Recovery Resources
books by Iyanla Vanzant helped, as well as one about verbal abuse. it was hard to find books that were not about physical abuse, but i found one, and it helped me so much. it shed light on what i was going through and i realized that i wasn't crazy, that it was an actual syndrome, and that it happens to other people. i learned about controlling behaviors, and the insidious nature of emotional and psychological abuse, and how it creeps up on you until it's too late. i learned about the dr. jekyl and mr. hyde syndrome, which i've experienced since i was born. sometimes it's so embedded in my relationships that i know something is wrong but i can't see it for what it is--kind of like when you try to read a book when it's too close to your eyes.
people always wonder why battered spouses don't simply leave. it's never that simple. quite often they've been brainwashed into believing it's all their fault, and if they would just try harder next time, it wouldn't happen. i spent a couple of years in that downward cycle of paranoia and self-doubt.
studying abuse patterns helped me refine my identifying-hazardous-people skills, which i started learning about in al-anon and continue to do to this day. sometimes i feel (well, i'm probably flattering myself here) that i have razor sharp vision that sees right to the root of people and behavior, but i also know that i can be oblivious to really obvious things and that my judgment can be clouded by my own story. sometimes i find out i'm completely wrong. then i get disappointed and upset because i realize that my false assessment of the other person was all about me and my stuff. i hate that!
my friend brian had that razor-sharp vision, and i learned everything i could from him. we had dinner one evening and i had just sat down at the table and he already knew i had a new boyfriend. i hadn't even said anything! he also knew his mother had a gambling problem and that his father had begun to drink alcoholically. i have never seen anyone be nicer or more sympathetic to my mother than brian, because he saw through everything down to the core of the frightened, unloved, unhappy person she is. it's like he could see everything clearly for what it truly was.
i also needed to learn why i was drawn to dangerous people and how to un-program that.
this week may be a bit of a whirlwind. it's spring break, and i have activities planned almost every day. tomorrow my dad and i are going to school, where we'll have dinner in the dining hall and watch some tv with my friends in my dorm.
tuesday i'm having lunch with an old friend at my favorite sushi place. then i'd like to go to my creative writing class, then my dad and i are having dinner at our cousin's house in san jose.
wednesday i may be shopping in sf with friends from school, thursday i'm on call for RTS from 1-7pm. I don't know about Friday, but I'm picking my mom up at the airport saturday night and then going back to school.
i hope to see a couple of movies, get a pedicure, a facial, maybe go to yoga, use my gift certificates from christmas and return some stuff to banana republic that i don't want.
it's so weird to be here without muffin. i miss him very much. he was such a beautiful cat. i need a cat in my life at all times, i think. that kitty from the Barnes' was amazing. purring so loudly, cuddling with me in bed, being affectionate, running around like a mad kitty, trying to jump on me from various places or climb up my sweater or arm. he'd sit on my shoulder like a parrot would.
i can't believe the school year will be over so soon. coming home for the summer is my worst nightmare, especially having had such a fun year with all my new friends and the mills community. i have no money to live on my own, though, so i guess i could look for a job but i don't know if i'm ready for full-time stress. i could get an internship but they don't pay anything. it's more important for me to be on my own than anything else.
ideally, i'd like a place in the city, but it's very expensive. i guess i should do some more research on internships. i've been putting it off, and now i know why. there's so much other stuff in my life that needs addressing, and i think that's where my anti-school energy and resistance have been coming from. i'm tired of going to school; it's been 11 years since i entered pomona. a combination of bipolar and the rigidity of the system are to blame. i thought i would have a graduate degree by now.
i was never in a hurry to get married, but i always thought that by age 30 sounded about right. time for grad school, work, independence, finding the right person, and then settling down. instead, i won't even have my BA until i'm 30, so i've lost about 8-10 years.
can i just say (borrowing a phrase from natasha) how awful it is that princess diana's death has sparked a minor tourism industry in paris? it's disgusting. before her accident, the ritz hotel in paris was like any other. now, every time i've been to paris since her death, there's a frickin' tour bus parked in front of the ritz with people walking around and taking pictures. it's disgusting.
wow, i guess i have a lot to say. i watched a documentary about marilyn monroe and princess di, and janis joplin. i'm fascinated by sick or ill or troubled people, and then i hate myself because i worry that i have some kind of morbid personality. i often have a hard time relating to happy people because i simply don't speak that language. i often feel like a wet blanket, introducing some totally depressing subject in the middle of a conversation.
i should make a separate entry of Debbie Downer quotes from SNL. I love that stuff, but it makes me feel juvenile. I'm 29 already, and never been given the chance to grow up. I need to find some people my own age to address that aspect of my life and development.
it's funny how i love to analyze people but that doesn't necessariy translate into wanting to be a therapist. i don't like statistics and don't believe the human experience can be understood via numbers. i think that intuition is a more powerful form of intelligence when it comes to human behavior, which is why psychology is not my favorite lens for studying them.
it's like psychology looks at people from the outside in, while literature is the reverse. plus, i find language to be artistry and it's much cooler and more nuanced than numbers and painful charts and shit. i find literature much more relevant.
