KILLERS!

Pete and I were sitting at home last week and there was a knock on the door around 7 or 8pm.
I made Pete get up to answer, because he's in charge of taking care of the killers and I'm in charge of the spiders....and let's face it, the likelihood that a spider was knocking on the front door was slim to none.
I heard a voice ask if Pete was the owner of the home and dang it I had to get off the sofa anyway, I hoped this wasn't some sort of killer trick.

There was a young woman at the door with a clipboard and other people in her same outfit with clipboards wandering up and down the street in front of my house. So of course, I thought KILLER KILLER KILLER!
She basically said that :insertcontractingcompanyhere: had just finished some work in my neighborhood and wanted to know if they could provide me with a free estimate for anything from roofing, siding or room remodel work.
I said no, thank you and shut the door firmly. Then I went through and made sure all the doors and windows were locked. (Ok, maybe not the last one....but probably because Pete was there and I was too embarrassed to be that paranoid in front of anyone.) But I had (fortunately or unfortunately) just read an article about thieves disguising themselves as contractors/handymen/women that try to get in your door by "cold-calling", casing the joint and then unlocking doors or windows to come back and rob/attack the homeowners later.

Nice story right? A little funny Bethany paranoia and strangers roaming the streets at night, hilarious! Except.....


The next night we were at Sharen's and there was a knock on the door and THE SAME WOMAN was standing on their step saying they had just finished work in HER neighborhood and wondered if they would like free estimates for anything. THE SAME WOMAN! MILES AWAY! AHHH! KILLERS KILLERS KILLERS!

Pete was at Sharen's too and said it would have been hilarious had I whipped open the door and started screaming at her about stalking me and how I moved just to get away from her and then she showed up HERE! Which would have been funny, but I just didn't have the energy.

Look at You

The therapist asked me as part of our "getting to know me" survey how I felt about my body. I didn't even blink when I said, "Hate it."
She asked what my eating habits were. I said, "Out of control"
I stopped myself from getting a Hostess Cupcake out of the vending machine the other day because I went to the bathroom first and saw myself in the mirror.
I thought, I should only ever eat in front of a mirror.

I know it's not the food. I know that it's me and my brokenness. I'm finding this body image/weight thing is far more of a spiritual issue than anything else.

But still I eat. I eat when I'm hungry, I eat when I'm bored, I eat because there's food in front of me or when it's time to eat. I eat when other people eat, I eat in secret in my car and when I'm home alone.

If my body is supposed to be a temple then my body is in serious disrepair.

I mean, it's not a new issue. But it's a huge issue, because I feel huge.
There is shame attached to almost every aspect of my physical life and I just can't shake it. I feel isolated and alone in it. It's made worse when well intended loving people try to talk to me about it. Because while I might be a little sniffly but mostly calm on the outside inside I'm running around in circles desperately looking for a way out of this conversation. Instead of hearing the words "I love you and want you around for a long time" I'm hearing the words, "You're disgusting. I can't even look at you. How could you be so hideous and repulsive"
I can't even hear you anymore those words get so big and loud in my head.

I'm slowly but surely removing myself from video and photographic history because of how much I hate my body...then to add salt to an already seeping wound I feel so left out and invisible because I"m not in videos or pictures. Sometimes I feel like I just can't win.

It's a confusing hot mess in my head and heart right now and I feel all jumpy and exposed. I'm tired so easily because it is taking a lot of energy to stretch towards mental and physical health when I've had 31 1/2 years to learn thought and behavior patterns that are trying to kill me (melodrama much?).

It's definitely one of the things on the therapy docket, because I am clearly not able to take care of this by myself.

Now...where did I put that pizza?

Focus

I can easily get stuck in a rut of focusing on that which I have lost. That which I do not have. It seems that once it starts it eats through my focus and creates a mindset where I just can't see anything else.
But then I wonder, if shutting down the way I have time and time again to numb myself to these losses is any healthier.
I'm working on a balance between the two and also figuring out what healthy grief and emotions even look like.

Losses do that. One life-loss can infect the whole of life. Like a rash that wears through our days, our sight becomes peppered with black voids. Now everywhere we look, we only see all that isn't: holes, lack, deficiency.

- Ann Voskamp "One Thousand Gifts"

Hollow Motions

For years of mornings, I have woken wanting to die. Life itself twists into nightmare. For years, I have pulled the covers up over my head, dreading to begin another day I'd be bound to just wreck. Years, I lie listening to the taunts of names ringing off my interior walls, ones from the past that never drifted far and away: Loser. Mess. Failure. They are signs nailed overhead, nailed through me, naming me.

The stars are blinking out.

