I won’t get all long-winded about the backstory like I usually do but, in the last week, I’ve really been struggling with a haunting from my past and an unclosed door with a broken-heart situation and how it relates to my current life and what I’m doing that’s wrong in it and all that noise. It’s been really attacking me, actually, and gave me a hell of a depression spell for a few days.

And then I realized that, in order to actually, totally forgive myself, I have to stop giving a shit whether or not anyone else does.

I’m starting to think that basic life principles need to come with footnotes for those of us who don’t automatically realize the implied intricacies.

In this exhausting, cathartic, havoc-wreaking, daily-self-inventory-and-renovation I’ve been undertaking since I actively started working on recovery a few years ago (I might’ve mentioned it here… a few times…) I’ve had to dig out a lot of personal muck (usually of the self-induced variety), filter it, clean it and then put it back in my foundation where it belongs. It’s been pretty taxing and has lead to what seems to be an unending series of epiphanies about me as a person but, for the most part, I’ve been able to look at it all, deal with it accordingly and then move on when the time is right.

As it should be, I think.

But in the last couple years, it has become more and more obvious that I wasn’t just a terrible person when I was drinking or in my throes of depression or even when I started adolescence, as I’d first suspected when coming out of my drink-driven stupor. In fact, in the last six or so months, I slowly became aware that there might not’ve been a time in my life before a few years ago when I wasn’t completely self-involved, malicious, spiteful, wrathful, jealous, insecure and pathologically dishonest. And that stings way worse than the thought that I had an illness or even an addiction to hide behind.

I’ve discussed this ad nauseum (so if you’ve read anything on this blog before now, feel free to skip this paragraph because you’ve probably heard me talk about this ten times minimum) but, basically, I sobered up and started trying to figure out this whole mental illness-cum-self loathing lifestyle I’d clung to for the better part of a decade because I realized that I sucked to be around to everyone, especially myself. And I kinda went about all the follow-up work (making amends, identifying my flaws, addressing my insecurities, avoiding the catalysts/antagonists) in hopes that, eventually, it would chip away at this character my addiction and illness had created and reveal the bright, polished, pure person I used to be way back in the life I could no longer remember, mentally or emotionally. That was kind of the end goal- I wash away all the muck so I could get back down to basics and start rebuilding from there.

But what really happened was that I started making amends and looking at my flaws objectively and doing the really embarrassing/humbling work of raking myself over the coals to find out what the hell I was doing and try to fix it all, only to realize that my original foundation was made of crap to begin with.

I know that sounds really harsh because, for Christ’s sake, I was just a kid when the depression really started setting in. (I can remember my first episodes at 11, which is still “childhood” for me, I guess.) But even before that, I was never a nurturing, compassionate child. I was bossy and domineering and totally self-centered and brutal and meeeaaaan. Good Lord, I was mean.

Don’t think this is me just feeling sorry for myself or blowing typical childhood cruelty out of proportion; when I had this epiphany, I spent a good while going “No, that can’t be right. You’ve had friends since you were a kid; surely you didn’t suck that much. You’re just in a funk. Go walk it off and come back and look at this more objectively.” And, after a ton of deliberation it seems that this isn’t just a fluke.

I was manipulative and dishonest for as far back as I can remember. I can remember bullying other kids and enjoying taunting people who made me feel weak and imperfect as early as preschool. I can remember saying horrible things to and about other people at every age. I can’t remember doing selfless or unprompted kind things for those around me at all… not even once. And what’s worse is that I can’t remember doing anything really kind or selfless for my siblings at any time during my childhood, which is something that really tears me up to think about, to be honest. I could go on but, truthfully it hurts a bit too much. The point is that the evidence is present and clear. These are the things that were only magnified once the hormones and disease kicked in later on.

And, yes, okay, I’ve realized and explained where all my chronic meanness came from before now. I totally get it. I was so insecure and was so certain that someone was going to jump out and mentally assault me (which, incidentally, happened a number of times) that I preemptively did it to as many people as I could in hopes that… ::sigh:: it would make me feel better? I could beat everyone to the punch? Who even fucking knows? It’s all very textbook. It’s all very pathetic. I know. I get it.  And, as aforementioned, the worst part was that I honestly thought I was so insignificant that the awful things I said and did to people couldn’t possibly have any sort of repercussions because who the hell cared what I had to say? I didn’t. And, as blathered about for a few years now via this blog, this is what I’ve had the privilege of wading through and sorting out in my search for sanity and a better, cleaner, lighter soul. So far, it’s been working.

But now, at the bottom of all of it, when I make deliberate actions and I’m fully accountable and responsible for everysinglething that I do or say or think and I don’t do anything or say anything I don’t mean, I find that there’s not anything else that’s left for me to work with. There’s no real memory of anything likeable about me from before I was some sort of monster and I feel like I’m sort of grappling at straws while having to deal with this awful realization that the reason I was so eager to escape my reality to begin with was that I’d always just sucked to be around since I was like, 3.

Ouch. Didn’t see that coming.

Now my personal recovery is not just about knocking down all the rubble and shaking it off my limbs but it’s also trying to figure out likable aspects of myself as a base skeleton.

Shit. I don’t have the energy for all this. Wouldn’t it be easier just to do an Etch-A-Sketch restart where we shake it clear, pretend it never happened and start over?

And, of course, more than half of my problem with this realization is the utter grief and remorse I have for being that person and not realizing it up until now. Naturally, this is the part that I’m honestly trying not to assault myself with the hardest but it’s proving to be nearly impossible - seriously, who wants to think that they were never a genuinely nice person at any point in their youth? I just have to keep reminding myself that rolling around in the muck isn’t going to help me get clean. (I love cliches. Thanks, Aldous Huxley!)

But still, there’s a level of defeat and frustration to this huge realization that I’ve been working to fend off in order to keep moving forward. I guess I had always figured that, if nothing else, I had a real pure Self under there that I was hoping to recover and reconnect with once I got my Demon Era properly handled and filed away. Problem is, it looks like this going to be more of a discovery/construction mission than a reconnaissance one and I’m not sure I packed the right tools.

Liz Pardue-Schultz

In order to get my Chapter III off to a strong start, I’m hitting the “reset” button on everything and putting myself through a 90-day rehab of sorts. Due to external conflicts, I couldn’t actually start this on my birthday, mostly because I intend to incorporate a lemon-and-cayenne-nastiness Master Cleanse fast for the first week and my whole little family has a disgusting case of the Ick that I needed to tackle first.