i need to take my afternoon meds soon and make lunch. my problem with cooking, of many, is that i wait until i'm hungry to eat, but by that point i'm too weak to fix food, so i stay hungry. i look forward to learning more about cooking once i'm out of school and on my own.
anyway, back to lady di for a moment. when i was a kid my parents and i stayed up late to watch her wedding live from England. it was this huge deal. and then she died, and i stayed up late to watch the funeral. it was so sad, i was really crying. it was fall of my sophomore year at pomona college, and i was living in the foreign language dorm. in retrospect, that was a happy time, but it also the year i learned i had manic depression, which wasn't so fun.
i walked around like a zombie for days, as if i had seen a ghost and been kicked in the stomach once i realized that i had it. surreal. that stuff only happens to crazy poets and painters, not to shining stars like me (well, i had been raised to see myself that way), i thought. but it made too much sense. all of the past years, going back to junior high, suddenly made sense. it was so clear.
so i took leave from school, came home, saw a psychiatrist, got my diagnosis, went home, told my folks, and they were upset. i don't think my dad believes my diagnosis to this day. that same month they lost their retirement money in the stock market, and my dad's job sort of went away. he hasn't been able to find work since.
that's what the past nine years have been like. we sold our house, cause we couldn't afford it, and moved to some wretched retirement community in san jose. i had to live there for a year and a half or two years because i couldn't function. i had no choice. fucking humiliating. then my mom suddenly decides it's time to move again, so now we live in this so-so modest townhouse in mountain view. it's sad. my parents are unhappy.
i just wished they'd managed their money better so we never would have had to leave 1614 clay drive. shit. all of this stuff happened at once. meanwhile, i wasn't getting any better, in fact, as the years went by i got more and more hopeless as one drug after the next failed. most caused wretched side effects which were humiliating and destroyed my self-image even further. i was a pretty kid and then a model as a teen, and by my early twenties i was a wreck.
on top of that, i had bad acne that didn't respond to anything but accutane, which suppressed my immune system and i had bronchitis, the stomach flu, and a gum disease all at once. so my gums have receded a bit and i have permanent acne scars.
i feel like i know what it's like to have it all and lose it all, and then some. i never knew the kind of suffering i've experienced existed in the world. loss of innocence. it was just one thing after the next for years.
enter effexor. it's been a slow and difficult uphill path since then. i will never regain all that lost ground. i have very little left, but i'm building on it. going to mills was a huge step forward, but it wasn't the college experience i'd dreamed about since i was a kid, the one i felt belonged to me and was inevitable based on who i was before the illness.
so it's one acceptance process after another. a slow and difficult process of accepting a life i never wanted and trying to make it bearable. so much loss to let go of.
i don't know what's up with all these long entries i've been making lately, but who cares. i really should go get lunch and my meds now.
people always wonder why battered spouses don't simply leave. it's never that simple. quite often they've been brainwashed into believing it's all their fault, and if they would just try harder next time, it wouldn't happen. i spent a couple of years in that downward cycle of paranoia and self-doubt.
studying abuse patterns helped me refine my identifying-hazardous-people skills, which i started learning about in al-anon and continue to do to this day. sometimes i feel (well, i'm probably flattering myself here) that i have razor sharp vision that sees right to the root of people and behavior, but i also know that i can be oblivious to really obvious things and that my judgment can be clouded by my own story. sometimes i find out i'm completely wrong. then i get disappointed and upset because i realize that my false assessment of the other person was all about me and my stuff. i hate that!
my friend brian had that razor-sharp vision, and i learned everything i could from him. we had dinner one evening and i had just sat down at the table and he already knew i had a new boyfriend. i hadn't even said anything! he also knew his mother had a gambling problem and that his father had begun to drink alcoholically. i have never seen anyone be nicer or more sympathetic to my mother than brian, because he saw through everything down to the core of the frightened, unloved, unhappy person she is. it's like he could see everything clearly for what it truly was.
i also needed to learn why i was drawn to dangerous people and how to un-program that.
this week may be a bit of a whirlwind. it's spring break, and i have activities planned almost every day. tomorrow my dad and i are going to school, where we'll have dinner in the dining hall and watch some tv with my friends in my dorm.
tuesday i'm having lunch with an old friend at my favorite sushi place. then i'd like to go to my creative writing class, then my dad and i are having dinner at our cousin's house in san jose.
wednesday i may be shopping in sf with friends from school, thursday i'm on call for RTS from 1-7pm. I don't know about Friday, but I'm picking my mom up at the airport saturday night and then going back to school.
i hope to see a couple of movies, get a pedicure, a facial, maybe go to yoga, use my gift certificates from christmas and return some stuff to banana republic that i don't want.
it's so weird to be here without muffin. i miss him very much. he was such a beautiful cat. i need a cat in my life at all times, i think. that kitty from the Barnes' was amazing. purring so loudly, cuddling with me in bed, being affectionate, running around like a mad kitty, trying to jump on me from various places or climb up my sweater or arm. he'd sit on my shoulder like a parrot would.
