admin-style purging

It is officially summer. Officially the most triggering time of year since my life with Roi. I had somehow convinced myself that it's been forever since any indiscretions but then I just went back through this blog and realized that it's been about a year since any acting out with sex addiction and a mere 4 months since another breach of trust with prescription drugs. 

This is what happens when I spend too much time with Roi and not enough time in my own reality. All the crazy gets normalized and I end up feeling like I'm the problem. I'm the crazy. Like, what is my problem already, everything is fine. I forget that 5 years of nearly continuous addiction leaves its mark and there must be proper time to heal. 

What I don't forget is that despite sobriety, there's still a lot of crazy and the events of the last several months seem impossible, insurmountable to write about. Too many interwoven complexities that I can't possibly unravel in one blog post to catch you up on all things. Let's just say that I'm coming to terms with how ill Roi is and how ill I got and how far I still have to go and how Roi is probably done growing since he's been in denial for pretty much the whole show.

Sorry that this isn't all more poetic. I always need to do a bit of admin-style purging before getting to the writing. 

in the dreams of good and evil

I haven't had enough neurofeedback lately and it's showing. I am being reminded, not-too-kindly, that my brain is still vulnerable to PTSD symptoms, and that talking to therapist or anyone else does little to help me in the intersections of triggers. 

Two nights ago I had terrifying dreams. There were two tracks, both interchanging, and equally chilling. I only remember bits of one. I was in a house, standing in an dark entrance hallway. Outside it was black and creatures of various sorts came to the door. I would sense their presence and have to let them in. Each time a harmless animal would rush in and then straight out through the back. The "good" animals I was somehow helping, but often they would be followed nose to tail by other animals, mostly neutral, but some were dark, low-lying, shadowy things clicking and skittering along the edge of the hallway and detouring off the hallway to the upstairs and I could never get the door shut quick enough to block them getting in. 

I couldn't let in the good without letting in the evil. 

Later, I was standing in the living room in a panic because I knew there was a fox upstairs. A shy little fox, and yet I knew it wasn't a fox. It was something else, some evil disguised as the fox, meant to trick me and do me harm and I wasn't going to be able to protect myself from it or convince anyone else in the house of the danger as long as it was in the house in the form a fox. I stood there sweating, eyeballs rolling in my head,  frantically searching for a way to protect myself. 

In a flash of insight I knew what I had to do, and when the fox came downstairs I wasn't fooled by it's small frame or timidness. I grabbed the thing by its face and squeezed its skull between my hands as I forcefully repeated, "I know what you are, I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE". After several seconds the fox exploded and transformed into one of the dark shadowy skittering things, and then vaporized.

I forced myself up and out of the dream then, just barely able to pry my eyes open and will myself to keep them that way until the dream had passed. 

Meanings seem evident. 

It makes me question whether it is safe for me to stay on here with Roi until I am financially able to leave without disrupting Lexi's life. Resilient as I may be, living in a trauma field day in and day out where every interaction is like opening that front door to let in the "good" but not being able to shut it fast enough to keep out the evil - who can keep their head in that?

I used to think, "a better person than I", but I've taken to recognizing that my life force, my will to live unencumbered, is strong and it is this part of me working within wounded parts of me that keep me resisting and clarifying and pushing back instead of playing games that do not come natural to me, or throwing in the towel and pointing the nose of the car in the direction of "family" next time Lexi and I are in it, or just plain not fighting. 

There's no perfect answer for how to be in this, how to breathe an air filled with toxins that change shape, odor, color, and opacity and only get the oxygen.

The neurofeedback - it's like an oxygen tank I get to carry around for a few days until it empties out. I need more of that to keep from losing consciousness. Less talk time in therapy, more physical time.

quicksands

Therapist is really settling into her chair in a way I haven't seen before. She's got one leg over the arm now, the other leg tucked underneath the first one. We're talking about my "future", as in career and livelihood. It's never easy for me to explain what I want to do, and frankly, there's no real job title for it either. I have several "talents" that look unrelated, or abilities that suggest talents I don't actually have, and it's taken me a third of my adult life to circle around this mix of talent and abilities and wants to find the one or three common threads and how they fit together. 

I only started getting any real clarity a year ago, before the big bad sad, when I was happening to have a lot of lunches with a friend who was also a personal coach. She was the centrifuge to my handfuls of ingredients. We were meeting this way to work on some collaborative projects together, but after a time she was all, "Briar, you need clarity", and I was all, "I KNOW DAMMIT". So she asked me questions and I answered, and there was nothing new or surprising until we got past the point in the conversation where I would normally switch topics because I could feel the other person getting exasperated or overwhelmed or lost or bored. 