(Also, NO, I’m not doing the MC in hopes to lose any weight; I know I’ll gain whatever I get rid of right back after the week is over and I’d never want to lose weight through starvation anyway… Losing hair, muscle mass and skin luster is gross. I honestly just have so much gunk from the last two/three months in my system and I really want to get myself to a healthy, balanced state to work from. I’m even doing the salt-water flushes, but I draw the line at colonics… and not just because I can’t afford them.)

I don’t intend to go into great detail in public about my motivations or intentions with my DiY rehab but I really want it to be a means of flushing everything out (physically and mentally) and building my daily life from scratch, which will have a great ripple effect on the Bigger Picture. Frankly, I think it’s a change that’s long overdue and I’m excited to see where I am on April 25.

So anyway, I thought I’d give everyone a heads-up since I’ve heard the Cleanse does crazy stuff to one’s mind and, although I’m going to try really really hard not to, I may be prone to spouting some insanities publicly.

Maybe I’ll just make a rule to keep to myself for the 7-10 days.

It probably wasn’t noticeable from the exterior, but 2009 was perhaps the most monumental year I’ve had in a little more than a decade as far as my mentality and resulting general life course goes. I know that sounds terrible considering I had a child in 2007 and got married in 2008 but honestly, 2009 is when everything about who I was and what my life was about during the last 10-14-ish years drew to a close.

See, around the time my mind started messing with me in a clinical sense, some people that I deemed “Important” began to make me believe these negative things about myself that weren’t true. As the story goes, these beliefs lead to more profound false beliefs which fueled actions to back up the initial beliefs and then allowed me to believe more lies about my identity handed to me by predatory self-loathing idiots and it all just spiraled out of hand and turned into this huge mess in which I had successfully morphed myself into this godawful person I never actually should’ve believed I was in the first place. Since 2003-ish when I first started realizing what a mess I’d gotten myself into, I’ve been steadily trying to pick up the pieces, refigure everything out and clean up the catastrophic messes I made. (I’m not saying I’ve been successful the whole time since then, by the way. In fact, I spent the first couple years after that continuing to inadvertently botch things out of sheer habit and blurred vision.) And, in the last couple years or so, I’ve finally gotten to a place where I’m consistently happy and [relatively] stable enough that I can really look back on all of it and go “Okay, since this is the most sane I’ve ever been, let’s see if we can figure out exactly what the hell actually happened with a [relatively] clear perspective…”

Okay, looking back on things and overanalyzing them is nothing new for me. In fact, it’s been pretty damned exhausting hauling that neurosis around with me for over half my life. However, this time when I took a second (or a week) for retrospection, I actually felt this incredible sense of closure and profound relief.

No, it’s true! In the last year I’ve finally gotten over some people and events that not only don’t exist and/or don’t matter anymore but really never did matter to begin with. (Yes, I’m still a bit embarrassed that I built such a huge framework for my life out of complete bullshit, but I’m certainly not about to waste any more time feeling sorry about it or worrying about what I could’ve done differently.) A few months ago I even performed a little one-person ritual in which I identified all the lies and false authorities on which I’d built my self-worth and discarded them formally. (There was a lot of candle-lighting, stone-charging, body-cleansing and meditation involved.) And then I sat down and identified all the truths about myself and my life that I’ve always known and that people who love me have always been willing to support. And honestly, it felt like a complete mental molting of sorts.

But wait! That’s not all that happened this year! This year I finally (FINALLY) was able to make all the amends to people I’d hurt that I’d been needing to for many many years. I honestly never really wanted any sort of response or forgiveness from these few leftover people (although forgiveness is always welcome) but I just needed to know that I did all I could to at least deliver the genuine apology that was deserved, no matter how past-due. Somehow, not only did I get this knowledge of successfully delivered messages, but I was honestly listened to and respected by the recipients, my apologies heard and taken seriously. I was even granted forgiveness, which was the icing on the cake and the ice cream on the side. The feeling that I don’t owe anyone else an apology for anything is an incredible novelty to me and makes me value and choose my actions with impeccable care. (This is not to say I’m not going to offend people or step on toes ever again - I do it at least monthly. I just don’t make offending others an objective anymore.)

And, in addition to being liberated from this completely invisible fear-based “prison” of false beliefs I’d crafted around myself based on the opinions and actions of people who are worthless AND finding closure from my unbelievable cruelty in the past, I also was able to finally get away from Myrtle Beach/South Carolina, (which really turned out to be more of a symbolic liberation than a physical one as I’d finally gotten to a place where I adore(d) the people I’d chosen to surround myself with there.)

With all of these genuinely life-and-mind-altering events combined I was finally able to look at my life objectively and see - without guilt or denial or refusal - all the truths and blessings that are lying in my lap, this great existence that kind of just happened upon me and the realization that, if I don’t go and screw it all up (again) I have the potential to do whatever it is that I may want to do. (Figuring that out is another issue altogether.) And I have more loving friends than any human deserves cheering me on, so I kind of owe it to everyone who bothers to have faith in me as a human (including myself) to point myself in a direction and quit making whiny, self-loathing, fear-based excuses as to why “I can’t”. And now that I’m not wasting all my time hurting over the past and the idiots I let dominate it/me or trying to therapanize (new word alert!) my brain into normal, everyday functionality, I don’t really have any excuse not to.

So it seems like my reevaluation and life-participation in 2010 is a bit more important than usual. This being said, none of these completely-invisible-but-totally-important changes I’ve made in 2009 were on my Resolutions list, so I’m not going to base the rest of my existence on some list I scribble down in the next few weeks. However, with all the shit I’ve been able to throw out of my daily life in the last year and where that’s put me right now, I know I’ve got a lot more momentum going forward than I have in a really really long time. It excites me to dream about what that will allow me to do between now and 2012 when the world/existence comes to a screeching halt.* I’d better get started.

* No, I don’t believe that crap.

Dear 13 yr. old Self,

Hey! I was driving back from Raleigh to Sanford last night and listening to Nirvana and thought of you. Because it’s October and all the trees are changing colors, I remembered how much you liked the view from your bedroom window and I sort of wanted to join you there and scribble some more in that red plaid journal you keep in your bedside table.

