Tuesday, April 30, 2013

My life, unembellished

My day starts when most other people have been at work or school for several hours. The first thing I do is take my pills. If I don't take my pills right away, I don't get up, and if I don't get up, I end up playing Facebook games on my phone (without getting out of bed) for another hour or two (I have no concept of time.) I put off getting up because I often feel terrible when I wake, and I need the time just for the headache or nausea or body aches to ebb enough to make leaving my bed seem like a real option.

Okay, so I'm up, and I'm naked. Unless it's really, really cold, I do not sleep in pyjamas. There are two reasons for this: 1. I overheat and feel confined wearing clothes in bed, and 2. Being naked when I get up forces me to put actual clothes on before I leave my room. This is one of the many ways I have to outsmart myself, trick myself into not spending the entire day in bed.

I dress myself, and, if I'm feeling particularly industrious, I put on make-up. Brush my hair and my teeth, put on my jewellery: the hand-made Kenaz pendant I made in honour of my dedication to Loki, and my silver chain with a sterling raven and an orb cage that holds a "star" garnet. Earrings, if I think of them.

I go downstairs and I eat one of my typically two meals per day. I have to be careful what I eat, because if I eat something that gives me a reaction (IBS or allergic), it will potentially delay leaving the house by another hour or so. It is, however, essential that I eat, because I am hypoglycemic, and I usually don't have enough money to get coffee and food.

Finally, I put on my headphones. I queue up my favourite playlist on my phone, and head out the door. The music is absolutely, positively essential. It distracts me from the aches and pains and weird flutters in my chest and bright sun and loud traffic sounds that would otherwise trigger anxiety. I do enjoy walking, with the music in the background. It energises me and helps me feel more like "me." It is at this point that I am finally fully awake.

I walk for about a mile, either to Travonna or to the bus stop to get to another coffee house nearer to my friend Isa's house in Clintonville. Upon getting to the coffee house, I order a drink, have a cigarette, open my lapotp and start to do... whatever it is I was going to do that day. Today, for instance, it's writing in this journal. Sometimes, it is working on a graphic project for a friend. Sometimes, it's writing a story. Sometimes, it's just playing games and socialising. Arguably, I could do these things at home, but then I would never have left the house, and I would lose any semblance of routine that I have. This is also the time that I use for artwork, if I am particularly inspired.

After a few hours, my husband gets off work and picks me up. We go home. One of us makes dinner. We talk about our days together, we catch up on stuff we've recorded on the DVR. We cuddle, even if one or both of us is online doing other stuff, we're still sharing time together. At about 11:00, Matt goes upstairs to bed. Sometimes I join him, and we have sex, but even then, he goes to bed far earlier than I do.

Then the TV is shut off, and I go upstairs. This is the time I reserve for me, myself and my gods. This is when I meditate or perform rituals, kneeling or sitting by my altar, opening myself to Their influence. I don't do it every night. I can't do it every night, but I should do it more.

After meditation, if any, I indulge in playing Facebook games again, catching up on Words With Friends and DrawSomething, until I feel sleepy enough to shut down. I take a shower, shave, dry my hair, brush my teeth, tidy my room, and lie down. I set my alarm and put on my "thunderstorm" or "campfire" sound effects.I try to sleep. It usually takes me at least an hour or so. By then, it's typcially about 3 a.m., sometimes even later.

And there are strange dreams, and nightmares, and sometimes I write them down and sometimes I don't. It all starts again the next day, at 11:00 a.m., when everyone else is eating lunch.

Weekends throw me for a loop. I love that I can spend time with my husband, and that we can do things together, but it screws up my routine. Anything that screws with my routine, loose that it is, makes me anxious. This vexes me, because I don't want to be an obsessive-compulsive wet blanket who is incapable of doing thing spontaneously. It seems like the older I get, the less comfortable I am with spontaneity, and that really bugs me. It doesn't even feel like that should be part of me. I'm Morgan and I love adventure and meeting new people and doing stuff I've never done before. What the hell is this anxiety shit?

Anyway. That's a typical day in my life, unembellished, without any fun stuff described. It's not that fun stuff doesn't happen, I just wanted to give a good impression of what it is I do with myself when Matt is at work.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

I'm such a child.

Today, my therapist implied that I am a "child" in my relationship with Matt, and that I am an adolescent in terms of emotional maturity. I've said of myself that I feel I am still making up for a childhood I never had, but hearing it in this context got my hackles up.