I never got much chance to work with what we pulled out of those conversations - by that time I was already clutching onto the edge of sanity by my fingernails. 

Therapist leans forward a little now as my throat clenches with frustration, my voice tighter and higher. "How long ago did you come to see me?", she asks as she reaches for my file. She shuffles through a few papers and announces, almost to herself, "June 16...so 9 weeks, just over two months." 

I'm not sure what she's getting at. She drops the folder back onto the table and looks at me, "It's rare that someone comes to see me in as much distress as you were in and makes this much progress in just two months, you know that, right? You're quite resilient." 

Her point, I gather, is that I'm being impatient. And I am. My birthday is next week, and I can't help but feel time is slipping through my fingers. One of my competitors in my industry has announced his book will be launched in November, he's already in editing stage. That could've been me and I blew it. And someone else has come out of left field with 1/8 the experience I have and will be presenting at the industry's biggest conference on MY GODDAMN TOPIC. That should've been me. I'm losing ground every day. I've already lost ground I can't get back. I'm not being pessimistic, I know how this shit works. I was positioned at the front of a cutting-edge wave, I had made incredible in-roads, but all those months I spent being depressed I dropped off the radar and other people moved in. Nature abhors a vacuum and all. 

I've got other plans, and I know I'll be ok, but no amount of well-meaning sentiments will convince me I didn't lose something back there in the quicksands of the Big Bad Sad. 

The Escape Artist

It occurred to me today as I was relaying my recent mind hijacking to therapist that Roi is an escape artist. He has made a life art out of escaping accountability and keeping responsibility to a bare minimum. Don't get me wrong, that took effort and intelligence and I sometimes envy him. 

But that's what it is. Roi's primary orientation is about escape. This should not come as a surprise to anyone in relationship with a sex addict, or in relationship with just about any type of addict. Except Roi isn't seeking to escape just bad feelings, he seeks to escape something much more fundamental. 

Liz had two things to say about my hijacking anxiety episode. One, she validated that my thinking is clear and my orientation and motivations are in the right directions, but my nervous system is responding outside of my control. Not like I needed to be told, but I won't lie, it's always a relief when Liz confirms what I feel like is happening. 

Then she proposed the idea that Roi probably takes his escapism too far, and at the expense of others around him, but I could myself go ahead and adopt (for now) a similar orientation. That I can allow myself as long as I need to not do much of anything. 

She didn't realize I am already doing that and when I allow myself to "drop in" to that feeling, that orientation, it feels right. But the hijacking, once triggered, throws me way the fuck off and because that state is a hell realm, I'm walking around in a constant state of low grade anxiety in anticipation of the next episode. 

She decided we need to add a neurofeedback protocol that works directly on calming the amygdala so that my nervous system can take a break long enough to drop this pattern. I only got a brief shot of it today so it's too early to feel a difference but I'm hopeful.

The Crazy Has Passed

It may not have been as linear, or intentional, or as graceful as WomanAnonymous's recent trigger handling, but the crazy has passed, and when I think about it, I did handle it in much the same manner as WA. I was just a lot more clumsy and messy about it. 

Progress, not perfection. 

I emailed Roi this morning that I was sensing a shift and would like to know if a shift has happened because I want to know where things stand. 

He called pretty promptly, and once I heard his voice I'm convinced that this time I got hijacked somewhat in error. I do think there is a shift in Roi, and though he didn't acknowledge any shift, he did say he's not really looking forward to coming home because he just really likes the small-town island and he wishes he could live there. 

Translation: Roi has had no real responsibilities while there, no one to be accountable to, no questions being asked of him, no expectations of him. He is cooked for every evening and other than helping with clean-up, no real chores. 

It makes sense I would feel a shift, and in the midst of my freaking out I considered this very real, viable possibility to explain it. But my brain is still vulnerable, and once hijacked everything careens out of control too bloody fast to get a hold on. The writing helps. You help. Recovery work has helped. Therapy is helping. But I am not yet able to catch the trigger before it kicks my feet out from under me. I am not yet able to trust that these extreme feelings will pass. I am not yet able to fully trust in the process of healing. I do not yet have faith that I will be returned to myself intact.

Now that the crazy has passed, and I'm reassured that Roi is not about to turn cold, I feel just a little guilty that I need Roi to hang in there so that I get to call the shots of our separation if that's what I decide I want. I just need to feel a little bit of control. 

The Truth is Sometimes Funny

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes." ~William Gibson