Anyway, I thought that, because I’m twice as old as you are, I thought it’d be fitting to at least touch base with you where you are at that ever-so-pivotal and formative era and compare notes. (Oh, don’t get weary of hearing all about the elusive mystery of adolescence just yet because it honestly never ends. Seriously. Scores of people are obsessed with the “coming of age” years, even beyond John Hughes.) However, because we’ve both seen “Back to the Future” a million times, I’m sure you understand why I can’t start doling out advice or telling you how things are going to be 13 years down the road. Unlike when Doc came to tell Marty that his son was in trouble, I’m keeping my mouth shut because I’m rather pleased with the way things are in 2009 and I don’t want to say anything that might screw it all up. (I know! “2009″ sounds totally weird, right?)

Don’t get me wrong, though. There’s a massive pile of stuff I want to at least warn you about or try to advise you to do differently because, you know, experiencing heartrending pain isn’t fun. (You might’ve noticed.) It’s kind of like being a mother to a child and wanting that child to turn out to be really well-rounded and competent and socially adept and strong but knowing that she’s going to have to deal with and weather a lot of bullshit before she gets to that point. It’s all imperative to growth but it sucks to have to walk through together.

And that’s the point of me writing to you is to tell you that I’m here. I don’t mean to ostracize you or make you feel ignorant by saying, “You’ll understand this more when you get older” but I know you’re smart enough to get that I’m not intentionally being insulting. Please know that there’s nothing you’re feeling right now that I don’t fully understand. I get it. I’ve seen and remember all of it. I know the reasons you think you’re crappy and why you hate certain people and how you feel about certain things and I know that sort of omniscience from me is annoying but I just want you to know that I’m on board with all that. And I love you anyway.

No, I really do. And not in the way that mothers love their children because they have to or how people choose to love people because they’re settling. I really, honestly love you. And I think you’re pretty amazing, actually.

Yes, okay, you’re incredibly awkward-looking and you have no idea what you’re doing sartorially. (Those get better with time - the former slightly more than the latter - but just be thankful for that amazing rack you have. It’s pretty amazing for an 18 yr. old, let alone a 7th grader. And you didn’t have to pray a single day for it, right? Give thanks.) And, yes, you’re painfully insecure, which causes you to be horrible to people you feel threatened by. And you’re culturally inept and things with your parents have just started getting interesting and you’re often that weird girl who talks about sex or left-wing politics too much and you’re confined to those god-awful braces for another year and there hasn’t been a single male human who’s shown any interest in you since the 4th grade and you have to ride around in that giant bus your mom drives around and you have a deeper voice and more facial hair than anyone else in your class and you’re madly in love with someone who will never ever love you back and you only have enough money for a pair of Arizona jeans and some cK One knockoff fragrance for your autumn wardrobe… I get it. You’re tragically, unforgivably flawed and your first years as a pre-adult are not anywhere close to what you were hoping.

Let me clue you in on something that I don’t think will hurt your natural progression: Every single person your age feels exactly the same way you do. Every single one. Even those cocky douchebags who have throngs of girlfriends and torment you daily are freaking out on the inside about how tragically flawed they are, too. I swear. And here’s the real kicker, ready? This whole self-centered mentality is going to continue for at least another 4-6 years with those people you’re around. Seriously! I know you’re positive that all anyone’s thinking of is how much you suck every time you walk into a room and it’s easy to believe that when you’re constantly being reminded by idiots around you that they think you suck. Here’s the thing [that I'm hoping you'll believe because it's me you're talking to here instead of some adult who couldn't know what they're talking about because they don't know what it's like to be you]: everyone is so busy freaking out that everyone else is going to notice how much they suck that they try to hurl the negative attention onto someone else preemptively. And, because you’re the one who’s always had good grades and a loud mouth, you’re the top candidate at the moment. Apparently, you’re pretty intimidating. Good work! (If you want proof of this, wait until one of those little shitheads tries to embarrass you by loudly calling you a “dyke” again and then ask them how many times they’ve jerked off to two girls going at it. If you throw in a wink at the end, I guarantee they’ll have no immediate response.)

Just, above anything else, remember that those people who think that “these are the best years of your life” are the people who have done nothing exciting or of value since they were 18. And in Adult World [that lasts way longer than jr. & sr. high put together], those people suck.

I know. I know. It doesn’t matter who you’re hearing this stuff from; it can’t change how you actually feel about it and deal with it, even if the person telling you all this knows everysinglething about you. It’s cool. I’m not taking it personally.

I’ll spare you any more lectures and, no, I’m still not giving up any secrets. I will tell you that things get a little better for a while, then interesting and fun, then bad, then fun and bad with a little good, then kinda bad but you don’t really notice because you’re still having fun, then very very very dark and then awful and then completely intolerable (literally) and then, just when you’re positive it’s always going to be awful because it has been gradually so since right around now, it gets really unbelievably, incredibly, amazingly wonderful and it stays that way for longer than you can remember. I promise.

So that’s what you have to look forward to. And I wanted you to know so that, during these next 13 years, you’ll keep a glimmer of hope in your heart to keep yourself moving forward. I know you’ll disagree with me, but I believe you’re better than all that crap you’re grappling with right now and I know you’ll figure out how to get rid of it over time.

I do love you. And I think you’re exactly where and who you should be right now. Trust me on this one.

Much love and light,

Mrs.* Castallare

*

I have one relationship in my past that I tend to make a lot of references to.* At this point I am able to discuss this person and this situation and even who I was at the time without any sense of emotional connection, which I really consider to be healthy given the amount of time that has passed and the amount of contemplation and active therapy I’ve participated in. And, while I can site this relationship for being the base of a lot of my behaviors and lasting mentalities, I don’t sit around and blame it/him for my problems or addictions anymore as I’ve gotten to a mental state from where I can identify how my choices affected me and how any outside influences could’ve been handled differently.

However, up until 7 or 8 months ago this wasn’t the case and that really really started to bother me, especially given that, not only has this relationship has been nonexistant for years now, but I’m in a much better place with a much better life and a whole new sense of self and healthy habits that I never really felt myself capable of maintaining or posessing. In fact, given how embarrassed I was by the association to that specific person and/or the actual relationship, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why I had this need to keep revisiting the situation and trying to make sense of all of it. I’d exhausted myself with therapy and introspection and sobriety and even talking it over with this specific ex (who can site everything he did wrong but continues to do the same things to his partners today.) And then one of my friends suggested I get involved with an Emotional Abuse Survivors Support Group.

