Facebook clean-ups and timeouts

Well, I just whacked about 10 friends from my Facebook friends list. Of those that remain, about one-quarter of the non-St. John's friends have been marked as acquaintances.

I had just returned from my second Facebook timeout. This one was four days; I think the first was five, if not a whole week.

It was enough, and I think good enough, for me to think about doing it one week a month. It would help social media detachment. Now, do I do this one week a month with Twitter? If so, the next step after that is to do it some week with both at the same time.

As for the whole issue about whether online friends are really friends or not, to the same degree as meatspace friends?

Outside of Leo Lincourt, I don't think a single non-Lifering friend would be a meatspace friend. That's not to say that all Lifering friends would be that, either.

Cutting and other stress relief — thoughts from the past

Below is a draft post from 2009 that I didn't realize I had saved as a draft. It was three months after moving to Odessa, Texas, to stay employed as something more than a C-store clerk in the middle of the Great Recession.

Free-flating (sic) anxiety still running in my head.

Did some fairly serious "picking" this afternoon.

(I never did "cutting," but, picking at my fingernails down to the quick, then, picking at the skin until it bleeds, or a hangnail bleeds? Yes.)

That's it.

But, I wanted to think about that more.

The fingernail deep picking I had identified as cutting by that time already. Do I have other such behaviors today, though?

Free-floating anxiety I still have, though less than 10 years ago for sure, and I think less than five years ago. Continuing sober life, continuing acceptance of the dailyness of life and continued aging, to be honest, are probably all factors.

My brother, the Lutheran gun nut

Having just read a pretty good (but not quite great) 2017 biography of Martin Luther, as I was finishing a review of it, I went nosing around for other reviews. I then, eventually landed on another, 1980s, Luther bio that I knew I needed to read.

Among the reviewers was a semi-familiar name. I googled it and "Paul McCain" became more familiar as president of Concordia Publishing House. I then, among links that brought up, eventually saw one for a Facebook group called (no, really) "The Armed Lutheran." Shock me that my oldest, political wingnut, Lutheran pastor primary abuser oldest brother is a member.

But he is.

I don't think Walt's probably bought any guns since what he got out of the division of Dad's property. Rather, this is likely virtue signaling first.

It's a "virtue" I could do without.

Children abhor an emotional (and intellectual) vacuum

In progressing through my recovery journey, and looking back at my parents, I have regularly contrasted dad's emotional fire (mainly of anger management issues along with emotional and physical abusiveness) with mom's emotional ice of not being there.

But, in some recent poolside meditation of sorts, or at least pondering, between pages of a re-read of Bessel van der Kolk's "The Body Knows the Score," about which I have previously blogged, I had some new insight.

Ice is still something "positive," in the sense of actually being there, and actually having empirical, sensual evidence it's there.

A vacuum? It is nothingness.

What led me to that was, after a bit of my pondering, I started doing something Gestalt-like, which van der Kolk talks about a lot. I started having a dialogue with an image of mom.

After the dialogue was done, as I noted previously in my most recent post before this, I realized that I didn't hate mom. I didn't really even loathe her.

Instead, I abhorred her, or more accurately now, I abhorred her emotional vacuum. From there, I jumped to Harry Harlow's experiments with rhesus monkey babies and maternal or pseudo-maternal bonding.

I know mom bottle-fed me, but that was normal in the 1960s. She didn't have much tactile interaction with me otherwise, nor a lot of emotional interaction either on "positive" or "negative" emotions. I did see her once or twice in fear of dad's anger when directed toward me, but I have no idea if she ever talked to him about it further.

Anyway, this carries on to mom divorcing dad.

She claimed that she was tired of him trying to force us into religious careers. (I have proof of this; my dad apparently destroyed a partially completed application of mine to New Mexico Tech, and I know this because after I was put on academic probation at his religious alma mater after my first semester, he wrote me a letter to "shape up" or I'd never get into it. I found the letter back almost 30 years later, going through a box of old items of mine he had in storage. J'accuse!)

And yet? She never fought in court to have primary physical custody of me and my sister, as far as I know. I do know the court said we could make our own custodial parent decisions as long as we didn't bounce around too much and show detrimental effects.

