A State of Flux and Transition

I am currently in a sort of quandry.

In short, my quandry is what to do with this blog.

I haven't really used it for a couple months because I haven't felt the need to use it.  Nothing really happens that warrants posting about; things that do happen are so ridiculous they aren't worth wasting the energy on anymore.

When I first created this blog, it was at the suggestion of someone whom I thought had my best interests at heart when he suggested it.  In hindsight, I know now that he used the blog as a stand-in for himself because he doesn't have the maturity, social graces, or common decency to actually be there for someone when they need him.  He thought that my writing in a blog would replace his emotional support.  Now that he's out of my life and I'm moving ahead, I really have no need for this blog as I've been using it.  Much of the negative I was writing about no longer applies; my family (for all their annoyances) and I are on better terms, and I'm better than I've been in a long time.

One idea I have is to make it a creativity blog.  I've started sewing, I'm getting back into writing, and a space like this would be good to post in and help me stay motivated.  (Now, if only I didn't leave my camera in Pasadena...oy.)

So, yes.  This space will be much more positive from here on out.  The 'Transition' is over, and now it's time for the end result of that transition.  Good riddance to the bad rubbish I dealt with, and look ahead to what's coming.  We'll see where things go from here.

Freewrite 11/26: Space and othersuch

It seems that, the more I keep pushing forward, the less I'm leaning on this.  I'm not ignoring it intentionally, I just feel like an idiot at the thought of constantly having entries that are merely 'Today, nothing happened', or some variant thereof.  I like to write when I feel the need to, whether for good or for bad.

This definitely turned out to be one of the 'good' ones.  I'm writing this on the last night of my visiting my parents for Thanksgiving.

...Yeah, I'll wait for the shock to dissipate.  I've got all night.

Kidding aside, I know it seems counter-intuitive that I'm here.  Many people who know me and know what I've dealt with over the past eleven months or so were worried about my visiting.  But I wanted to test the waters for myself, so to speak.  To put it simply, I've been tired of the 'can I or can't I go home' Limbo I've been stuck in since last December.  Even though Mom had told me I could visit if I wanted, I still wasn't totally sure it was necessarily a good idea.  So Thanksgiving was to be a test-run of sorts.  I was extending an olive branch, to see how my parents would handle me visiting.  If they were negative, then I wouldn't have any qualms about staying away.  If they were neutral-to-positive, I'd see about visiting whenever I could.

So this first visit back home in nearly a year overall was good.  There were one or two little snags, but all in all no really huge issues.  The 'snags' were things that their past behavior set up to happen in some ways, so I hope they weren't too surprised at them happening.  But they've been interested in my schooling, interested in what classes I'm still needing, giving what input/advice they can, and taking care of me without necessarily enabling me or letting me off the hook.  I'm still answering to them and to my aunt; they'll all kill me if I give up now.

They have made promises to me that I hope to hold them to, especially where a vehicle is concerned.  I was told that they'll help me get a vehicle if I save up $3-$5K towards it.  That seems totally doable on my end, so why not?

I have something of a theory about all of this:  Simply put, I think we needed space from each other.  My parents were operating under the assumption that I knew exactly what they wanted and needed, whereas I was wanting them to tell me what they needed from me.  It just kept building from there until things fell apart.  My being away for nearly a year before this visit allowed us all to cool off, catch our breath, and just have space from one another to work through things.  (My going to CSUN certainly seems to help with all of that, I think.)  I think from here there's a good chance of things working better.

Guess we'll see where things go from here.  (Oh yeah.  Mom made the remark that, based on his behavior towards me, she thinks I've likely outgrown Justin.  At this point in time -as well as the foreseeable future- that feels like an accurate assessment.

Freewrite 10/31: Pulling the Plug (Continued)

My last posting proves that I should really stay away from computers at 2AM.  I didn't realize just how exhausted and overwhelmed I was.  So, let's try it again, shall we?

In short, I'm officially done with Justin.  I tried being good to him, I kept trying to be good to him, and it wasn't enough.  I'm tired of not getting a straight answer from him.  I'm tired of his wish-washy 'it doesn't affect me, so I don't care about your life events' crap when I ask him if he's supportive of my going to CSUN.  I'm tired of him using his flawed, circular logic to try and prove his points, I'm tired of him trying to pit me against Becky when I call him on his crap, all of it.  I have tried so hard to compromise with him, I've tried bending over backwards to understand what he wants, and I'm getting nothing in return except insulted.  He has essentially told me he wants absolutely nothing to do with me, that he thinks my attempts to try and understand him and be good to him are 'manipulative' and 'stalker'-ish, and he keeps insisting he's perfectly fine while also talking about how he has zero self-esteem and zero self-confidence.

