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solstice: Sympathy for the Grenade | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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›comments[0] ›all comments ›post #571 ›bio: kristen ›perma-link ›12/4/2024 ›09:30 ›archives ›first post ›that week
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She had fallen hard. The pills weren't working as well as they were earlier when she'd just been numb or maybe the ice had thawed from the huge shift in her life. Here she was. An old, familiar place. Feeling like death warmed over. Part of her technique was reading the reddit boards - it was her one connection to other humans. The worst things you could think had already been thought. Today she had learned that people can get paralyzed from hanging themselves incorrectly and passing out on their legs? All the suicides seem to want one thing: the love of the great mother. She had had it once after a bottle of robo dm in a fuck-it phase post-college. It had been awesome to feel: there was a universe just beyond her reach and this was all just a dance and she could lighten up because afterwards it's all absorbed back into bliss. She had lost that feeling long ago, but it was useful to recall it. Today, the water she left for the neighbor's cat had frozen. Every day she looked in the mornings hoping the cat wouldn't be there because it was so cold she hoped the neighbor would keep them in her house. Would she climb out of this depression ever? Last night she wept. This morning she wept. The thing that triggered this was the knowledge that it had been years since she had genuinely laughed. She recalled the two stand-up comedy events she had attended after separation #2 and how she walked out of one and stone-faced the other. She wondered if it was better or worse or whatever to feel feelings instead of the numb. She had wanted to cry earlier - to get it all out. Now, she wanted to go back into numb. The problem was she viewed herself as a grenade. Who would love a grenade. What did a grenade need to live? it's purpose was to explode. Everyone was all right now. She wasn't needed to hold anything. She was safe. She had a ticking clock of respite. In the rice cooker, she had of all things some rice cooking. She had bought this expensive zojushi device back when she had hope that she was going to jump into a new field. It would make her laugh now if she laughed at anything. Maybe she chortled at stuff. Taylor Tomlinson - another fuck up mental case - was the one that made her smile the most. It's funny because it's true. She didn't want to embarrass her mother, but she was down again and needed so much help. It wasn't going to come because she wasn't going to bother anyone. It was her gift to them all. That's what made her weep also last night is realizing that her gift to anyone and everyone was being the grenade in the locked box. She was going to pretend she was ok and not bother anyone. Another side of her wondered if she could be her own therapist. "what brings you here today." "I'm 53 with the mentality of a 14-year old goth kid." "what exactly does that mean to you." "I've never grown up. I've only pretended to, and now I'm screwed and alone. I self-isolate and remember one time in my past that I felt connected to people, and I've never gotten that back." "say more." "it's embarrassing. it was so long ago, and since then I've tried so hard to be good." "what does being good mean to you." "not cheating on people. respecting other people's ... well acquiescing to other people. Not being a depressing bother. Not being a crazy maniac." "that's a lot of what not to do. what are some ways that you can be?" "I can choose to numb. I can choose to isolate myself. I can choose to not be a bother." "what would you say to someone who was in your position - what would you say to yourself in your current position.?" "oh, that question again. I don't know what I would say. It's too meta. Let me try though. This is all I currently have. [PAUSE] you may not want to hear this right now. I know you must be really scared or you wouldn't be here, and you are here. You are trying to get that pin back in the grenade, and it might be more real to just let it explode. You may not believe this, but I think you're so worthy of love even though you fucked up so much. I still think you're the most amazing person I've ever met. I could talk to you for centuries. It makes me so sad that you keep hurting yourself - that you keep hating yourself. I'm always here. I've always loved you even when you peed your pants in a strangers bed looking for connection and numbness, I've loved you. you were not good with relationships because you hadn't integrated that part of yourself that felt such rage. Maybe now you can communicate. oh fuck. this is so ..." "do you feel that no one wants to talk to you? why?" "I'm a bad person. I blow things up. I crash. I'm not stable. I can be fueled by euphoria, drugs, drink, company and feel that I'm super worthy of love. The next month, I'm garbage. I need an external emotional regulator - someone to validate me. I destroy people who love me and end up finding fault with them. My first husband is so much better off without me, but I kind of died when I