an expression. I escape.

The heart of the inside is escape. Demanding, nothing appeases it.

And it is doubt. Doubt that any expression is adequite. Is enough. Gets it.

If every attempt at complete self-portraiture is doomed to failure, then I still exist. There is no need for fear of ceasing to exist because deep within me is an enigma that is me. That is perfect, in its way. And every attempt of the Other to fit me to shape, to picture me catches the outside and the shape of the inside defies the moulds others put me into.

One of it's favorite expressions is silence. When probing gets too close, words literally fail me. They cease so I can remain unseen. So I can remain.

It is fearful of getting caught because it is so furtive. As if it were wrong, inherantly. Evil is the wrong expression. Wrong is the corect one.

To bring it to light is to bring to light that I am Wrong. Wrong in the core, Wrong in the fundament of my being.

And I need to protect others from this realization. So they do not witness the perverse core of my being--resistence, perversity, a willful Wrong over Right.

A Wrong that chooses itself as much as it is Wrong by nature. It cannot be other than Wrong but it chooses to be so nonetheless, because to choose otherwise is to betray it's being.

I feel down, and down is the authentic expression of my being. It is sadness. Not pitty. For which it is sometimes confused.

Therapy

I go to therapy a lot. Right now, three days a week.

I don't even know how I'll pay for it once I switch insurance. Well, that's a few weeks away.

It's going well. We talked about power issues. I give a lot of power to others over how I think about myself. Specifically, how I value myself. I don't have a good idea of my self worth when I imagine others valuing me poorly.

For example: I was talking to a girl over the phone and the issue of what I am doing came up. And I imagined her to be super critical of me. I faltered in my explaining of my situation. Which isn't that unusual. Looking for a job just after leaving school.

A friend put it well--I can say I was working on the side and found the side work more interesting so I decided to leave.

I can really say anything I want. It's a chance to reinvent myself. Try new things. But I don't always think of things that way.

I don't really know where this is going, so maybe it's time to stop.