September 2, 1998
I was a real goody two-shoes when I was younger. Today, I've decided to re-establish some of those standards. I've never really cared for crude and dirty jokes, but over the years, I had "lightened up" a little. I still would not pass them on, but I wouldn't tell the person telling the jokes not to tell/send them to me, so they wouldn't feel that I was judging them.

Today, it was more than I could take.

For the past couple of months, I have read many stories of incest and child abuse and it has made a deep impression on me. During this same time, an acquaintance has gone from sending humor mixed with a few dirty jokes, to sending me almost exclusively crude stuff. It is strange, I have been sending mostly clean stuff, with only an occasional innuendo, and she has repaid this by sending me even more explicit stuff.

Today, she sent me a joke based on a child observing his parents' sexual acts. I became nauseous and almost burst into tears. I knew I couldn't read another one of these things. So, I did what I should have done a month or two ago - I told her to stop sending this stuff to me. I'm also going to ask an in-law to stop too. I can't be even a passive partner to this debasing attitude anymore. I wish I hadn't lower my standards in the first place.

September 10, 1998
Alas, I have been negligent in my journal entries, but I have not put off my efforts to become better. This weekend I have done some deep soul searching and typed it up somewhere else. Tonight, I give you the edited version:

Though I am usually good at judging character, I have a blind spot when it comes to women who resemble my mother. I realize that part of it is the psychological need to fix these women, in place of my mother. I realize that I need to give up this fruitless task.

But what exactly is my blind spot? By its very definition, a blindspot is something I can't see. It's sort of like a black hole. Perhaps I should treat it like that? You find a black hole by studying what surrounds it.

So, what surrounds my black hole? I don't have this blind spot with men, which may be why I trust them more, because I see them clearer. The one male I met that resembled my mother the most, I despised completely. The hairs on the back of my neck would stand up whenever he was around. He used false flattery to manipulate everyone around him, and would carefully twist words to cause trouble. It was all I could do to be civil to him. Finally, I gave up and just let the insults come out. He's the only person in this universe that I ever felt the need to insult. He still talks to a few of my siblings, and they say he has changed, but then, they never understood why I didn't trust him in the first place. He never asks about me anymore. hehehe...

Okay. So, we can eliminate men from my list of possibilities. Hmmmm... Let's see about women. H's mom is a lot like M, but I mistrusted her before I even realized who she was. M is a lot like my mother and so is my old friend N. Mom, M, and N are the top three poeple this blindspot has been the most obvious with. Well, I guess the next step is to list their more outstanding attributes and compare them.

Mom - childish, manipulative, wants to be the center of attention, wants to be revered, short tempered, twists words, likes to take credit for others acheivements, very strong sense of denial, artistic, talkative, lazy, inconsiderate.

N - wants to be revered, tries to change people so she can take credit, likes to be the center of attention, friendly, talkative, very strong sense of denial, concerned with status, admires creativity but doesn't exhibit much herself, slave to current trends.

M - arrogant, manipulative, wants to be revered - thinks she should be considered a wise person, very strong sense of denial, artistic, short tempered, talkative, lazy, argumentative, inconsiderate.

Excluded: H's mom - strong sense of denial, manipulative, narrow-minded, frowns frequently, concerned with status, inconsiderate, dislikes creativity.

Possible blindspot characteristics:
A desire to be revered and the center of attention.
Talkative.

This list didn't do me much good, so I called one of my best friends and asked what was it about M that worried her to the point of advising me to stop dealing with her.

Anyhow, my friend said that one of the things she noticed about M was that she was so emotionally needy that she seem to suck the life out of the people around her. The same could be easily said for Mom and N - and for other friends of mine who have caused me frustration in the past. I could also add a sense of bluster - the ability to sound as if they are strong, when they are not.

It's probably the bluster part combined with the neediness that gets me, because H and a few other emotionally needy people I know, don't cause the emotional and mental damage. As I sit here and contemplate this, other names fall into this catagory. Twelve women came to mind without any effort.....some of these women caused more damage than others...some of these women meant well, but their own problems blinded them to the effects of their actions.

