... visit The Product at barrettchase.com
Video: Show us the next DVD or movie you're looking forward to seeing.
"Casino Royale," deftly scooped up by Ezra at the rental store last night on a mission to bring me "X-Men 3," which I hadn't seen yet...
Dear Katrina --
I am going to a play after work and probably will not see you before you leave for home. I wanted to wish you a good weekend and say goodbye but also to come clean/out, whatever, about something I've been trying to talk about for a long time. It feels a little cowardly to be saying this in a letter, but I think the damage will compound the longer I go without saying it. My heart is beating really fast right now, but it's because I trust you and value your friendship so much that I really don't want to shut you out.
Which is what this is about -- the way I shut people out, and the way I feel I've been shutting you out recently. I have a sense that you recognize it but aren't really sure how to breech it/fix it, etc., nor is it your job to do this. Nor is it your fault that this is happening. This isn't new -- what's new is that I'm finally beginning to understand it, and why I so often behave in ways that are completely contrary to how I want to behave or even how I expect to behave.
Although she's never made an "official" diagnosis, my therapist has suggested several times that I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. This is a disorder I actually know very little about because I always felt sure it had nothing to do with me -- isn't PTSD just for war veterans and rape victims? I guess not, although most of the research does focus on that subgroup.
I'm just now starting to understand what this means to me and my current situation. Basically, I learned a long time ago not to deal with painful emotions -- or emotions in general -- and I've consciously kept my life drama-free so I don't have to. What results is that current situations trigger disproportionate emotional reactions that have little or nothing to do with the current situation. These reactions are totally visceral and I don't often have time to rationalize my way out of them (i.e.: separate the past from the present) so the only way I can find to react in the moment is to shut people out to buy myself more time to work through what's happening. When this happens, people often think I'm angry or judging them when really all that anger and judgment is self-directed. My internal dialogue is something along the lines of, "Why am I doing this again? Dammit, stop doing this."
I don't know if I'm explaining this well, but I guess you know where to find me for clarification. The main thing I want you to understand is that when I shut you out it's not about you at all and it's very little about the current interaction -- instead, it's my mind and body jumping at the opportunity to work through all the old stuff that we still haven't worked through. So please don't shut me out in turn, even if that seems easier or like it's what I want. It might be easier, but it's definitely not what I want. And please be patient and forgiving when I'm not as "present" to you as you need or want me to be, and know that I love you so much and because of that, am working hard on this, too.
Love,
Lacey
P.S. Could you please feed the kitties before you leave? Thanks. =)
P.P.S. I just read over this and it feels like I haven't explained myself well at all, but I think I need to get to work rather than using all my editing skills up here.
My therapist says it would be "interesting" if I got into a relationship while I was in therapy so I could check in with her about it. As if that's my homework. "Go home and bring back a relationship by next week. I think it'll make you feel better." Funny, how it comes back to the same advice provincial aunts give you. In the end.
Barriers. I have barriers and not boundaries. I fall in love over and across boundaries, and only across boundaries because that keeps my barriers in tact. If you don't fall in love across boundaries, it's much harder to maintain the barriers. I know there are emotional reasons that I have consciously steered clear of intimate relationships for the past two, three? years and unconsciously steered away from them before that. So yes, I am willing and ready to work on that emotional shit, to finally clear it out of the way, and yes, she can help me with that.
But what about the intellectual shit? There are so many intellectually sound good reasons for not getting into a relationship. Do I totally sacrifice my principals just because the emotional end of it is under control? Sacrifice the truth of what I KNOW? That women's standard of living goes down with marriage, while men's goes up? That most rape and assault happens between people who know each other? That even feminist men have grown up with male privilege and as such, is it ever totally possible to have an egalitarian, heterosexual relationship? Is it possible to break out of the heterosexual model even in same-sex relationships? Does it matter?
I don't like the way I am when I'm in love and therefore I don't like it when other people are in love, either. How's that for cold-hearted bitchiness? I feel like being in love is so little about the object of your desire and so much about yourself. That being in love is the most self-centered state of being, that it's an obsession with yourself as seen through your beloved's eyes, not an obsession with your beloved. So in actuality, staying single doesn't feel like the selfish choice to me, as people would imply, but the selfless one. By freeing up the mental and emotional energy that an intimate relationship would demand, I have all this energy to pour into my creativity and activism and self-discovery. I've always felt there's something to be said for the relationship between celibacy and creative and spiritual energy.
I feel like a relationship would be selling out at this point. Or admitting that all my sound reasoning is really just a fucking band-aid.
I have this great blog and I never update it. I don't update the other three, either... but this one is better so I really should update it more often.
So... I'm going to cop out of writing anything of substance and post a video instead:
I shouldn't have gone there tonight. I knew I shouldn't have gone, but I told myself I'd only go for 15 minutes. I told myself I had to go sometime, wade through all those messages that she sent me way back in May that I still hadn't read. So I began reading them. Some of them I even responded to. It was like responding to someone that was dead. In my heart, I know that she'll never read them. But I imagined that I was back in college and that everything was the way it used to be. That at this point, I don't need to send them to her anymore. That perhaps it would be enough to just send them off into the universe.
I take my GRE tomorrow. Christmas is a week away. This is not a good time for me to drag myself through the emotional wringer. But for too much of my life I've used avoidance as my one and only tactic for dealing with pain. And sometimes I think torturing yourself is almost healthier. Because then at least you feel something. Something.
Now when we talk on the phone, I feel awkward and afraid just like when I talk to anyone else in the world. I always end the call first, run away from her the way I've run away from so many others. I'm not scared of her the way I used to be scared of her, which is good. I just don't know what to say to her, and it's not the same as being scared and knowing what to say. I wish I could have kept her forever.
Katrina and I are going to watch the last episode ever of Queer as Folk
tonight. I'm going to transfer my mourning energy elsewhere.
What are your top 5 movies/DVDs of 2006?
Pirates
Saw III
Hills Have Eyes
I don't know anymore...I'll have to think about it, I LOVE movies!!
Friends, comments, education, amusement: what's been the best thing to happen to you on Vox so far?
amusement
What is your pet peeve, the one thing which really drives you mad?
Submitted by Beki.
I have a few...
1. people who leave carts in the parking lots and not putting them in the cart catcher thing
2. people who turn right in the left hand lane or people who turn left in the right hand lane
3. left hand exits off the highway
4. people who just leave merchandice anywhere, and not put it back or at least bring it to the cashier
5. people who chew with their mouth full
6. people who talk with their mouth full
7. people who are just outright rude
8. people who claim that their pain level is 8-9-10 when it really probably is not and they're just big babies
