Reflection Time

I still think about, cogitate over, and otherwise commonly revisit the immense guilt I feel over my first marriage. I don't let it seep into my current marriage. I have practiced putting it away so many times that I can recognize when it starts rearing its ugly head and shut it down. But thoughts still creep up at the least expected moments.

For every moment I have to try and be the bigger person in my marriage and for every moment where I am the smaller person, those thoughts are there. I acknowledge there is a certain type of fixation with it, many pieces working together to play their part in a broader flaw. It's hard to let it go. Not for lack of trying and not for not wanting to. But there's obviously something I'm trying to control (?) or a lesson I need to master.

And by not being able to let go, I mean of the cringe. My cringe. The cringe of my crimes against my ex. I do not mean by 'hard to let go' in any single kind of wistful way. I mean in a hard, cannot change, cannot control, the past is unfixable kind of way. The cringe that plays on a loop in sporadic and unwelcome moments.

This is unhealthy at best and toxic at worst. It does nothing to aid my life, add to it, nor extract any type of meaningful lesson by its own action. It is, for all intents and purposes, a shallow and fruitless merry-go-round that has resulted in many, many random apologies to my ex, trips to the confessional, and just about any kind of self-lancing thing induced by guilt and more cringe. And I am working on forgiving myself, but it's there. 

Many people could put it behind them simply through embracing a knowledge and an ownership of the fact that the past is the past. And this is true for me, generally. But I'm working on it still. And I feel that coming here to say it "out loud" will forge the process, just as writing such raw and /or vulnerable things has done for me before. 

Not Smoking

My husband and I are just over 90 days into being smoke free. It's been a lot harder these last few weeks than it was the first 2 months. Undoubtedly due to the excitement and stress of purchasing our first home together as well as trying to prep our condo for sale. Not to mention my oldest graduating from university in 5 days. 

The app I found to track what I used to smoke and how much I used to spend versus what I'm gaining back has been encouraging. From reaching health benefit goals to financial goals, it's a good supplement to being on the smoke-free side of the struggle.

I do find that I am still missing that first drag in the morning, and the immediate halt it puts on my brain. That's the whole reason I started in the first place. I was waitressing. My brain was going a mile a minute trying to remember orders and making her and put them into the computer. The very instant I took a puff I have a cigarette, everything would just stop for a second. That was outside of drinking, anyway. The first time I tried a cigarette, my ex and I been drinking and he pulled out a couple of those flavoured cigarillos, which created a new buzz, but in subsequent partying moments, I noticed the buzz I got from those lost its strength. Another time he happened to have cigarettes in hand, from somewhere (much to my shock), so I tried one of those.

That happened a few times while drinking. Then, while waitressing, as a noob, and as a former head case, I had my first legit sober smoke. The spinning thoughts slowed down immediately. I'll never forget standing outside the back door of the restaurant feeling mental relief wash through my mental faculties.

A normal story, by all accounts. Except that it wasn't and it shouldn't have been, because this ex of mine survived hellacious bouts of cancer, and this point in time was about 5 or 6ish years into being cancer free, although not joint free. It was never, not once, lost on me how VERY much I ought not be smoking. This is a journey into itself, of choosing to smoke despite ALL... the reasons not to. 

And it wasn't normal in the way that I had clearly not learned to deal with the spinning. Because here it is again. Except I have to deal with the spinning now instead of forcing it back down with the inhaling of carcinogens. But I remember buying my first pack with my tip money and promptly becoming what I thought was a closet smoker. I doubt I was as covert as I thought I was. 

Therapy time

I'm really, really starting to grasp under the concept that I need to process things before I respond. Surprise surprise, the thing I was always told to do.

But, like I mean, for myself. And not just being arbitrarily told by a parent who has not gained my trust. Like I really, really do.

Not only do the hot reactions of yore serve nothing to solve the least of an issue, they just really do not serve to solve the least of anything. Not one thing.

Most largely because not doing so has restrained me from learning how to digest and process my feelings any healthy and a regulating way.

Even though I have learned in a very unsatisfying way how to yield my emotions to reason, the very real truth is that I still have those hot reactions and triggers from 20 years ago. I still feel like an unregulated, emotional teenager. I feel like a hot wreck as the hormones and whatever chemical inability that keep me from harnessing a calmer self continue to rage through me.

I don't feel like it controls me but in truth, it totally does. Sometimes it's just an arbitrary change in my hormones that I can legitly feel course through my veins. Other times, it's something someone says. Usually somebody close to me. And sometimes, woe be to God, it's both. Then all fire and hell rain down upon us all. 