left him - and I was so arrogant the whole time. I think I'm a fraud and I've never delivered on any of the potential I had. You know I repeat in my head all the time external validations - times people have validated me. I'm alone all the time, and I choose that rather than being with dipshit shallow folks. I feel too much. I'm crazy. I'm too sensitive. I change all the time. I'm a disaster. I'm poor. I should have been the abortion my fucking asshole monster father wanted me to be. then I wouldn't have hurt anyone." "you talk a lot about your first husband. Tell me what you really want to say. I know you've said before than you idealize that relationship, yet what's the real thing you want to have heard?" "I thought I would emerge from that relationship like a father - a good father - raising a child. I thought all that love and acceptance would allow me to finally live and do what I felt I had to do - I felt I had a mission on this earth long ago - to be a writer - to be a star. I remember saying to him that he made everything bad that had happened to me ok because it all had to happen or else I wouldn't have found him - the one who really sees me and can hold me. I felt I had graduated and then ended up homeless on the street instead. he said he pitied me when we had our last talk. I was on such a trajectory to just jettison the whole thing. my entire life since then has been an attempt to make meaning of what I did - to make it make sense. I also thought he'd be better off without me. I was a fucking dick." "do you think you romanticize your past?" "look at my now bitch. yes of course. I fucked up. everyone I ever loved is better off. I self-flagellated and whatever. this is bullshit." "have you ever heard the phrase 'comparison robs joy'?" "I have a sister who is a millionaire and gorgeous. I am 53 and will likely die of suicide if I'm brave enough." "that definitely sounds joy robbing. you said in our intake that you never got a chance to tell anyone - to process the first divorce. why is that? it seems you write about it and talk about it a lot." "I skip over it all the time. The rutted things I say are the same 'he's better off without me.' 'I left him so that he wouldn't have to deal with me' but that's not true - none of it. I was scared taken away from the only happy place I'd ever known and put in a new environment and had so much shame that I masked with bravado. even now, my happy times were 22 years ago - it was like a window of happy. And do you really think I was happy? I was always unsatisfied and questing. I think I was horrible for him, and I had to go from shame to isolation. I joined a cult and am still exiling myself." "I don't understand. what would you want to have happened?" "I would have wanted to have a couple's therapy. I would have wanted to do my own therapy. Instead, I felt like I was the only one crazy and I had already fucked up too much to ever recover from - so I wanted to rush through it - to be back to being perceived as normal as one of us. even this - this embarrasses me. what I'm not telling you is that in the day to day I was a monster. I said I'm sorry at least a hundred times, but it doesn't get that feeling back - that feeling of being connected to someone ... interesting and amazing." "and the second marriage?" "another emotional validation external thing. I knew all the time from the first that he was not someone I would ever want to introduce to my old crowd - he would just clam up and couldn't hang because he was so self-contained and ego-driven. the thing I did for him - and it makes me laugh - is that I didn't cheat on him. I acted great. I was a pretending faker who was never called out on anything. but in the end, I'm grateful he's not around anymore. It gives me PTSD to even think of how it ended, but I'm sure I deserved it. I should disappear now. I have nothing to offer anyone." "what if you never married again and you lived to 98 and lived in a box on the street in Oakland homeless and forgotten? I would think the weather would make it relatively easy to be homeless and you said LA is not the place for you ever again. What do you think your life would be?" "I would think I'd be arrogant to the other homeless people. I'd also try to pick up as much trash as I could. I would think my life would truly have been a waste." "if you never went back to Wilmington again and never contacted any of your fragile network of quasi-friends and family - what do you think would happen?" "I'd have to find a way to forgive myself. look the rice is done, and it's time to make my curry with the vegetables I have on hand and save some money from the financial debacle that Wilmington was." "OK. let's try to leave with a goal. what would you like to set as a goal before our next session?" "I'd like my goal to be that I allow at least one person into my life - to not pretend with them." "what would that look like" "a bloody text to some unfortunate person in my life - what do I have like three? I think I'd like to do another goal. that one sounds like it's imposing on other people." "would it really be that you're too scared - that you'd get rejected? that you'd burden them?" "wow, you've really earned your fee there lady."
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