Some Perspective and Old Habits

This week has been pretty up and down for me. Lots of good things have been happening in nearly every arena that I participate in, to one extent or another. There have been a couple of happy surprises as well. But there’s been some darkness on the outer fringes, too. More than usual. This, naturally, got me thinking.

Thinking for me is a dangerous thing. I can over-analyze the smallest detail of the shortest conversation and create a life-altering conclusion that may or may not (likely not) be based in reality. It’s a skill I’ve unwittingly sharpened over the years. So, I try to temper my thinking a bit, but things got out of hand this week and some old “friends” reared their ugly heads. However, I’ve managed to reteach myself an important lesson or two from it.

One thing that just sucks is mistrust. I struggle with trusting people often, but it’s been getting better over time. The more you trust and people fulfill that trust, the easier it gets. And most people are basically trust worthy. That doesn’t stop me from throwing it all out the window for no real reason or, worse yet, any reason. I did that this week, to no real harm thankfully, and (re)learned an important lesson about friendship.

It matters less how the other feels about you in a given moment than it does how you feel about them. People can treat us like crap and we can choose to take it or not and return it or not. That doesn’t mean we don’t let them know when they hurt us, but it does mean that we view the friendship from a different perspective. I’m not friends with people necessarily because of how they feel about me, though that certainly helps. I’m friends with people because I like them, enjoy their company, and want them to be a part of my life.

Allowing friends to be where they are and giving them a safe place to be there while still gently letting them know when they are hurting us or are in need of a shift in perspective is a difficult thing, but is the role of a friend, I think. For some people, feeling like a particular friendship is “safe,” whatever that may mean for them, can be an incredibly powerful thing.

Technorati Tags: friendship, trust, mistrust, love

A Darker Day

Well, I’ve been told that these days would happen. The occasional darker days where very little seems to be able to cheer one up. That was yesterday for me, or rather yesterday once I left work (I had a great day right up until 5:00, don’t know what happened then).

But in an effort to still find silver lining…

Finding Things to Appreciate

So part of the HeartMath stuff I’ve been reading about and practicing revolves around appreciating someone or something around you or in your past. That’s not something that comes easy for me even with many great people and positive events in my present and past. I don’t think I’m in the minority on that one either.

But I have found one thing for certain. Any neutral or positive social interaction I have, be it a hello with a co-worker or even a stranger, or a pleasant meal with a dear friend makes the whole appreciation process so much easier. And it makes those interactions where there is tension, momentary or otherwise, or other negative impact all the more fleeting and insignificant.

So my lesson for today: people rule.

Forgiving One’s Self

I had a pretty shitty weekend.

But I got something out of it. The knowledge that at least part of my self-image, the part that compares me to others and wonders why they get what they want when I tend to not, is based in a world where I am being punished for some sin or short falling. I’m not sure where that all came from; a church during my childhood that taught the evils of sin (which I don’t remember being the case), a nearly puritan style of morality that the Christian Right is proclaiming in spades these days (again, not sure where that would’ve come from), or just the fluke of a white guy growing up with some semblance of an honor-shame system of social interaction in an country where shame is decidedly a relative term.

I’ve felt for some time now that I don’t get the girl because of choices in my past, that I don’t picked for positions in the world around me because I did the wrong thing in some moral decision when I was six years old. That my punishment is to live a life where I watch others get what I want. Tie that in with one person to compare myself to, one person to have a formless voice point to and say, “There is your standard” and it becomes easy, at least to me, to see why it feels like the goalposts keep getting moved on me, the standard is always just ahead, but never to be reached, and I that I fail where this other succeeds. Now have that other get chosen over me for things I have both offered to do or have shown skill in before and get what I once desired in love not once but two or three times over and you have a nice little version of hell right here on earth.

But I’m not schizophrenic, at least I don’t think I am (most of my friends seem to also see my other friends, so I think I’m good on the imaginary people front), so the formless voice pointing out the standard and making sure I never get to it is really me telling me I’m not good enough; that there is a dark stain on my life that will always hold me back. But then that’s easy to counter. Everyone has a dark stain. I never learned in history class of a President of the United States who did everything right in his life. The best students in school were also the most disturbed. The nicest people I knew were also the most haunted in some way. I’m no different and no one else is really much better. The key is to know that God forgives everything. That if God is Love then it must be enough to wash his entire creation clean.

I think part of the Lord’s Prayer, dare I say it, needs to be amended. When we say, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, we should tag on a line about having the strength to be forgiven. The reality is that I may never get the girl and I may never be chosen over others in the goals I desire. And it does not change the fact that this other does get chosen over me many times in life. But I can throw off the burden of this dark stain and wear it proudly saying, “Yes, it’s there, but I’m forgiven of it and it will be the horse I ride on into heaven.”

Moving to an As Needed Basis

Today was my last regularly scheduled therapy session. I’m not kicked out or anything, rather I now have what could be called a primary care physician of the mental world. That’s to say, if I ever feel sick “in the head,” I can make an appointment for a one-off visit or, if needed, a string of visits.

This is a little weird for me. I still have things I’m working on, but I’ll always have things I’m working on. The difference between me now and me a year ago before I started therapy is that I have tools to handle what I’m working on well. I’ve grown in the last year, too, but the point of my sessions was to instill habits and concepts that help me to be me.

What’s really weird about this is that I’m not cured. There was nothing to cure in the first place. Usually when you see a doctor, you have an illness that is treated and then goes away. That wasn’t the case this time. It’s been more like a year of training in how to ride the ups and downs of life and interact well with the people around me through all of that.

So we’ll see what happens. I’m confident that I won’t be back there for a while, if ever. However, I will miss someone listening to me as much and as well as my doctor did.

