Thursday, October 7, 2010

Scrapping Jane Laplain... for now.

Readers

I hate cliches with the burning passion of a thousand suns. Particularly when they turn out to be 100% correct.  But it's true what they say about Life:  It's the stuff that happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

I had planned this blog to be so much more than what I was able to make it out to be. I had planned this blog to be a vehicle for exploring complex issues of intersecting traumas and life changing experiences good and ill I've failed to process or integrate to this day.  I had planned to be the kind of person who could connect with others about their passions and their pain.  I had planned for the first time to be someone who is able to open up about her pain and be honest about the life I've created for myself, rather than just going thru it on autopilot wondering what's wrong.

What I discovered is that I'm in no shape to do so at this time. And instead of slowly becoming that capable integrated person, I quickly became the same old paranoid, critical, defensive control freaking villain I've always been. Even now with every opportunity to change and reasonable expectation of privacy and safety, I still cannot.

I've tried to write fully three times as many posts as you see here on this meagre blog.  I was simply unable to complete any of them. No matter how much I plan "catharsis" thru self expression, I just cannot bring myself to say these things without compromising my own sanity and ultimately, my ability to support myself and sustain a routine or any kind of relationship with another human being.

In short I'm figuring out that this healing business is the sort of stuff I can only do when I have the time and emotional reserves to focus on doing that and nothing else.

And honestly priorities are what it's all about right now.  Due to several reasons that were both outside of and entirely within my power to change, I am forced back in to survival/autopilot mode.  I must find a new job and I must create a new routine in the sudden absence of the life partner I'd planned on spending my life with.  Again with those plans.

This may seem like a histrionic overreaction to being dumped but in truth I've been thinking carefully for the last several hours and coming to terms with several truths.

1. The kind of help I need can't be done alone.  And it apparently can't be done while I'm in a relationship either. Must figure out third option.

2. What I had thought of as my reaching a space of emotional honesty and "safety" in my relationship, the freedom to let the pain out for the first time ever in the context of a loving safe environment,   actually was about me giving myself free license to abuse others rather than (or perhaps in addition to myself) and neglect others' needs (in this case my partner's) rather than my own.

3. I have to somehow live with the fact that I became an unbearable monster to the one person who I can say ever cherished me and did NOT treat me as such.

4. I have (yet again) sabotaged my chances for true healing by returning myself to a situation where I have no choice but to be alone and to struggle alone.

5. I have to face that the problem, no matter how many awful things others in this world may have done to me, the problem  has always been ME, and my reaction to what happens to me.

6. I am nowhere near ready to be the kind of person I hoped I could be.

7. Due to my own desperate, stupidly stupid and selfish actions, I am further behind in that goal than I've ever been.

Or maybe not.  If nothing else, I've come to a space where I fully realize my own participation in the unhappiness that has been my life thus far.  This is not an insignificant thing.  Rather... it has given me new insight.  And perhaps new wisdom that the next time I attempt something as big as all this, I'd better do my homework first.

Thanks for listening.

Jane

*NOTE 10/22/10*   After a few days cooling off, Mr. Laplain  agreed to come back to try working things out.  Whether we do work out will be up to both of us, but mostly me. I still have all of the above mentioned work ahead of me.   I'll be back to blogging again, as soon as I get some real grounding.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

i never got a chance to say goodbye

i've been angry with you becuz you've been visibly hostile with me .. of course you've had right to be. I know that's my own fault for not even explaining why * I * was being hostile and distant with you, but I swear to you i was unable to articulate myself until i did. and then even after that, you were distant and snippy everytime i did try to initiate conversation with you, at a time when i was actually trying very hard to break thru this fog of panic.


i haven't handled this situation well at all and i apologize.. and perhaps it is unfair to ask this of anyone.. but please understand when im in a state like this... when im suddenly dramatically different and quiet for no reason.. when you know we haven't had a fight or a falling out to warrant this kind of behavior.. you HAVE to understand it has nothing to do with you its all on me. so the last thing i need is someone being angry and distant with me becuz im going thru an episode.. it feels like im being punished or mocked for being triggered. like im to blame for what im feeling. that may or may not be the case, but hostility and pouting is the absolute worst way to get me to come around...

i guess im asking too much of you tho. im asking you to be sane in the face of my insanity, be kind in the face of my hostility.. and thats not fair. under normal circumstances i would say, oh hell no nobody can deal with a double standard like that... but when im not in my right mind... there isnt any reasonable accomodation that i am able to make.

this is the loneliest part of dealing with my PTSD... the triggering, the paranoia, the rage with nowhere to go but inward... the being in need of somebody to be normal and stable and ACT LIKE NOTHING DIFFERENT IS HAPPENING other than i just happen to be freaking out for a little bit in a corner somewhere. its impossible to explain... but if you know im going thru something that has nothing to do with you, please give me my space and please don't let it crush you to your core that i can't be a normal person in that moment.. just wait me out.. be happy.. live life... write me a love letter if you need to... just don't sulk at me and resent me... it makes me feel like you think im choosing my trigger over you. please don't make me feel that way, i would never choose this feeling in a million years. please don't lie in wait for me outside after work to make me feel "safer" or actively try to change my mood after ive explicitly requested space and silence... it makes me feel stalked and manipulated.

please understand you are not dealing with an able minded person... please don't expect sanity from the insane. at least not all the time. it just sets me up to fail.

I missed my calling as a self fulfilling prophet

Several things. In no particular order.

I found out my job picked up a huge military client. This client demands that we all submit to background checks.  I am not out to anyone at work. It is in fact, not a friendly place to be openly queer anything, much less trans.

I am scrambling looking for a new job because I'm fairly certain that once I'm outed at work it will be a glass ceiling situation at best, ammunition for management to lay me off for "unrelated" reasons by the end of the year.

After a three year respite, I started spotting from my ancient surgical incision that has opened and closed over the last ten or 12 years.  This is incredibly painful and gross.
I had a slow motion nervous breakdown over the course of several days after a drunken or drugged (couldn't tell) thug grabbed my ass and breasts while we rode in the elevator of my apartment building.

I said some awful hurtful things during this nervous breakdown to Mr. Laplain.  This was his last straw and he left.  I just came home from work just today to a note and a halved out apartment, where his things used to be.

I am at a loss for how to proceed. 

Or whether or not I even should.

Later.