Frankly, it made me feel like shit. I'd really like to believe I'm a little better-adjusted than that. I felt attacked, when she said those things, which prompted further "adolescent-like" responses, and of course only made the situation worse. By the time I got out of there, I felt like going home and cutting myself -- also a very adolescent thing to do. It seemed my therapist was hell-bent on making the point that I am not an adult on any meaningful level.

This all started with a discussion about money. My husband and I go to the same therapist, and we have joint sessions sometimes. Last time, my husband told her that he felt over-burdened by money problems, partly because I do not take part in budgeting. The problem is that I'm almost phobic of dealing with anything involving money. And I meant to come into therapy and tell her that, I really did, but something stopped me. Instead, I became very resistant to her suggestions that my husband give me access to his financial information and could not bring myself to tell her why.

So I'm going to start with the easy bit of the hard stuff: why am I terrified of dealing with money? I'll just make a list.


  1. My credit is terrible because I did stupid things in my 20s and I've defaulted on student loans. I still have creditors trying to contact me. I don't want any of that to impact my husband. 
  2. I do not work, and I am not contributing to the household monetarily. I feel that his money is his money, not "half mine" or any of that happy horse shit. What he gives me is a gift, and I am thankful for it. I am not comfortable with thinking of the money Matt earns as "ours." 
  3. I have never had a real income for more than a few months at a time. Mostly it was student aid that came in quarterly. I'd feel rich for about a week, and then the money would be gone, because I would eat out a lot and buy things to make me happy that I really didn't need (but that everyone else around me seemed to have.) I am afraid I would not be trustworthy with free access to my husband's money.
  4. My mother never allowed my father to have his own bank account. Every red cent he ever made went into her pocket, and she got everything when they divorced. There was no trust at all. Some of this might have been justified on my mother's part, but not to that extreme. I am afraid of becoming like her if I have access to my husband's financial information.
  5. When I was growing up, there were three unforgivable sins, according to my mother: enjoying sex, being fat, and being in debt. Now, I am all three of those things. Even though she doesn't really talk about that stuff with me any more, it is still ingrained. I mean, she went so far as to tell me not to talk to other kids whose parents didn't own homes.
  6. I have seen money issues destroy relationships even when I thought those relationships were strong. It just doesn't seem fair that I should be forced to get involved with something that could poison my relationship with my husband.
  7. I hate the entire concept of money. I hate that every single thing I do every day of my life has something to do with money. This is just my naive idealism, and it has no place in reality, but it's still in there as a contributing factor. I'm not about to go off the grid - I'm far too addicted to the Internet
All of these things make me hate money and everything to do with it. But apparently, I need to deal with it in order to be an adult, because being an adult is the ultimate goal. 

Which brings me to the harder part of the hard stuff.

What do adults do?

They have jobs. They have responsibilities. They support themselves. They have cars and they know how to drive. They take care of their belongings, including cleaning their homes and replacing things when they are worn out or need an upgrade. 

According to these criteria, I have never been an adult. I might as well be five years old. Why does this hurt? Because I should want to do all those things, but I don't. I've never wanted to. And not wanting to be an adult makes me ... what? A terrible person? A worthless person? It's too easy for me to fall into that spiral when I think about it too much. 

When people see me in public, they see an adult. I speak with eloquence, I create art, I conduct myself professionally, or casually, or sexily -- whatever the occasion calls for. I seem like an adult, but I am not. I'm just a child pretending to be an adult. I am controlled by childish fears, and I am deeply ashamed of those fears, and I hide that shame so well that people might even take me for being arrogant or haughty at times. 

It's disgusting.

I'm disgusting.

I'm not making anyone proud. I'm failing. I am a failure. Despite my considerable wit and wisdom, despite my way with words, despite my passion, my intelligence and my experience, I have never graduated from adolescence. And realising that is infuriating and hurtful and... makes me act even more like a spiteful child.

And I really don't know what to do about it, to be honest. I am still clamoring for things I never got, things I have been led to believe that every human being has a right to -- being taken care of, being trusted, being allowed to stretch my wings and explore my talents and become what I was meant to be. It never happened and now I am ... this thing. Whatever this child-monster is. 

I'm a lie.

So what do I do now? Suck it up, get off my ass, give up all of my precious free time and much of my time with my husband to get a $8.00/hour job to pay off my debts, go back to school, actually finish a degree, get another job, then a better job, then another better job... 

No. Society says that I should want that, but I don't. I just... don't. I can't make myself want it. My therapist can't make me want it. I just ... want to rest. I've spent fifteen ... no, eighteen years running myself ragged just trying to survive. I deserve to relax. I deserve to be taken care of. Maybe I'll get to the point eventually where some of these things will fall into place naturally. Maybe I'll be one of those late-bloomers who gets her first degree at 50. Maybe I'll make some real money with my artwork. 