The story: I went to the cupboard to pull my favourite cup to make some tea and noticed it was gone. I accused my husband of taking it, in a question. "Did you use my Moon and back cup?" He admits to it. Okay, so far so good. Should have been good enough. Let it go. It's over and done with. 

An entire thought creeps up in the back of my skull all the way to the front of my brain which likely works out more to be a story than a single thought. How is it fair that he gets to use my cup when he doesn't like me using his?

And I mean, I get really agitated even recounting this. For reasons that I cannot rationalize at all. He is not some unfair guy. He is not unreasonable. We've gotten this far, ten years, with my "fiery" ways and all. We've slogged through the mud enough to know the do's and don'ts of each other.

Part of that starts to get to me, too. My fiery ways. He knows that I'm going to get pissed off. Which sounds pretty damned narcissistic except for I only mean to point out how much he cares when I get mad in other instances, how flooded he gets when I even express the tiniest agitation, to the point where sometimes I feel like I can't even be myself in some manner of personality. Like he can't even with the mere possibility of it. 

And then also gets the same level of mad about it. It doesn't make sense that he gets flooded with something that feels less loaded (to me) of mine in other situations that include my temper, but is noncommittal about this mug. It doesn't make sense. It's not consistent.

But I feel like he doesn't care. I feel like I'm supposed to care and he doesn't have to. I feel like I have to be on hyper alert and he gets to be flippant. He says he didn't realize it was my go-to mug and offers the reverse scenario empathy. "I can understand [my side]." It's still not good enough.

But why??? 

Why is it not good enough?

Why is it not good enough tonight?

Why is this a particular problem tonight? And not on other nights? Why, another nights, in other situations, is it good enough but it was not good enough tonight?

And why, oh WHY, are we here again? Why are we here again after all this time? Why am I still doing with this crap? That bubbling rage in my chest? And why oh why the inconsistency on my part? Why okay some days and not others?

I think a lot of that extremist perspective confirms things I haven't worked out so I'm trying to work them out here. I also think that quitting smoking while trying to move have been their own kind of hell. To be continued...

Story Time

Story time. I have spent a lot of time in my life whining and crying about things that I couldn't change and about things that I could change.

I've learned, through the wreckage I have caused or witnessed or been a part of, that the only thing in this entire world that I can control is myself and my actions.

I can't control the thoughts or feelings of others. I can't control their actions. I also can't manipulate a situation to my favour. That's not to say that I haven't tried.

But to that end, to the end of really trying to own that very real lesson of self-control, boundaries start and end with self-control, and I still struggle with self-control, regulating emotions, and in a word: coping.

I am still noticing a distinct and acute inability to be my true, rational self when I am working on something that is taking up my attention or doing a project that requires critical thinking.

First of all, I don't naturally start with critical thinking when taking up a project. I have learned... to approach various tasks, whether at work or at home, with a kind of framework that basically "gives" me (me giving myself) the time and opportunity to think about the steps I want to take. I have "bootcamp practiced" this to fix it and so that I can more consistently set myself up for success. But it is not in my nature to do so automatically. Not my nature at all. I prefer sporadic and spontaneous bouts of various missions accomplished which I pull out of my ass and do with flare. Because when I had to do that, it worked for me. Sort of. And when the time came where I didn't have to, I was long into the habit of it. 

That means starting on a project without the right tools. Or telling someone I can do something quickly and learn otherwise just as fast that I can't. I've gotten myself into pickles but I've had to get myself out of more times than I care to count. It comes from the same place that would leave me trying to sight read my piano music in front of my teacher, like a wild, panicking beast, because I refused to practice. But I'll talk about that later. 

It also meant getting right pissed off when someone would try and tell me what to do or make suggestions that were truly and ultimately harmless regarding some tasks. But we'll get to that hotly messed narcissism later. 

Second of all, whether or not I started a task with a precursory framework or pulling a stunt out of my ass, it seems that all the work I've done on my mental health to cognitively rebuild my poor thinking habits and poorly established emotional habits goes out the window. I find that I revert back to the busy, non-thinky, overly critical, supremely negative version of myself. The one that picks fights, the one that criticizes, and chomps on anything and everything in her way. The unhappy, unsettled, damaged (?) little 16, 17, 18 year old who is flagged and choked and triggered on every. last. little. thing. 

This is embarrassing ay-eff. 

Now, this doesn't happen all the time. And I don't get that way very much anymore. And I am personally convinced that something about the way my hormones work throughout my cycle have something to do with it. At the very least that would explain the inconsistent emotional turbulence, when all I want is nothing more than to be consistently emotional. At least to the point of being able to see it coming and manage it when it does. The problem is that I'm still being blindsided by it to some degree, but even worse is that my family, in particular my husband, are blindsided by it to a major degree. This is a major problem. I'm 42 freaking years old.