You're my Mom!

I am sometimes (often? most of the time?) a very insecure person.  I don't understand what I mean to a lot of the people I love.  I have a very hard time thinking I am special.  And yet I have all these marvelous people who love me and think that I am truly a rare find!  But I don't understand it at all.

I have tried to be a good mom to my Second Daughter.  It is a challenge, not because of her, but because I do not want to let her grow up and be who she is.  I want to hold on to her and to be involved in everything she does.  But she has grown up and has earned her freedom and a life to call her own.  I am not doing well with "empty nest."

And when she is with me, when we are together, I don't understand why she wants to spend time with me.  I am a wet-blanket and nothing like as fun as her boyfriend or some of her girlfriends.  And when I bemoan my lack of understanding, she tells me, in exasperation, "You're my Mom!" like that explains everything!  I stand there without any comprehension of what it means to her for me to be her mom.  I don't know why I don't understand.

Tonight, I got a clue...

I was the oldest, the first-born, of three brothers.  I do not remember feeling special to my mother.  I was never able to make her feel proud of me.  Nothing I did was good enough.  I could not make her show me her love.  After Poppa knows how long, I became just this child, confused and alone, who lived in the same house with my mom and dad and my brothers.  I felt no real connection to anyone but my next younger brother (who happened to be Mom's favorite.)

I have no experience of what it means to love my mom.  I have no reference point when Debra tells me, "You're my Mom!"

Dealing With Anger . . .

  . . . Finally!

At my therapy session last week, I brought up something in my current life where I could see me acting out in anger. I was curious and worried where it came from.  It had to do with a relationship with a man and . . . while I don't have an attraction or an antipathy to men, in this one context I could see myself taking out my anger, punishing, a man.  It isn't pretty in my imagination.  It isn't who I want to be.  I don't believe it is who I am.  

I wanted to explore where it came from.  I wasn't so much interested in dealing with my anger, just understanding where it came from and, hopefully, keep that demon bottled up.

I've been seeing my therapist for almost four years.  She is an excellent match for me and a lot of the things I have worked through she has been a huge help and support. But!  But, it took me well over a year to express my sadness and sorrow and grief to the point where I could cry in front of her.  I am sure she was wondering when or if I would ever get to my anger.

When I was younger, a long, long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away ...  up 'til I was about 15, I had a very volatile, very violent temper.  I didn't get in to more than a few physical confrontations with people, but I broke a lot of things in my anger and rage.  The last real outbreak of my anger, that I can remember, was with my Dad.  I started a physical fight with him.  I wanted to hurt him and hurt him bad!  He was 44 at the time, in fairly good physical shape and in reasonable command of his body.  I was fifteen, bigger than he was but I really didn't know anything about fighting with another person.  The result was that I couldn't do anything to him but kind of wrestle around.  Mom came out to break up the fight.  Dad said we were just funnin' and laughed it off.  My mom looked at me and said, "I don't think so."  Dad never really laid a finger on me, but he cut me to my heart with the way he dismissed and made a joke of my anger.  That was the last time I really let my anger out.  After that...  after that, I would be obviously angry on occasions, but I wouldn't say anything or do anything outward -- I would just steam inside.  My anger would be very hard for me to let go.  Over time, I've come to bury it deeper and deeper.  I would just eat it. (and eating is one of the things I do when I'm angry -- there's a reason I'm 40lbs overweight)  I tried to be an "adult" about it and rationalize my anger.  I would very rarely take it out and look at it and own it or find the legitimate things about what I was angry about and deal with them.

Ephesians 4:26 Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not make room for the devil. So says Poppa's Book.  I don't know that I've heard of where it says how to  "be angry but sin not.."  but the point is, being angry is a legitimate emotion.  Where things are wrong are in rage and in not processing the anger.  In my head, I knew, know this verse, but never, Never have been able to own my anger and deal with it in a way that is healthy for me and healthy for those around me.  I just don't really know how.

And my anger scares me!  Scares me to death!  I don't know where the anger ends and the Rage begins.  I don't know when I'm being angry over nothing or over little things or when I am angry about a principle that is important to me.  I am afraid I might do physical harm to people I love.  I am afraid I might irreparably damage and tear relationships that are precious to me.  I am afraid I will end up alone.  For these reasons, I pull into myself, away from people and try to just let things cool to a place where I can function with people again.  But I do not deal with the anger.

And I have a lot to be angry over. Some of it reasonable, some not so...

I am angry that I didn't do what I could to transition in college when I first thought of it.  Or again when I was in my thirties.  I am angry I threw away the opportunity to be a young and reasonably attractive woman.  I am angry that I threw away a chance to have a life-partner.

