Needs

I'm still not ready for people. I'm in a funk.  I called out of work yesterday, and today. I'm really not ready to open up, empathize, and help people tackle their issues.  Fragile. That's a good word for it. I'm feeling fragile. I couldn't really pin it down, till today.  Irv helped me frame it in language.  I'm still sort of bummed about my father, and his open hostility towards me.  We pulled some cards together, and now I can sort of see his reasons, but that doesn't magically fix how I feel.

I'm such an introvert, just spending a week straight with other people is enough to ruin me for the whole next week, especially this trip, where Alden was in our room.  I didn't have one moment of time alone, except bathroom time, and even that was always hurried.  Rushing to do the next thing, feeling obligated to not sit in our room alone, but go to Chris or Dad's room and socialize with the family. I can only do so much of that in the best of times.  Add dealing with my father who was hostile, grouchy, demanding, demeaning, anxious, mean, sexist, and generally miserable and on a mission to make the rest of us miserable...and I can't even.  We got home the day before yesterday, and I still don't feel fully myself, or "home".

I'm roaming around here, trying to stay drunk or high all day, and on the verge of tears, when I'm not.  I've got no motivation to do anything that I love. No urge to seek out my friends and loved ones to talk to them. I'm fucking lost right now.  Maybe a few more days in isolation will help. Maybe the cards we read today will get a self-dialog going, so that I can work through this.  Just touching the sore subject of my parentage/my father's issues with females (which means issues with me), and my mother, is enough to make me burst into frustrated tears.  I always said I was thoroughly happy not knowing where I came from, but every year, the mystery gets more and more...mysterious. More and more little slips and revelations.  Details come to light, but they only provoke more questions.  I'm not even being deliberately vague right now, but I don't even think I have the stamina to tackle the issue head on. I will. I'm trying to get myself there.

It's five pm. I called out of work. I have plans to go to a birthday party of a dear friend...a half hour ago. I'm still unshowered, and thoroughly dreading the evening.

I need therapy.  I need silence. I need answers. I need to understand.  I need to recharge.  I need a good cry.  I need to find the tears first.  I need to find the words.  I need to get back on the horse and tackle life head on.  Fuck.

I'm making it a point to paint every day, no matter how busy or shitty the day is.  It's helping un-mire me from the bullshit mundane productivity.  Like, every day, I have time set aside to create something totally frivolous, whose only job is to be cool, and or interesting to look at.  It's a few hours of calm quiet time every day.

There's something distinctly satisfying about laying down strokes of color, and watching some meaningless little metal or resin chunk take form into a tiny little character with a story and a sort of life in my imagination.

I'm deeply satisfied seeing my skill develop and my techniques refine with each miniature.  I practice grounding and centering to become ultra calm and steady, every time I pick  up a brush.  It's both fast and slow. Painting something the size of a quarter requires an absolute stillness of self.  It's fast in a way, too. I can cover a lot of space in a small amount of time. I can see improvements from one miniature to the next.  Things slow down in details.   I feel like this really helps hone my focus.  Painting requires razor focus. Only in this hobby will I spend an hour perfecting inside the mouth of a creature whose head isn't even as big as my thumbnail. When people are talking to me, I fuck up.  When there's loud noises, I fuck up.  Hopefully, one day I can even focus through big distractions.

I started doing this on a whim a few years ago.  It's turned into a necessary thing, and I feel like the positive benefits of dedicating myself to painting every day, spilling over into the rest of my life.

Something about getting high on a Saturday morning makes me check all my email dilligently.  Then I stumble across one from Good Vibrations. They're having a sale.  Suddenly, it doesn't seem strange to blow $50 on anal toys, to get free shipping.  I actually sat there and contemplated it for a long few minutes.

This keeps boinging around in my head:

"People don't have to be nice to you just because you order them to."