This sounded ludicrous to me. First of all, I wasn’t even in this relationship anymore and I’d been going to therapy for eeeeverything that was fucked up in my life anyway so surely this tiny element would’ve been taken care of already. Secondly, while the situation I was in was unbelievably unhealthy, shockingly insane and tumultuous, and had many singular episodes of undeniable abuse, it couldn’t have been categorized as “abusive” because I kept going back to it and inviting it back into my life… surely I was just as in control as the other party, if not just as much at fault. Plus, me still not getting this whole “removal of ego” thing [necessary for full recovery from major fuckeduppedness] had me still believing that I was somehow immune to having been in a full-scale “abusive relationship.” I mean, I wasn’t locked in a basement or told to remain silent in public or even beaten on a regular basis… So, sure, I was in a codependent relationship with a lot of powertrips and mindfuckery and infidelity and dishonesty and other general dysfunction but never an “abusive” one. Somehow, even though I had spent years prostrating myself and taking emotional beatings from a genuine self-loathing idiot, I still thought that that sad, subservient, grappling wreck of Me that I was was still too proud or self-aware to have been susceptible to an “abusive relationship” as if those were reserved for people far worse than me.

However, I thought I’d at least check out the criteria just so I could go back to my friend and have hard facts to back up my assertion that my former relationship was not abusive. So I checked some online literature and smiled with a sense of relief when reading first and foremost that abusive partners have real jealousy issues and control issues… actually, I laughed out loud. My former partner didn’t give a shit where I was or who I was with most of the time and he rarely bothered to call when he said he would, so he certainly didn’t fit that stereotype. But then I kept reading and I felt my stomach bottom out with the familiarity of the symptoms:
My partner had blamed me for all the problems in our relationship and even his own abusive behaviors.
(“I wouldn’t have lied to you about seeing my ex if I knew you wouldn’t get mad about it.”)
My partner did make fun of and/or belittle me to his friends/acquaintences.
My partner did treat me so badly that I became embarrassed to bring him around or even tell people when we’d gotten back together.
My partner did withold sex and emotion from me.
My partner did cheat on me repeatedly.
My partner did make me feel like I would never do any better than him and was lucky to have him at best.
My partner did leave repeatedly and then come back, begging for forgiveness.

The list went on and on, even as I moved from site to site, hoping to find one list that had little to no relevance to my particular situation. It was only when I read about the characteristics of an abuse victim that I felt my eyes fill with tears and I had to push away from the computer in order to catch my breath. All of these things applied directly to me… I wouldn’t have been surprised if the person writing these articles knew me personally.
I did take all the blame for what was wrong in the relationship.
I did contemplate/attempt suicide.
I did have clinical depression.
I was pretty much textbook in pecking-order chastization and battering.
I did withdraw from my family.
I did defend my partner’s abusive actions to people around me.
I did repeatedly leave my partner (and constantly planned to.)
I did feel like I loved and hated him all the time.

In a frenzy, I spent the next month collecting and reading everything I could about mentally/emotionally abusive relationships (and not all from the internet, either. Imagine!) and, even more than being surprised or dismayed, I was increasingly embarrassed. Mortified, actually.

I was already embarrassed that I had been so codependent with an average-looking, uneducated, emotionally stunted child for so long but then when I read words about our situation and how his manipulations were just another form of brainwashing, I felt hopeless and worthless all over again. I realized that all that time I had been the very malleable, idiotic stereotype who was just as pathetic as I’d always feared. I was “that abuse victim” who “couldn’t” leave [for no apparent reason], which was a character I’d always been frustrated and disgusted with.

And all this was even more distressing to me because I was in a great relationship with someone who wasn’t even capable of this sort of mental destruction and here I was feeling the ramifications of something I’d pulled the plug on years prior. This wasn’t relevant to my life anymore! This had nothing to do with the people I’d worked to surround myself with in the aftermath! This was something I’d worked really really hard to be fucking done with! I was pissed to have to be dealing with this already-belabored situation[/man] again, when it[/he] was never worth any of my time in the first place. And the very last thing I wanted to do was to beat the [assumed] dead horse even further by talking about it more and having to delve back in to all the wounds and emotions and shit I’d worked to fucking get over. More than anything, it just seemed unfair and unwanted.

When I started talking to other women in an online support group, I was kind of in the same mentality that I was when I started going to AA meetings; I don’t fucking want to do this, I know everything I need to know about this, how is this going to effing help me, etc. I mean, seriously, how much is there to talk about? As it turns out, there’s a lot. And there are a lot of things that I had experienced in my former relationship that I’d never even stopped to think about that these other women brought to my attention. And it was amazing to talk to other women who were on the “other side” and had all the same feelings about it that I did: Why wasn’t it so easy to just leave even when you’d known you should for months/years? Why can’t you get other people to understand the need to leave even when you’ve been in their place? When do you stop dealing with the emotional bullshit of all of it? What’s the best way to present this to your children as a life experience? It seems like the more I talk to women, the more I realize that I’m among many many women who didn’t realize they were in what would be considered “abusive” until long after they were out of it. Many of us considered ourselves empowered, educated neo-feminists and were certain we were going to be joining a support group of women with whom we had nothing in common.

And, although painfully predictable to the theme of this essay, it’s been really amazing. We’ve gotten to the point where we can talk openly about the relationships we’re in now and ask each other to keep us accountable for our actions and the situations we’re in. We’ve told our individual stories and even pulled out pictures of these abusive assholes to have a group “WHAT WAS I THINKING?!?!” laughing-fit-style cleansing. It’s been really great.

Because of this, though, I’ve gotten to that point where I can casually discuss this former relationship as just a marker in time for reference’s sake like I would with such phrases as: “When I was 9…” or “On September 11th…” or “During my pregnancy…” To me, it doesn’t come with conflicting emotions or that underlying frustration of me needing to figure it out or right it.

This became evident when I was speaking to one of my ex’s ex-friends (who still keeps in touch with me, obviously) during this last weekend. While it’s been amazingly validating to have a handful of former friends of his go out of their way to stay in touch with me (especially after all the horrible things he made sure to say about me) and hear their similar complaints (although never as intimate as mine), I’ve really gotten past that point where I’m trying to show off how awesomely I’m doing in case they happen to talk to him or where I love to indulge in gossip about how terrible he’s doing or how awful he’s treating those around him and can just enjoy having a friend that I delight in the company of who - ohbytheway- happened to be a friend I met through a former romantic partner. There’s a real sense of triumph and recovery in the simple act of physically getting our new families together and talking about everything great that’s going on with us without ever mentioning the god-awful circumstances/person that set up our friendship in the first place.