Unlike dad, who for surface appearances (and maybe some stress relief, but I don't mean to buy his explanation that mom "caused" his temper let alone his acting out on it) did change for generally the better (setting aside "grooming" me to move with him — not sure how much of that he did with sis), mom never did that. It's like, even given the truth of what she claimed about dad, she was still telling a story more than a reality, and that the focus remained solipsistic.

(More on that word below.)

Because of who she worked for, and my SAT results, I got a corporate National Merit Scholarship, which actually pays more than the regular ones, even if a half-cut lower in prestige. Years later, she told me that she had considered writing her corporate headquarters to see if it would revoke the scholarship because I was attending my dad's religious alma mater.

And, no, she'd not contacted me at that time. She wrote me ... half as often, or less ... in college as dad did.

Let's see.

Knocking the props out from under me financially would have done what? Make me even more distant from her, for sure. Angry, even if I didn't realize it at the time. And hence, the "(and intellectual)" I just added to the header.

I mention the word "solipsistic" above. I used to think of mom as "narcissistic," but at that previous blog post, I realized that's not right, either.

I think a true narcissist, whether conscious of it or not, has different internal motivations than mom did.

The "solipsistic"?

By the time I was 12, this abused and emotionally whipped pre-teen, and "old soul" of sorts (no, not in any metaphysical way, New Agers) from that abuse, realized emotionally and psychologically that he did not want children when he grew up. In part, I knew that my mom was mentally ill in some way and I didn't want to pass that on.

It is an "old soul" of sorts that feels that way, and that accepts that stance as necessary, just as it's a similar old soul who can think in his mind of peace-promoting bible passages when his dad thinks he should attack the leader of neighborhood bullies because the rest of them will all cave in.

There's many more ways in which I simply had no connection with mom. Part of that, per van der Kolk, of course may be being "shut down" in some way. But, already when I was 5, I had issues of physical and emotional abandonment from her.

And, the apparent mental illness (neurotic, not psychotic level) behind that is another reason I abhor, but don't loathe.

Dad, on the other hand? Genetic tendencies to anxiety, as well as to anger management, are mental health issues. But, they're not mental illness.

While there are several good things he did for me throughout life, ultimately, while I don't hate him, and I don't think I loathe him as a person, I do overall loathe how he was as a father.

Powerless vs made a decision

Alcoholics Anonymous, and the 12-step movement it launched has been chock full of logical (and arguably, ethical) inconsistencies from the start.

Beyond that, the religious angle (it is, because it mentions a deity and because courts have said it is for First Amendment issues) is off-putting to the non-religious and to many religious people that don't agree with its particular religious take.

Beyond THAT, the "powerless" issue is offputting to women, minorities, abuse victims and others.

Step 1 of AA’s 12 steps says:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

But Step 3 says:

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

See, in religion, Lutheranism recognizes this problem and Martin Luther says that people by their own power cannot come to faith in God. 

But, AA hoists itself in its own petard. A decision is an act. Power, not powerlessness.

Of course, Lutheranism has its own problems. It essentially reduces a human being to an automaton, like Buddhism's claim that there is no individual soul, just a life force. And so, Lutheranism has its own petards.

The way to reject this is to reject an omnipotent deity (and an omnipotent karma), and accept a humanistic world. That world may still have an imperfect deity that some call god, though I don't see that, and that in turn raises philosophical issues about what creature would merit the term "god."

In any case, "powerless" is an absolutist word. Good humanism rejects that. And good sobriety rejects that, too. No need to hope for a "daily reprieve" from the AA version of a Calvinist double predestination tyrant.

Childhood sleep, sickness and wellness and abuse

I am re-reading through parts of Bessel van der Kolk's "The Body Knows the Score" and at one point, he mentioned that child abuse survivors reported much higher rates of sickness than the general childhood public.

I did have some allergy problems in childhood, but nothing serious. I occasionally had some small asthma problems, but that was likely due to dad's smoking as much as anything.

Otherwise, I had no real sickness problems.

But, sleep patterns?

As a pre-teen kid, I regularly stayed up until midnight, and irregularly read under the covers in bed until after that. Once, after previous warnings, my dad caught me and gave me a "spanking" that was more a beating. This was part of his bad parenting, and in her own way, mom's bad parenting, too. Neither one asked WHY I was staying up that late. Neither one talked more to my teachers or principal about gifted classes or anything else that a semi-poor school district in New Mexico might do, either for me individually or me and a few others. (I never even knew others of my level of "geekness" or beyond in elementary school, to be honest. Only in junior high, for a town of more than 15,000, did I start seeing others.)