But if I'm going to live that way, I have to stop feeling guilty about it. I have to stop comparing myself to others, to societal standards, to what my own psychotic super-ego says I should be. I have to be okay with who I am, and where I am, before I can grow at all, and all growth takes time. 

What I am now is a wife. If, in order to be a better wife, I need to get over my terror of money, I will do it, for my husband. Somewhere in the process, maybe I'll begin to see it as personal growth, but for now, I have to take him into consideration. He loves me unconditionally, but he needs me to step up. So I'll do my best. 

I was hoping that, by this point in this lengthy entry, I would start to feel better about this, but I'm not feeling better. I feel like I'm in trouble. Like I'm being punished for something I forgot to do, or put off doing. I feel judged. I know that I'm the one judging myself, but that just makes it more difficult. If someone else is judging me, I can fight back, but if I'm judging myself, all I'm going to end up doing is going around in circles. I'm suck. 

I don't even know where else to go with this entry. My mood is in the toilet. I'm tired. It's almost 2:00 a.m. I'm done for now.



Thursday, April 11, 2013

Poly ain't easy

Some people think polyamory is easy. It's not. It doesn't mean you just get to do whatever you want with whomever you want whenever you want. It doesn't mean you are free from the worry of ever being alone. It doesn't mean that you'll never get your heart broken. I know all this, and yet, I still have a lot to learn.

In terms of relationships, have a very strict code of ethics I follow, and all of the rules I have made for myself are based on my own past mistakes. I get very judgemental when I see other people breaking my rules. For instance, one of my cardinal rules is: "Everyone knows everything, at all times." This means there are no secret trysts, no clandestine rendezvous, no unexpressed feelings for another. My husband and I tell each other if we even have the barest hint of a crush on someone. There are sometimes pre-negotiated exceptions for special circumstances (like conventions, etc.), but for the most part, no one is in the dark, ever.

Another rule I have is the rule of equality. I cannot tell my husband he isn't allowed to see other people while I continue to date freely outside the marriage. I cannot tell him he can't go past 3rd base if I'm actively having intercourse with my other partner. If I ever started to feel that I wasn't comfortable with the idea of Matt seeing others, we would have to sit down and re-negotiate an equitable solution that would most likely result in closing the relationship for a while and only being with each other.

To me, these things are no-brainers. They are absolutes. They make sense, and they keep me safe. In my eyes, you just don't fuck with these rules, and if you do, you're in an unhealthy relationship and you need to re-evaluate what you're doing. So when my close friends, who are also poly, broke these rules, I became extremely irritated.

Not only were the rules broken, but it ended up affecting me. During Marcon, the male in the couple (I'll call him "Bob") and I made out. I've known him for many years, and we have always been an on-and-off item. He's someone Matt knows that I might be physically involved with at any given time. As far as I knew, Bob's girlfriend (I'll call her "Pam"), was completely fine with this arrangement. She was down with the poly lifestyle and understood that Bob and I had a history. I lived with them for a year at one point. We shared. There wasn't any animosity.

Bob and I hadn't had any time together in ages, and when we re-connected at the con, some old feelings were rekindled. He said he was interested in perhaps seeing me on a regular basis again, and I really liked the sound of that. But suddenly, upon hearing about this, Pam became upset and jealous. And I wouldn't mind, except that she, herself, has a regular boyfriend and at least one other lover on the side.

I can't stand hypocrisy. I'm also very protective of Bob, because he came out of a horrible marriage in which his then-wife never touched him. At all. For any reason. For four years. And he wasn't allowed to see anyone else. Meanwhile, she was cheating on him. I saw what it did to him, and it hurt me so much. At the time, I felt like it was my fault. After all, I'd had the choice to stay and be with him, but instead, I'd buggered off to England to marry some guy I barely knew. Maybe that's part of why this whole thing hurt so bad, I dunno.

Anyway, Pam (who is absolutely nothing like Bob's ex-wife), took exception to me calling her a hypocrite, and we had a falling-out. Understand that I love Pam and Bob both like family. They are extremely important to me, and just cutting them out of my life isn't an option for me. They're not random Facebook friends I can just block and be done with it. These are heart-friends, people I feel I need in my life to be whole. But I'm scared that if this kind of inequality continues, it might tear them apart.

"It's nothing personal," Pam said. Except, it was, wasn't it? I could not help but feel as if she had trusted me one moment, and not trusted me the next. I mean, of all the people Bob could see, I'm probably the least threatening. My priority is my husband, absolutely, always, and I would be devastated if anything happened to break up Pam and Bob. "We worked it out ourselves," she said. They were both okay with it, so I should be, too.

