Therapy and other things...
Therapy has hit the painful parts.
Now coupled with my individual therapy I have group therapy. Group is a bit more challenging than individual in that you can't control the group setting. In therapy I can manuever around the painful bits with the skill of a Formula One racer in a Ferrari. Group, other people are in the driver's seat, going where they want to go and doing what they want to do. And thus I have to go there too.
We discussed the affair.
I always feel I need to get it out there first, my Scarlet Letter, my badge of sin. It's the weight of guilt I carry with me everywhere, the millstone around my neck. I think it's all the worse considered how thing went, I wonder why in the world was I so stupid? But there it is. I can't forgive myself for it, I know that. I feel shame in having been a person who would do something like that and shame in that I don't regret the relationship I got out of it, (well, with the possible exception of today). I feel shame in that I hurt someone but justified my reasons for it. There is a ton of shame there, and disappointment in myself that I've never, ever dealt with. Group therapy has sort of brought that out in a lot of ways. I don't know what to do about it.
It also brings up a lot of issues about relationships and families. We all have fucked up families in this group, selfish, self-centered ones that neglected their children and forced them to grow up much to young. We are all dealing with our anger at our parents. I discovered just how much anger I do feel at my parents, anger at my mother for obvious reasons. But anger at my father too, for the things he did. Now, that doesn't mean I don't love them, but...I do need to stop rationalizing away things that hurt me. I've done it for years. We were poor, my parents were trying their best, blah, blah...and that all is true. But there is a point when I have to realize that those things done to us were just wrong.
That gets to my individual therapy.
We've been discussing my rejection issues and my inability to connect to people. I struggle a great deal with my fear of rejection. I assume that people who stop talking to me or who don't warm up to me immediatly don't like me and that it is because I have something wrong with me. I assume that if you stay for a conversation or try to reach out to me you must like me. And those people I cling to because I think, "finally, someone who doesn't think I'm awful!"
Yeah, I know, I have no self-esteem.
My therapist is trying to get at the heart of it. Part of it was my childhood, I was picked on a great deal as a kid. I was different, small, skinny, white, red hair, freckles. Too poor to hang with the middle-class white kids from military families, to white to hang with the poor, black kids I grew up with. I tended to hang with other people on the fringe, just like me, ones who didn't care that my skin was pale or that my family was poor. When I moved to Missouri it was even worse. Now I was the outsider in a small town, where everyone grew up together and was related to one another. I was the outsider, the stranger, the new person.
I never fit in.
I think the Jewell crowd was the first time I totally fit in anywhere. Now my last years at Milan I did, I found a place for myself, but at Jewell I found a family. I'm still close to them now. And that's the structure of my friendships. I find people who don't reject me, and then I cling to those people for dear life. I will overlook any sin, any crime just so those people will be my friends and not leave me. Because there might not be any other people who ever love and care for me again.
Another interesting tidbit we uncovered is my propensity to hide the pain when I am hurt. When I was seven, I was picked on by bullies, (one of whom is a now infamous, former-basketball player). They were kids, so was I, and in class one day they decided it would be funny to try and make me cry. So they began trying to cut my hand. At first it was just a scratch, but then they made it deeper and deeper, drawing blood. I wouldn't move my hand, I wouldn't hide it, I merely took it and wouldn't react. That wasn't the only thing, I remember at some other point push pins being used to try and make me cry or scream out, all very secret if you are wondering why the teacher didn't notice. She didn't notice because I didn't scream and I wouldn't tell her. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of the attention.
I don't like letting people see me cry. I don't like letting you have the satisfaction of seeing that you hurt me. I refuse to let you see that you have broken me on some fundamental level. So when people reject me I swallow it and go quietly to pieces in private. Which is what I've been doing of late.
And now we get to the emo part of this post. So Patric, as many of you know, has a relationship. I have tried not to involve myself in it, but I do ask for his friendship. Why? Because frankly he's all I got. I'm alone in this city in many ways, I have my roomie, sometimes I have Randy, but that's it. Friday night comes and I have no one to spend it with. I have no girlfriends to go to the bars with, no one to catch a movie with, nobody to call when I have had a bad day and need a beer. I get Linda, who God bless her loves me, but who is so broken I doubt she will ever go back together again. Patric may be many things, but he's my friend.