This is fundamentally what's wrong with my mother. She thinks she can treat people any way she feels like treating them (which is usually like shit, let's get that straight) and because she's...I don't know, her, that everyone automatically needs to respect her, and be kind to her.  It's the worst kind of entitlement.  That's what I'm facing and fighting.  I think that's a theme that stretches back in my life, back to early childhood.  Demanding respect, while simultaneously slapping me in the face, both figuratively and literally.  Demanding kindness and care for herself, while giving back nothing but negativity and abuse.

This is what makes my stomach flip into knots.  This is what brings out pure, unmitigated hate.  This is what makes me angry.  This is what makes me cry furious tears.  This is what makes me watch her walk down my driveway, and not feel too upset if I see the last of her.

Then, on the other hand, she's my mother, and I'm the last person in the world that she has, so I naturally feel protective towards her.  But, she knows I'm it. She knows I'm all the family she's got.  She knows I'm the only person in the world that gives a shit about her.  So, why does she treat me like she does?  Because she has done it like this for my whole life, and because I have let her.

I'm still dealing with this.  I guess it took more than one blog entry.

The week has been weird.  Today has been really weird. Well, that's not fair either, it's a fairly normal day, till she showed up.  My mother was here.  We had to kick her out of the house, and now she's sad.

She comes here while I'm on the phone, and hangs around.  That's fine. So, when I get off the phone, she chats me up about her usual bullshit, the house, money, insurance. She's nosy and bossy, like normal, but I can field that.  Last time she was here, she was just plain nasty to everyone, and I haven't forgotten.  She talks about wanting a smartphone, so I encourage her to get a Windows phone which is absolutely dummy proof, and has all the features she needs.  But she cuts me off, and goes on and on to say that they guy at the Verizon store thinks she should not only get a phone, but also a tablet, and all this horseshit.  I asked if she really needed all that, because she also has a laptop and a desktop.  She's like "but I want something to keep me busy when I'm sitting in Perth Amboy!"  So, I tried explaining what wifi is, and how a tablet needs wifi, and she kept cutting me off, so I said "fine, you're right. You're absolutely right, you know best what you want."  And I was prepared to end it there.

Then she started shouting. I let her shout at me.  I maintained that she's right, and nothing I can say or do would ever sway her.  Luiz just told me, in watching that, I went out of my way to be peaceful to her.  Luiz interjected at one point by saying "even if you ask for her opinion, nothing Lisa says or has said at least since I've known you has ever changed your mind."  So, she starts shouting at Luiz.  Luiz was like "are you paying bills in this house? What have you done for us lately that gives you a right to yell at us?"  Something like that.  Anyway, it escalated, and she was being really nasty to Luiz, and I walked her out the door.  I calmly explained, while she was still yelling, that she comes here with a chip on her shoulder, on some war path, and she treats Alden and Luiz like shit, and they don't have to take it, and neither do I.  I explained that I don't hate her, and she's free to call or stop by any time, if she feels like being civil, but she doesn't have the fucking right to push around anyone in my household.  She went on about how Alden disrespects her, and I ended the conversation with, "Listen.  If you're not nice to Alden, he doesn't have to listen to you.  Period.  You treat him like shit, don't expect him to be receptive in any way.  I dealt with your shit when I was his age, because I had to. You treated me like shit, and I was forced to respect you because you're my mother, but you're not his mother, and he doesn't have to take shit from you."

I try to do right by him. I try to teach him he doesn't need to take shit from anyone, if they don't respect him.  I spent too many years of my life being mentally and physically abused, and I'm not gonna lie, I'm still damaged.  I work every day in small ways to fix myself, but I feel like my energy is best spent raising Alden not to be damaged and abused and walked all over, by people.  Love your grandmother when she's loving, but when she's abusive, you don't have to take it. Always love her, because she's family, but walk away when she starts her shit.  I've been working my whole life for that.  I still take her shit.

I feel shaken at having to confront her like that, but I'm turning over a new leaf.  My house has been the site of a lot of negativity lately, and I'm taking huge steps to clean it out.  I don't need her shoveling more of it on us.

