Sorting Out the Mania

So I’ve had a couple of remarkable weeks ending about a week ago where this attachment stuff was just blowing my mind.  My relationship with my husband has been off the charts.  I have felt able to be so close.  My heart has been open in ways I never knew was possible.

And then I talked to my grandmother about my grandfather’s impending death, then the uncertainty about my next appointment with Andrea happened, and it seems like there’s been other stuff.  I’ve been struggling with anxiety.

Andrea asked me a great question today.  Did I think it was existential anxiety or life anxiety?  I decided existential anxiety.  It was nice to think of it just being life anxiety.  Of course, it is life anxiety.  How could it not be?  And that’s okay with me.  But the existential stuff is trickier.  It doesn’t feel good at all.

And I am happy.  But I have a deeply happy disposition.  It’s deceptive.  Just because I can find joy in things does not mean that I am healthy.

So Monday night I am working on a project for my father-in-law.  It’s getting past dinner time.  I haven’t eaten.  I keep working on it.  I’m a touch manic.  I know I have to eat.  Nothing I have at home will do.  So I get in the car to go get something.  My husband is out at a work meeting.

I am driving to my desired place and it dawns on me that I am a bit manic.  The fact that nothing at home will do was a huge sign for me.  I couldn’t care for myself by making a meal – I needed someone to take care of me.  I couldn’t be bored – my food had to stimulate me.   It was actually impractical to drive to get food.  It would have been much easier for me to make myself something.  But I couldn’t.

This was really painful.  I feel the pain all over again.

So I told myself that all I needed to do was notice what was happening.  That helped.  I could also understand why I was anxious, that all the things going on had me feel anxious and this felt merged with my experience of existential anxiety.

The next morning I spent some time thinking some about the why’s behind the anxiety.  That morning I knew I had a lunch with someone I’ve known for quite some time about something she’s helping me with.  I realized that I wanted to tell her what was up.  I wanted to have fun with her, but it seemed like I would be being fake if I didn’t mention how preoccupied I was by life events.  So I mentioned it, and it was really soothing.  She gave me some good advice and then we got down to our fun work.  The mania holds its power over me when I have to pretend that I don’t feel something that I do.

At one point I’d written this post in my head and it had a series of ideas that fit tightly together.  Those ideas have now faded from my memory so I am going to wander a bit now.

In talking with Andrea yesterday briefly, she said to me that it felt like a really long time since we spoken.  While it had just been a week, a lot had happened.  She said she felt sad for herself that she was missing out on what was going on.

Today she checked in with me about how that was for me.  She wondered if I felt like I had to protect myself from her when she said that.  Because this was about her talking about herself, experiencing.  I didn’t think so but I was intrigued by the question.  Of course, my mom was so overwhelming to me and I did have to protect myself from her to keep myself from being so enmeshed with her.  But I was already enmeshed since I had to protect myself.

Anyway.  I’m totally rambling now.  I suspect that in a few months these questions, thoughts and feelings will work themselves out.  I think what is different is that I am learning that I don’t have to protect myself so much from being overwhelmed or subsumed by people and experiences.  Of course the death of my grandfather will be a big deal and it’s looming nature is hard for me.  I think the feelings I fear being overwhelmed by are connected to realizing that with my grandfather’s death my biological family will mean less to me.  I keep trying to fit myself into that family.  I hope against hope that things will be what I want them to be when really the members of my family will be who they are.  It sucks that I don’t like who they are.

That’s really the hard part.  I don’t like who they are.  They are not my kind of people.  I keep trying to make them into my kind of people but they are not.  My grandfather is.  My grandmother kind of is.  But everyone else?  Not my people.  I have to repeat this.  I have tried over and over again to deny my feelings.  For the longest time I didn’t even let myself not like them.  I thought I was the weirdo.  But it’s not about anyone being a weirdo – I don’t fit with them.  I don’t respect them.  Not because they do awful things but because I value different things.

I’m not quite ready to reject them.  I don’t see any other alternative.  To be close to them I would have to make a lot of effort, try to turn myself inside out to be liked and then they still wouldn’t be capable of really appreciating me.  By reject them, I do mean reject them as people.  I mean reject them as people I care about making an effort with.  I will always care, but they will not be people I am chummy with.  I so wish this were different.

I am generally so hopeful.  I want to have hope in people.  But then I remember, especially with family, that if things could be different, they already would be.

There’s a point I get to sometimes in my heart where I feel so relieved because I glimpse how much better things are, for all involved, when I look after my own interests instead of others’ interests.  It allows more freedom for everyone.  I think these glimpses were part of what helped me have such a great couple of weeks of the year.

Anyway, lots going on.  Lots being woven together without being very cohesive.  I am really curious about this notion of not having to protect myself from Andrea.  I think that feeling/capacity to not have to protect myself from people and life was what made the first two weeks of the year so glorious.  My sense of self was strong.  That is good for me.

Well, no more rambling for now.  I like me, even in the middle of this very much in progress mess where I’m so in between old habits and the new emerging ones.

Enough for tonight.