Last night he had a car accident, rear ended on the 405, as far as those sorts of accidents go it was kind of nasty. He is fine, car runs, but it's a lot of body work, frustration, money, etc. And he came home to his new apartment to find a flood in his garage. Fun.
Normally I'm the first person he calls. I found out about it this morning. And then he applauded his self-restraint by not calling me. Of course I freaked out, this is a person I care the world about, but he said he was fine. Besides, there was nothing I could do because "some" people wouldn't like it.
Translation...girlfriend...she wouldn't like it.
It was a kick in the gut. The time I even get to spend with him is next to nothing, I don't hardly get to speak with him, our conversations are next to nothing...and it's because he doesn't want to call on me like that because she doesn't want him to.
As usual I'm the expendable one.
My life has been marked with this sort of expendability, the idea that I'm so easily thrown away. After all, if it really hurt, then I would say something wouldn't I? See above. Yeah, we've already established that I don't. I don't give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me cry, of seeing how much it hurts that I can't even spend time with them, or have them in my life. How much it hurts that the one person I cared for is gone, and he thinks it's admirable that he didn't tell me that he was hurt in an accident. All those years of turning myself practically in knots for someone, and all I get is, "I'm an inconsiderate ass, but I'm trying to do right."
That doesn't make any of this feel better. Because in the end you still get your relationship, your happy little situation, and I'm left grasping for straws without any support and I'm all alone to boot. There is nothing right or fair about that. And there is not a damn thing I can do about it.
All I can be is angry and rage with the sheer injustice of it. At the end of the day I'm sitting here, without a house, really, without a job, without my best friend, and I'm the last person to know when he got hurt. The one person I thought I could always turn to when life went to shit, and I find out that I'm inconsequential in his life, or at least I have to be now because I'm a threat.
Fuck, if Patric wanted me in his life, if he really gave have the shit about me I gave about him, he could have had me years ago. He didn't, so I don't see why anyone is threatened by me. I was never a threat to anyone.
So yeah, the last few weeks have been pretty fucking shitty, thank you.
Now coupled with my individual therapy I have group therapy. Group is a bit more challenging than individual in that you can't control the group setting. In therapy I can manuever around the painful bits with the skill of a Formula One racer in a Ferrari. Group, other people are in the driver's seat, going where they want to go and doing what they want to do. And thus I have to go there too.
We discussed the affair.
I always feel I need to get it out there first, my Scarlet Letter, my badge of sin. It's the weight of guilt I carry with me everywhere, the millstone around my neck. I think it's all the worse considered how thing went, I wonder why in the world was I so stupid? But there it is. I can't forgive myself for it, I know that. I feel shame in having been a person who would do something like that and shame in that I don't regret the relationship I got out of it, (well, with the possible exception of today). I feel shame in that I hurt someone but justified my reasons for it. There is a ton of shame there, and disappointment in myself that I've never, ever dealt with. Group therapy has sort of brought that out in a lot of ways. I don't know what to do about it.
It also brings up a lot of issues about relationships and families. We all have fucked up families in this group, selfish, self-centered ones that neglected their children and forced them to grow up much to young. We are all dealing with our anger at our parents. I discovered just how much anger I do feel at my parents, anger at my mother for obvious reasons. But anger at my father too, for the things he did. Now, that doesn't mean I don't love them, but...I do need to stop rationalizing away things that hurt me. I've done it for years. We were poor, my parents were trying their best, blah, blah...and that all is true. But there is a point when I have to realize that those things done to us were just wrong.
That gets to my individual therapy.
We've been discussing my rejection issues and my inability to connect to people. I struggle a great deal with my fear of rejection. I assume that people who stop talking to me or who don't warm up to me immediatly don't like me and that it is because I have something wrong with me. I assume that if you stay for a conversation or try to reach out to me you must like me. And those people I cling to because I think, "finally, someone who doesn't think I'm awful!"
Yeah, I know, I have no self-esteem.
