Here’s a good NYT story about how past adversities (if not overdone) can boost resilience in some ways, as far as ability to reframe adversity and more.

That said, I'd appreciate some positive life changes not too far down the road, rather than treading water after adversity, at least job-loss adversity and relocation adversity.

Welcome? to 2011

It's a new year, and I turned a year older by the calendar last week.

I'm hoping to continue to improve in acceptance of the outside world, self-acceptance, resilience, and what I can learn about myself, among other things, in the months ahead.

I am hoping to learn more about self-awareness of others' critiques of aspects of me, to distinguish critiques from criticisms and more.

I am hoping to "move forward" in other ways in life too.

I am hoping to improve job-hunting/networking skills if I don't "land" something new relatively soon.

ANGER IN THE KEY OF C-SHARP MINOR

Minor keys often have melancholy, plaintive laments,
More so than jarring stridency,
Unless a sudden dissonance intrudes;
And, so it is with my anger.
Slow to form, with an undercurrent of counterpoint,
Spoken and developed in individual voices,
Like a late Beethoven quartet,
Or, maybe, even more, one by Shostakovich.
I don’t even realize that I am angry until the score plays out,
Usually about halfway through the third movement.
Then, a diminished seventh lingers, a four-part pedal point, if you will,
Until the cello transitions out, into a growling presto ostinato,
And I can no longer deny to my conscious self that I am angered,
As my emotions now move attacca, without pause,
Into a final movement,
Where resolution is supposed to be found,
But, per the style of musica moderna,
Is not guaranteed.
— Dec. 14, 2010

Love after lovelessness

LOVE AFTER LOVELESSNESS

Love
Was a word rarely heard
Rarely used, rarely spoken,
And certainly, rarely remembered
In one aching, yearning man’s
Childhood household.

Combine sexual abuse
And exhibitionism with twists;
Add in religious fundamentalism
About human sexuality
In this childless household.

Finally, take emotional coldness
Anger, controlling, and
Distancing both physical and emotional,
And you have a childhood household
That rarely modeled love
As well as rarely speaking of it.

Sex was seen as not just dirty
But also controlling and manipulative.
However, with love largely absent,
Sex filled a gap.

And the word ‘love,’
When spoken to me post-sobriety
On the phone by a once-raging father,
Seemed as manipulative as
A mom’s sexual exposure and spoken delusions
Had to a teenaged, hurting child.

I am more than my story.
I have grown beyond it, at least in bits,
But it would be a lie
To simply say, ‘I am not my story,’
Though I need to detach yet more.

If you know me well, as you do,
You know that. And I know you do.
Something can be both true and excuse-making.
I recognize more who and what I want,
If but in fits and spurts, too.

And I know that life isn’t always perfect,
Especially in its timing.

The Donner Party, struggle and motivation

California was a land of lore and lure even before John Marshall found gold traces in 1848.

Farming, ranching, mild climate and vast unclaimed, untamed acres all called across the Sierras to Americans, even before the land had been wrested from Mexico.
Among those listening?

Jacob Breen and family. George Keseberg. And, the eponymous Donner family.

Unlike the Founding Fathers, these people had no fortunes to give. But they did give most of what money they had to make the trip. And, they certainly, in cases such as Jacob Breen, had honor, whether sacred or not, to pledge to their fellow travelers.
While on vacation recently, I visited some Donner Party sites. Though I had driven I-80 before through the area, I had never gotten off the freeway at the Donner State Party site. And, since I had come from the north, on a California state highway site, about 7-8 miles north of the interstate, I saw the Donner Meadows, where the Donners themselves wintered in 1846-47.

I asked myself, rhetorically, what would I be willing to do to get to California today? How much work would I be willing to expend? How much of my current “baggage” would I be willing to discard? What is my goal in getting to California — am I moving to something or just away from something?

I haven’t pondered those questions too much yet. Maybe I’m deliberately avoiding them a little bit. Maybe, like many other things in life, I want a surer goal before committing to them more.

That said, let me look at the Donners more. Yes, they knew about California the potential agricultural paradise. But, gold had not yet been discovered. They were simply looking for a better life, not to get rich.

Beyond that, how much am I willing to surrender of my old self for change today, in general? As I get older, do I get more attached to what I already have? Less willing to take risks?

How much is pain in my current life, combined with hope for the future, going to be a motivator?
And, by the time I had gotten back home, or soon afterward, I had at least one additional question for myself.

Is the desire to move to California a search for a “geographic cure” for issues that need help in other ways?

All good questions. To some of them, I don’t yet consciously know the answers, though I may have partial answers in my subconscious. Others I can answer more fully right now.

As for a geographic cure? No. I’ve been interested in moving to California for years.
As for pain as a motivator? It may continue to grow, and maybe I need that.

And, “surrender,” or another term? How much am I willing to let go of old attachments, such as what job or career path I should or should not follow, how much anxiety I can tolerate in daily life and more? At least at the conscious level, I don’t have answers here, though I suspect that I have more letting go to do — letting go of preconceptions about myself, letting go of attachments to old emotional patters, and things like that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_party

Boundaries and others, growth and relationships

I've upset someone. I've more than just "upset" this person; they are angry/sad, and say they have lost trust in me.