Normally, this would send me flying to my bottle of vodka, to steady the old nerves, but I think I'm turning a corner on drinking, too.  After last weekend, I'm dialing it back.  I've been drinking far too much, far too often, and I think it's because I'm dealing with some unresolved issues, lots of anger, and fuck...it's just easier, when all this stuff surfaces, to just party the issues away.  I suppose that should be its own whole blog post.

Right now, I'm hungry, mentally and physically exhausted, and tired of people's shit.

Harriet and I have had a complicated relationship, to say the least.  I have to say this, first, though. I love her like I love anyone that's entered into my immediate circle of friends, even though I haven't hung out with her in ages.

When the kids were in kindergarten, we dropped them off and stood around the same spot, and started talking to each other. It developed into a tight friendship, where I would sit in her Durango, and wait for the kids. We'd show up every day at school two hours early with coffee and music, and sit there talking waiting for the kids to walk out, even when her daughter and Alden were in different ends of the school, we made them walk around to where we were.

Our deep friendship progressed into a sexual relationship, and that was fun for awhile. She always had a billion things going on at once, and I was sort of happy to be a part of her chaotic life. She would drag me to parties and friends houses, and she did a lot to chip away at my social anxieties. With her, I learned to "fake it till I make it" in social situations.  She didn't give me the choice to sit out, often.  I catered her aunt's 75th birthday party. I loved her and hated her, and I blogged a ton about her back in the early 2000's because she was such a turbulent and zingy ball of energy in my life back then.

Then our house burned, and all that shit happened, and I got too busy.  A few years later, her house burned down, and I helped her out a lot with her pets and other stuff. She moved out of the neighborhood for a few years, while her house was being rebuilt.  She got into some bad relationships, while cheating on her husband, some very jealous types. She got mixed up with a woman that got her hooked on pills, which really kinda killed our friendship for a time. She couldn't really even say hi to me, the woman was so insane.  She served some jail time, lost her job. Got another job, lost that.  So much bullshit. I tried to be around for her, through all this, and she'd come over despairing sometimes, but the light kinda had gone out of things.

So, today she turns up.  Looking good, tan, and happer than I'd seen her in a while.  She's going to NA meetings, and she's been off the pills for four days  We chatted about the houses, she lost more in Sandy than I did.  She moved out of the neighborhood again, when her house got destroyed, and just came back a few weeks ago.   We've both kinda come to the end of our ropes about things, with the houses and we reconnected on a great level.  I opened the door to her. If she ever wants to just come over and get out of the house, just to quit staring at the four walls, I invited her here.  I know that means a lot in the recovery process.  Just to get out of your prison and go take a walk.  I lit up seeing her on the porch. I love reconnecting with old friends, no matter what's transpired in the meantime.  Nevermind all the bullshit, I hope she stays off the pills, and sticks around.

I closed reddit. I cannot bury myself in comforting things, right now. I need to write.

So, Luiz did something almost irreparably shitty to me, today. It's something he does on a frequent and consistent basis, but this turns out to be the most damaging time.

When I love someone and trust them perfectly, I talk to them. Sometimes, my friends confide in me, and usually when it's something I could use input on, or something that fills me with joy, I'll share it with Irv or Luiz. So, once when Schuyler confided to me that was so out of my knowledge zone, something kind of shocking, I mentioned it to Irv mostly, because he's pretty steady and can provide detached unjudgemental information. It was like "Schuyler has this weird situation. I'm at a loss. Please advise." It was a secret. It was something that Schuyler was feeling uncomfortable with, and turned to me for advice. Luiz over heard this, and at the earliest opportunity mentioned it to him. In a mocking way.

That was maybe five years ago? Schuyler hasn't confided in me since then. Our friendship took kind of a turn. We're very casual now, and we barely ever talk. I'm not gonna lie, I've been feeling the sting of it since it happened. Then he told Alden some very important details about my personal life that is none of a child's business. I'm a parent, Alden is my kid. There needs to be some mystery about my recreational life. Luiz went ahead and just shone a spotlight on every facet of my life, to Alden, unasked for. Facets that no kid ever needs to know about their parent.