Strangely, it’s the realization that those old, tyrannical emotions aren’t even bothered with anymore that has given me the most pride and sense of accomplishment of anything else in my years of therapy and recovery. I never thought apathy could make me feel so good about myself.

*This is something I won’t be doing after this entry. Promise.

Once upon a time, many years ago, there was a Boy who loved me very very much. In fact, this particular Boy loved me more passionately, with more unabashed zeal, attentiveness and dedication than any other man in my life ever did, right up until three years ago. This superior love far outweighed anything I’d ever experienced, including that of The Other Guy I was currently in a long-term relationship with.

It all started out very harmlessly, as these things always do. We went to tiny local concerts together and made mix tapes and wrote postcards for each other when we were apart during the summer and there was nothing romantic about it or evident of any sort of ulterior motive. We both had significant others that we loved and we talked about them regularly, although more often than not his shared anecdotes were more pleasant than mine as I was prone to crying on his shoulder, sobbing about how The Other Guy had lied to me again or had been overheard talking badly about me or was just not giving me what I wanted in general. Over time, however, his words of encouragement and reassurance became more intimate than friendly and I found that mine were following suit. Suddenly, we realized we were in the throes of very deep, very unexpected emotions.

Soon, we were spending even more time together and flirting with the idea of “where this could go” and really becoming overwhelmed with emotion and excitement of new love. And then he pulled out the stops and broke it off with his girlfriend to offer himself to me exclusively. On my birthday that year, he lined all 10 miles of the major highway route to our school with signs that said “Happy Birthday, Elle!” and planted a banner in the front with the same message. He stuffed 20 empty glass bottles with varied hand-written loveletters and gave them to me for Valentine’s Day. He adored my family, he came around whenever he could, he always kept up with how I was feeling, what I needed, what I would need… he was everything I had ever wanted and I was enamored with him.

And there wasn’t much not to like, really. He was one of those kids who came from a rough upbringing and somehow beat the snot out of the status quo. He was more determined and driven than any single person I’ve ever met to this day but, even more importantly, he kept about him this constant attitude of optimism and joy. He was a spiritual guy who always kept that at the top of his list, even though there was no parental figure holding a gun to his head to do so (This was a new concept to me.) and he was proud of that aspect of himself. He even took me to my first and only Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. He was open-minded, healthy, successful, friendly, joyful, spiritual, ambitious, creative, resilient… the list could go on.

The problem, of course, was that I was an emotional wreck of biblical, Jericho-like proportions. Usually, these stories have that pathetic theme: “Girls only want bad guys and nice guys finish last.” but this time it doesn’t apply at all, surprisingly. The truth was that I’d always wanted to be with someone like him; who doesn’t? And, specifically, I wanted him. But I - being submerged and brainwashed with self-loathing and general desperate insecurity - was positive that I was not deserving of this sort of happiness, that somehow I was going to screw it all up and only be reminded of how undeserving I was in the aftermath.

And me, never being one to pass up the opportunity to fulfill a personal prophecy, went ahead and did just that.

(WARNING: This is where the Crazy kicks in. Also, the Pathetic. I sound like a complete, psycho-ex-girlfriend-stalker-type loon from here on out. Just be forewarned.)

So, in unbelievably predictable fashion, I cowardly sprinted back to The Other Guy in the “safe” dysfunctional relationship I was familiar and “comfortable” within. (For those of you who haven’t spent years in therapy and/or 12-step meetings, this is textbook codependent/addict behavior. The more you knooow.) My heart ached as the Boy kept coaxing me to come with him and let him make me happy after I’d told him my decision, but once I’d finally settled on my choice, I transformed into something very very sinister and hideous.

From where I sit now I can only come up with one theory as to how my mind possibly justified my behavior immediately after this, but that doesn’t make it any less excusable or blatantly insane. I guess because I was genuinely ruled by the staunch belief that I was worthless, unimportant and undesirable, my mind concluded that anyone who would bother to try to romance me was a moron. I’ve discussed it before, but for years I had a very Eeyore vernacular, always thanking people for paying attention to me or thinking of me and always wondering why in hell I was included in any sort of social engagements at all. When I started dating The Other Guy in my earlier high school years I was just amazed that any male would find me desirable at all, so I settled for that and assumed that I was lucky to have even obtained that much. So, when I see the Boy continuing to go out of his way to make me feel wonderful and show me his affection and shower me with adulation, I start to think there must be something wrong with him.

Soon, I’m treating the Boy like a pathetic, lost puppy who is intent on over-romanticizing everything and must be desperate to still be pursuing me. I start mocking him and emasculating him, both to our mutual friends and to his face. I ignore his calls, laugh at his attempts to talk to me like a concerned friend, and try desperately to swat away any remaining emotions I may be experiencing.

Jesus Christ, it just seems so arrogant and ridiculous from where I am now… anyway.

When we got to college a number of months later, I found myself feeling remorseful and missing his company but, still tumbling down a slope of self-destruction, my attempts at apologies were always overshadowed by my desperate loneliness and my hopes that maybe he’d come back and try to rescue me again. Any formal apologies I initiated always turned into a weepy, clingy drama fest in which I would be torn between desire and guilt while he would just be trying to figure out what the hell he could do to escape without causing me to implode. Naturally, his resistence in these conversations translated through my insecurity as blatant rejection and sent me into even more despair. (Like I said: I. Was. In. Sane.)

Honestly, I just thank God he had the integrity and self-assuredness to get the hell away from me instead of letting me drag him into a quagmire of Crazy. It’s one of those things that’s rather admirable about him.

Anyway, I left that college after I hit Rock Bottom: Episode I in 2003. We kept in touch here and there but it was always kind of strange and stilted. Frankly, I was so amazed that he’d waste any more time talking to me at all that I didn’t care what our meetings were like, but I always felt that he saw me as some sort of charity effort and I fought not to loathe myself for that.

Presently, we’re both married to people we’re insane about. All he ever wanted was to find someone to love, get married, and start a family and, like with everything else in his life, he did exactly that right after he graduated college. We speak when we can, although conversations are always in that cordial, scripted, “Hi, how are you, I’m doing well, it’s good to hear from you.” kind of language you use on loose acquaintences and your parents’ friends. While I know there will never be any more singing or giggling or sharing absurdities, I am quietly heartbroken at the knowledge that there will never be any reminiscience - happy or otherwise - between us and the realization that this is entirely my fault.

