Did you know I also hate the word "hubby"?
This post is some therapy for me. You can feel free to skip it, but I need it up here for me, to be able to see it the next time something starts to build.
When I go insane, I go all out. It all stems from not being allowed to get angry or upset as a kid/teenager. Before I jump in here, let me just say that while I'm sure this is all evidence that therapy is working, I said earlier this afternoon that I almost wish I'd never started with Wayne because now that I opened the box of emotional crap, every day, some new and horrifying piece of crap flies out of it that I have to deal with. It was almost, almost, better before I opened that fucking box.
So when I was growing up, whenever something happened that made me mad or made me upset, there were one of two things that would invariably happen: either my being upset would make it exponentially worse (like when my grandmother would threaten to kill herself whenever I'd accidentally upset her--for instance, if I got homesick and wanted to go home rather than stay the whole night, and that is 100% trufax and happened so many times I've lost count) and I'd end up apologizing and pretending I was fine, or my being upset would be superseded by my mom's turmoil (like when I'd be upset about my dad's gambling, and if I showed so much as a crack in my armor, my mom would break down completely) and I'd end up comforting someone else instead of getting comforted.
I don't know what to do with my negative emotions. I'm very good at acknowledging them. I can tell you how furious I am, or how sad I am, or how anxious I am. I'm very good at talking about them. But I don't know what to do with them. For 32 years, I have shoved them into that box and reinforced it with packing tape and tried very hard to forget that the box even existed because everything in the box was pointless anyway. It didn't matter to anybody.
Now, though, now I'm kind of fucked. Because eventually, no matter how good I am at packing, the box's dimensions are finite. It doesn't expand. It doesn't stretch. It can only hold so much before the seams split and all that crap explodes. And it isn't pretty when it explodes.
I hadn't even realized it until last night, but here's what happens when the box just can't hold anything else: I pick a fight, and 99 times out of 100, I pick it with Terri because she'll fight back (unlike my mom, who you would think would be the likely fight candidate). I don't even do it consciously, but if some tiny little thing happens, I can blow it out of proportion amazingly well and be a completely irrational human being and make her fight with me.
This does two things. First of all, it lets me get out all the negative emotion. It's unfair, because it all comes out at Terri, but you know as well as I do that there are certain people you feel "safe" getting angry at and fighting with.
Second of all, I feel guilty for being angry or upset about things, particularly things like my dad's current condition. I should feel bad for him, I should be sympathetic, but instead, I'm furious with him, and I feel like a horrible person for being angry, so in another example of the circle of life, I'm also angry at myself. Like I said before, Terri will fight back, and when I get someone to yell at me, I feel like I'm getting what I deserve for being angry.
I'm like a self-injurer, without the physical injury part. I'm stealthy. I'm a psychological cutter. And not only that, but I'll make you do my dirty work.
When you pour alcohol into the mix (and by "the mix" I of course mean "me") it makes it very hard to keep that fucking mess in the box under control when the box is filled to capacity, and... well. To make a very long and ridiculous story short, a fantastic night around a bonfire with my extended family, including Paige (who was up until ELEVEN O'CLOCK OMG), talking and roasting marshmallows and drinking beer and laughing ended with me crying in T's front yard, sobbing "I did everything right, I tried to be a good person, and there's nothing I can do about my dad!"
It was a Dane Cook cry. It was a snot-everywhere cry. It was the kind of cry where I have had on a full face of make-up all fucking day, on a SATURDAY, to cover the splotches and broken capillaries that make it look like I seriously got into a gang fight. Yes. I hid the evidence from my mom, because if my mother noticed that my face looked like it exploded and found out I lost my shit last night, this would become an exercise in "we can be upset together and bond like girlfriends" or "I'll just be cold and emotionless and walk away and leave you with your mess" rather than "my daughter is upset and I need to be there for her". (Remind me to write Laura Geller, by the way, and tell her that her concealer really is amazing.)
I feel better having realized all of this last night, but it still sucks. I mean, I still don't know what to do with my anger, or how to deal with it. Shit, we never even got our fucking McDonald's fries, because you can't take a blubbering, shrieking, flailing mess through a drive-through. Especially not one threatening to get out of a moving car and walk home. So I guess I'm getting better, but man, getting better is HARD.
