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Sep. 9th, 2011 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizabeth[ETA: I don't think anything in this entry is triggering, but I am somewhat hampered in my mental faculties at the moment; if I should cut this, please let me know and I will do so immediately.]
There are several things going on in my head right now.
I got fired today, not for cause, I hasten to add — I was told almost in the same breath as "this is your last day" that I was really good at my actual job — but because I wasn't a good fit for the office culture. Which basically means I got fired for being an introvert in an office full of extroverts.
Which of course is awful.
(I am trying very hard not to think "if only I hadn't had that downswing through most of August which gave me blunted affect! if only I had told people that I have depression!" Bitterness and recriminations and self-blame is just not the place where I should go right now.)
It's also a relief, because oh my god it was exhausting faking extrovert forty hours a week. It was so fucking exhausting. And I apparently shouldn't even have bothered because I sucked at it.
I had my first therapy appointment this morning, after the traditional August holiday, and it felt shallow and inadequate.
So after I cleared out my desk and turned in my key, I came home, dumped my stuff, and went to the gym. Because my mind was hamstering — unsurprisingly — and I was a little in shock (I honest to god did not see this coming. I was, I am, good at my job. I really thought that mattered most of all.), and I desperately didn't want to talk to anyone.
Lifted weights for forty-five minutes, mind hamstering at 90% (it helped, I know it did), took a hot shower, which usually induces a state of floaty calm (not this time), and took my laptop over to the Engineering Library, where I have reading privileges, and fired up my jobs RSS feeds and Idealist membership. (OMG, I hate LinkedIn with a firey burning passion.) And then I read some trashy romance on the Harlequin site, which helped more than anything else to get my mind to stop hamstering, and came home when I started feeling chilly.
While I was walking through the park on my way back to my place, I started feeling like I might, possibly, maybe, a little bit, want to cry. Someday. (I very very very rarely weep. I think it's part of my earlier-mentioned difficulty with feeling my emotions as they happen.) Thanks to my four-plus years in therapy, I knew this was not a bad thing. That being able to express my shock and grief was, in fact, a good thing. So I hurried home, did some mindless tidying of my room, which I find very soothing, both the process and the result, and lay on my bed, talking gently to myself. "It's okay to cry if you need to. It's okay to be scared. It's okay to be sad and angry and whatever else you feel. It is okay."
I tried the fetal position, and I tried wedging my body against the wall. (This has sometimes helped in the past when I have been starved for touch and comfort and security and a little crazy with it.) I tried curling up under the covers. Nothing was quite right.
And then I thought, I can't think why, of the story about Queen Victoria, and her response to discovering, at age eleven, that she would one day be Queen: "I will be good."
And I realized: there is no one in my life for whom I am not trying to be good. A good friend, a good sister, a good roommate, a good daughter, a good therapy patient, a good employee. I have no one around whom I can be broken. For whom I can be inadequate.
That thought was what tipped me over into crying. I'm crying again writing this entry.
I am so scared of disappointing people. I am so scared they won't love me anymore when I fail them. And I am so tired. It is so hard to be good.
My stepfather's father, with whom he had a difficult relationship, died last week, and he's having a bit of a time of it (obviously). And that death has brought up a lot of memories & feelings for my mother, whose father died a few years ago, and to whom she was very close. My sister is in Scotland. My closest friend is just starting her semester and I kind of think of her as a little sister, it would be really hard for me to break down all over her. My ex-girlfriend is having "can't get hired" stress of her own, and I think we're still feeling out the boundaries of our relationship since we decided that we didn't have enough sexual compatibility/chemistry to date. I had a session with my therapist just this morning, and I will be calling her to schedule another appointment ASAP, and if I cry, it is going to be the first one where I actually cry in her office. (I secretly envy![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sheafrotherdon her relationship with her therapist, a little; I literally cannot imagine feeling so safe somewhere that I could walk in and start crying. Trigger warnings on those links for sexual assault, PTSD, depression.)
So now I am curled up in my bed, crying into toilet paper (because I can't fucking find any tissues), and trying to feel my feelings all the way through and simultaneously not let this be the start of a genuine depressive crash. I can't afford that. I had just made it about 85% of the way back from the previous one, which lasted less than a month and was barely an "episode" as I classify these things.
This ginger tea with honey is disgusting, but it is helping with the nausea that always accompanies tears for me.
The prospect of getting up and making dinner and interacting with my roommates is beyond horrific, right now, and one of the things we talked about in session today was how very much I do need solitude to recover, how hard it is for me to be "in society" as much as I have been for the past several weeks. I want to be gentle to myself and order takeout from grubhub (minimal human contact for the win), but there is the awful voice in my head that "you're not employed, you can't afford takeout." But you know what? I am going to listen to my stepfather telling me, a few weeks ago, that I have a tendency toward cheapness (true) which he thinks I learned from watching my biological father (probably true but not the whole story), and defy that voice, and buy myself some goddamn Vietnamese food. Fifteen dollars is not going to destroy me, and I cried today, and I am going to BE an introvert on this day when I have been punished for being an introvert.
There are several things going on in my head right now.