I found myself thinking about all of this after I recently came across a friendly “Hi, how are you…” message from him in my inbox from many months ago. And I realized that, even after all these years of real, intense apologies that I’ve had to issue to pretty much everyone I’d ever spoken to before I got sober, I never bothered to give him one. Yeah, there were a half-dozen of those drunken, blubbering apology sessions I previously mentioned but I’m positive those couldn’t have been taken seriously.

So, after 8 years I sat down and wrote him a letter in which I sincerely apologize as a sober, [mostly] sane, self-realized adult. Truthfully, I really hate doing that sort of thing after all this time because it kind of makes me look like some obsessive freak who can’t let things go and needs to rehash shit that other people have obviously laid to rest and gotten over. Most of the time I feel like I’d be better off just leaving it alone. And heaven forbid if this somehow gets misconstrued as me trying to instigate trouble or something else.

But, as per my Twelve Step practice, I know it’s something I’m responsible for and, even if I never hear from him ever again, he deserves to hear at least one sober, sincere apology from me. And frankly, if I went to my grave knowing that I didn’t grow a pair and give that to him, I’d never rest peacefully.

However, THIS? THIS is what we should be talking about in those government-funded D.A.R.E. programs. “Hey kids, you shouldn’t drink because one day you’re going to have to look at all the carnage in your rearview, pull a U-ey and clean it all up.”

In maintaining and controlling my sobriety and mental illness it is imperative that I take inventory of myself on a daily basis, even in the aftermath of all the intensive therapy I’ve done. And because I consider myself a giant, lazy wuss I kind of don’t understand it when people around me are just unwilling or even incapable of doing the same thing to themselves when it’s absolutely needed.

Admittedly I’ve taken being self-aware and explorative to a bit of an extreme as I’m constantly overanalyzing every move I make almost to a fault, but at least I can confidently say that I’ve thought about every decision I’ve made, the motivations for that decision, and how this decision is going to affect myself and those around me. This is not to say that I don’t make wrong decisions, but I’m at least able to honestly take full responsibility for anything I do, regardless of the outcome. And frankly, that cost thousands of dollars in therapy to be able to accomplish. So there isn’t anything I do that I haven’t thoroughly considered, even if I’m deliberately making an unhealthy choice (A recent example: “I’m having sugar cravings like a crazy person and will ingest a Reese’s SonicBlast every single day for two weeks, fully knowing and accepting that this will cause my ass to expand, which I will deal with once I’ve exhausted this craving and moved it out of my system.” By the way, it worked and I’m not craving sweets with such ferocity but I totally owe God a favor because somehow I only put on three pounds after a solid month of constant indulgence.)

So, not to sound like a holier-than-thou arrogant prick but whenever I’m around someone whose flaws are palpable and this person simply will not confront them to get themselves out of misery, I’m not only frustrated but genuinely confused. It’s hard for me to realize that because most people’s flaws aren’t life threatening like depression or alcoholism, there’s no pressing need for them to do the emotional legwork and actually deal with their problems. As long as they can live a functional existence, they can afford to avoid delving into their inner selves and picking up the therapeutic habits of self-awareness, even if that means keeping walls up between themselves and their pasts, etc. And that’s kind of a foreign concept to me. After so many years of being exposed to self-improvement techniques (whether I was actually practicing them or not) I kind of forget that most people don’t think in terms of recovery and the mental therapy required to change their lives.

Naturally, I’m not saying that every single person requires therapy. In fact, I’ve been happy enough to know many many people who have that perfect balance of self-awareness and clarity. However, I’ve been in the presence of so many people who just settle for mild misery and the lower-end of mediocrity in their lives simply because they’re too afraid to confront change and the idea that they might have to evaluate themselves. Again, because I consider myself a stubborn lazy-ass, I just don’t get how so many other people can be scared of things that are really not so bad.

For example, I know a woman who is in a marriage she should’ve left a long time ago. She and her husband haven’t communicated in years and, in turn, have created an intricate web of blame and disdain for the other. Intimacy is foreign to them but instead of sitting down and actually bearing their feelings and talking about the state of things and how it came to their present situation, they avoid each other, he sometimes running to other desperately alone women in hopes to fill the hole. It’s sad, yes, but it’s unbelievably sick above anything else. I can’t imagine how living in fear of having to deal with the inevitable pain of confrontation and a marriage disintegrating by spending every single day in misery, living with someone who hurts you and makes you loathe yourself even more is better than just growing a pair, dealing with the pain for a couple years and living the rest of your life in the happiness you’ve made for yourself. It’s so so sad and unbelievably frustrating to watch. I understand that this woman is afraid of being “alone” (even though I can’t imagine feeling more alone than living with someone who is perpetually emotionally devoid) and having to learn to function in the real world on her own and will probably have to finally tackle some massive demons instilled from her crappy childhood in order to build the confidence to get out of this marriage she’s punished herself with for too too long, but it just seems so cowardly for her to spend the one life she has being miserable because she’s afraid of fucking feelings.

And it’s like that with anyone who is in a terrible, demeaning relationship of any sort (obesity, addiction, romantic, etc.) They’re somehow more comfortable being constantly hurt by something else than just ripping off the band-aid, dealing with the terrible emotions that will follow and then getting on with their lives. I understand it because I did it for about 5 or 6 years with someone constantly working to demoralize me, but now that I’m on the other side of that mental barrier and see how easy and undaunting those feelings that I was terrified of confronting actually were, it just seems incredible that anyone would spend their life not taking the risk of making themselves happy. Or at the very least, not increasingly miserable every day.

It’s just amazing how, when not in someone else’s mind, the prison their fears create are completely superficial if not nonexistent. It’s amazing to watch how crippling someone else’s mindset can be to their entire life. And it kind of gives a renewed perspective to how false the power of my own fears actually are.

I spend a freakish amount of time dissecting and scrutinizing myself, motivations, emotions, thought patterns, actions, etc. I’ve discussed it before but in my recovery I kind of took the whole “taking a daily self inventory” thing to an extreme. (I’m big on extremes; never much for moderation. This, too, I’ve discussed. Moving along.) Most of the time I’m not so much reviewing my actions as convincing myself further that I am an emotional disaster that even the Red Cross wouldn’t cover. I obsessively judge every single thought that crosses my mind and I tend to drive myself into a self-beaty-uppy frenzy more often than I’d like to admit. Honestly, I’m not just tough on myself; I’m fucking relentless.