Luiz will see me pulling cards, for a friend and come hover over what I'm doing. He'll get up in my shit and try to help me. Then in short order, he'll go to that friend, and say things like, "So, I hear you're having marital issues, WELL, Lisa and I pulled cards, and we figured this out about you." Which isn't the case. Sometimes, I turn to him for help when I'm too close, but more often than not, I read the cards solo. I'm digressing. But, I'm writing out the history here.

So, today, he kind of carpetbombed me. He waited till the very end of a really good day, during PMS, after I packed a huge bowl, 10 hours before I'm going to eat breakfast with her, and announced that he had a crush on Michele. Which hurts, and we talked about the reasons for it, which I might have to write another blog post about. But, it's really nothing that I couldn't cope with, I just needed to digest it, you know? At some point in that conversation, he said

"I'm pretty sure she doesn't hate me. I meant what I said about cultivating a friendship. It's my way to be selfless and be cool.  My designs on a clean friendship are pure."


Then he kept trying to impress upon me that he needs to be friends with her. My answer,


"Well, there doesn't *need* to be. She's my best friend. She's not close friends with Irv, never has been. She's friendly with Irv. She's friendly with you."

So, that was kind of the end of that. He kept begging me to trust him, and I really can't. I trust that he'll do what he wants, what he thinks is right no matter what my feelings are. Something kept nagging at me about the word trust.


At that exact same moment, he was carrying on a conversation with her in another window, trying to be all deep and philosophical and what he thinks as "friendly" I guess. He took a conversation that Michele and I had months ago in confidence. A girly girl on girl conversation that made me happy, some personal bit of emotion and conversation that should have been between her and I only, one that I shouldn't have really shared, but I stupidly did...and repeated it to her verbatim. As in "Lisa told me this is how you feel about this situation, and I think that's just ducky." He was using some piece of confidential information to become closer and "friendlier" with her.

It was just most shitty, scummy, backstabby thing ever. Michele picked up on it immediately and ended that aspect of the conversation. Cards were pulled. He didn't think it had any effect. It most definitely had a very immediate and heart rending effect. Michele now doesn't think she can trust me. And just when we were getting our friendship back on track after Kenn. Now we have this huge, maybe irreparable rift, and this distance. The same kind he caused between Schuyler and I. And Chris and I with his little "open letter". And Alden and I. This 18 year old friendship went through some very brittle times, and now as adults we were just getting so much fuller and better.

I feel like an ass. I feel like now Michele can't trust me, the way Schuyler couldn't, the way nobody could, I guess. I'm not blind to the fact that I made it wrong. I can't believe I'm so stupid. I should never have told Luiz shit. Actually, I was very transparent about recent developments, too, till he spilled my business to Alden. Around then, I started dialing it back around him and not telling him the majority of what goes on in my conversations with people. He didn't even realize that my trust for him was eroding by the day, and was so shocked to learn I don't tell him 100%. Instinct told me to not disclose secrets anymore, and I definitely quit, maybe in early May.

I'm anxious and exhausted. I'm dreading tomorrow morning. I've been sitting here with tears threatening to fall, but somehow not. I feel hot and dry and angry. I'm hurting and raw, and unsure of anything.

He keeps pawing at me, looking for me to comfort him or boost his ego. That's not for him today. He doesn't get to run over my feelings with a steamroller, and my relationships, and expect me applaud him for his spiritual journey to "become a better person" That's the thinnest line of bullshit I've read all night.

I'm falling asleep at my computer. I'm husked out. Maybe I can bring this more out at a later date, or maybe this was enough. I'm not even sure how to go about being social tomorrow.

I know why. I don't even have the emotional fortitude to go into "why" he does this, right now.  It's enough that I know, and I strongly dislike his reasons.