I got fired today, not for cause, I hasten to add — I was told almost in the same breath as "this is your last day" that I was really good at my actual job — but because I wasn't a good fit for the office culture. Which basically means I got fired for being an introvert in an office full of extroverts.
Which of course is awful.
(I am trying very hard not to think "if only I hadn't had that downswing through most of August which gave me blunted affect! if only I had told people that I have depression!" Bitterness and recriminations and self-blame is just not the place where I should go right now.)
It's also a relief, because oh my god it was exhausting faking extrovert forty hours a week. It was so fucking exhausting. And I apparently shouldn't even have bothered because I sucked at it.
I had my first therapy appointment this morning, after the traditional August holiday, and it felt shallow and inadequate.
So after I cleared out my desk and turned in my key, I came home, dumped my stuff, and went to the gym. Because my mind was hamstering — unsurprisingly — and I was a little in shock (I honest to god did not see this coming. I was, I am, good at my job. I really thought that mattered most of all.), and I desperately didn't want to talk to anyone.
Lifted weights for forty-five minutes, mind hamstering at 90% (it helped, I know it did), took a hot shower, which usually induces a state of floaty calm (not this time), and took my laptop over to the Engineering Library, where I have reading privileges, and fired up my jobs RSS feeds and Idealist membership. (OMG, I hate LinkedIn with a firey burning passion.) And then I read some trashy romance on the Harlequin site, which helped more than anything else to get my mind to stop hamstering, and came home when I started feeling chilly.
While I was walking through the park on my way back to my place, I started feeling like I might, possibly, maybe, a little bit, want to cry. Someday. (I very very very rarely weep. I think it's part of my earlier-mentioned difficulty with feeling my emotions as they happen.) Thanks to my four-plus years in therapy, I knew this was not a bad thing. That being able to express my shock and grief was, in fact, a good thing. So I hurried home, did some mindless tidying of my room, which I find very soothing, both the process and the result, and lay on my bed, talking gently to myself. "It's okay to cry if you need to. It's okay to be scared. It's okay to be sad and angry and whatever else you feel. It is okay."
I tried the fetal position, and I tried wedging my body against the wall. (This has sometimes helped in the past when I have been starved for touch and comfort and security and a little crazy with it.) I tried curling up under the covers. Nothing was quite right.
And then I thought, I can't think why, of the story about Queen Victoria, and her response to discovering, at age eleven, that she would one day be Queen: "I will be good."
And I realized: there is no one in my life for whom I am not trying to be good. A good friend, a good sister, a good roommate, a good daughter, a good therapy patient, a good employee. I have no one around whom I can be broken. For whom I can be inadequate.
That thought was what tipped me over into crying. I'm crying again writing this entry.
I am so scared of disappointing people. I am so scared they won't love me anymore when I fail them. And I am so tired. It is so hard to be good.
My stepfather's father, with whom he had a difficult relationship, died last week, and he's having a bit of a time of it (obviously). And that death has brought up a lot of memories & feelings for my mother, whose father died a few years ago, and to whom she was very close. My sister is in Scotland. My closest friend is just starting her semester and I kind of think of her as a little sister, it would be really hard for me to break down all over her. My ex-girlfriend is having "can't get hired" stress of her own, and I think we're still feeling out the boundaries of our relationship since we decided that we didn't have enough sexual compatibility/chemistry to date. I had a session with my therapist just this morning, and I will be calling her to schedule another appointment ASAP, and if I cry, it is going to be the first one where I actually cry in her office. (I secretly envy
sheafrotherdon her relationship with her therapist, a little; I literally cannot imagine feeling so safe somewhere that I could walk in and start crying. Trigger warnings on those links for sexual assault, PTSD, depression.)So now I am curled up in my bed, crying into toilet paper (because I can't fucking find any tissues), and trying to feel my feelings all the way through and simultaneously not let this be the start of a genuine depressive crash. I can't afford that. I had just made it about 85% of the way back from the previous one, which lasted less than a month and was barely an "episode" as I classify these things.
This ginger tea with honey is disgusting, but it is helping with the nausea that always accompanies tears for me.
The prospect of getting up and making dinner and interacting with my roommates is beyond horrific, right now, and one of the things we talked about in session today was how very much I do need solitude to recover, how hard it is for me to be "in society" as much as I have been for the past several weeks. I want to be gentle to myself and order takeout from grubhub (minimal human contact for the win), but there is the awful voice in my head that "you're not employed, you can't afford takeout." But you know what? I am going to listen to my stepfather telling me, a few weeks ago, that I have a tendency toward cheapness (true) which he thinks I learned from watching my biological father (probably true but not the whole story), and defy that voice, and buy myself some goddamn Vietnamese food. Fifteen dollars is not going to destroy me, and I cried today, and I am going to BE an introvert on this day when I have been punished for being an introvert.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 03:05 am (UTC)For the record, a) I think you think you have to be more than good, you have to be PERFECT, b) you have indeed been less than perfect with me, c) I do in fact love you anyway and will no matter what. I hope that helps and doesn't freak you out further! But it's the truth. <3333333
*more hugs*
no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 04:01 pm (UTC)Thank you, sweetheart.