I also got up at 6 a.m. every weekday to watch the "Today Show" when it was still broadcast live. Again, neither parental unit asked why, let alone talked to me in more detail about this.

Per van der Kolk's talk about feeling unsafe at home, I felt moderately unsafe, or mildly-moderately unsafe, no worse than that, with dad's emotions and anger. Maybe about the same with my two sexually abusive brothers. With mom? Other than worries that she would be so solipsistic — bingo, the word popped into mind at the right time, and it's better than narcissistic — to forget about me (and no, not joking), I felt safe otherwise.

But, safe only in the sense of not being actively threatened. If feelings of abandonment are part of lack of safety, I had that in spades. And I've just realized that.

Beyond a lust for learning, I think both the late sleep start and early sleep end were in part environmental control issues, as my brothers, for the most part, were sexually abusive of me in bed during night time sleep time. Staying up later meant — or was intended to mean — staving that off. Getting up early was meant to keep them from coming in too late. (At the same time, the younger of the two abusers taught me to sneak out of house, including out my bedroom window, to go down to a former Denny's 24-hour restaurant at 2 a.m. On our bikes. Why the restaurant staff wasn't calling police the few times this was done, I don't know. And people think the good old days were better? Not even always for white people.)

At the same time, I surely had sleep anxiety issues. Why this didn't translate into a general somatoform anxiety, with symptoms like, say, a semi-regular spastic colon, I have no idea.

I'm glad, and that may be part of my resilience that led me to survive as well as I did without surrogate parents. (I would have been a mess, and either dead, a druggie, or a male butt-boy prostitute, had I succeeded in running away from home.)

Finally, the degree of abandonment I surely recognized, but also surely didn't actually consciously recognize or feel, is in turn surely related to my ability, as well as my desire, to live alone as an adult.

Yes, I don't have a high degree of "connectedness." And it may prove troublesome down the road. But, it works well enough now, and has for some time.

Wilingness "versus" willpower

AA and the blue-covered paperback book contrast willingness and willpower. And my cogitation, plus some relatively recent sobriety support experiences, say this is wrong.

They're complementary and intertwined.

Sobriety willingness gives the power for willpower that is sometimes all that is to avail when an addictive voice whispers temptations. Sobriety willingness provides the willpower to subsume those addictive voices, those addictive subselves, the "what I don't want to do" portion of Paul and Augustine's lament, the less desirable internal neighbors in Walt Whitman's multitudes or however one expresses that.

And, we do contain multitudes, or at least small neighborhoods; modern philosophy of mind and cognitive science talk about subselves.

So, that's why willingness and willpower intertwine. The willingness to give a sober self or subself more room in the neighborhood is part of what empowers it.

The sobriety support experience that stimulated my thought is that sometimes, what seems to be an abundance of willingness may hide a lack of unity of mind, or even, to get to the willpower issue, may hide a **desired** lack of unity of mind.

And, I've seen somewhat related issues outside the sobriety world.

Years ago, at my group of suburban Dallas weekly newspapers, we hired a person to be the news editor of one of them when we got an opening. Said person was making notes for himself all the time about being organized to do this or that ...

And, amidst all the notes and reminders to himself to get organized, never actually DID get organized.

And, I don't think was even fully conscious or cognizant of that.

I expect to write further on this in the future.

Taking another's inventory not just a 12-step thing

As a recovery blog, this is primarily about my recovery from both alcohol abuse and addiction, and sexual abuse.

But it's also, at times, about general issues in sobriety, including my observations in sobriety support.

I started in AA, before discovering secular sobriety and moving on to it. And, I heard the comments in AA warning about "taking another person's inventory." The old-timers didn't say don't do it, they just warned about it. It's like Jesus saying, "don't judge, lest you are judged in return," but he did not say never do it.

Anyway, it happens in secular sobriety, too. And it's insidious when an inventory is taken in private and another attitude is presented in public.

It's generally bad, outside of that, if the person taking the inventory isn't a sobriety rock themselves.

And, I think that's the main reason the warning arose in the AA version of the sobriety world.