By keeping the secret of my gender (even from myself in a lot of ways), I froze out people who I wanted desperately to have a close relationship with.  That especially includes my Ex and my Children.

I am angry that my Ex abandoned me.  I deserved better -- "In sickness and in health, till death do us part."

I am angry that my First Daughter and Son abandoned me.  I  deserve better!  I gave up my girlhood so they could get through college before having to really deal with their Dad's gender.

I am very angry that one of my mentors when I first came out threw away our relationship.  

I am angry that a woman I had thought my best friend (after my Second Daughter) has cut me off.

I am angry that another really good friend doesn't talk to me anymore.  She thinks I've abandoned her but she left the relationship a long time before I stopped making the effort.  I am angry that I don't know how to reach out to her.

I have all this anger and more and I do not know at all how to tap it to let the anger go and be healthy.

My therapist was almost bouncing that I started to express my anger.  And assured me that our sessions are a safe place for me to express my anger.  But I need to learn how to express it in my everyday life in a way that is honest and authentic with the people I love.

When Am I Good Enough . . . For Me?

This is a follow up to the blog "Disaappointing Day ..."  There were many things in that post that I touched on that I feel I need to explore.

In the sixties there was a song, "Red Rubber Ball" and one of the lines was "There is a lesson to be learned from this and I learned it very well."  It seems appropriate to me.  The constant message that I didn't measure up, that my best wasn't good enough, that nothing I could do was enough to earn the love and praise of my parents, indeed, my whole family, was not at all wasted on me.  I can be a little slow and a lot clueless but I usually do "get it" eventually.  I learned this lesson much too well.  I could not do, be, act, good enough to please the people who loved me.  Ever!  When faced with that, there are two options: either you decide you don't care and you do as you please, or you redouble your efforts and become your own Judge, Jury, and Executioner.

I cared.

I cared and internalized all of the expectations I ever felt placed on me by my parents.  Their expectations simply became the foundation of my own expectations.  There has always been a level of performance, of achievement, that I expected [be honest now! it's expect!] to work to.  And along with the expectation of my achievement has come my expectation of falling short, indeed!, of faliure.  Because, "Good" wasn't "Good Enough," "Good" became another word for "Failure."

This has had a very significant effect on my life.  There have been many paths I tried to take, started to take that were doomed from the begininning because I expected to fall short and I was right.  Self-fulfilling Prophecies.  And many, many other paths that I did not dare to take because I knew ahead of time I would not be good enough, that I would fail.

I could not make the idea of "Better to have dared and lost . . ." be considered seriously in my life.

This way of thinking, this way of living, poisons my life, corrodes my dreams, and strangles my loves.  This idea that everything I do or want fails is the bedrock of the feeling that "Everybody I love, leaves me."  I create the environment for my own distrust of everyone else.  My dear Second Daughter has had to be and continues to need to be so very patient with my lack of trust.

I don't apply for this job or that one because I don't want the rejection and the failure.  I don't attempt an activity that I would find enjoyable because I won't be good enough.  I turn into a wall-flower at parties because I believe no one wants to talk to a failure like me.

I have always admired the Bold.  The people who could essentially say, "Damn the torpedoes!  This is going to be Fun!"  It is very hard for me to go to parties where I don't know many people.  I don't know how to put myself out there for people to get to know.  And those people who know me think I'm somebody really special, a Somebody more than "Good Enough."  Somehow, some way, I have to risk!  I have to take chances.  And I must, Must! accept whatever my best is, is "Good Enough!"

A Disappointing Day...

~~~~~~

~~  This is one of several posts 
~~  I started and hadn't been able 
~~  to finish.  They will be 
~~  appearing out of the chronology 
~~  of events.

~~~~~~

Friday was a long, hard day.  It was a day of big emotions and big emotional swings.  I didn't handle things well.  It seems I never really do.  I can never do things the easy way.  I know the way I live my life must be a source of consternation and concern for the people I love and who love me.  It started early and didn't end 'til after midnight.  I was physically tired but more than that I was emotionally wrung out, emotionally tired.

Around 4AM I was roused by an IM message asking if I could take a friend to urgent care later in the day after they woke up.  Of course I can do this, and I told them so.  And rolled over and back to sleep.  My Dear-Heart of a puppy, Xena, does not have any concept of sleeping in.  She woke me around 7 and insisted we play or go outside so she could do her duty.  And my day was off and running.