The End of Accutane…

On the morining of December 24, 2004, I took the last dose of Accutane in my course of treatment. I see the doctor again on January 24, but I don’t expect him to put me back on the stuff as, so far, my skin has remained clear and has even cleared further, by my eyes.

There are two positive upswings in this for me. First, I can have a drink with my friends again. And the party to do so has already been planned, invitations sent, and people are joining me.

The better has been a more personal one. My mood has dramatically altered since stopping this treatment. I was told when I started to watch out for signs of depression, that suicides may be linked to Accutane, and so forth. I didn’t think much of it as I had taken it once before during my high school years and don’t remember a similar experience. During the last 8 months, I never thought to attribute a bad or worsening mood to the Accutane. A lot happened in my life and the lives of others and there have been more than a fair share of rough times amidst them.

Yet my basic ability to be happy, to seek for the good around me, to feel positive has become so much easier in the last couple of weeks. Sure, I’ve had some bad days recently. But even those have had their positive sides.

All that to say that for whatever reason, be it not taking Accutane anymore, the end of the holiday season (definitely a possibility as well), or a significant time of growth in a short period of time (probably a good mix of all three and many other things currently unknown to me), I feel a lot better.

Changes of a Year

A year ago, if you asked me to describe my friendships with people, they would be sharply divided into two categories: those who are my friends and those who aren’t.

A year later, a good bit of therapy, and some significant changes in the lives of those around me have added a great deal of diversity to the answer to that question today. In other words, there are more than two categories of friends that I have.

There are friends who seek to spend time with me. These are almost always the people I am closest to (and also seek to spend time with, it is a two-way street). A year ago, I would be hard-pressed to think of anyone who sought to spend time with me, despite the fact that they did exist.

There are friends who “show up.” That is, they are people who don’t make any effort to see me, and I also don’t make such effort towards them, outside of normal weekly/monthly occurrences. These people are close to me, but not as close, though there are always seeds of potential for deeper friendships and to move in that direction with a great amount of ease that I am very comfortable initiating.

Then there are people more easily named acquaintances, casual friends at best, who are really friends of friends. These are people who I see or spend time with by happenstance. They might be visiting with someone I know and we happen to meet only as a result of them visiting with that person. Should their visit not happen, I would likely never see these people. Folks who assume I’ll be around, take my presence for granted in some fashion, or those who seek a friendship with me once all other things are taken care of or seen to would also fall into this category. These also have potential for deeper friendships, but the start up is somewhat different than those who “show up.” It would probably involve the person in question first showing a genuine and clear interest in spending time with me apart from the person they are primarily visiting with. Me making that move is also a possibility, but that is an area of great difficulty, particularly if the other party clearly shows no interest in doing so.

Then there are the people who I simply don’t know. These have the greatest potential for growth, of course, but that usually requires me to get off my ass and meet people. That’s something I don’t have a great deal of skill in.

There’s something remarkably freeing to be able to see a friendship that is growing or deteriorating and be able to place it in more nuanced categories than friend or not. It’s okay to have people moving in and out of these places with fluidity and to be free to focus my attention where I’d like to and not feel guilty about the fact that others may not be getting the attention others would give to them. And to know that there may be other types of relationships besides these four that I have yet to discover.

Working It Out

Continuing off the forgiveness bit here.

This is really affecting me today. So many thoughts that have been coming up off and on for weeks now and bringing pain or sorrow or lonliness are still coming up, but now in light of not having let go of something that happened over a decade ago.

I’m comforted by the story of the bleeding woman in Mark who was healed after twelve years of injury. What I wonder about in that story is the what happened next. Did she just go back to her life, now free of that pain and suffering, and have a wonderful life from then on? Was that the first step in a healing that we only got to see the first step of?

I guess it boils down to relearning an entire way of thinking about the world around me after having done it another way for so long.

One of the things that has been helpful is to allow a brilliant future to reshape a story. Jesus is changing me, quickly or slowly, into the man he created me to be. And that future and certainty is something to look forward to and to allow that to be my definition, or at least a significant part of it.

There is a step further, though. That’s allowing that future and certainty to redefine the events of my past in light of who I was made to be (whatever that may be). I have a story to tell, but it is meant to be told in light of redemption and glory.

Getting out of telling my story in light of pain, suffering, and abandonment is the hard part.

The Edge of a Knife

Last night, a couple of my friends prayed for me. The net result has been different ways that I can seek for how God cares and has cared for me.

Today has been skirting the edge into that cycle of anger, sadness, hurt, and emotionless that I’ve been experiencing to one degree or another these last few months. Coincidentally, this cycle has started to align itself with the days of the week, so Tuesday, for instance, tends to consistently be a good day that is a break from the cycle.

But there have been parts of today that have been decidedly unusual for a Tuesday. And some of the things that came from the time of prayer last night have proven to be helpful in battling back the waves of negative emotions. I’ll have to go into more detail about that later, though.

The Realm of the Unconditional

The idea of an unconditional action or relationship of any kind is largely foreign to me. I understand the basic concept; actions done, typically of kindness, that are not seeking any particular reponse from the other person. The only motivations are intrinsic. These are things you do for others because it makes you happy to do that or out of an expression of love and friendship.

I don’t get it. Not lately, at least. I’ve gotten wrapped up in how some people treat me or how they don’t treat me as I treat them (flipping the “Golden Rule” a bit).

The problem is, I don’t know how to unwrap myself from this one.

As for everything else, I’m finding a need to confront the emotions I’ve felt for the last three months towards a few people. It’s not that I’ve bottled them up, it’s that I’ve avoided facing them as how I’m really feeling.