Taking another's inventory is much more than the cheap "when you point at someone, you have three fingers pointing back."

The big issue is that for a person with relatively little sobriety time to take another's inventory, it usually involves not taking a good inventory of their own sobriety standing.

Anger: More displaced or more real?

I went to my city's library this Saturday. Got there at about 3:40 p.m. or so; it closes at 4.

I grabbed one book from the new nonfiction rack, then went into the stacks to browse for more.

I lost track of time a bit.

Then, the lights on the back wall go off. From my experience in a town about the same size where I lived before, I figure I've got 10 minutes.

So, I browse about 2 minutes more. Then more lights go off, as in about all of them.

I stride up to the counter with books in hand. One clock was at 4; the other a minute or two earlier.

All lights were out. Back office doors were being closed. I was told staff computers were already shut down and I couldn't check out the three books I had.

I basically said nothing, but they could see my look of disgust.

And I emailed library staff when I got home.

That said, had I not been engaged in some self-distracting behavior online, I would have gotten there earlier.

So, how much of my anger was displaced?

Some of it ... yes.

No more than 50 percent, though, if that. The poor customer service would have happened even had I gotten to the library when I did for other reasons, "good" reason.

In fact, I don't think more than 20 percent was displaced.

And, I need to make sure that I'm not 12-stepping or something to do an "inventory" that isn't true.

On the flip said, I think my expression was good. No yelling. Minimal comment in general. Setting the books on the counter firmly, even forcefully, without slamming them.

I give myself credit for that.

Nature and the Dao

There's an old, but non-cliched, saying among environmental lovers: "Nature bats last."

I tried recently applying that to Daoism. But ... no, doesn't work.

Makes it sound like the Dao is the other team. And it's not.

"Dao is the quarterback"? That's somewhat better, especially if one thinks of today's NFL, where the whole offense runs through the QB.

Still not quite right.

"The Dao is the dealer in a giant solitaire game"?

That's probably closer.

It's a metaphor I will work with more.

I'm stopping this post here for now.

====

Mom would have turned 90 today

My mom, as regular readers of this space may know, was a problematic part of my life.

By the time I was 12, if not earlier, I had come to the conclusion that she had some sort of mental health issues. In more adult times, I recognized this was neurosis level, not psychosis. But already by 12, I saw it as bad enough that I didn't want to have kids, lest I pass on some genetic bad seed. (I later doubled down on that for various reasons related to my mom and dad.)

Mom also engaged in what an adult group therapist called "covert sexual abuse." This was primarily done through her getting ready for work, when I was in puberty, with her bathroom door propped open and her partially nude.

Years earlier, when my older brothers were in puberty and before my parents divorced, she would have the bathroom door shut, but yet unlocked, while doing the same. And, they opened the door and pushed me in there more than once. (With 1.75 baths in a house of seven people, the bathrooms were in regular demand, and mom knew that, too, aside from my brothers doing this.)

I don't know what all was behind this on mom's part. But, as shown by the reactions of my brothers, it was a form of sexual abuse and it had its fallout.

Some of this may be related to her early adulthood.

My mom was a stewardess for TWA back in the 1950s, when they were called "stewardesses," hired specifically for their looks (and usually fired for the aging of their looks by their mid-30s) and TWA was one of America's top airlines.

So, she "had it," if you will.

My mom was a little more than a year older than my dad when they got married. And, at age 26, she was getting close to "old maid" age for the height of the Baby Boom. And, my dad had tried to break their engagement but, in those days when engagements were considered halfway tantamount to marriage, mom's parents raised holy hell and dad's parents said, tagging along, "man up."

So, had previous men seen something in mom's personality that dad was now catching? Dad had seen her as a "catch," physically in general, and perhaps to prove something about his level of manhood to his dad, and even more to some of his uncles.

So ... he bowed his head and moved forward.

(By marrying each other, their "bad seed" didn't spill off onto others. Instead, it — in both genetic and nurture forms — hit the five kids they had together.)

About the time of that covert sexual abuse, mom divorced dad, claiming he was trying to force all of us kids into religious careers. Given that this was after all my brothers had graduated high school, and that she never fought for primary physical custody of my sister and I, this didn't add up in reality. (As I later found out with a stolen college application, there WAS a fair amount of truth to dad doing this, but, still almost none as far as why mom divorced him.)