Recently, however, I’ve been privy to a few different situations that kind of have stopped me in my tracks. A while ago I talked about the Universe momentarily dropping the veil between my life now and what it could have been hadn’t bothered with practicing active recovery and, since that didn’t seem to be enough to get the message across (I’m a slow learner sometimes), the Universe then began hurling at me more and more examples to support its point. I was kind of starting to get it, but apparently I needed an extreme example. Go figure.

So yesterday I’m folding laundry, washing dishes, doing other general housewifery and watching a documentary about women who are stalkers. I listened to women who were reformed stalkers and had gone on to live normal, sane lives and other women who were still proud of their actions and felt totally justified in their completely insane tactics. It was weird how some of the women on either side discussed a very real sense of purity and justice in their actions (even though the reformed ones have since realized that this was a mere illusion) and remembering how, in my craziest (usually alcohol-soaked) moments I felt the same drive. And then I thought about people that I knew/know in my own life who display this same kind of Crazy… and then I started thinking about the people I know who display a lot of Crazy in other forums.

And I started to feel really really good about myself for a change.

Here’s the thing. I still have tendencies toward the Crazy from time to time and sometimes they even get a little out of my control, which is scary. But I am always always working to get better and I’m consciously keeping them in check (or immediately wrangling them back into check should they momentarily escape.) And you know what? My Crazy isn’t ruining my life or the lives of those around me anymore. My Crazy isn’t bailing on my friends and family, isn’t busy trying to destroy myself with drinking or drugs or insane spending sprees or shitty relationships. My Crazy isn’t driven from fear or loneliness or selfishness or low self esteem anymore and I’m no longer perpetuating a shitty or even mediocre existence out of confusion or denial or anger or fear or anything, really. My Crazy doesn’t conduct any of the dramas that inevitably come into my life and I’m able to dismiss any unnecessary bullshit quickly and efficiently because the Crazy doesn’t rule my ego anymore.

In fact, if I can take a minute to fling humility by the wayside, I have a pretty rad life right now. And, given that this life is so much better than it used to be a few years ago, I’m pretty convinced that my work in therapy and sobriety and general recovery is directly responsible for building this around me. My family not only completely trusts me these days (a MAJOR change from the former) but they enjoy my company and have confidence in my abilities as a parent and as a competent adult (an even more major change.) I have a base group of amazing friends who constantly have my back and are always rightthere when I need them, without me having to ask. I have a functional, jealousy-and- [99%]- insecurity-free love life with a man whom I trust and love completely, who treats me the way my parents always told me I deserved to be treated, who is committed to growing and nurturing each other in our lives together. I have a healthy, happy daughter who is developing perfectly on schedule even though I know next to nothing about being a parent.

Apparently, even though my Crazy may always be on my mind and I may always be on guard for its attacks, it really plays a very very minor role in my life these days. My neuroses (and ensuing insecurities and then the resulting complications of such insecurities which cycle back into neuroses) are minor obstacles that crop up every so often instead of acting as guidelines and barriers in which to contain my whole entire existence. Proudly, I can admit that this is the very first time in … well, since I can remember… since 5th grade?… that I can say that. These days the things that used to cripple me and keep me submerged in a miserable life are just little mostly insignificant quirks to my character that are laughable among my close friends and family, instead of being exhausting and embarrassing to those around me.

This doesn’t let me off the hook, of course. I’m never off the hook, really, if I plan to keep growing and learning about myself and life and recovery and all that (which I do.) And I certainly don’t think I’m all figured out or have all The Answers or am somehow above fault or relapse or missteps. I’m not a conceited idiot. I’m sure I’ll continue over-scrutinization/criticism of myself until I’m old and grey (even though, like effing everything pertaining to my thought behaviors, I’m working to find a middle ground on that, too.)

But for just a second, I think I’m going to take a break to be a little smug and arrogant. (Again, I’m big on extremes.) ‘Cause I used to be Utterly Hopeless, Pathetic, Destructive Crazy, but now I really believe (supported with aforementioned evidence, of course) I’m safely in Self-Aware, Seemingly-Normal(-Whatever-That-Is), More-Than-Functional/Downright-Thriving Crazy. To the outside [of my head] observer I’m functional, capable, assured, competent, sane, trustworthy, normal-amount-wobbly, instead of being chronically catastrophic. Nobody’s making “Crazy Bitch” or “Crazy Train” the ringtone that sounds when I call them. (This actually happened at one point.) Sure, people may have terrible things to say about me (people always have terrible things to say about anyone, it seems) but they’re not locking their doors or putting restraining orders out because of me. (Frankly, I think anyone who may have a problem with me these days really just has to be looking for drama. Clearly they’re wasting more time/energy being pissy and resentful than I am, ’cause it’s clear skies on my end.) And I’m not covering my head in shame from my most recent stint of making a total ass of myself or loudly defending myself to a bunch of random people I may or may not have wronged a la “Springer”. Not having the Crazy at the ready is pretty damned liberating, relaxing even.

So yeah, I’m taking a minute to sit back on my laurels and indulge in a little schadenfreude toward the Crazies with whom I no longer share a category. Of course it’s morally wrong/bitchy/insensitive and an incredibly cocky, shameful fault to admit to publicly. However, this emotion will, of course, settle into a middle ground of healthy, normal, gratitude with which I can maintain a productive sense of humility. But for just one second I’m going to enjoy snorting and sighing at the Crazies around me with knowing pity, “Damn; that bitch/bastard is cah-razy.” without feeling too much like a hypocrite.

I’m probably going to start with my next door neighbor. It’s like having Springer’s show delivered to my home! (Actually, any reality TV is good for this.) And then there’s the crazy bitch that keeps harassing me via MySpace from 1,000 some miles away. Oh, I could do this for a while.

“I’m rich rich richrich rich.” - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I’ve talked about incorporating the familiarities of pop culture references into my spiritual practices before but, recently, I’ve started using another offbeat [completely fabricated] method for my daily meditation practices. See, because meditation is such a foreign thing for me I have trouble really feeling like I’m committing myself to it when I’m doing it alone. Somehow, something so relatively new to me and my Western upbringing feels completely false when I’m practicing it by myself. So I thought that perhaps if I create a little bridge of familiarity between the new practice and things I feel comfortable around and emotionally related to, then I could ease myself into a routine over time that I really felt I was being genuine with.

So what the hell am I talking about?

