lists and lists and lists, oh my!

i have this list of things to do on my vacation (that's this week, mind you) and i've not had the motivation to do much at all.

i know part of my problem is that i'm ruminating--and trying to break that cycle is often difficult. the train of thought just keeps rolling and rolling, despite the fact that there's no hill to keep it going. i'm sitting here, rolling it with my own hand, a child with a pink and white hula-hoop.

i'm watching my new kitten, henry, choose a peice of kibble. he's quite picky, in spite of being a little hoover when it comes to other foods that hit the floor. has to find the right kibble peice for the right mouthful at the right time.

on monday i saw my t-doc again, and we went over the MMPI 2. for anyone who hasn't taken this test, it's a series of true-false questions that allow the dr to see where you're at as far as depression, paranoia, etc. measures a ton of stuff. the questions seem, after a while, to be the same thing, over and over, tossed in with random crap: "I love my mother" (true or false) and then "I'd like to be a racecar driver" (true or false) and then "I don't like walking into dark rooms" (true or false). so on and so forth. it took me about an hour a week ago to complete this, filling in all the little circles. i did not miss one question--answered all 567 of them.

and yeah, my hand hurt from the coloring. i don't think i've done that much coloring since i was in kindergarten.

anyway, we went over the test and helene said, "this was interesting. you are a lot more depressed than i thought you were. you don't present yourself as depressed." we kind of agreed that it was something that had been going on for so long that i have glossed it over and am able to function within the bounds of it, but that it's still crippling me something fierce.

we talked about anxiety issues i have, and paranoia, and how mainly, my form of depression is that a ton of the time, i have a difficult time understanding where my emotions are coming from, and actually caring about things that are happening in my life.

i keep thinking of dragging my emptiness around behind me, like a giant cement mixer truck, spinning and spinning.

i'm tired of having feelings that all feel like bulldozers. there's nothing that sneaks up and taps me on the shoulder--no feeling of sadness creeping in like rain, no feeling of joy pressing along my spine like massaging fingers.

it all feels like being ambushed.

if i get sad, it's sudden. if i'm happy, it's quick. it reminds me of thunderstorms in early summer--you can see the clouds, it rains, it rumbles, it flashes--and then it's gone. hard to make it last.

it's exhausting. i'd like to be able to slow down and process some of this, comprehend it. it's hard to learn how.

i've got 29 years of bad behavior, or bad habits--your choice--under my belt. you could call me an expert at one thing--avoidance. (or two. i certainly know how to clean things...)

i know that i try to avoid things; my own pet peeve is that i avoid confrontation. i keep thinking of that line from "serenity", the smugglers talking to mal: you fight when you oughta hide, and you stand when you oughta run.

i know i do that--i can look back at the map of my life thus far and SEE the line of my crossing--jagged, erratic. avoiding that which might cause me to hurt--and also that which might cause me to grow.

i never saw my parents fight. they were quiet, don't yell at each other in front of the kids, type of parents. i don't know that they fought elsewhere, either. it's hard to say. all i know is that dad would come home from work carrying a chip the size of jupiter on his shoulder--work, vietnam, the burden of supporting a family. you name it. he'd come home and just be angry--his face, his shoulders, the tread of his shoes.

it makes me cringe, just to think of it. my father never hit any of us, never hurt my mother. never spoke loudly. but the very prescence of fury being restrained in a house is enough to make me want to hide.

i have a hard time remembering times when his forehead was not creased, eyebrows tucking into each other. impending doom--that is what i felt.

i think that the younger kids didn't feel it as much. my middle sister remembers it, but the twins--they don't. over the years, dad's gotten treatment for high blood pressure, and had bypass surgery, and he is a very, very different man. he's always liked hugs, but now he actually cherishes the hugs, and he doesn't have this perpetually frustrated look on his face.

i think that my trust in men has been undermined since day one. i could not trust that my father would be happy to see me, until i put on a song and dance that made him realize he was home, and could enjoy his family. it was something that i think we all learned, as kids. "look over here, it's the bird of joy! yes, yes, you can be happy to be home!"

i love my father. i do. he's a gentle man, a loving man. i can see echoes of him in my actions, in my behavior. but more than anything, i can see how, as a child, i was sublimely influenced by his behavior.

i think about the trust issues i am having with dan--how hard it is for me to trust men. i think about that and i cringe away from it. i don't want to confront that feeling, because i love these people. i love dan, i love dad, i know many, many men who are cut from a mold of honor, justice and all those things that make people, as a whole, good.

the test i took also showed that i have a high sense of naivete--not that i'm not aware of the world and how i operate in it, but that i expect that everyone is going to treat me well, that no one will hurt me. part of my issue with the entire situation right now is that i place implicit trust in women. my mother has never given me any reason not to trust her; neither have my sisters, or any of my female friends. to be honest, most of my guy friends have not, either. but it's difficult for me to place them in the same bin--part of me keeps them separated, for whatever reason.

what it comes to is that i trusted serena implicitly to be honest with me; i think part of me did not want to confront the fact that perhaps there was something more going on than i thought, and i could not believe when the truth came out that anyone i held dear could treat me that way.

dan apologized; dan's been willing to work. we've been making steps in repairing things, using glue and duct tape and threat, to put things back together, to change the way we react and act towards each other. slowly, i am rebuilding trust. the problem with trusting dan is that i think i'm holding back all the trust i have held since i was young--trust was contingent on moods, on how well i did at disarming that mood. i'm not only rebuilding the trust i had in him; i'm rebuilding ALL my trust, and taking down the vaudeville act that pokes its head out now and again, trying to defuse the angry bomb.

performing allows me to hide from my own fears; it allows me to just "ignore the man behind the curtain" ala the wizard of oz. if i'm distracted by averting another persons' mood, then i can distract myself and avoid my own, as well. difficult to fold up the costume, however.

the women friends i have are my backbone; i have allowed them to be my backbone, since i trust them so easily and have had no reason to do otherwise. i'm pulling back into my turtle shell of avoidance, when i am with my girlfriends, because even though none of them has wronged me and i'm not hurt by them, the hurt of having dishonesty visited upon me by one woman has left a bad taste in my mouth for others.

but i know that if i fall backwards, there are a million arms to catch me. i trust in that, because over the last few months, that is what has kept me afloat--knowing that everyone is there, knowing that i have only to ask.

my avoidance comes in the asking. my avoidance comes in the telling. because by doing either, i feel as if i am confronting something that i don't want to confront.

i have two boxes in my garage. they're save-it boxes, from when i was a kid. they've got baby books, math books, turkeys i colored in first grade, you name it. my list of things to do this vacation included opening them and going through them. it's something that should be easy for me to do--confronting childhood and giving away barbie dolls. but in doing so, i'm cut by the edge of being nearly thirty--looking in those boxes will remind me of my own longevity, and i'm not sure i can confront that, either.

it's much easier to hide, to work on things like cleaning the bathroom, and finishing my witch's weeds, and take the cat to the vet for shots, than face the monsters that lurk under my bed.