And so went the rest of my life's connection to her, really.

Dad's anger was at least something tangible. Mom often being an emotional and psychological vacuum was just that — a vacuum.

I'm reminded of the long-ago animal psychology experiments with monkey babies who could cling to a mother-like piece of cloth for nurture even if that meant undergoing deprivation of other physical needs.

If not outright emotional abuse, it was emotional neglect.

I think she bonded somewhat more to my sis as the only daughter. Sis certainly reached out to her. I'll venture there was, at least in early years, emotional bonding of some degree to my brothers. (That said, per mom's beauty focus, there was competition there, too.)

I never felt that.

One time, I felt actual help from her above the age of 8. One other time, she was in horror at physical abuse on my from dad.

Otherwise, she was a smotherer and an infantilizer of me the few other times she tried to do something that probably seemed like nurturing loving.

No wonder that I wanted to escape both parents, not just dad's anger, in hindsight, the one time I tried to run away as a kid.

Today? If mom had a living spirit, I would mutter "namaste" as a benediction and a call for it to get afterlife help, if needed, rather than an acknowledgment of divinity. I can't even do that.

I need to keep doing it for myself.

Goodbye, mom, and diminish, memories.

The Puppy, Part 2

The reference is to this previous poem about an incident in my life from the middle 1990s.

THE PUPPY, PART 2

I’m more of a man than you, dad.

I killed the puppy

When it returned

From wherever you took it,

Unlike you,

Who couldn’t do it

With the puppies in Flint

You couldn’t immediately get rid of.

I proved it

To my self

In my mind

I’m more of a man

Than you, dad.

I was sad

But controlled it.

No tears.

I was angry

It took too many shots

Before the puppy

Stopped moving

And was truly dead.

But in it all

I was more of a man

Than you, dad.

Even as

Your innuendoes

And your put-downs

About me

Being less of a man

Less sexual of a man

Rang in my brain.

Violence, not power

Is the ultimate aphrodisiac

In too many minds.

A dead puppy

Is now humus

Across a quarter-century

Of time and space.

And across that stretch

I have let go a little bit

Of the perceived need

To prove myself to you.

Dear Mr. Frederick

For a variety of reasons, including an adaptation of an idea from Bessel van der Kolk's trauma and counseling book, and what a hexagram in the I Ching "said," I decided to write a letter to one of my upper-grade homeroom elementary school teachers, once I found who I believe is the correct version of that person.

The letter follows below. After that comes some thought about the letter.

----

Dear Mr. Frederick
(I still can't call you Roscoe!)

I am not sure you even remember me … but you've been on my mind off and on for the past several months. I finally did enough Googling and found what I was told was your current address.

I was in Jefferson Elementary in the early and middle 1970s. You gave me A+ and even A++ grades on math quizzes, if I got all the extra credit stuff correct.

A short, skinny kid. Bullied a fair amount by others. Maybe you noticed some of those effects, even if  you knew nothing about the bullying itself.

I so fondly remember the post-lunch play and recess time, with you playing quarterback for two teams of kids.

It just felt at times like you were especially looking for me. Even if that's not true, it felt that way.

In hindsight, you were perhaps a small bit of a surrogate father, or at least a surrogate uncle whom, I wish today, could have been more of a surrogate father.

And, that's all part of why I remember it.

Per refreshing your memory, if you don't recall or know, my dad was the pastor at the Lutheran church. Unfortunately, life at home in general was not spiritually nurturing.

However — or maybe "because of" is a better reason — I tried to follow in my dad's footsteps, all the way through his divinity school, when I realized I just couldn't do that.

I eventually landed on my employment feet as a newspaper journalist. Especially in small towns, it's one of the few "professional" job options open without a degree specific to the employment, like you as a teacher.

Of course, I had no idea, 20-plus years ago, that the newspaper world would be where it's at today.

Anyway, those surrogate father thoughts have grown in the last year or two, as I feel more trapped in not just the field, but a particular newspaper job, and in Texas as well. It's America and I'm over 50.

At some point, something like the voice speaking to James Earl Jones in "Field of Dreams" led me to think, Why not find out where you live? And, when I did, then, Why not write?