And I'm sad.  This all makes me so incredibly sad.  I believed in the guy, I knew he has so much more value than even he gives himself credit for.  I never thought he was a screw-up, just that he (like many of us) just needs some work.  He's so incredibly talented that, with the right training and confidence, he really could go far.  But he won't believe in himself and his work, and he refuses to have anything to do with people who truly care and want to help him.  He's hurt a LOT of people this way, and now I'm just another one.  It breaks my heart, it makes me sad, it feels like an utter waste...I could go on and on about how all this makes me feel.  He's falling apart piecemeal, I can see it.  But I can't save him.  I can no longer help him, I can't save him, I just need to leave.

And so I'll leave.  Optimistic little thing that I am, I'll keep a tiny bit of hope that he'll one day actually start bettering himself, but it's a slim hope that I doubt would even come true.  He's apparently happy with his lot in life, nothing's really going to change.  I think in some small way I'll always care (it isn't easy to just switch that off), but I can't watch him keep spiraling downward while he claims nothing is wrong with him.  It really does hurt, but I can't let him and his attitude keep me from pursuing what I'm doing.

Freewrite 10/31: Pulling the Plug

It is done.  I am done, and I am over it.

I'm tired of the bad treatment, tired of being strung along, tired of being told I'm somehow 'lesser' for merely being human, tired of my caring being thrown back in my face...all of it.  I'd been wavering for the past few months about Justin, but I know now that cutting him out of my life is the right thing to do.  He cannot and will not treat me with respect, he refuses to compromise or attempt any sort of understanding, then he blames me for his behavior. 

Any friendship with him had essentially been on life support for the past few months as I evaluated how he was treating me.  While there have been good times, there have been even more bad times, even more times when he refused to treat me with the simplest decency, then told me it was somehow MY fault that HE chose to behave in that manner.

And I'm done.  It hurt to come to this decision, but I can't be hurt anymore while waiting for him to be decent.  I won't let myself be hurt while wishing he were the type of man I know he can be.  He can be so much more than he is, but I can't let myself wait for the day he realizes that fact.  He chose to be this way, I now choose to walk away.

Freewrite 10/5: Week 6

So here I am.  I'm in week 6 of my first semester at Cal State Northridge.  And by extension, week 6 of my time here in Reseda.

If I seem underwhelmed, I don't mean to.  I'm just telling it like it is, so to speak.  It only really occurred to me Monday afternoon that this was my sixth week, and it just feels so...natural.  I've gradually been meeting people, gradually getting into things on campus, and I'll have a decently paying job soon if all works out well.  So I think things are skewing in a more positive direction, which is a nice plus considering there have been a few naysayers along my way who swore I'd never make it to this point.  My living environment is great as well.  Sure, I share it with a bunch of people, but it's worked out well for me.  The space is big enough that you don't feel like you're walking on top of anyone else, and the sleep area is far from being a 'shoebox' or anything else super small.  Plus, on days when other people have classes and I don't, it's nice to have this huge of a space practically to myself.

Academics-wise, I'm in a good place where I feel like I belong.  Personal-wise, I don't know if it's really home or not.  I've worked so hard to reach this point, but the people whom I promised I would get here don't seem to care.  There are days when I feel cut off personally from things, even when academically things are going well.  But in the end, who knows?

Freewrite 9/23: the Nature of Things

With my semester kicking into high gear, I've had the chance to really sit down and think about how things have been going for me.  I must say, they feel like they're going well.  I still feel like this is where I belong at this point in my life, and that this is what I should be doing for the interim.  I'm enjoying learning about myself and about the environment around me, since it's all still so new to me.

I've also let myself think about me, about where I came from and where I've been for the past nine months.  Surprisingly enough, it isn't nearly as difficult to think on as I'd thought it might be; if anything, it's been rather easy.  I've come a long way since that night in December when my parents told me they didn't want me staying in their house, and each day I grow that much stronger.  It used to be that remembering that night would make me tear up, now I can think of it with dry eyes.  I sigh a bit at remembering it all, but nothing terribly painful.  It just feels like a waste, of sorts.  I wanted that parting to be a better one, not one influenced by Dad and his temper tantrums.  But sometimes that sort of painful separation is the best way to break free, lest one remain complacent for too long. 

Or worse.  Some of you might note that I often jest that I'm too 'stubborn' to die.  I still believe that of myself, but I also know that, had I remained in that environment much longer, I would have been another statistic.  Even if all hadn't fallen apart, even if I had managed to remain there until I began CSUN, it wouldn't have mattered.  The thing was, being there was making me compromise my own nature, it was making me be someone I couldn't keep on being.  And that sort of life hurts, it hurts a lot.  Had I stayed, I would never have made it to CSUN because I couldn't keep holding in that kind of pain while living that kind of lie.

