Mixed Bag Update

Oh my. Has it really been so long? July was my last post.

The good news is that this long hiatus essentially means that my neurofeedback and therapy worked well enough that I didn't need this outlet so much. The bad news is that I've lost touch with you few souls who I shared something with. An acknowledgment of wounds, of helping each other down unknown paths hoping it was towards some sort of light. 

Much is different and much is the same. I can safely say that I've been out of the deep depression for a good solid six months or so. I had to prematurely end things with my little cherub faced therapist because of insurance problems. She dug me out of the hole, pulled me away from the edge a bit, but sometimes...some things reach up out of that hole and wrap coldly around my ankles, gently tugging. Gently enough that I can notice so that I can just as gently unclasp the tendrils. 

I'm proud of that. And relieved. I'm more resilient than I gave myself credit for. 

But I wanted more, I wanted to keep working until I felt more robust. I'm not happy about the premature ending of therapy. I plan to resume as soon as it's feasible. 

I have a new job, finally. It is aligned with my values, but it's also intensely challenging and low paying. So it's a "for now" thing. 

Kyd is still free-wheeling on his personal karmic roller-coaster of wild upswings and disastrous plummets. I try not to board the ride with him, try to sit on my hands and wait on a nearby bench, listening and flinching at his shouts of joy and cries of despair. He recently camped out at our house for a week because he lost his living situation. While he was with us he also lost his job, which he held down for all of four weeks. It was per the usual, but I was deeply dismayed to learn that he lost his job for being late because he had done drugs the night before.

I decided I need to go back to Al-Anon after that. I'm sorry that many of you don't find it so, but Al-Anon depresses me. I'm missing something, obviously. Probably something to do with surrender. 

Fine. 

Roi. Just writing his (fake for the sake of anonymity) name makes me cringe. We're trying to do 12-steps together, but despite his sobriety I've found he can't stop pathologically lying - about every small thing. Or needing to control everything. And he finds that I criticize him just for breathing and get "overly" angry so he can't talk to me about anything. 

I could analyze this all out for you, but it's pointless. We're both tired of living in the relationship equivalent to a tornado aftermath, and yet neither of us is willing to slog through the mess and rebuild. Basically, I don't think we love each other. At all. 

So there's the cheerful update for anyone still listening. Some good things personally, and some sad things relationally. 

I don't know when I'll be back again, but love and light to you. 

dream invention

Last night I dreamt of an invention that showed how long an addict had been sober. It was all very sci-fi - a set of embedded lights under the skin in two lines, like a landing strip, from collarbone to the bottom of the ribs. These lights glowed bright red when the addict's acting out had been recent, and as the days of sobriety racked up, the lights would gradually dim. 

Once the lights extinguished altogether and remained out for a given period of time, they would begin to glow green - very soft at first, and then stronger with each passing day - to indicate the addict's progression toward a healthy life.

If only this were so.

howling for a miracle

Kyd is going to work with his father. The last time this happened a lot of bad shit went down and my sister had to drive from her college and pick him up. Pick up a shivering, crying, hurt and angry teenager. I then spent the next year dealing with the fallout. Understandably I have deep reservations about this arrangement, but per the usual Kyd has backed himself into a corner, burned his bridges, and watched his options shrink and fade. He feels he has no other choice, and from where I'm sitting I can't offer much to the contrary. 

Perhaps more importantly I have to tread very carefully with my thoughts around this. I am acutely aware of my fragility around the powerlessness I have to protect Kyd from both his own self-destruction and fragility, and the people around him who wound him more. I'm also acutely aware that I  am deeply angry with those people - Roi, my ex, my exe's family, Kyd's girlfriend, and the people and situations he chooses for himself. 

Two months ago I tried to coax Kyd into applying to live in one of the many intentional communities in the area. There are organic farming co-op living situations where you can work for your room and board. There are at least two contemplative communities. Places where Kyd could grow, be around more positive people, live more healthfully. He shot my coaxing down. And now he cries and laments that he has no options, so yes, I'm angry at Kyd too. Angry and frustrated that he keeps making the "wrong" choices and I see him hurtling down another entangled, mine infested path. 

In this case he'll be around his father - a deeply troubled man who descended headlong into drugs, alcohol, and violent relationships after our divorce. 

So I'm here, hanging by my fingernails over a pit of despair and helplessness, howling for a miracle.  

stupid things

Realized this morning that if I DO get this job I applied for and I DO move out that I DON'T get to have the holidays in this house. Not even one set of holidays. 

Motherfucker.

my sophie's choice

When I don't write here it's sometimes because things are going well enough that I don't need this secret space of mine. Sometimes it's because I'm frustrated that the situation is the same. 

The situation is the same. Roi is an emotionless robot (he says so himself), Kyd is emotionally unstable, Lexie is doing ok but full of anxiety and dragging her feet on leaving the nest, I want to leave but am financially dependent and despite multiple resumés having hit the inboxes of hiring managers for jobs I am qualified for I get no call-backs, and every option I consider leaves someone hurting. 