Funny, this. Yesterday morning, the morning before, all these mornings, I wake to the discontent of life in my skin. I wake to the self-hatred. To the wrestle to get it all done, the relentless anxiety that I am failing. Always, the failing. I yell at children, festering with bitterness, forget doctor appointments, lose library books, I live selfishly, skip prayer, complain, go to bed too late, neglect cleaning the toilets. I live tired. Afraid. Weary. Years, I feel it in the veins the pulsing of cultures hopes. Would I ever be enough, find enough, do enough? But this morning, I wake wildly wanting to live. Physically feeling it in the veins trembling, the hard pant of the lungs, the seeing it in steady stats, how much I really want to really live,. How I don't want to die. Is that the message of nightmares and dreams? To live either fully alive...or in empty nothingness?

It's the in between, the days of walking lifeless, the years calloused and simply going through the hollow motions, the self-protecting by self-distracting, the body never waking, that's lost all capacity to full feel- this is the life in between that makes us the wildly walking dead.

- Ann Voskamp "One Thousand Gifts"

Blind & Deaf World

I was sitting in the plastic chair reading my book. Waiting for the oil to be changed and the tires to be rotated.
Then the old man came limping in.
I at first thought he was dirty, but I think he was just old.
Do you know what I mean?
The old where all the dirt and debris of a long life has settled into the folds of your face and hands so there's a film of living laying over you.
He had a gruff voice and a red handkerchief hanging out of his back pocket. There were pens in the shirt pocket and an old farming cap on his head, slightly crooked.

The man behind the counter was kind. He smiled with his eyes and listened to the old man rattle on and on about his car. How he can still get down to work on it himself, it's just the getting up that's a bit hard nowadays.The man behind the counter said he could squeeze him in if he wanted to get his car checked out right away.
The old man said no, he had groceries in his car and he should probably head on home to get them put away. But he said, "I'll probably pop back in tomorrow if that's ok with you."
The kind man behind the counter said, "Anytime, sir."
Taking a good chunk of time to do so, the old man shuffled back out of the waiting room.

It made me tear up a little. Because we just don't treat each other that way anymore.
I don't treat people like that as often as I should.

See, I'm fairly certain old man was just lonely. Probably no family, or no family that can come around as often as he likes. Maybe he was a recovering jerk. Maybe he had been a cruel person in his youth and now no one will come around that believes he's worth a second glance. I don't know. But the kind man behind the counter who probably had several other things to do didn't hurry him along, he didn't sigh and roll his eyes when he thought the old man wasn't looking. He smiled with his eyes and he talked with the man, letting him be heard.

I was reminded in the waiting room that smelled like oil and grease that sometimes, kindness and even grace is just letting the lonely have a place to be seen and heard in a blind and deaf world.

Whoops....

No post today....we'll return to our regularly scheduled program tomorrow.

Validation

I don't know that I'm going to write about therapy a lot but I wanted to write this.
I have no idea how to wear validation.

I have struggled for a long time trying to minimize things that have shattered me. Because they were just these silly things that happened; it never occurred to me that if they were really silly I would have moved on years ago.
I have silenced my voice and confined my grief to behind closed doors. Because it never occurred to me that anyone would stick around or care to hear anything. I was after all just a petulant bad girl. Who could possibly care?
I have medicated myself with boys, food, alcohol and sarcasm and I have numbed myself so deeply I couldn't figure out how to ever feel anything again. Because it's not safe. It's scary and people go away and are never who they say they are anyway.
I have placed blame on shoulders that, while they hurt me deeply, the offense was not proportionate to the rage I applied to them. Because I have practiced saying it's no big deal for decades, and how could I break the news to those I tried to convince it was ok that it was not, in fact, ok at all?

Then I broke. It was too much. Being back there in that town. Seeing those places again and feeling let down and unimportant was too much. Even now, it's just too much.
I was already cracked and being tenuously held together by an intricate facade of  sarcasm and practiced deflection and the straw, that last straw, it was just too much.

I couldn't explain what happened. Even I could see the punishment wasn't fitting the crime. But I just kept breaking. Over and over in small cuts with every breath I was being shredded and I could no longer stand. I felt like I had to justify it, that when you looked at it up close it seems like just a silly little white girl drama being played out. But it was more and I felt so invalid in my panic and pain.

But at my first meeting with my therapist I felt validated. In the green room with a woman I'd never met and was frankly a little terrified of, I felt safe. She felt soft to me. She gave words to the tatters I presented to her in my tear soaked hands and she validated my feelings in a way I never thought of before. She gave name to the behaviors of grown ups that she said should have been better and she didn't dismiss the depth of the scars they had left.
It was like a long, deep breath of hope.

I went in prepared for there to be at least 6 weeks between appointments because of scheduling issues and she said no. She said I shouldn't have to wait and she made a choice that had to be inconvenient to her because it was best for me and it was refreshing to feel her take my seriously. It was startling to feel important enough to have someone go to that much trouble.


I spent the next day walking around in a cloud. Exhausted from feeling so much, and then talking about and also just sort of dumb struck because I have no idea how to wear validation.