My therapist is trying to get at the heart of it. Part of it was my childhood, I was picked on a great deal as a kid. I was different, small, skinny, white, red hair, freckles. Too poor to hang with the middle-class white kids from military families, to white to hang with the poor, black kids I grew up with. I tended to hang with other people on the fringe, just like me, ones who didn't care that my skin was pale or that my family was poor. When I moved to Missouri it was even worse. Now I was the outsider in a small town, where everyone grew up together and was related to one another. I was the outsider, the stranger, the new person.
I never fit in.
I think the Jewell crowd was the first time I totally fit in anywhere. Now my last years at Milan I did, I found a place for myself, but at Jewell I found a family. I'm still close to them now. And that's the structure of my friendships. I find people who don't reject me, and then I cling to those people for dear life. I will overlook any sin, any crime just so those people will be my friends and not leave me. Because there might not be any other people who ever love and care for me again.
Another interesting tidbit we uncovered is my propensity to hide the pain when I am hurt. When I was seven, I was picked on by bullies, (one of whom is a now infamous, former-basketball player). They were kids, so was I, and in class one day they decided it would be funny to try and make me cry. So they began trying to cut my hand. At first it was just a scratch, but then they made it deeper and deeper, drawing blood. I wouldn't move my hand, I wouldn't hide it, I merely took it and wouldn't react. That wasn't the only thing, I remember at some other point push pins being used to try and make me cry or scream out, all very secret if you are wondering why the teacher didn't notice. She didn't notice because I didn't scream and I wouldn't tell her. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of the attention.
I don't like letting people see me cry. I don't like letting you have the satisfaction of seeing that you hurt me. I refuse to let you see that you have broken me on some fundamental level. So when people reject me I swallow it and go quietly to pieces in private. Which is what I've been doing of late.
And now we get to the emo part of this post. So Patric, as many of you know, has a relationship. I have tried not to involve myself in it, but I do ask for his friendship. Why? Because frankly he's all I got. I'm alone in this city in many ways, I have my roomie, sometimes I have Randy, but that's it. Friday night comes and I have no one to spend it with. I have no girlfriends to go to the bars with, no one to catch a movie with, nobody to call when I have had a bad day and need a beer. I get Linda, who God bless her loves me, but who is so broken I doubt she will ever go back together again. Patric may be many things, but he's my friend.
Last night he had a car accident, rear ended on the 405, as far as those sorts of accidents go it was kind of nasty. He is fine, car runs, but it's a lot of body work, frustration, money, etc. And he came home to his new apartment to find a flood in his garage. Fun.
Normally I'm the first person he calls. I found out about it this morning. And then he applauded his self-restraint by not calling me. Of course I freaked out, this is a person I care the world about, but he said he was fine. Besides, there was nothing I could do because "some" people wouldn't like it.
Translation...girlfriend...she wouldn't like it.
It was a kick in the gut. The time I even get to spend with him is next to nothing, I don't hardly get to speak with him, our conversations are next to nothing...and it's because he doesn't want to call on me like that because she doesn't want him to.
As usual I'm the expendable one.
My life has been marked with this sort of expendability, the idea that I'm so easily thrown away. After all, if it really hurt, then I would say something wouldn't I? See above. Yeah, we've already established that I don't. I don't give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me cry, of seeing how much it hurts that I can't even spend time with them, or have them in my life. How much it hurts that the one person I cared for is gone, and he thinks it's admirable that he didn't tell me that he was hurt in an accident. All those years of turning myself practically in knots for someone, and all I get is, "I'm an inconsiderate ass, but I'm trying to do right."
That doesn't make any of this feel better. Because in the end you still get your relationship, your happy little situation, and I'm left grasping for straws without any support and I'm all alone to boot. There is nothing right or fair about that. And there is not a damn thing I can do about it.
All I can be is angry and rage with the sheer injustice of it. At the end of the day I'm sitting here, without a house, really, without a job, without my best friend, and I'm the last person to know when he got hurt. The one person I thought I could always turn to when life went to shit, and I find out that I'm inconsequential in his life, or at least I have to be now because I'm a threat.
Fuck, if Patric wanted me in his life, if he really gave have the shit about me I gave about him, he could have had me years ago. He didn't, so I don't see why anyone is threatened by me. I was never a threat to anyone.
So yeah, the last few weeks have been pretty fucking shitty, thank you.