My specific example involves the fact that no matter what traditional Hindu mantra I choose (and there are tons of them… who knew?!) I simply cannot take myself seriously when I’m repeating something over and over in a language I don’t even speak. It feels too pretentious. So, instead, I’ve been using small phrases (which - in case you aren’t aware - are all mantras really are. Even “om”.) that originated as song lyrics.

Man, just saying that out loud makes me feel kinda lame, to be honest. Ah well; I’ve done worse in a public setting.

Recently I’ve been spending my meditations cleaning house. In the last two months there was the relapse of depression that really knocked me over and then, just as the fog from that began to lift, I made the mistake of opening myself up emotionally and reanimating some old demons and battles that I’d figured out and left behind years ago. (My bad.) So in the last week or so, my meditations have focused on imagery of letting go of these “demons”, which take the form of recurring harmful thoughts (kind of anti-mantras) and erupting emotions that have no benefits or relevance to my mentality or life at all. I like to address these terrible mental habits like annoying ex-boyfriends who are unwelcome in my house (mind) and mess up my day and waste my time and simply refuse to go away. And, luckily there are a lot of songs that address such scenarios. Shawn Colvin’s “Get Out of this House” has been a great one to start with. Usually, I just repeat the title line during visualization practices, but sometimes I’ll feel my concentration waning and I’ll switch up to a couple lyrics here and there.

But no song has been as great of a mantra for this specific practice than… oh man, it’s kind of embarrassing… Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More”. I’m positive I’d be less embarrassed admitting this if it weren’t for the well-known psychedelic ‘Alice in Wonderland’-themed video. (I saw his giant hat at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!) However, feeling the slow-moving melody and just repeating “Don’t come around here no more…” when my mind heads back over to its habitual dark thoughts has been fantastically empowering. All the lyrics fit perfectly, too, which is beneficial to my adopting the whole song.
I particularly like to repeat this verse:
I don’t feel you anymore
You darken my door.
Whatever you’re looking for,
(HEY!) Don’t come around here no more

A few days ago I was inspired to do one of my semi-annual sage-burning, salt-spreading, crystal-cleaning cleansings around the house and that’s the song I put on during the ritual. The benefits of the song were multiplied by the immediate access to the musical composition, meaning that when the Heartbreakers rock out there at the end [with Tom making all those weird-ass ad libbed noises] it helps to usher in a great sense of relief and resolve to maintaining the healed, strong mentality achieved through the meditative practice.

It sounds kinda lame when mentioned out loud, but I found/find it to be quite effective as a meditation technique, in addition to being engaging and stimulating. And isn’t that what practicing spirituality should be anyway?

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Progression in Hindsight

If you’ve been reading for any length of time you may recognize that one of my biggest (and most embarrassing) faults is my routine inability to just let shit go. For some reason, after a situation has emotionally drained me and ultimately imploded, I just looove to revisit it to figure out what can be repaired and/or salvaged. No matter where the shattered pieces have landed, I just have to go back to ground zero and try to make sense of it so I can, eventually, put all the pieces back together and place it in a perfect little frame to display in my “Closed Cases” exhibit (I assume.) I like to venture all the way back into these past dramas to poke and prod and try to make sense of situations that obviously made no sense ever (otherwise they’d still be functioning) instead of just accepting that sometimes disarray is an acceptable finale to a situation. (Thank you, Samuel Beckett!)

Returning to a senseless, broken, crazy-making situation to try to make sense of it or resolve it is exactly comparable to me drinking a bottle of wine in hopes of figuring out or curing my alcoholism. I know this. I’ve known this. I realized this many many years ago in fact. And, still, I catch myself making that same mistake even to this day, even after years of evidence that it never ever works.

And I kick myself for this fault of mine on a daily basis. Hard.

But recently I ran into a person with whom I shared many years of drama and general insanity. After letting her suckiness monopolize entirely too much of my time, emotions and energy (without receiving any of these in return, of course) I’d finally cut her off. Cold turkey. This is something I’ve never been able to do successfully. In fact, after I sat her down, explained why I would no longer be taking her calls and said “bye!” she continued to try to get in touch with me, claiming she had no idea why I suddenly didn’t want to associate with her at all anymore. (So yeah, my hour-long presentation highlighting my standpoints on the matter clearly had no effect on her whatsoever.) Even still, I stuck to my guns and never wasted any more time arguing with her or trying to get her to be more respectful or engaging in any part of her dysfunctional insanity. As a matter of fact, after about a month or so I never even wasted any more time thinking about her or being mad at her or feeling anything at all for her. This all happened a little over 5 years ago and even recently when she wanted to hang out and/or catch up, I was still completely emotionally disconnected from the situation and shrugged off her request without a second thought.

Whoa. That doesn’t sound like the obsessive, clingy, chronically emotionally invested, can’t-get-the-fuck-over-it image of me that I kick myself for routinely. In fact, that healthy choice seems pretty progressive and emotionally stable of me.

When I realized that I’d been capable of actually following through with something I’d honestly believed I’d always been incapable of, I sat down and thought about all the other times in the last few years that I might’ve been able to do the same in similar situations. I was kind of convinced that this instance of me genuinely discarding something broken/dysfunctional/insane and completely emotionally getting over it in the aftermath was just a fluke. Just a one-time occurrence that wasn’t likely to happen again. But, the more I really thought about it, it seemed like I’d actually been capable of a good deal of emotional weeding. From where I sit right now, there are at least a dozen instances I can name where I found myself thoroughly immersed in and ravaged by a toxic relationship of some description and finally cut off the pointless interactions and walked away from this emotional tarbaby* AND was able to completely emotionally disengage from this scenario without having to go back and try to make sense of it all. These situations all vary in their previous intensity and power over my emotions and thoughts but in every case I’ve been able to just be done with it. Completely.

Now I’m not saying I’m cured just because I’ve been able to successfully remove myself from harmful relationships a few times because even doing it once is still damaging. (That’d be like saying, “Well I must be getting better because I don’t shoot heroin as often as I used to.”) But it really does give me a lot of faith in myself by having proof that I’ve been able to do this one thing (for years now!) I’ve always assumed I was incapable of. Makes me feel like doing it a couple more times isn’t that big or insurmountable of a deal.

So. Um. Yay me!

::: Smiling tilt of head. Gentle pat on back :::

*The use of “tarbaby” in this instance is a reference to the Br’er Rabbit folklore of the Old South… NOT a racial slur.