I had hoped to try to go play golf, but not knowing when my friend would wake, I putzed around the apartment and did some chores.  And I, of course, did my usual 'net surfing.  One of the things I've been trying to change is being so dependent on my Second Daughter. I hate being needy! So, instead of my usual routine, I didn't say good morning to her first thing like usual.  I was hoping she'd initiate the day with me.  It didn't happen and I got a little more out of sorts as the day went on.  Silly Momma. 

A few days before, I had stared to fill out the online job application for barista at Starbucks.  I came to a place where I had to explain why I left my last employer.  Here, things got really hard.  I can answer the question, "I was terminated" just fine, but the "why" is really hard for me.  It brings the scene back to me in full force.  The things they accused me of doing just knots my bowels.  And the accusations are false; it's just what they used to fire the transsexual who had come out just a few weeks before.  But the shame stays with me still.  Still, I want to fill out the application honestly, so what do I do?

Last year I had the opportunity to share my experiences going to San Mateo with a young woman who has become like…  Annabelle's become another Daughter to me.  I gave her all the information I had and the links and pointers to information  that would help her through her surgery.  I offered my phone number and email to her to give to her mom who was going with her to San Mateo.  Her Mom, Sandie, and I have become so close these days that we are definitely Sisters.  She is another of the wonderful blessings Poppa has graced me with in this journey.  Sandie is sort-of retired from a career in Human Resources.  She asked me for my resume' last week to help me improve it, if that's possible.  I sent her an email asking how I address the firing.  She asked for more information and, in tears, I wrote the story again.  I waited for her response.  And I put off finishing the application.

I shared this with my Second Daughter.  She felt that this was a disappointing decision.  That I was putting off getting the application in seemed to be … not what I needed to do.  She knows better than anyone else that I really need work; that I need work with medical benefits and I need it soon.  I was already a week later than I wanted to be getting it done.  And she was right, I did need to get it done ASAP!  Friday, I was already upset with myself that I hadn't acted on this before.  I knew it was coming but I subconsciously did not want to go there.  

So my Second Daughter, Daughter of my Heart, was disappointed in me.  Like everyone else in my life.  I grew up, if you can call it that, in a household where good wasn't good enough.  My father never, ever, had any praises for me.  Very few expressions of disappointment, but I absolutely never felt like he was proud of me.  That left me with disappointed.  He never made many of my sports events and I felt he was disappointed with me, that I was less than he wanted me to be.  Mom on the rare occasions she was paying attention to me, would always tell me, "Good job, but …"  But it wasn't a good job because it always, _Always!_ could have been better.  Always, not good enough.  For as far back as I long as I can remember.  And the most important person in my life now, thought my decision to put off finishing my application was disappointing.  On the one hand, I understood her disappointment and she wasn't wrong, but I was crushed!  I tried to work through it because I knew I had to know the right way to address my firing, oh Poppa! it was hard.  

I took Xena out for a walk and to check my mail.  I saw that I had a bill from Swedish where I had gone when I had my stroke..  I have been waiting for this since I went in for my stroke.  Opening the bill and seeing the charges just floored me.  My Daughter was disappointed at me and I have bills that were going to be higher than if I had been able to get my surgery.  In tears again, walking back to my apartment, I heard myself mutter something  haven't said in almost 3 years, "I wish I was dead!"  I haven't been this low in a long time.  And background to this is Friday night was my son's graduation ceremony from seminary.  The graduation he very plainly didn't want me to attend.

Sandie got back to me eventually and I finished up my Starbucks app.  I told Debra that I'd finished the application and she said she was proud of me and that she knew I could do it.  But I continued to struggle with feeling "less than"  It was a couple days before I was able to come out of that funk.

Camping Trip To Tower Rock

Friday Evening

We are here.  The drive wasn't too bad for a Friday at the beginning of summer - it got slow in a few places but very, very little stop-and-go. I lost any cell phone signal about 30 miles from the camp.  It wasn't a big surprise.  When we got here, Xena and I found Gryph and checked in. We took a leisurely walk around the fish pond and then checked out different places to pitch our site. A lot of what looked prime to me at first turned out to be a bit soggy.  The tent was going up on a tarp so it really wouldn't have been a problem, but I wasn't happy anyway.  We found a place that seems dry enough kinda-sorta under some trees that should protect against a southern wind.  I staked Xena out and put up the tent.  It's like 45 degrees out but I busted a sweat fairly easily and I don't think I've cooled off much yet.