You know what sucked about those first several months?  If you know me well enough, you know I tend to be a rather bright, cheerful (or at the least mellow) individual.  Those first five or six months?  I.  Was.  Depressed.  No, literally.  I was literally depressed.  Depressed, grieving, and struggling to pull myself back up to where I needed to get to.  The problem with that depression is it was so subtle, and it was intertwined with so many other things that I couldn't even identify it until I distanced myself from it by a few months.  In the process, I didn't take care of myself as I needed to, and I made a LOT of mistakes.  I took things that weren't mine without asking, mostly out of fear and prior manipulations.  Any ability I'd previously had to ask for my needs to be met was intimidated out of me because it was 'inconvenient' for me to have needs.  I was in a lot of pain, and I was struggling to get from zero to sixty, as it were.  I wasn't happy as I was, but I didn't know at the time how to fix myself, or how long it would take.  Could I have done better?  Maybe.  I did what I could with what I had and the capacity I felt I had to do it with.  I accomplished a few things that helped me along the way, and so shaped me now.

I really don't have regrets.  Regret implies that I wish I hadn't gone through things because they were unpleasant for me.  And yes, there were very unpleasant things.  But I learned from them, so why should I regret them?  The negatives turned into positives in the end, and they helped me to get to this point, so I really can't regret them.  What I can do is acknowledge them for what they were, acknowledge that there were things I could have handled better or done differently, forgive myself for what I had control over, and move from there.  That is what I have a say in, and that's all I can do myself.  Acknowledge, learn, forgive myself, and keep forging ahead.  What others think of me in that regard is irrelevant, as I have no control over that sort of thing.

I'm not afraid anymore.  A little nervous at times, yes, but not afraid.  I've learned a lot about myself and what I can do.  I'm not who I was, and yet I am.  I'm not judged for who I was, as I was back home.  When someone sees me for the first time, they don't think 'Oh, it's the Chiropractor's daughter', or 'Oh, it's Stephanie's little sister'. I'm seen as just me, and that's fine with me.  I'm judged by what I do for myself, instead of what the 'fishbowl' expects me to do.

From here, who knows?  I just wish this path didn't feel so lonely sometimes.

Freewrite 9/12: A Tenuous Olive Branch

So you might remember a while back I had talked about cutting my parents out of my life completely due to their perceived toxicity?  It's kind of a long story, but this is sort of an update to that.

Saturday was Mom's birthday, so naturally I called her to wish her a Happy Birthday.  We talked for a little while about things, and she really seemed interested in my schooling.  She gave her typical 'Mom' advice, and we ended our chat on a positive note. 

Continuing on, Mom had mentioned my sister moving to Virginia with her job, so last night I called and chatted with her for a while.  As with Mom, she seemed really interested, and gave some good 'Big Sis' advice that I'll definitely be keeping in mind and pondering on. 

I hadn't realized how much I missed Stephanie and James, how much I really miss home.  For all the really bad -especially there at the end before I left- there was a lot of good as well.  I miss the Terriers, miss the Boxers, miss the chats Mom and I would have about school...I really could go on.  I reiterated with both Mom and Steph that I'd like to visit if I can manage, and they seemed open to it.

The volatile variable in all of this still seems to be Dad.  When I talked with Grandma, she was telling me that she felt Mom wasn't able to tell her as much as she might have wanted (and by extension didn't seem that receptive to what was said) because Dad may have been nearby.  Talking with Steph confirms this a bit better, as she told me Dad's the same as he ever was.  That really worries me, and I told her as such.  She reassured me that Mom's dealt with it for 33 years now, so she's likely the best person to keep dealing with him, so to speak.  Still, that doesn't sit well with me.  I don't like the idea of her being in that environment, even if she 'knows best how to handle him'.  That really doesn't seem fair.

But then, not a lot of things in life are fair, are they?

Freewrite 9/6: Continuing to Excise

The more I interact with and see Justin, the sadder his behavior makes me.  He claims he doesn't hate me, has said in the past he wants to remain friends, yet he's the worst sort of fair-weather friend.  He really only seems to 'care' when there's something he wants; most other times he says he cares little and finds a ot of my behavior 'annoying'.

I don't care, personally.  He can find me as 'annoying' as he wishes, that doesn't excuse his being a disrespectful jerkass.  I haven't turned in my right to be treated like a decent human being, and I'll be damned if I let him get away with disrespecting me.  If I extend him an invitation, he can decline it like a mature adult, instead of throwing a whining fit like a toddler.  Last I checked, the guy is nearly 30, not going on 3.  He should have long since grown out of the whiny 'I want my way or I'll throw a fit' behavior he still shows.  I mean, I can understand being peeved if one is extended an invitation every day, f'rinstance.  But he's not actually extended an invitation every day, just when I feel it would be enjoyable.  Even I'm not that desperate to see him.