And Pam was right. It is between them. My ethics do not apply to other people. And by imposing my ethics on them, I am the one who is being hypocritical. Whether it makes sense to me or not does not matter; they have no responsibility to justify themselves to me. There are things I don't see, things I don't understand. I get that, and I am sorry that I let my knee-jerk reaction get the best of me and cause a rift. I am sorry that I took it so personally as to resort to a personal attack.

However.

I lashed out because I was hurt. Very, very hurt. To have feelings rekindled like that, then extinguished, was traumatic for me. And it had just always been that I could be affectionate with Bob when we were together, even when all three of us were together. Suddenly, I didn't know how to act. I had gone from feeling closer to Bob again, anticipating a renewal of our relationship as lovers, to ... what, not being able to even kiss him, or hold his hand? I just could not wrap my head around it. So when Pam and Bob acted as if nothing at all had happened, that nothing was different, I lost it.

"It's fine that you guys worked it out, but I need time to process it, okay?" And I walked away from them at the movie theatre.

I guess this was selfish of me. I don't know. Since then, Pam has been responding to posts on my Facebook page as if absolutely nothing happened. I haven't heard from Bob, but that isn't unusual because he's rarely online compared to me. It's because for them, it is like nothing happened. Like Pam said, they worked it out. So this is all in my head.

I decided I needed some space from them for a while. It wasn't as if I saw them every day anyway, or even every week or every month, but of course now that there's this tension, I cant stop thinking about them. I know that I need to be a better person and just let go, let them deal with their own lives as they see fit, regardless of whether I think it makes sense. Pam has issues that I'm not going to go into here that have changed her perspective on life dramatically in the last year, and that is her battle to fight. Considering what happened, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that things will never be the same again.

Regardless... I need time. I don't want to lose either of them, but I need time to process the changes. I also need to acknowledge that this is not my drama unless I make it so. I am in a stable place, in a stable relationship, with many friends and family to support me and my husband. It's okay for me to relax. There is no need to import strife just because I'm used to it.




Wednesday, April 10, 2013

New med

This is day three on gabapentin (Neurontin.) After many months of trying to get an appointment with a psychiatrist, I finally saw my new doctor on Monday. I'd done my research on gabapentin and thought that it might help me on multiple fronts, but it's off-label for bipolar disorder. So, I was pleasantly surprised when my doctor suggested it. Since I am notoriously sensitive to medications, I am on a low dose: 100 mg three times daily, in addition to the same dose of escitalopram (Lexapro) I have been on for years.

Because I do research drugs that I'm prescribed, or may be prescribed, I have heard the horror stories. The ones for gabapentin read pretty much like any drug. "Drug X is terrible! It gave me headaches and diarrhoea and back pain and hives and my feet swelled up and I had the urge to eat my baby!" That's because most people who go online and write about prescribed drugs are the ones it doesn't work for, and there is usually no information on what their diagnostic history is or what other drugs they may be taking. So I take note of all of that and file it away, but I stick to peer-reviewed research for the facts. I actually found a study that seemed to indicate that gabapentin is more likely to be effective as a mood stabiliser in people with co-morbid bipolar and panic disorder. Hi! That's me! 

Gabapentin has the potential, at the proper dose, to ease pain, regulate my moods, and help with anxiety. If it does even one of those things in the long-term, I will be ecstatic. I think that, due to my sensitivity, it will take some time to adjust to it. I feel a bit "fuzzy" on it, so far. I've had a mild headache, too, but I can't rule out allergies as a cause for that, since spring has suddenly exploded in central Ohio over the last three days. It's too early to tell if it's affecting my moods, especially since some recent events have triggered some volatile emotions. I have, however, experienced a decrease in pain. A friend massaged my shoulders last night, and for the first time in many years, I was able to tolerate pressure on my trigger points. Colour me flabbergasted. Nothing, not even narcotics, has had any affect on that before. So here's hoping this trend continues. It would be nice for something to work for once!



Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Emotional incest. (TRIGGER WARNING)

Isolation: despite the fact that I am an introvert and I greatly value my "alone time," it's one of my biggest triggers. I was isolated for nearly half my life. It wasn't solitary confinement, but my mother's paranoia-fuelled  restriction on contact with anyone she did not approve of. It's easier to talk about the people she did approve of: her parents and her grandmother. That was really it. I never even got to know my extended family, I didn't have any aunts or uncles on her side of the family, and anyone on my father's side was absolutely taboo, including my grandparents. Consequently, the only friend I had growing up was my grandmother. (The relationship I had with my grandfather pretty much began and ended with a fart joke.)