I will say this, though: I'm sure if I really had had that camera crew that I always say I want following me around last night, it would have made some goddamn compelling reality TV.
When I go insane, I go all out. It all stems from not being allowed to get angry or upset as a kid/teenager. Before I jump in here, let me just say that while I'm sure this is all evidence that therapy is working, I said earlier this afternoon that I almost wish I'd never started with Wayne because now that I opened the box of emotional crap, every day, some new and horrifying piece of crap flies out of it that I have to deal with. It was almost, almost, better before I opened that fucking box.
So when I was growing up, whenever something happened that made me mad or made me upset, there were one of two things that would invariably happen: either my being upset would make it exponentially worse (like when my grandmother would threaten to kill herself whenever I'd accidentally upset her--for instance, if I got homesick and wanted to go home rather than stay the whole night, and that is 100% trufax and happened so many times I've lost count) and I'd end up apologizing and pretending I was fine, or my being upset would be superseded by my mom's turmoil (like when I'd be upset about my dad's gambling, and if I showed so much as a crack in my armor, my mom would break down completely) and I'd end up comforting someone else instead of getting comforted.
I don't know what to do with my negative emotions. I'm very good at acknowledging them. I can tell you how furious I am, or how sad I am, or how anxious I am. I'm very good at talking about them. But I don't know what to do with them. For 32 years, I have shoved them into that box and reinforced it with packing tape and tried very hard to forget that the box even existed because everything in the box was pointless anyway. It didn't matter to anybody.
Now, though, now I'm kind of fucked. Because eventually, no matter how good I am at packing, the box's dimensions are finite. It doesn't expand. It doesn't stretch. It can only hold so much before the seams split and all that crap explodes. And it isn't pretty when it explodes.
I hadn't even realized it until last night, but here's what happens when the box just can't hold anything else: I pick a fight, and 99 times out of 100, I pick it with Terri because she'll fight back (unlike my mom, who you would think would be the likely fight candidate). I don't even do it consciously, but if some tiny little thing happens, I can blow it out of proportion amazingly well and be a completely irrational human being and make her fight with me.
This does two things. First of all, it lets me get out all the negative emotion. It's unfair, because it all comes out at Terri, but you know as well as I do that there are certain people you feel "safe" getting angry at and fighting with.
Second of all, I feel guilty for being angry or upset about things, particularly things like my dad's current condition. I should feel bad for him, I should be sympathetic, but instead, I'm furious with him, and I feel like a horrible person for being angry, so in another example of the circle of life, I'm also angry at myself. Like I said before, Terri will fight back, and when I get someone to yell at me, I feel like I'm getting what I deserve for being angry.
I'm like a self-injurer, without the physical injury part. I'm stealthy. I'm a psychological cutter. And not only that, but I'll make you do my dirty work.
When you pour alcohol into the mix (and by "the mix" I of course mean "me") it makes it very hard to keep that fucking mess in the box under control when the box is filled to capacity, and... well. To make a very long and ridiculous story short, a fantastic night around a bonfire with my extended family, including Paige (who was up until ELEVEN O'CLOCK OMG), talking and roasting marshmallows and drinking beer and laughing ended with me crying in T's front yard, sobbing "I did everything right, I tried to be a good person, and there's nothing I can do about my dad!"
It was a Dane Cook cry. It was a snot-everywhere cry. It was the kind of cry where I have had on a full face of make-up all fucking day, on a SATURDAY, to cover the splotches and broken capillaries that make it look like I seriously got into a gang fight. Yes. I hid the evidence from my mom, because if my mother noticed that my face looked like it exploded and found out I lost my shit last night, this would become an exercise in "we can be upset together and bond like girlfriends" or "I'll just be cold and emotionless and walk away and leave you with your mess" rather than "my daughter is upset and I need to be there for her". (Remind me to write Laura Geller, by the way, and tell her that her concealer really is amazing.)
I feel better having realized all of this last night, but it still sucks. I mean, I still don't know what to do with my anger, or how to deal with it. Shit, we never even got our fucking McDonald's fries, because you can't take a blubbering, shrieking, flailing mess through a drive-through. Especially not one threatening to get out of a moving car and walk home. So I guess I'm getting better, but man, getting better is HARD.
I will say this, though: I'm sure if I really had had that camera crew that I always say I want following me around last night, it would have made some goddamn compelling reality TV.