Mike has had his snip appointment postponed (by the snip office) FOUR TIMES, I am not EVEN kidding.
Well, okay, I'm not KIDDING but I AM misleading/exaggerating: three of those postponements were of the pre-snip appointment, and the actual snip appointment has only been postponed once (so far). But since each postponement of the pre-snip appointment also caused a postponement of the snip appointment, I'm going with what makes the better story.
Furthermore, the snip appointment was for tomorrow, and the doctor's MOTHER-IN-LAW DIED YESTERDAY so it had to be rescheduled.
If we were religious, I'd be starting to look at Mike Very Meaningfully.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Knives
I wrote a post recently about how when we try to put ourselves down (like to excuse our messy house), we sometimes inadvertently put other people down. I was thinking of my mom, making a big deal out of saying to my sister-in-law that she (my mom) NEVER cleans---thinking it will put my sister-in-law at ease. But since my mom's house is spotless, it has the opposite effect: it sends the message "I consider my spotless house a TOTAL PIT that is the result of ZERO EFFORT, so please imagine what I will think when I look at YOUR house."
And recently my mom has been worried about my dad's health (not "in general" but "for good reason involving hospitalizations") and she's been saying things like "He just won't even make the EFFORT to lose weight." This in response to the doctor saying my dad should lose weight (even though nothing they've found so far has been in any way linked to weight, but perhaps we shouldn't get into THAT topic again), and my dad saying helplessly that he CAN'T: that he's tried and tried for decades and still can't. My mom counts THIS as not even being willing to lift a pinkie finger. And since I take after my dad, weight-wise, this is inadvertently hurtful to me as well, when she's going on and on about this to me. Especially when she makes her little puff of exasperation about it, from her thin body. And especially when she has told me time and time again that she knows it's not a matter of CHOOSING. That she thinks people come off "God's design table" at their own particular sizes that are the perfect sizes they're meant to be. She gives the example of one friend who is very plump, and who is obviously meant to be that shape and GOD HIMSELF wouldn't want her to diet. She tells me how mad she gets at another friend, a thin one who accuses her (the friend's) husband of being too plump, when my mom knows she (the friend) would be five pounds thinner FOR SURE if she COULD be, so she (the friend) ought to understand that it's the same with her husband, who would also be thinner if he could be. My mom isn't trying to hurt me, but she's sending a new message here, and it's a message that's canceling out all her decades of supportive messages. She's sending the message that she considers my dad's body a total pit that requires zero effort, so please imagine what she thinks when she looks at mine.
This makes me feel like communication is pointless: there's no way to even TALK without injuring people. Everything we say is knives.
And recently my mom has been worried about my dad's health (not "in general" but "for good reason involving hospitalizations") and she's been saying things like "He just won't even make the EFFORT to lose weight." This in response to the doctor saying my dad should lose weight (even though nothing they've found so far has been in any way linked to weight, but perhaps we shouldn't get into THAT topic again), and my dad saying helplessly that he CAN'T: that he's tried and tried for decades and still can't. My mom counts THIS as not even being willing to lift a pinkie finger. And since I take after my dad, weight-wise, this is inadvertently hurtful to me as well, when she's going on and on about this to me. Especially when she makes her little puff of exasperation about it, from her thin body. And especially when she has told me time and time again that she knows it's not a matter of CHOOSING. That she thinks people come off "God's design table" at their own particular sizes that are the perfect sizes they're meant to be. She gives the example of one friend who is very plump, and who is obviously meant to be that shape and GOD HIMSELF wouldn't want her to diet. She tells me how mad she gets at another friend, a thin one who accuses her (the friend's) husband of being too plump, when my mom knows she (the friend) would be five pounds thinner FOR SURE if she COULD be, so she (the friend) ought to understand that it's the same with her husband, who would also be thinner if he could be. My mom isn't trying to hurt me, but she's sending a new message here, and it's a message that's canceling out all her decades of supportive messages. She's sending the message that she considers my dad's body a total pit that requires zero effort, so please imagine what she thinks when she looks at mine.