i can't believe the school year will be over so soon. coming home for the summer is my worst nightmare, especially having had such a fun year with all my new friends and the mills community. i have no money to live on my own, though, so i guess i could look for a job but i don't know if i'm ready for full-time stress. i could get an internship but they don't pay anything. it's more important for me to be on my own than anything else.
ideally, i'd like a place in the city, but it's very expensive. i guess i should do some more research on internships. i've been putting it off, and now i know why. there's so much other stuff in my life that needs addressing, and i think that's where my anti-school energy and resistance have been coming from. i'm tired of going to school; it's been 11 years since i entered pomona. a combination of bipolar and the rigidity of the system are to blame. i thought i would have a graduate degree by now.
i was never in a hurry to get married, but i always thought that by age 30 sounded about right. time for grad school, work, independence, finding the right person, and then settling down. instead, i won't even have my BA until i'm 30, so i've lost about 8-10 years.
can i just say (borrowing a phrase from natasha) how awful it is that princess diana's death has sparked a minor tourism industry in paris? it's disgusting. before her accident, the ritz hotel in paris was like any other. now, every time i've been to paris since her death, there's a frickin' tour bus parked in front of the ritz with people walking around and taking pictures. it's disgusting.
wow, i guess i have a lot to say. i watched a documentary about marilyn monroe and princess di, and janis joplin. i'm fascinated by sick or ill or troubled people, and then i hate myself because i worry that i have some kind of morbid personality. i often have a hard time relating to happy people because i simply don't speak that language. i often feel like a wet blanket, introducing some totally depressing subject in the middle of a conversation.
i should make a separate entry of Debbie Downer quotes from SNL. I love that stuff, but it makes me feel juvenile. I'm 29 already, and never been given the chance to grow up. I need to find some people my own age to address that aspect of my life and development.
it's funny how i love to analyze people but that doesn't necessariy translate into wanting to be a therapist. i don't like statistics and don't believe the human experience can be understood via numbers. i think that intuition is a more powerful form of intelligence when it comes to human behavior, which is why psychology is not my favorite lens for studying them.
it's like psychology looks at people from the outside in, while literature is the reverse. plus, i find language to be artistry and it's much cooler and more nuanced than numbers and painful charts and shit. i find literature much more relevant.
i need to take my afternoon meds soon and make lunch. my problem with cooking, of many, is that i wait until i'm hungry to eat, but by that point i'm too weak to fix food, so i stay hungry. i look forward to learning more about cooking once i'm out of school and on my own.
anyway, back to lady di for a moment. when i was a kid my parents and i stayed up late to watch her wedding live from England. it was this huge deal. and then she died, and i stayed up late to watch the funeral. it was so sad, i was really crying. it was fall of my sophomore year at pomona college, and i was living in the foreign language dorm. in retrospect, that was a happy time, but it also the year i learned i had manic depression, which wasn't so fun.
i walked around like a zombie for days, as if i had seen a ghost and been kicked in the stomach once i realized that i had it. surreal. that stuff only happens to crazy poets and painters, not to shining stars like me (well, i had been raised to see myself that way), i thought. but it made too much sense. all of the past years, going back to junior high, suddenly made sense. it was so clear.
so i took leave from school, came home, saw a psychiatrist, got my diagnosis, went home, told my folks, and they were upset. i don't think my dad believes my diagnosis to this day. that same month they lost their retirement money in the stock market, and my dad's job sort of went away. he hasn't been able to find work since.
that's what the past nine years have been like. we sold our house, cause we couldn't afford it, and moved to some wretched retirement community in san jose. i had to live there for a year and a half or two years because i couldn't function. i had no choice. fucking humiliating. then my mom suddenly decides it's time to move again, so now we live in this so-so modest townhouse in mountain view. it's sad. my parents are unhappy.
i just wished they'd managed their money better so we never would have had to leave 1614 clay drive. shit. all of this stuff happened at once. meanwhile, i wasn't getting any better, in fact, as the years went by i got more and more hopeless as one drug after the next failed. most caused wretched side effects which were humiliating and destroyed my self-image even further. i was a pretty kid and then a model as a teen, and by my early twenties i was a wreck.
on top of that, i had bad acne that didn't respond to anything but accutane, which suppressed my immune system and i had bronchitis, the stomach flu, and a gum disease all at once. so my gums have receded a bit and i have permanent acne scars.
i feel like i know what it's like to have it all and lose it all, and then some. i never knew the kind of suffering i've experienced existed in the world. loss of innocence. it was just one thing after the next for years.
enter effexor. it's been a slow and difficult uphill path since then. i will never regain all that lost ground. i have very little left, but i'm building on it. going to mills was a huge step forward, but it wasn't the college experience i'd dreamed about since i was a kid, the one i felt belonged to me and was inevitable based on who i was before the illness.
so it's one acceptance process after another. a slow and difficult process of accepting a life i never wanted and trying to make it bearable. so much loss to let go of.
i don't know what's up with all these long entries i've been making lately, but who cares. i really should go get lunch and my meds now.
Comments