Wipe Your Tears

Posted on January 31, 2016 by luckyotter

There IS life after loss. There is life after abuse.
This post is beautiful, moving, powerful, heartbreaking, transformational, the story of my life…oh hell, just read it. Leave comments under the author’s original.

Seeking a Life Full of Laughter

Today the sun is shining, and this beautiful break from the cold winter of Cleveland, reminds me how much I love and look forward to spring. While my heart yearns to be outside and to run, feeling the air burning in my lungs as I force my out of shape legs to keep moving forward, I am still scared. I am still broken.

I dreamed of him last night. And in my dream I confronted him about his behavior, and his choices. And his cold cruel laugh and his inability to look me in the eye, reminded me that it was all of a lie in real life. Knowing in my heart, that even though he was fake, my feelings were not. That even now, if he came crawling back I would still want him. It made me feel ashamed and angry.

I want to feel the sun shine on…

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Girl Scout thin mint cookies.

Posted on January 30, 2016 by luckyotter

thinmintcookies

What exactly is it about these cookies that’s so addictive. They’re fucking delicious and have been since I was a Brownie. At my funeral, I want people to throw boxes of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies on my grave instead of flowers.

Yes! I’ll have money soon!

Posted on January 30, 2016 by luckyotter

Some of you probably know that for about a month, I’ve been without a drivable car. I’ve been fortunate enough to be allowed to use the company car, but obviously this can’t be permanent and I’m limited as to where I can take the company car.

A few kind people sent small donations to my car fund (thank you very much to those who contributed!) but the GoFundMe was a bust and I took it down.

I’d been worried about my tax refund (I worry myself into a frenzy every year) which my daughter and I filed together (since she lived with me much of last year). I had no reason to worry, because it’s more than I expected and should be enough to put at least a good down payment on a decent used car and might even be enough to purchase a used car upfront, if I’m careful. I’ll be using my 2001 Ford Taurus as a trade-in or I might try selling it on Craigslist first. It’s got several great things going for it: new tires, a new transmission (rebuilt last year), and an amazing sound system (I will miss that!) Between the money I get from the car, my tax refund, and the little bit I’ve been able to save from donations, I should have enough.

I was a nervous wreck before DD and I left for the tax preparer, but I came away feeling great because the news was actually good (it always is). I don’t know why I drive myself insane over this every year. I waste so much time just worrying and fretting over everything. Worry flies in the face of faith; if you have enough faith you don’t worry.

After we left the tax preparer’s office, DD and I celebrated by having a late lunch at Waffle House. I wouldn’t let her take any pictures of me, but here’s a few of her enjoying her meal (and her phone).

Worry is useless, because if what you worry about never happens, you’ve worried for naught, and if it does happen, you lived through it twice. — Unknown

My head is a car wreck.

Posted on January 30, 2016 by luckyotter

My head is a car wreck

all sharp edges painful brightness

razor blades screeching wheels

rusted edges steel on steel

chaos blood pain terror

thought-snippets nattering and chattering

scraping and scratching

trying to get out

tight jaw gray pallor heart in throat

out of body floating am I dead will I die?

was I ever alive?

brain flashing danger signs

knotted intestines

startle tremble shake and quake

suspicious paranoid hypervigilant

Take me to the junkyard I can’t be fixed

Go away go away go away go away no wait don’t go hold my hand

help me help me

help me God help me someone anyone

Save me wake me up get me outta here

wrap me up in peaceful dreams

when I finish out this nightmare

When your therapist rejects you.

Posted on January 30, 2016 by luckyotter

I just read a post from a blogger who describes how her therapist suddenly terminated her without warning. She writes,

I spend pockets of time here and there throughout the days just wracking my brain trying to figure out what went so wrong. I replay our conversations in my head and try to decipher what this meant or why she said that. I try to figure out what the fuck I did wrong.

It’s devastating and crazymaking. Unfortunately, being suddenly rejected by a mental health professional seems to be pretty common. People who have never been in therapy sometimes have trouble understanding how devastating this can be. We become extremely attached to our therapists through a process known as transference, especially when the therapy is of the psychodynamic type (as opposed to behavioral/cognitive methods like CBT). The therapist acts as a surrogate parent and for a therapist to terminate a patient without warning is akin to a parent rejecting their child. It’s extremely traumatic and the victim often develops PTSD from the rejection, especially if they already have attachment or trauma-related issues due to rejection or neglect by caregivers when they were children. The problem is that many people with mental disorders themselves become therapists, often to work out their own emotional issues by proxy. They may not be aware they are doing this, but it happens all the time. That’s why therapists are encouraged and even required to be in therapy themselves, in order to address any counter-transference issues that may come up with their patients.

If my therapist ever rejected me like that…ugh, I don’t even want to think about that. I think I would just want to crawl into a hole somewhere and die. I know he would never suddenly terminate me without good reason and without explaining why, but because I worry about everything, sometimes I worry about that too.