This makes me feel like communication is pointless: there's no way to even TALK without injuring people. Everything we say is knives.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Control
I've been feeling so out of control. I'm not in control of my moods, or my temper, or my weight, or my chores, or my eating, or my children, or my social anxiety, or my exercise, or my spoken words, or my reactions to others. There's a brain/body disconnect: I can tell my body all day long to act/feel a certain way, but it declines to do so.
Do you know what makes it all the more frustrating? Everything I read under the general category "How to get control over these things" seems to me to boil down to this message: "You know what's better than being out of control? Being IN control. So give THAT a try." To me, that's like telling a drug addict her problems will be solved if she just stops wanting to use drugs, and then brushing off our hands briskly and saying, "There! Now if she doesn't change, it's because she doesn't WANT to and isn't TRYING to and isn't WILLING to DO THE WORK."
When I read other people's personal experiences, all of them read to me like this: "I decided I was out of control. So I got back into control! It's a constant effort and/or it no longer requires effort, but either way I'm in control rather than out of control, and that's a better way to be! You can do it too!"
For a long, long time, I thought the problem was that I hadn't found the Right Way yet. There are only so many decades of Right Ways I can try before it seems like it's not them, it's me.
There are so many levels of frustration here. Frustration at the lack of control, and the consequences of those lacks (and also PANIC about the consequences of those lacks). Frustration at the endlessly repeated failure to gain control (not REgain---I've never had it). Frustration at not being able to understand how others are managing it---or even make sense of their instructions. Frustration at being misunderstood as saying something other than what I'm saying, every single time I discuss it, because people can't understand how things are for me any more than I can understand how things are for them. Frustration at trying what I considered last-ditch efforts (medication, therapy) and having those also fail.
Do you know what makes it all the more frustrating? Everything I read under the general category "How to get control over these things" seems to me to boil down to this message: "You know what's better than being out of control? Being IN control. So give THAT a try." To me, that's like telling a drug addict her problems will be solved if she just stops wanting to use drugs, and then brushing off our hands briskly and saying, "There! Now if she doesn't change, it's because she doesn't WANT to and isn't TRYING to and isn't WILLING to DO THE WORK."
When I read other people's personal experiences, all of them read to me like this: "I decided I was out of control. So I got back into control! It's a constant effort and/or it no longer requires effort, but either way I'm in control rather than out of control, and that's a better way to be! You can do it too!"
For a long, long time, I thought the problem was that I hadn't found the Right Way yet. There are only so many decades of Right Ways I can try before it seems like it's not them, it's me.
There are so many levels of frustration here. Frustration at the lack of control, and the consequences of those lacks (and also PANIC about the consequences of those lacks). Frustration at the endlessly repeated failure to gain control (not REgain---I've never had it). Frustration at not being able to understand how others are managing it---or even make sense of their instructions. Frustration at being misunderstood as saying something other than what I'm saying, every single time I discuss it, because people can't understand how things are for me any more than I can understand how things are for them. Frustration at trying what I considered last-ditch efforts (medication, therapy) and having those also fail.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Didn't
This afternoon my mom tried to explain God to my only girl, and I was there, and as an example my mom was going through who believed what ("Grandma believes in God and loves him, Daddy doesn't believe in God...." etc.), and she said, "And Mommy believes..." and she hazarded a guess somewhere on the agnosticism side of atheism, a guess that reflected her enduring hope that God and I have had a fight and that I am just being pissy and sulky, and I put a pushpin into my actual belief, which is that to me it is absolutely irrelevant whether God exists or not, because if God exists as he's been portrayed, I have no interest in following that kind of leader.
If you are religious you might think I got some sort of satisfaction out of seeing my mother's hopes for my religious future dashed like that. But I didn't.
If you are religious you might think I got some sort of satisfaction out of seeing my mother's hopes for my religious future dashed like that. But I didn't.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)