Archive for October, 2008

to an insane degree

Written on October 18, 2008 by beth and matt. 0 Comments

i’m falling apart.
i’m overly emotional.
i’m unable to get functional time (wrt school anyway).
i’m closer to the surface.
i’m fragile.
i’m switchy.
did i mention unable to get functional time? and did i mention that i have group members expecting me to get things done by four today?
i’m vulnerable.
i’m in physical pain.
i’m exhausted.
essentially, i’m in crisis. 

but damn it all, i know that this move was a really good thing.  and i say that knowing my state of mind is not unrelated. i can make it through this? that has to be true. i’ve made it through so much. yes, we had extremely intense suicidal ideation/wish last night… but i guess that’s not the same as carrying it out.

i’m not sure of much. i know that we are undergoing some sort of rebalancing – us therapy types, us fronts, had a very free rein for a very long time. to others it feels like when the therapy types are unchecked, we become insufferable and cocky, too sure of ourselves, too attached to ourselves, too affected. they exploded in meticulously detailed violence, rage, hate at us last night. maybe that’s their right. i mean, maybe we do need an attitude adjustment. maybe we have been self-satisfied. i don’t know.

but i do know that this move is good.

though thinking about it now, while feeling proud of ourselves for something we shouldn’t have was too much attachment to the self, so was needing to be a smooth surface to which no external anger can attach, can find purpose. presuming to be able to avoid anger is incredibly cocky and self-centered.

everything is dangerous. i don’t have time to be writing this entry. i don’t have room for crisis, but i guess that’s always the case when crisis comes.

even though our sky is falling, this doesn’t feel like a setback or a relapse to me. certainly it is a low point of the spiral… but i know we are moving forward. and i say that doubting a lot more than i usually doubt.

all i can fall back on is mercy, self-forgiveness, gentleness, is knowing i am not special, different, above or below the mass of humanity, is my faith in imperfection and in a rhythm my body knows but i don’t know consciously. i’m thinking of the three treasures from the tao – mercy, moderation, modesty. and my versions thereof.

that paragraph provoked more rage from those others. we are not in equilibrium.

we’re here!

Written on October 15, 2008 by matt. 3 Comments

i’ll post an entry with pictures later. but yeah, we moved! we have our very own studio apartment with a window we get to keep open all the time (this is a very big deal to some inside) and our own kitchen and our own bathroom and we are accountable only to ourselves, suddenly. we went and got signed up for internet last night (clearwire, and the installation thereof really bore out their commercials!) somehow it didn’t really feel like home until there was internet.

things are incredible. different. scary. amazing. daunting. inspiring.

i don’t even know what i want to say. i still have to keep up with school, but right this second that feels like too much. i fade in and out. there does seem to be a lot more time here. everything is simpler. we went grocery shopping only for things for us. whole milk, and french bread, and sharp cheddar. there are so many little ways we’ve been deferring to someone else for so long.

i love this tree outside my window. i love the shade it makes. i love the light, so much light, i let in as much as i can. and open the window too, when i can, even though there are many city sounds. i don’t think i mind the noise so much.

i got groceries and came home and put them away and cleaned the few dishes (indigo gave us some kitchen knives; they are such a good friend.) i got myself some lunch of bread, cheese, and broccoli. i came in front of the computer to eat it but there was too much light or something i don’t know it just didn’t feel right and i thought maybe i’ll watch a dvd or something but then i thought maybe i’ll just sit and eat. and i even got up to go look for a book to read and then made myself sit back down. those were a long fifteen minutes. i think it was good for me. i tasted everything more sharply. it was delicious. but it was so hard to not be doing anything. i almost gave up many times. it was hard i think for the same reasons that going to sleep at night is hard. i rely heavily on distraction. we got scared without reason, and then sad. we wanted to cry, just because we weren’t distracting. just because we were tasting our food instead of getting it down as quick as we could. i don’t know. there’s so much. i can’t believe just eating lunch nearly brought us to tears.

we need, i need, to do schoolwork. but i don’t know. our system is all stirred up. it feels like too too much. we’re going to die. i’m so afraid of what’s going to spill out of us, now that it’s safe…

look to the clock on the wall

Written on October 9, 2008 by matt. 0 Comments

i don’t really have time to write. i should be working on the programming project… or, more, i should have brought my textbook today so that i could work on syntax. there’s readings i could find online. there’s all kinds of things i could/should do, even stuck at school.

oh well! too bad for them!

i can’t decide whether to say i feel a little better about school than i did in my last entry. when i have functional moments, it is glorious. so interesting. being a graduate student and only working on the field that is my interest is awesome. even the boring-est parts are way interesting. in my functional moments, even the programming assignments are fun. both my classes are so logic-based. there are so many cool puzzles, so many intricate solutions.

it’s funny, i’ve been thinking i have to be a little careful in my journal, not because i’m afraid of people here finding me in my academic setting, but more about my academic setting following me here. i don’t want this journal to come high up on the list in searches about compling concepts, or specific courses numbers at this school, or anything like that. i’m not so good at being careful to not say things, so we’ll see. it’s just a funny consideration to have to make.

anyway, so those are my functional moments. but vastly, i have patches merging with patches of broken-ness. i do still have some time that i can use for academics, and that’s great. but i’m so afraid i don’t have enough non-crazy hours in a week. over the weekend, i had almost none, and i need to count on weekends for getting stuff done. i even have a three-day weekend, but i still didn’t manage to get in the right space. and it wasn’t for lack of trying.

i’m so jealous of people who have only the normal exhaustion considerations. i know normal people experience mental fatigue too, but they are like sims – their needs are comparatively trivial to meet. they have so many hours to choose from in every week. so many that they overload their weeks to three or four times what i do, or more. i think “normal” people are easier to understand when you think about all the hours they get to choose how they spend.

also, the hours i don’t have, i don’t get to spend them fulfilling my needs either. so i still have the normal requirements, stamina, hunger, etc… if i ignore those when i can, then very soon i decompensate completely. so i have to waste time on self-care even when i am in a comparatively good frame of mind. really, my non-crazy awake hours are comparable to a “normal” person’s awake hours, period.

of course that’s a gigantic oversimplification, and there are probably gradients in more than one dimension, but it’s a little useful for us as a heuristic. also, it’s not so clear-cut in my own life as functional moments vs. non… though i think that it’s more well-defined than you might expect. times like today, when i am reasonably alert (despite weird body symptoms like i’m tired, except i got enough sleep) make it so clear just how much extra energy i have to expend in my non-functional moments. when we are upset, kids crying loud, Ones relentlessly sarcastic and insulting, fears clustering, in those moments it is a huge challenge to even understand what the program we already wrote does, let alone extend the logic and see where it needs to go next. even doing our reading is like trying to read (academic literature, no less) in a language we do not speak, if you’ll forgive the simile. 

it just makes me so resentful (of nothing, of the way that school is structured in our society). it just makes me so frustrated. it’s not fucking fair. (i know, boo hoo, but don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.) 

i used to get to compensate for the smaller time per week with my intelligence. but i’m not an undergrad anymore. there is no coasting. i need a lot of damn time with this stuff.

in other news, we’re supposed to get to sign our lease by tomorrow (though it’s already been the 48 hours the manager said it would take). so that’s awesome. i’ve got a fair amount of packing done, but that makes my room into a claustrophobic disaster, which in turn makes it harder to concentrate. (and doing homework at school can work, but has a really really high cost on stamina.)

i really am trying. i am not lazy or stupid. sometimes i think i just need to hear myself say it. i almost said “out loud.” heh.