But whatever.  He wants Becky and I to leave him alone, fuck him.  I'm done with the whining, with the hissy fits, with the 'I'm better than you even though you're way out of my league' behavior from him.  We can leave him alone, easily.  So in short, until he actually improves his behavior, I'll be saying 'So Long' to this loser.  Maybe if he can actually behave himself around us we'll let him back.

Freewrite 8/30: Vanishing Act

I'll start this off with a bit of explanation about me.

Some of my traits lend themselves well to being both negative and positive.  They're positive because they keep me focused and working hard, yet they're negative because other people often don't know how to respond to them.  They also serve to remind others that I am a person with my own feelings and needs, that I won't lay down quietly and take bad treatment from others.  Much of it is due to how I was treated in the past; my feelings and wants were disregarded, so now I redouble my efforts to make sure they're taken into consideration.  Sadly, it also can mean that I tend to react more harshly when I feel others are pushing my buttons or treating me badly, no matter how innocuous their intentions.  I have to be blunt: If I feel like I'm being disrespected or treated badly, I will very likely be triggered and I will very likely react accordingly.  I hate that I'm currently wired like this, and I plan to work on trying to defuse those wires so I can react less extremely.  CSUN has great resources for mental health/counseling that I plan to take advantage of now that I'm in an environment where I feel I belong and can thrive.

Justin, however, is still a sticking point that just doesn't seem to have an easy remedy.  I'm not sure he fully realizes just how triggering a lot of his behavior is for me (at least, I hope he doesn't.  I don't think I could handle it if he knew he was being triggering and behaved that way anyway).  But the fact is, a lot of his behaviors push my 'trigger' buttons, then he throws it in my face that I 'have issues' that he can't deal with.  Sadly, telling me I'm 'overreacting' does essentially nothing to help matters, and only will get me angrier.  (Hey, YOU try reacting perfectly rationally when someone tells you you're overreacting when your buttons are pushed and you're upset.)  I think the toughest part is when he knows I'm hurt, yet he refuses to show empathy.  Even just saying 'sorry things are rough; hang in there, they'll get better' or some variant thereof can be a help.  Or even just apologizing for something that was misconstrued.  My parents wouldn't show much empathy when they hurt me, or they would show very shallow and false empathy but never change their behavior to prevent it from happening again.

I've been giving him the benefit of the doubt here.  A lot of people don't always fully realize when they trigger someone, especially when that 'someone' has dealt with invisible trauma and is healing from it.  My transitional period is over, and now I feel I can heal much more deeply than I could during the first 8 months.  I don't get the feeling he's doing any of it maliciously, but more because he doesn't understand how better to handle things.  I always ask him to be sensitive, but I don't think he knows how to do so without a bit of help.  I really want to help him to help me, so to speak.  I want to help him be able to navigate my moods and my touchy spots so as to make things easier on both of us, just as I've been trying to do for him.

Of course, as much as it pains me to have to do, I also have to acknowledge that he just might plain hate me.  I'm used to that, dealing with it from my parents, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.  I've told him if he hates me, it's no issue for me to disappear.  I won't stay where I'm not wanted, and I'm good as disappearing from those sort of situations.  I've wanted him to succeed, wanted to be supportive, wanted to see him succeed, and wanted him to see what a success I'll become.  But if he hates me, then I can't do that.  I genuinely miss his company, miss just spending quiet time with him, even if just watching a movie and talking.  But I won't force myself into his company if he hates me.  I miss him so much that I'm crying a bit as I write this, but I won't stay if he doesn't want me to.

Non-freewrite Update: My current status and state of being

This isn't a freewrite.  Rather, it's an update as to my current feelings and status.  (Freewrite is forthcoming.)

In short, all systems worked out, and I have begun my first semester as a University student.  I am at CSU Northridge pursuing a Bachelor's in Public Health Education, I live in a nice place a couple miles from campus, and so far things are good.

Wait.  Things are actually GREAT.  I love my living arrangements.  I live in a large home with a bunch of other people (the majority of whom are CSUN students), and it's a great environment to live in while I study.  I'm already a bit more sociable with people, and I'm enjoying sitting out in the common areas and watching TV or using my Netbook, rather than sitting in a room doing nothing.  Everyone here is awesome, we're all supportive of one another, and it's just a great space to relax and study in.  I can see myself sticking around here for a while.

As for University, lemme tell you something.  It felt AMAZING to set foot on campus yesterday.  I really felt like I'd found my niche, felt like I was right where I belonged.  When I was going to Cypress, I felt very 'ehhhh' about being there.  It just didn't feel like I was supposed to be there.  But I definitely feel like I have a place at CSUN, even if it is a huge University, and I can see myself doing some good here.  Go me.