Care and Feeding of Monsters

I spend a lot of time trying to find a way to say “It seems like things are anxious in your head and I want to help you find reassurance”. It seems like this should be easy but often I find it quite difficult to communicate. Like when you’re avoiding something and being asked to pay attention to it will trigger you, even if you later agree you want to pay attention. Or when I can see your fear but cannot offer direct reassurance because the fear is internal. It’s not fair that I sometimes can see your feelings before your sorted them out. And it’s super not fair that you get triggered just by being paid attention to instead if neglected. But I hope someday we can figure out how to talk about it without you feeling terrible. Because I’m hyper sensitive to your emotions and I want to be on your side about them, even when they’re hard, even when you feel isolated by them. I’m not trying to talk to you in ignorance of your anxiety or anger or sadness, or in objection to it. Rather I’m trying to talk to you because of it, to help you share, to help you be less alone, to make it easier. And I don’t just mean Shanda — this happens to me all the time.

Therapy was back to the LI technique. We started with my feelings of wanting to escape, to run away, particularly when traveling. We focused on a similar feeling when I first went to summer sports camp — around age 10 — a few hundred miles from Mother. Where I considered running away and the practical value of doing it from camp. I could lie to the staff about leaving and go unnoticed for more than a week before Mother even started to talk about it, let alone did anything. Even if the staff did notice it’s likely Mother wouldn’t respond for several days. I was considering escape, though at the time I didn’t understand it quite that way. I imagined it would be a good way for me to stop distressing the people in my life with my ongoing presence and existence.

I also spent a lot of that week trying to justify to myself why staying was better, because clearly my assigned old people were providing the useful resource of frequent access to housing and food, and those would both be harder alone. I mean, sure, it wasn’t every day, and they couldn’t get me sheets or a blanket for my stay at camp, and I didn’t have clean clothes, and I was unfamiliar with the concepts of empathy or safety, but that’s just because I was such a burden. It wasn’t fair to ask normal people like them to raise a disabled monster like me. And this time at camp might finally be my chance to free them from that burden. It would be hard until I could own a car, but that was only a few years away. And I’d have to go someplace where it wasn’t quite so cold, but I was already almost in South Dakota so I could probably get down I-35 a ways before winter.

But of course I couldn’t go, because who would take care of the kids? Mother already had trouble and though I was an emotional burden on her the kids were definitely more practical work. Ben was still not in school and he needed someone to make him food a couple of times a day. I made him a week of sandwiches before I left, but what was he going to do after that? It would be months until Alex would be back in school with access to lunch, and she couldn’t manager Mother to get lunch money all the time. Who would protect them from Mother when she was having a hard time, or help them avoid the things that made Mother upset in the first place. If Mother ever really lost it and hurt one of them they’d both be in foster care, and that’s a crapshoot at best, particularly for older kids.

And then I pulled that feeling and that 10-year-old across my life with me, trying to tie that state of mind to other parts of my life. To expose that 10-year-old to things I know now. To offer perspective and compassion that wasn’t available to me at the time, or more accurately to learn that I could have such things now even if I couldn’t then. That it was unreasonable for me to be searching for ways that I got support from my assigned old people, or trying to free them from the burden of child rearing. That I shouldn’t have to consider how the camp staff would react to my lack of support or find ways to protect them from the hard situation they’d be in if they noticed how I was a monster (i.e. how I was abused). To protect the other young people from the dangerous way I couldn’t comply with the demands of the camp or the staff. To lie to both groups about calling home, about wanting sheets ¹I got a shitty blanket when I went back the next year, but still no sheets. That was easier to sell to the staff and my peers. In layer years Mother told the person transporting me that I didn’t bring sheets or a blanket because I wet the bed. Which for some reason those people accepted. Some of them even tried to help me with that imaginary … Continue reading, etc.

There’s a related feeling about travel escape, that I was able to link in. It’s about those times I sat in the 3rd row of a minivan and fantasized about a traffic collision that would kill the 4 people in the front of the car and let me escape ²When I was dreaming of car crashes I used to think that having a dog would help me survive. That a dog would have skills and capabilities that I couldn’t exercise, and would help me with things like foraging and staying warm and getting attention from kind humans. In general that a dog would help me run away. Now that I have one I see it’s the … Continue reading without responsibilities. Just like I imagine escaping my day job and debt and the million other things I manage today I once dreamed of finding a way for me to get out without endangering others. Those sorts of car trips were always stress level Gamma for a whole slew of reasons. Mother was anxious about a bunch of parts and therefore even less capable of decision making and even more likely to be irritated. Pete refused to react to anything that happened or make any decisions about whole classes of issues like obtaining food or stopping to pee or managing the temperature of the back of the van. And as this went on Pete demanded more and more support in placating Mother, so by the end of the day it was often impossible even to keep the kids from crying. Hungry and tired and surrounded by people in distress and unable to even predict when it might end let alone control any of it.

So together those two bits cover most of my modern travel panic. Being trapped in a metal tube, fantasizing about death, desperate to escape my responsibilities, desperate to escape my abuse (though imagining it as the burden I impose on others). Thinking that everyone would prefer it if I were gone, so long as I could arrange for all the ways I had been useful to keep happening, or at least to not matter anymore. And I still imagine it as living outside and not talking to anyone about anything for at least several years. If I let anyone know I needed help they’ve be able to tell that I was broken and they’d send me back to my assigned old people and it would just be worse than before. Imagining that maybe I could save some of the limited supply of tolerance that people have for me in case I “really” needed help at some point in the future. Imagining that I could stretch the supply by continuing to be useful from afar.

It does help me understand why I feel like me being around hurts people. I knew the bit about bad reactions to me, but I hadn’t seen the way I saw my abuse as not only my fault but as a hassle for everyone else. That’s how it was treated, both by my assigned old people and by other old people who knew it was happening — like I deserved it and should be ashamed for making other people do it to me. It helps me see how isolated I was; it’s hard for me to even imagine that I could communicate with anyone outside Mother’s direct control, which means I never had any help with anything unless it was dropped into my lap and could be hidden from Mother. And it helps me see how much effort I spent on trying to stay isolated, for fear my need would contaminate other people.

This LI process definitely feels more useful to me than other things I’ve tried. Much better than last week, where the session felt pretty low-value. So I’m feeling okay about the concept of therapy; it still feels like something I can control, at least in this small context. It’s slightly distressing to think that this one technique is the only thing I’ve ever found useful and manageable, but I should try to see that as an improvement and not a limitation.

Today was tough for both Shanda and me. But we did okay dealing with it. She came and worked downstairs in the afternoon, so we could be close together. And we watched some @BPS to feel better about it. I got all the work I had planned done, though still none of the backport bug. And got my expense report in and all my other paperwork done. All but the FCC license renewal, because their system wouldn’t take my money. We also made progress on taxes and dog cleaning and insurance and the like. Shanda had some hard times bout religion again today, but I think another step closer to the grief she needs. So not a bad day, considering the low starting point.

There are still lots of other bits I haven’t gotten to writing. But this is a start. Trending back up is presumably a good sign.

ZiB