And I loved my grandmother. She was indulgent, she took care of my every need, and she never yelled at me, called me names or imposed restrictions on me the way my mother did. I think she was trying to make up for what she'd done to my mother. I would tell her things I couldn't tell my parents, usually about my parents, and their arguments, and the way they treated me. And she would always keep what I told her in confidence. She never, to my knowledge, betrayed me by telling my mother any of it. That made her my soul confidante, my only friend, and the only relative I felt any real attachment to. Yet, by the time she died in 2008, I had separated myself from her, too, because I'd realised that the relationship I'd had with her when I was a teenager was... sick.

I stayed at my grandparents' house almost every single Friday night between the ages of two and sixteen. It was my second home. It's been sold, now, but I dream about the place all the time. I always knew I was safer there than at my parents' house. I always looked forward to going. 

When I was really little, brimming with imagination and a love of stories and fictional characters, my grandmother would pretend with me while my grandfather was at work. We'd play out fairy tales together, and it was great fun for me. I didn't have anyone my age to play with, and I loved to act from an early age, so it was a needed outlet. It was cute. As I got older, though, it changed. I remember, once, when we were playing "Sleeping Beauty" -- I must have been about nine or so-- she was the Prince, and she kissed me on the lips to wake me up. It was innocent enough, nothing improper, but somehow, it started to feel different. I had a very early puberty (age 8), so this was probably the beginning of the thing I never talk about. 

I must make the disclaimer that neither of my grandparents ever touched me in an inappropriate way. What I'm talking about here is fantasy. Regardless, it was wrong. 

As I got older, and more interested in romance, our "scenarios," as my grandmother called them, took a different turn. At any given time, I would have a crush on some male fictional character or celebrity (well, usually male, anyway), and my grandmother would pretend to be that character. Usually over the phone, but sometimes in person before I went to bed, we would play out my meeting with said character, I creating an idealised version of myself and she playing the character mostly as I directed her to, since she wasn't familiar with some of them. There is no question that I drove these "scenarios," and that, in my mind, I was having sex with the characters my grandmother was playing. We never went beyond the suggestion. There would be romance and a meeting of minds, followed by passionate kissing (again, with absolutely no physical contact between her and I), and then we would jump to "the next morning," or something to that effect. 

Because of the isolation, because of the fact that these stories were my only outlet, they became an addiction. I would talk to my grandmother on the phone for many hours every day. I doubt my parents suspected the content of the conversations, or else they would have stopped it ... wouldn't they? I remember creating fictionalised and embellished versions of troubles in my life, playing them out, drowning my angst in the arms of my pretend-lover. And when my grandmother couldn't talk, for some reason, I would become very angry, slamming the phone down over and over again as hard as I could and crying myself to sleep. (I'd say this behaviour went on from about the age of 11 until I was 14 or 15.)

I was hypersexual from a young age, a characteristic of bipolar disorder. I thought about sex pretty much non-stop from the time I was 10 years old until my mid-20s. I don't know if my grandmother fully realised this. I don't know if she really understood what she was doing by indulging me in these fantasies. I just know that it went on until I was almost seventeen years old, and I started to have actual relationships with men. In my early teens, when a relationship ended badly, I would retreat into the familiar fantasy world again. I knew that [insert character here] would always be with me, even if real boys broke my heart. I didn't think even think to label this relationship with my grandmother as horribly strange and extremely unhealthy. I didn't come to that realisation until much later. And when I finally did, it made me sick to my stomach. 

I have always felt that it was my fault. I was using my grandmother to play out these fantasies. I was the one in the driver's seat, I was the one who was demanding we continue. That's the primary reason why I haven't talked about this before. It just dawned on me, fairly recently, that this is exactly the thought process of any child who is sexually abused by a relative. Whether there was any physical contact or not, my relationship with my grandmother was unhealthy. Incestuous. Wrong in every way. It would have been healthier for me to write my own stories (which I did, and was punished severely for when they were found) or read romance novels (which I was forbidden to do).  These "scenarios" forever coloured my perspective on relationships and made my expectations unreasonable. They warped my view of what was "normal," as if it wasn't already warped enough. 

And now that I've got this all written down in black-and-white, I don't know what to do with it. There it is. It amounts to years and years of abuse by the only family member I ever trusted or felt I would miss if she were to die. She's gone, now, and I think it's taken me this long to even begin to process it. 

So now what?