Daily Archives: September 27, 2012

A few weeks ago a wrote a post called PTSD: Damaged Goods.  I had just come out of a tempestuous relationship and was feeling lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut, to quote “Side Meat” in the cowboy band Riders in the Sky.

Yesterday was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.  One fasts from both food and water for 26 hours, and if you go to synagogue, you pray a lot.  In mine, here in Jerusalem, you pray A LOT.  Meaning, we started at 6:30 AM and finished up after 6 PM, without a break, standing most of the time.  Our congregation sings most of the liturgy, so we sang almost all day, and danced a lot.

Wait a minute:  singing and dancing while fasting on the Day of Atonement, the awe-filled day when one’s fate for the coming year is supposed to be sealed?  Who will live, who will die, who in their proper time, who prematurely, who by fire, who by water, who by wild beasts, who by earthquake…it gets very specific.  And yet here we are, singing and dancing.  We are rejoicing, because on that Day we have the chance to truly change our lives for the better.  We are working hard at the task of bringing light into the world and into our own lives.

I started seeing things very differently during the course of the day.  Inserted into each of five sections of prayer is a confession, or viduy, that lists many types of errors we may have committed, whether knowingly or unknowingly, and after listing those transgressions, we ask forgiveness from out Maker and that our transgressions should be erased as if they were never committed.

Somehow in there, I started to see how the relationship I recently left had brought out characteristics that exist in me that I find repulsive, unpleasant, and just plain wrong.  I don’t like those things in myself.  But you know what?  If I hadn’t been in that relationship, I would never have seen those aspects of myself that I want to change.  They were lurking in there in my character the whole time.  I just didn’t have access to the stimulus that would bring them out.  The fact that those characteristics are present in the other person in a magnified, almost caricatured form, and it was a shock to me, while reciting the Viduy, to see those trait in…none other than Yours Truly!

Things like having a garbage mouth, not being careful about how I speak to others, being haughty and arrogant, being boastful, saying bad things about other people behind their back, and other things I’d rather not go into.  I don’t like these traits in myself, and my former but no longer Beloved brought these out into the light so that I could see them.

Rebbe Nachman of Braslav teaches that if you see a negative trait in someone else, it’s because you yourself harbor that trait and the other person is a messenger to help you see it so you can fix it.

Having said all that about things I don’t like about myself and want to fix, I’m going to take a huge leap here and say that I’m very happy with who I am.  I’m happy that I have the capacity and the willingness to take a good long hard look at my own character, and be honest about admitting that I have some work to do.

We are not created perfect, for the simple reason (according to Jewish thought) that we are here to strive for perfection in this life, and if we were already perfect, what would we be here for?

On the other hand, if we are doing a good job of striving, then we are carrying out our purpose here on the planet perfectly.

So I am feeling perfectly imperfect just as I am, as I am working toward perfecting my imperfections, and that’s pretty darn good, for me.

Kenny did not appear at the shop today and I spent the whole day wondering if I actually offended him. I mean, we play off of each other like the characters on That 70′s Show, throwing out insults and “burns”. Always trying to one up each other. He swore I absolutely could not offend him, so I went all How I Met Your Mother and thought, challenge accepted. I called him a helper monkey and asked him why he lived there at the shop 24-7.

Now he might not have appeared because he was working.

But then, maybe I did manage to offend a guy who said he could not be offended.

Thing is, we got a lot more accomplished without him there hijacking the computer and yapping and watching TV, even tho R’s grand daughter was sick and in the shop for three hours til her mom could pick her up. (Babies are like an instant upper for me,I was gaga.)

I don’t know why I even care.

Comes on the heels of the donor basically telling me how horrible I am. Which with as little time as it took him to get over me and recover from all my damage, I’m thinking I did something wrong. His first wife was allegedly so bad he didn’t date for 7 years. Cripes, I can’t even terrorize a man and traumatize him properly.

But apparently I was getting too twitchy today because R looked at me and said, “Getting paranoid there, Nik?”

Um…yeah.

It didn’t get much better once I got home. I just have this gut feeling the donor is going to find a way to punish me for not caving and signing his stupid paperwork.

Kinda feel justified in being paranoid.

But the anxiety is causes, the train of thoughts it sets off border on being completely insane.

That scares me.

I used to be paranoid,like Mulder, from X Files.

I am slowly becoming paranoid like Mel Gibson from Conspiracy Theory.

While my ever so helpful counselor tells me to regulate my emotions.

If my damn  brain would quit misfiring and putting me in these illogical frames of mind, I might stand a chance of that.

But since I spend so much time confused about what is mood swing, what is personality disorder, what is anxiety, what is my failing…

Bloody hell, the woman has me as confused as the donor.

I don’t think the mental health care “professionals” have a bloody fucking clue. They’re not even on the same damn page.

One says you absolutely have a mental condition and must take meds.

The other tells you the meds are necessary but you have to LEARN TO REGULATE YOUR EMOTIONS BECAUSE THE UPS AND DOWNS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH DEPRESSION OR BIPOLAR.

wtf is that?

Then you have psychologists,most of whom have zero use for medications and think everything can be psychoanalyzed and cured through thousands of dollars of chit chat.

I am becoming pissed off and disillusioned again with the whole mental health community thing.

I don’t think these people are helping me.

Or is that my own skewered perception?

I should feel better having talked to my therapist and her validating some of my concerns.

Part of my brain tells me she’s giving me bad advice because secretly she is on the donor’s side.

Which I am still thinking of my stepmonster,given that she talked to the man for 15 minutes and gushed about all the help her and dad have given me and how they’ve had her stay at their house (like I can’t handle taking care of my kid myself.)

She always wanted the donor, and she wasn’t shy about saying so right in front of my dad. Good looking, good cook, nice butt, blah blah b lah.

I don’t care if she denies it now, I think she just might be buying his self pity and leaning in his direction.

Though truth be told, I hope that is just the misfiring brain and panic and not fact.

I mean, I had a comment/message on my other blog tonight asking if they could use some excerpts for their similar themed blog as long as they give me credit…

and all I can think is, what if this is some trick by the donor, setting me up to look insane in court by using my blog against me?

or what if this is some random anti mental illness freak who wants to post my shit and have people mock me?

Yes,I know, I am pretty loopy.

This is where I force the logic to kick in, and just ride out the skewered perceptions and paranoia and panic.

I still can’t help but feel wary.

If things continue to slip this way…I may volunteer for electroshock.

I am sick of not being able to trust my own mind.