With a Sense of Poise and Rationality

March 2010 September 2010 November 2010 December 2010 January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011

Still pissed off that I somehow missed on the fact that I’ve been depressed a while and didn’t take notice of it, let alone took charge of the situation and corrected it, but what are you going to do? Sometimes you drop the ball— time to do some damage control.

I’m home, and I don’t want to go out, don’t want to see anyone, I’ve spent the last two days locked up in my room. Doing relatively productive things thay have nothing to do with the things I’m supposed to be catching up on, but still, at least I’m not sleeping the days away.

Tomorrow I’m forcing myself to go to N’s, probably seeing V on Wednesday, then forcing myself to go out dancing with my lesbian gal pals on Thursday, and probably just spending the day at home on Friday before I leave Saturday morning.

Somewhere in between there I should kick myself into finishing the assignments I put off because I was waiting for mania to kick in like it usually does, except… it didn’t, so now I’m screwed either way.

Essentially I don’t care anymore. I’ll either get it done, or I won’t.

There’s been a lot of discussion about future plans, the kind of frustrating discussion that ends in my father and I arguing and going at each other’s throats.

The best part is when he compares me to my cousins. He’s compared me to them all my life. When I was a child, I was never as good as them, as obedient as them, as smart as them, as extroverted as them, just generally as wonderfully magnificent as them.

Now he compares me to them in terms of how ‘spoiled’ I am, and how I don’t know how to look after myself in terms of cooking and cleaning.

Which essentially pissed the ever living fuck out of me, because I spent a fucking year doing that. And so when he explicitly says ‘Oh, you never did those things in California’ And my mother is trying to appease both of us by saying “Be quiet, you’re offending the girl.” And “Don’t listen to him, I’ve seen you look after yourself.” I end up lashing the fuck out, because I wasn’t aware he was living with me in Cali to witness this general lack of survival skills.

So then I started to wonder why I care so much, why it pisses me off to that extent.

And it all comes down to how I’ll never be good enough for him in anything. It doesn’t matter how much I try to prove how competent I am at anything I do, it’s never enough for him.

Then I started asking myself ‘Well, why the fuck am I judging my accomplishments by his standards? Who gives a fuck about whether or not he validates him, let alone acknowledges them? I’m not doing any of it for him. I’m judging my accomplishments by my fucking standards, because the only person I either impress or disappoint, and the only person whose opinion matters to me is my own’

And here is where my counter-dependence kicks in.

Life has been really hectic, and I haven’t been feeling too well. I admit I’ve been forgetting to take my medication, to eat properly, to sleep properly and to exercise in an adequate manner.

Basically, there has been a lot of failing in life going on.

And to be honest, I’m pretty much done with everything right now. I’m at that point where I’m just going through the week, waiting for things to be over because I’m just so sick of everything.

We went clubbing one night, which gave me that rush of enthusiasm again, but it burnt our very quickly. Then we had a wedding just last night, where it was around 6 hours of dancing, and boy did I dance, but the rush didn’t even last ‘till this morning.

I’m going to take a blind stab in the dark and say this is a mild depressive episode. Nothing interests me anymore, I’m detaching from everyone, I just want to sleep, I can’t focus on anything, and generally don’t give a damn about anyone or anything. I’m so self-absorbed in just how not well I’m feeling, I’m neglecting everything I know if I were in my right mind, I would not be neglecting.

The good thing is, that I’m not just sleeping the week away, finding no motivation to get up in the mornings, and just laying there, waiting for things to get better; I am making a bit of an effort.

Still, it’s difficult when I lack every ounce of motivation I once had. I tell myself to be motivated, but there’s no emotional weight to the words. They’re just empty things with no meaning.

All I can really do is take my meds, and keep pushing myself to pull things together.

I’m behind on a bunch of school related things due to this rut, but we’re getting to that time of the semester where I can’t afford to let myself just wait it out.

So this week I’ll be kicking my ass back into shape in that regard, and do with the million other non-school related errands I have to tend to.

I kind of just want to sleep the week away. But I know that I can’t. So hurray for conflicting messages coming from my brain.

For my interview class we’ll often do role play exercises, where the teacher will tell the interviewee to behave a certain way in order to push the interviewer’s boundaries. The point is to put the interviewer in an uncomfortable situation, and still expect him to put into use all the tools learned up to that point.

Today I got a pregnant girl from a very religious, conservative background, relatively indecisive about whether to abort or not. As usual, the person came with an “I need you to tell me what to do.” attitude, which of course I had to avoid caving in to.

Long story short, it was very difficult. My personal stance is irrelevant, the point is to guide the girl into making a decision that will suit her, and won’t psychologically damage her. Still, it kills my soul a little bit every time I have to shift into that conservative, religious mind frame.

In another exercise, I was put on the spot, having to be interviewed about love and relationships. Sweet Jesus, was I anxious. Mainly because I wasn’t allowed to lie or deflect, so I just minimized, minimized, minimized, describing behavior, instead of using labels.

It’s not that big a deal, given people are aware of most of my alt-sex identities…which is what happens when every other class feels like therapy, and you deal with psych students.
The interviewer wanted me to give a brief overview of past relationships, milestones, patterns, etc. but he got hooked on this last guy I had to end things with.

Of course it was extremely uncomfortable, but I don’t particularly like deflecting, so I simply kept myself in check in terms of how I phrased things.

It’s still all pretty fresh, so it was tapping a bit too deeply into an aching wound (not a good idea to sever things in the middle of NRE; everything feels more intense), but I think it’s something I needed, because it made me realize something very important.

At one point, after I’d described why I was drawn to this guy, he asked “Was this a guy you decided to go out with because it would please your family, or because it would please you?”

It took me a moment to answer, because the question took me so off guard. He paraphrased, and did a bit of an interpretation, quoting things I’d previously said about how this guy was perfect because he was fine with my alt-sex identities, came from a good family, was open minded (read: potentially corruptible), came from a similar background, and was the type of guy I could bring home and not lie about, or be terrified he’d be eaten alive by the family.

His interpretation was that I was trying to mix contexts. Please the family out of social pressure, while still trying to please myself.

And the thing that utterly terrified me was that when I talked about ‘family’, I wasn’t talking about my mom and dad, who are cool with whoever I’m with as long as they’re male and make me happy. No, I was thinking in terms of my uncle and cousins.

That scared the hell out of me.

Yeah, that’s how much this context has been affecting me. Luckily I will be getting the heck out of it in a couple more months.

The relevant things I learned from this failed attempt at a relationship were:

- It’s not about pleasing the family. I’m the one who’s going to be interacting with the person more than they are. It’s about what suits me, not them. And essentially, it’s in their best interest not to pose any objections about any of my partners (unless there’s a genuine concern), because it will only promote alienation.

- It doesn’t matter how perfect a person is in every other area or how ‘in love’ I am or how much I love them, if I feel inhibited expressing specific preferences, or feel there isn’t an open space to explore them, that’s it. To the curb.

- I don’t respond too well to male overly dominant personalities, since I start taking little things as an attack, and way too personally, getting very defiant in a non-sexy way. Yet if I’m treated on equal footing, I’ll have no problem submitting in general by my own free will— do it gladly, even.

- Sexual compatibility is very important.

- Right now, I don’t care for anything too demanding. I’m fine being someone’s secondary, just not their primary. Which would have been a good thing to know before I got involved with this guy to begin with.

- Mixing contexts doesn’t work. I was making him step way out of his comfort zone, and him way out of mine, creating a clash of framework, and thus slow simmering conflict.

- A ‘partners in crime’ dynamic is key.