Saturday Morning

After I got the tent up and our stuff inside it, I got brave? reckless? foolish? I let Xena go off leash.  The little sweetheart was in seventh heaven!  She so loves to run!  And she never goes too far away and then it's like, "Oh! I gotta go check in with momma!" and she comes flying back and does a little orbit around me.  Then it's off to the races again!  She was all over the place!  She went rocketing around this one tree and charged onto the green covering.  What she didn't know was the green was covering a pond and wasn't something to go galloping across!  She's never been a dog that really likes the water, but she swam her way around to where she could get out.  Shook herself off and was off and playing again.

Where Xena swam through the green covering.

Momma sighed, went back to the car to get a towel to dry her off some.  I wasn't sure how hard I was going to have to work to catch her to wrap her in the towel but she came right to me on her own. dried her off as good as I could and she was set to go again.  Crazy puppy!  I decided she needed to go in her crate to dry off some more.  I'm really disappointed she's not going to be cuddling with me tonight. No way is she getting in the tent with me 'til she dries off good.

I'm a little surprised how much that disappoints me. 

I slept fairly well. Warm enough and the bag is big enough so I didn't get tangled up in it while I was sleeping. Missed having Xena In the tent.  I think she did ok in the car last night. 

I've been taking lots of pictures around the campground. And I've been doing something I haven't done before. I have taking almost all pictures on Auto rather than Program.  The pics are different. I think there is at least 2stops different in the exposure. I'll have to look at them in Lightroom to see other differences. It's been interesting. Errrmmmm, just checked the camera and Program was set for 1stop underexposed =(   

Saturday Afternoon

Okay, maybe I didn't sleep so good last night!  When breakfast was over, I went in to "town" to get some batteries and I was a little dozy driving.  I passed up several pictures I wanted to take because I just wanted to get to the store and back.  Some how I managed to totally miss the turn to the campground coming back and didn't realize it until I saw snow on one of the mountains I was heading to.  That was a bit concerning.  I turned around and opened the window on the CuRVe for the fresh, cool air.  Got back to camp, pulled up a chair by the fire and Xena and I both started to doze. After a bit, I got up and went to the tent and crashed... probably for a couple hours at the least.  Woke up, under protest, and found the "sore throat" I had come down with suddenly the night before was now a full blown head cold =(  

Everyone is back from the hike.  They only went as far as the one falls. The path was wet, muddy, and slick, but they had a good time. I decided yesterday the my AFib was going to keep me from making the trip. For me, this was a really sad thing to decide.  Necessary for my health, but very hard to feel good about.  One of things that not hiking meant was I couldn't retake the pictures of the falls.  I've wanted to retake those photos for two years!

Sunday Morning

COFFEE!!! Somebody get me some coffee!  Or tea!  My dear puppy, true to form, wanted me to get up sometime around 6ish. Maybe I should have kept her in the car last night. But it was nice to see her curled up in the corner.  And when we get home tonight I'm hoping she'll sleep in the bed with me.  I miss her sleeping with me. 

And I've missed my Daughter.  Not so bad as usual because it's been busier and there are always people around even if I'm not talking to them.  But I think of Debra often.  She doesn't camp anymore so she wouldn't have been here anyway, but I always want to share moments that are good for me with her. 

I've tried to not eat too bad and I've taken my meds and insulin.  Missed my meds Friday night but I've taken all the others. I haven't been monitoring my beegees but I feel ok.. The beegees are probably a bit high' but not out of control. 

I think Xena is ready to go home. She's been sitting quietly next to me at the picnic table. The little kids seem to be running out of gas and I missed the older boys having too much to drink last night. It's time to pack it up and go.  I didn't get any of my kitchen stuff out, so it's just the tent and sleeping bag and luggage.  I think I'm just going to toss it all in the CuRVe and sort it out when I get home.  I have to figure out what I have and what I don't. 

The wind is coming up and it seems colder - definitely time to go. 

Lookin' forward to seeing the people I love!

All These Beautiful People

All these

Beautiful,

Vivacious,

Animated,

And Exciting people!

I feel drab

Like old,

Grey,

Peeling 

Wallpaper.

Apple to an Orange

I am not like these people.

But,

Where is 

My Beauty,

My Passion?

What

Makes me

Beautiful?

What 

Makes me 

Exciting?

Emotional in Church

My daughter says I get emotional in church. And it is true. Like so much else in my life I have doubted myself, my beliefs and my faith. When I am in the sanctuary, I feel Poppa's presence. I feel his warm affections for me. How could I not be emotional, on the verge of tears, to know He Loves _me_? So many years I spent in shame for who I thought I was and the conviction that Poppa did not love me. But now I _Know_ He loves me! I know I am as He made me!  How can I not cry?