I’ll give you an example of how ridiculous this worry gets. In my last session, toward the end, I asked my therapist if he had any children. I don’t think I had any reason to ask other than simple curiosity. But after I asked I felt liked I’d somehow overstepped his boundaries (he did answer me). I don’t even know why, really. He asked me what made me ask him that. Maybe he thinks this is significant. I imagined I saw an angry or concerned look on his face after I asked. But I always imagine negative looks on people’s faces even when their expression is actually neutral. I feel like I should apologize. I don’t even know if he was upset by my question but I still feel like it might have been a boundary invasion. I know he wouldn’t terminate me for this, but I still worry that he might like me less because I *might* have invaded his boundaries.

It’s so dumb that sometimes I feel like I have to be perfect even for my therapist.

Mental Health Writer’s Guild

Posted on January 30, 2016 by luckyotter

I’m proud to announce that both this blog and my other blog, Down The Rabbit Hole, have been accepted into the Mental Health Writer’s Guild, an organization for bloggers who focus on mental health issues including mental illness stigma.

From their About page:

The Mental Health Writers’ Guild exists to encourage: positive, informative, inspirational writing in respect of Mental Health. Doing so in the hope of ..

a) furthering a greater understanding of the issues and challenges relating to Mental Health and Mental Well-being.

b) addressing and working towards the reduction and removal of the stigma often attached to poor mental health and/or mental illness.

c) keeping people advised of any progress, research, developments or discoveries within the field of Mental Health and Mental Well-being.

Likewise, The Mental Health Writers’ Guild seeks to encourage support and unity between all those writing about Mental Health and especially within Guild members.

Any blogger who writes about mental illness is welcome to join. You may request membership on this page, or recommend another blogger for membership.

Cat nap.

Posted on January 30, 2016 by luckyotter

Sheldon catches some z’s.

I know this is one of the things I said a blogger shouldn’t do, but…

Posted on January 30, 2016 by luckyotter

I just can’t keep this to myself. This blog is about to hit a major milestone, probably sometime tomorrow: 50K views this month! Thanks so much to all of you who have helped this to happen! I’m over the moon. 🌕 🌖 🌗 🌘 🌑 🌒 🌓 🌔

It makes me laugh when I read this old post, one of the first I ever wrote. It was written when this blog was a week old and I had 12 followers. I’m not known for my patience!

I’m frustrated.

Never judge a thing until you try it for yourself.

Posted on January 30, 2016 by luckyotter

I’m one of those people who’s willing to try new foods, even if I think I probably won’t like them. One of the good things my parents did for me when I was a child was get me to try new foods. My mother loved to cook, and my father and I were her taste testers.

A typical dinner table conversation might go like this.

Mom: Here’s some Brussels sprouts.

Me: Ew. Everyone at school says they’re yucky.

Mom: Oh no, they’re good.

Me: But they look yucky!

Mom: Well, have you ever tried them?

Me: No.

Mom: Then how do you know you won’t like them?

I had no answer to that, so I tried them and have loved them ever since. That happened many times over, with different foods. I didn’t love all the foods I tried, but many I did. If I hadn’t tried them for myself and just assumed I would hate them because other people hated them, I never would have discovered how good they were.

The same thing is true for just about everything else. When I decided to start a blog in September 2014, I had to decide between Blogger and WordPress. Yes, there are other blogging platforms, but those two are the biggest and most well known. I talked to a few people online who told me that WordPress sucked. They said it was full of snobs and the people were unhelpful to newbies and unfriendly. They also told me it was hard to learn and the templates not user-friendly. No one had much of an opinion about Blogger. All my friends knew was that it was owned by Google.

So I decided to go with Blogger. I opened up Blogger and started the process to set up my blog. But I ran into a problem almost immediately. Because Blogger is connected to Google (and I already have a Google account), it kept wanting me to put in my real name. For a blog like this one, that was out of the question. I tried to write over it but it kept defaulting back to my name. I even tried to change my Google account information, but for other reasons that wasn’t going to work for me either.

Frustrated, I closed Blogger and opened up WordPress. I had no idea what to expect and was sure I’d be completely lost. I chose a theme. So many attractive free themes to choose from. Which one to select? Finally, I settled on the Twenty Ten theme and within 10 minutes I had my blog! I went to the dashboard and took a look around. Yes, it was a bit confusing but I started to play around with it and try different things. To my surprise it wasn’t hard at all! No, things didn’t come second nature to me yet. There was a bit of a learning curve, but after my first few posts, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on the basics. When I got stuck I went to the Forums and asked for help there. To my surprise I got my questions answered pretty quickly and in a friendly manner. As I began to attract a few followers, I also found that the other bloggers were helpful and very welcoming of newbies. I can’t say whether the same is true of Blogger, but I decided that my friends had been wrong about WordPress, at least WordPress.com. (WordPress.org is too daunting for me right now and at the moment I have no need to self-host).

I would never have been on WordPress at all had it not been for the name issue at Blogger. I can’t even imagine that, because my experience at WordPress has been incredible. I’ve never known such a warm and friendly bunch of people as the other bloggers here. I don’t know how WordPress got a reputation for being snobby and unfriendly, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

The moral of this story is that you really can’t assume things based on what other people tell you. You have to form your own opinions, just like you should always at least try a new food if you’re not allergic to it. There’s no way to know what you’re going to like or dislike until you actually experience it for yourself. Other people may be well-meaning (or not!) but their opinions are going to differ from yours, and if you just go along with them rather than making your own decisions, you never know what you might be missing.