It's like a lesser version of Sophie's Choice. Roi doesn't want Kyd here at the house - at all for six months because he was too chaotic, doing drugs, not working, and not meeting Roi's standards for how much work he should be doing around the house. Same story, different day on all fronts. 

So Kyd managed to find a job and a summer apartment, but lost the job and his apartment sublet is ending in two weeks. Predictably he's now depressed and angry and wants to come home and I can't let him. Even if Roi hadn't put his foot down, or I was on my own, I'm not even sure this would be the right thing for Kyd. I have gotten him into treatment numerous times only to a) have the therapist tell me/him that Kyd is fine, b) have the "expert" tell me Kyd is the worst case they've ever seen, they don't know what's wrong, or how to help, or c) Kyd sabotages it in some way. This last time I got him into neurofeedback and he didn't show for two appointments (once because he was fighting with his girlfriend) and he was doing drugs while getting treatment. So really, is letting him come home actually going to help? 

And yet not having the option tears me to pieces. Not having the option feels every kind of wrong. 

In itself this seems enough reason to leave Roi. Yet if I leave Roi now it means going to stay with my mother or father - both options mean taking Lexie out of her school and away from her friends, her life, her boyfriend, and everything she knows. 

Hence the Sophie's Choice. Which of my two young adult children do I say, "sorry, can't help ya"? There are some who would say "BOTH" because they are both technically adults. This should end the my having to make decisions based on their needs dilemma. There are some who would say, "Kyd" because otherwise I'm enabling him. I will never understand the distinction between enabling vs. loving-kindness, but that's another post. And still others would say, "Lexie" because it's time for her to jump the nest. 

The fact that the answers differ tells me one thing. No one knows shit about shit and reality is far more complex than advice.

p.s. I realized that last line may have sounded like an aggressive swipe at commenters loving support, but it was really about the line-up of "experts" who insist that we regular folk don't know what we're doing and they do. That still doesn't make it sound any less aggressive but I have my days where I'm tired and fed up and feel completely helpless and I get angry that there seems to be no help right here, right now. 


Sigh. I probably shouldn't be allowed on the internet right now. 

rain falls

After too many days of dry, parching heat, the rain has finally come. I'm not sure all of our vegetation will spring back, some of it looking rather...dead. Beyond repair. 

I can't help but compare by making this an analogy of my life at the moment. So long a dry-spell without love or genuine kindness. Too long with the lies and manipulation and control. Far, far too long away from myself having gotten lost. Is there a way back now? Is there a rain fall coming for my soul? Or is it simply just too late. Self too far gone, too damaged, beyond ability to receive the rain if it does come? 

I was given a clear, and quite powerful sign around the job search. An opening at an organization I've drooled over for years - since college. I've sent in my resumé, made contact with folks who might know someone. And now I must wait. 

I'm in Trouble

I'm in trouble. I have been floating in this limbo with Roi for so so long. Not floating, that's the wrong imagery. Locked into it, trapped in it, wishing to flee and holding that wish down with an iron grip the way one grits their teeth and locks the tongue to the roof of one's mouth to hold back bile. 

Lexie and I speak in code: "LBR" - life before Roi. How we were dirt poor and struggling but found happiness and beauty despite it. How now we live in a luxurious home so full of light and so devoid of happiness. She wants out too. 

The trouble being, as its been, my lack of a secure job. I've sent out resumés to no avail. And every silence makes me despair but I press on. This is not the real trouble. The real trouble is when my tongue slips and the bile rockets forth through my gritted teeth and Roi is made aware of just how much I can't tolerate being with him. Because then what? He wants to dissolve but I have nowhere to go except home to my parents, ripping Lexie from everything she knows where she is. Her school, her boyfriend, her friends. And while she wants out it is not so intolerable to her that she wants to leave the geographical area. She wants us to find a sweet, bright little home nearby - but that's not within my means now. 

Amidst all of this I am still employed by Roi and I have such resistance now to that work that it makes my skull ache. Every time I sit down to do the work I want to scream and break things, throw my computer out the third floor window and watch it smash on the lawn below. Tears leak out from the corners of my eyelids and I try, I try, but in an 8-hour work day I wring out an hour's worth of work - two to three on a really good day. And Roi hates me for it, is so resentful. I get that. It makes every sense in the world that if I need money that I should at least do the work I have in front of me. Beggars shouldn't be choosers. 

And while Roi and I agreed that the best thing that could happen for this situation is for me to find a job, he squirms every time I make the littlest progress. If I take a day to job search, to send out a handful of resumés, and I feel good for a second, like maybe I can do this, he calls a meeting to talk about work and our finances. Every time. If I call him on it he twists so that I can't find anything wrong. He's just trying to do what's right, and then I feel crazy, unhinged, damaged, and helpless all over again and I have to dig my way back to a bit of stable ground to catch my breath and start the process of resistance and force anew. Strap on the nearly empty oxygen tank and hope I have enough for the dive.

Kyd is struggling again too, and he needs my oxygen tank but I can't spare a drop.