You took the wind out of my socks!
Well this is odd to watch. Dad is so pretty and charming and well-spoken (and talks over the host a lot) and Mum is a total babe, jittery and awkward and adorable (and far too self deprecating). And I want to know what my shirt said that Dad mentioned! And the windmill that's mentioned, that's the beach where Peter and I ate all that sand, right? I liked seeing Dad make classic Dad gestures like at 5:22 in the clip, or mom's sweet laughter. It's SO strange to realize there was a time when you guys loved each other. Or could enjoy each other's company. Or had nice things to say about the other. It makes me uncomfortable, as though I'm waiting for it to erupt. This clip is telling though, each of you have moments in which what's going on at home shines right through (mom's look at 6:11 makes me so sad).
I'm glad they got divorced.
***
I went to a meeting tonight and got my one year coin, and outed myself about some intense loneliness that I've been wallowing in without reaching out. So now people have my phone number and it's my job to pick up the phone when they call. Harumph.
I spent the weekend plowing through steps 6, 7 and 8, and am now teetering on the edge of 9. It's been extremely productive, and an arduous, painful process that's taken up many pages of writing and many hours on the phone with Terri. And I've absorbed reading that I've only skimmed before. I wrote in my literature, I underlined, I responded, I made it applicable to me and I asked myself questions in the margins. I made it mine. It's the first time that I've felt that I'm not static and whining about how desperate and unhappy I feel, but am making this program mine by owning how deperate and unhappy I've felt, and my part in it. This year is not something that's happened to me. I wrestled through a full Sunday of completing, avowing to another human being, and turning over my inventory and character defects, an experience that lasted from about 1pm into the night. I took breaks to pray, to read recommended selections from the OA 12&12 and the big book that were applicable, and to eat a peanut butter and apple wrap on lavash bread. I woke up this morning feeling unrested and melancholy, but not in the dramatic sense that I usually make melancholy into. I felt it in the "things are going to be okay but they're just in transition now" sense. It wasn't total weightlessness, but it wasn't the bogged feeling of being rotten at my center that I've felt lately.
Last night the thought kept returning to me that this admission of character defects was an odd process; I feel like I've spent my entire life in the process of learning the right vocabulary to talk about them. They're things I've been aware of since I was very, very little, and I've always known exactly what my rap was on them; my vanity, my need for attention, selfishness (which takes the form of gluttony when it's with food, and neediness when it's with people), my affection for drama whether it's seeking it out in a situation or magnifying a feeling (good or bad) when I'm by myself by listening to the appropriate music. I've always had a kind of fixed speech on all of these things, and writing about them without spin or psychobabble, and with more honesty than I was used has been extremely difficult.
One of the things I really pulled apart last night was how I use music to feel. I think it's supposed to be the other way around, that music is supposed to be the catalyst, is supposed to inspire in you an organic emotion or a response, but more often than not I'm listening music as a method of intensifying an already existing emotion within me. I've essentially used music to enrich my emotions, whether I'm feeling lonely (Ray LaMontagne, Patty Griffin, Alison Krauss, Nickel Creek, James Taylor), detached (Marc Cohn, Chopin, selective Paul Simon, Liturgical Chant), empowered (Nikki Costa, SR71, Pat Benetar, Handel), or just like myself, comfortable with me (Barenaked Ladies, Bonnie Raitt, Des'ree, Mike Doughty, Bach). I've used it to solidify feelings for people, to indulge in my feelings for them more deeply, or to help detach from them by listening to music that belongs to someone else. And it WORKS- it actively changes the things that I'm feeling and how I behave as a result, or can move me deeper into the ones I'm feeling. The problem with this is that as this music intensifies whatever emotion I'm riding, I'm less and less in control of myself- I'm entirely owned by my feelings, which means I'm even more likely to shoot from the hip in responding to what I'm feeling. If I'm lonely this means I'll more anxiously seek out an instant cure for the loneliness, numbing with eating or another quick fix. If I'm feeling joyful the music I choose will further propel me into that joy, making it bigger, grander, brighter, higher than it would otherwise have been, which means that joy isn't as organic, and it also means that when it begins to melt, I have an unnaturally far distance to fall. If I'm feeling rejected or bitter or depressive, the music I have to hear dramatizes those feelings, puts me into a music video where I'm watching myself cry, makes my outlook even bleaker than it was without the music. It allows me an unnaturally large spectrum of emotion where everything I feel, even apathy, is more consuming. Every emotion is better with the music, there's a high that comes from feeling that deeply, even if it's a negative feeling. It's like emotional masturbation. I react to every feeling in an immediate way (that's usually selfish), and this is how using music like I do can get me in trouble. The feelings become so big that I'm actually owned by them and, they to act for me. I'm sure music isn't supposed to be used like this (yeah yeah there's no 'supposed to' with music, but for me there are definitely contexts in which it can be destructive to me. Seeing that sentence in print makes me sad.) Wow that was quite a rant. Perhaps it didn't make sense at all, but that's the best I can do. That's just an example of the kind of unraveling of my behavior and my defects that I've done this weekend. And there was so much more, I just chose this one to explain because it's one I have less shame about and feel I can talk about publicly like this.
It was neat to recognize that my defects serve one of two purposes. Either their about increasing or maintaining my self-esteem (which I consider to be the same thing as my comfort level with myself), or their about seeking an emotional thrill...a high. I'm quite head-first in the 7th step prayer. The fact that it begins with "My Creator" moves me very much. It's more humbling than "God", and also more affectionate.
***
I worked lunch today, a longish shift, made solid tips and was exhausted by the end because my ACL knee is in a whole lot of pain- not the ACL itself or the muscles around it, but the part of my shin bone that's near my knee that they had to drill through to actually get to the inside of my knee is swollen and very, very painful to the touch. Not like the skin is infected or anything, but it's something inside; there's a large mass on the bone, and it's looking very strange. So that's worrying me, and I'm gonna make an appointment with my orthopedic guy to take a look at it. Tonight when I got home from the meeting I did laundry, I finished my Symmetry homework, and I brushed my teeth. And now I'm going to fish my work laundry out of the washer to put in the dryer (yes, I often leave non work laundry wet in the laundry machine for longer than I should). Tomorrow I have symmetry, then I'm going rock climbing with some people from Upstairs, and then I'm going in to work the dinner shift. Go fish!
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