Then, after being chewed out strongly, very strongly, over this ... I argued back.

I'll admit (as this person said) that I "fired back" in part out of defensiveness. Entirely so, though? No.

I raised some real issues, which I had been holding on to for a while, and said I had some real anger myself.

Relationships are real ... and I hate using the word "practice" as part of growth.

At the same time, this person knows I have trouble expressing anger, especially.

Anyway, I have apologized since then. And, said I'd like to talk more about the emotions I triggered, and some fears this person has related to that. Right now, though, I appear to be getting the cold shoulder.

At the same time, this person has heard me say, and I believe more than once, "I don't play games, and I don't chase." I have dropped a follow-up "Hi, how are you e-mail," but, am not sure how much more I should say, and with what timing, without risk of violating what is a major boundary issue for me. I'm not sure what I should say without risk of being thought a game-player myself.

Life hurts at times, it is true.

Obviously, some ongoing patience here is part of the situation. But, when does patience become "drift"?

That said, back to revealing boundaries.

I know I absolutely stunned my dad when, after I had a bit of sobriety time, I told him, albeit by mail, not on the phone, let alone in person, how much I feared him as a child, just what was happening under his roof and nose in terms of sexual abuse and other things, and more. "Passive, pliable Steve" suddenly had a bit of backbone and a bit of self.

Throwing out the defensiveness/attacking part of my response to my friend, I do wonder if there's a bit of shock with this person, too. And, beyond that, how much we may be able to talk about these issues without a fair amount of time-water under the bridge, for a number of reasons.

I still don't know that one, either. But, an intuitive suspicion says it could be some time ... and I'm talking months, not weeks. And, that assumes this person will want to talk to me on that level at that time.

Meanwhile, back on "my side of the street." Part of my is sad, part is lonely, part is anxious, part is frustrated, part is a bit apathetic or "drifting" already. Because I've been single all my life, and not just in the sense of "unmarried," but without much real, longer-term relationships, and careful with close friends of either sex, it's kind of "easy" for me to drift like that.

That said, is my not wanting to "chase," and not telling more about my feelings as part of that, itself a form of games-playing? It's complicated.

Loneliness, with a touch of anger

Occasionally, I get pangs of loneliness. I realize now how much I hid my own loneliness from myself as a kid. In some cases, it's almost as if the whole emotion was suppressed in a quasi-Freudian way. In other cases, it's like it was nearer the surface of consciousness and I didn't quite beat it down without the help of alcohol or other things.

I don't know how much of this is natural avoidance due to gene-based anxiety tendencies, how much of it was lack of family emotional interaction (at least "good" emotions), how much of it was noncommittalness in attempts to avoid put-downs, let-downs and rejections both inside and outside of the family, how much of it was due to abuse, or what.

But, I walled off a lot, with a lot of layers. A few people recognize that; I've told more people. In any case, not just women are psychologically, or emotionally complex. And, at least in the U.S., men like me who can be that way at times are probably more puzzling than women.

I'm feeling both the loneliness and aloneness more at times now.

And, currently, feeling a touch of anger over issues partially related to that, and partially independent.

I care

I CARE

I care;
I care when I say “I don’t care”;
I care that I say “I don’t care”;
I care when I think I actually mean that I don’t care;
I care that a defense mechanism may be too imbedded.

Why would I not care?
Lots of reasons.
Seeing other people not care about me.
Feeling other people not care about me.
Feeling powerless to care about myself.
Seeing no guarantees results when I tried to care about myself.
Feeling hopeless about the result of asking for care from others.

So, I didn’t care.
Or acted like I didn’t.
Meanwhile, buried with repressed anger
Against both myself and others,
Repressed anxiety, and other repressed emotions,
Was repressed care.
For myself, above all else.
But for other people, too.
I hope.

June 30, 2010

Envy, anger, and more

I have been realizing in the past couple of weeks that I have a lot of repressed envy, not just repressed anger. My envy is more, but by no means entirely, on the nonmaterial side, i.e., of people's social skills, relationship skills, starting sexual relationship skills,job-hunting skills, etc.

That said, I do envy, to some degree, other people's material possessions. There, I envy them as much for the putative security of having a higher income than I do, having a house (especially if not overbuying a McMansion), etc. Some things, like the job skills, or job-hunting skills, are partially materialistic, in the degree that material means connect in part to immaterial ends.

And, I am beginning to wonder if repressed envy of others and repressed anger at myself don't go a bit hand in hand.

Road maps for life

A COFFEE-STAINED ATLAS

Analogies. Metaphors. Deeper meanings.
My atlas is a road map in more ways than one.
Torn, tattered, browned pages of internal road trips;
Nostalgic for past journeys to American wonder,
Hopes for future getaways,
And the emotional escapes and release of both.
I haven’t opened my atlas so much recently,
Nor looked as much at old photo albums of past trips.
The nostalgic side of that atlas has little savor
At this moment, and its hint of future escapes
Is almost equally dry to my lips.
If life is an eternal now, a succession of present moments,
Then past and future gain flavor from the taste of today
And my reflecting on them.
I may need to break metaphorical bread together
And share an atlas printed for two.