As far as material benefits, I'm not expecting anything. (Not that I would say no if you had anything!  This is America.) Per "Field of Dreams," I don't know if you're in any sort of pain, anyway. But, I'm writing.

Maybe I'm trying to ease my pain. Or, per Proust, trying to reframe it through a Re-Remembrance of Things Past.

Anyway, even if you have no pain, I hope this helps with your own reflection on things past.

I've also included side-by-side pictures, a then (for your memory) and now. A couple of online and social support friends suggested that.

Anyway, I don't know what else to say at this time. I don't know where you went after Gallup.

My dad eventually wanted to finish a second masters, then a Ph.D. I moved with him to St. Louis after my parents divorced. I eventually landed in the newspaper business after realizing I couldn't be a minister, for reasons noted.

I have bounced around various places in Texas, and was also in Hobbs. I don't know if you were back in Carlsbad in the late 1990s or not.

It's a nice place. I'd been there once as a kid on vacation.

As an adult, I have done the Riverwalk and some of the newer-opened sections of the Caverns. But, I'm afraid I probably wouldn't like the amount of oil-related traffic in the area if I were there today.

Anyway, Mr. Frederick, I am at the address on envelope or on email at XXXXXX.

---

First, the sentiments are real. So is the fact that I cast a hexagram, and an "interior hexagram" off that helped prod me to write.

Second: Is it the right person?

I'm pretty sure. Through half a dozen different search tweaks, I found his wedding announcement in the Gallup paper the summer we moved there. I eventually figured out the "J" that MyLife listed as a middle initial was actually for "Jr." And, Mr. Frederick's dad had been a high school teacher and coach for decades in the town where this Roscoe Frederick is now retired. I thought he was about five years older, based on childhood memories, but he's old enough to fit the bill.

Third, the feelings post-letter?

First, I thought it was maybe a bit selfish. Then, I started having antsyness about him writing back.

Third, assuming this is the right person, right address and that he's not either on vacation or in a nursing home, by a full 10 days later, I found out he doesn't do email. And, apparently, unless he's in a nursing home or on vacation, doesn't want to talk.

Well, I made one other southwestern connection this past week. Whether that leads to short-, medium- or long-term benefit remains to be seen.

Me and Bob Conners

Note: Bob Conners was a college English and speech professor of mine. He had the outreach to students of "Just call me Bob," and occasionally dropping in on dorms to visit students there.

But ... he wasn't always perfect. And, beneath the surface, years later, I started wondering about his level of investment in some reach-outs, and also how much they were about the students, and how much they were about him.

BETWEEN ME AND BOB CONNERS

Bob, you told us all,

On that spring break road trip,

That in your family, growing up,

Nobody told anybody to “Shut up,”

Because it was considered an insult.

And then you told me to “Shut up,”

More than once, across hundreds of miles.

Did you have fun?

It may have been teasing,

But, decades later, across mnemonic reframing

I don’t recall you qualifying yourself that way.

Certainly, not regularly, and my emotional memory

Says it didn’t feel that way.

Rather, some part of me,

Inner child, inner teen, inner college student,

Says it felt like bullying, not teasing.

It felt like I was the class clown again,

But as the laughed-at, not the laugh-inducing,

As though I were on a negative pedestal

For everybody in dad’s Suburban.

No, it wasn’t all bad. And I don’t

Want to sound like a complainer.

But, to the degree I felt I was getting attention

It did feel like being a class clown at emotional gunpoint.

Later, when I for the first time was graced

By one of your legendary dorm visits

Yes, I appreciated it.

And, your insight of

“There’s no one here for you, Steve,”

Rang true.

But, per Deena

With hindsight,

It also rings vacuous, even if not hurtful.

Who was the “who” that should be for me?

What was your insight beyond your statement?

Did the same surface of openness,

Followed by depths of shields and distance,

Ultimately lead to your divorce?

Is it why Mike thought you a phony,

To read between his lines on campus?

In the short run, your comment

May have eased a small amount of pain,

And even tempted me to a bit of superiority.

In the long run, because the real truth is that

There was no one there for me at home,

It may have left me with more pain, for more years,

Than I wish I would have.

Namaste

For some reason

Just popped into my stream of consciousness

Even though there is no divinity there in that space between us.

Rather, it felt like

A Hindu “rest in peace,”

As the best I can offer your memory.