Hmmm....
I will need to meditate on this for awhile and figure out how I can erase this blindspot of mine....

September 17, 1998
Seems like I'm doing the weekly journal thing this month...
Well, due to a miscalculation on my part, I missed taking my firbomyalgia medication twice last week. Yes, I paid for this laspe in my medication. I was so sore Friday it was unreal and I have been taking lots of naps to make up for my inability to get to sleep.

Speaking of naps, I took a slight one this morning, complete with dreams. Twice I came near wakefulness and thought I heard my children playing in the living room with the television on. It sounded so real that I had a small anxiety episode, thinking that my children missed the school bus. Then I remembered that there was no way they go get into the house without me knowing and forced myself to listen harder. As I did, the sounds of children and television disappeared and I heard only the sounds of the ceiling fans and airconditioner.

After the second time, instead of going back to sleep I laid on the bed and examined what was going on. The sounds of children and TV had to come from my memory and misinterpeted by my concious mind. The perceived reality of it all still bothered me and I remembered my mom telling me that she thought that one of the houses we lived in was haunted. She said she would be wakened by the sounds of a baby crying, but when she went to find this baby - there was no one crying. Sometimes we kids were somewhere else and Mom was the only one in the house. It occurred to me that what my mom had experienced was probably the some thing that happened to me. She had four small children at the time and undoubtedly had several memories of an infant crying. The difference was that I recognized the source to be my own subconcious and she was positive it came from outside herself.

Using what I know about fibromyalgia, I think I have a pretty good idea what happened. When a fibromyalgia sufferer is monitored during sleep, they show an alpha-delta wave distrubance. Alpha waves occur in the semi-conscious state of sleep. Delta wave occur in the deepest portion of non-REM, when the body does its daily celluar repairs. People with fibromyalgia will have alpha waves intrude during the delta portion of sleep, usually causing them to go back to the alpha portion or wake up. I must of had my alpha waves interrupting my REM sleep - making the dream seem real.

These brings me to another thought. Could it be that sanity is merely a matter of awareness? Of being able to differentiate where a stimulus is actually coming from and acting appropriately? Could my experience this morning be classified as a hallucination? The doctors tell me I am not schizophrenic, but could the only thing keeping me from becoming a schizophrenic be my ability to analytically question my laspes of reality?

The doctors are probably right about me, but I once read a study of how a certain ratio of niacin and Vitamin C reduced the severity of schizophrenic episodes, and I have a dietary supplement with the correct ratio which I haven't been taking for a couple of months. I think I'll go back to taking it - just to quiet my doubts...

September 18, 1998
Consistency is obviously not one of my strong points ;-)

A friend wrote this to me yesterday, after reading my last journal entry:
"the definition of madness is the inability to respond appropriately to a situation. that's what i learned in linguistics class, and it was what my prof. said would be the ultimate undoing of artificial intelligence. you would never get a computer to respond appropriately to a given situation.

you're able to step outside your box and look at all options in a given situation, so i find you more than sane...supersane!"


It's so nice to have good friends . . .

Meanwhile -

I've been contemplating the concept of someone being functionally schizophrenic. After all, people can be functionally autistic - the human mind has yet to shown itself to be a quantum entity, but rather a continuous spectrum of function and disorder. So, it is probably quite possible for someone to have mild schizophrenia and still have some control over its manifestations.

I know my sister's therapist sees Mom ability to control where she lost control as an argument against schizophrenia, but I think it's possible for someone whose mildly affected to still have some control - especially since it does worsen with stress. Heaven knows the woman has claimed to have experienced a great many weird things - an alien abduction, ghost voices, phantom stalkers, and so forth. The most significant aspect of these paranormal experiences is that they all seem to center around the theme that she is better than the rest of humanity. A paranoid egomanic perhaps? According to the entry in my dictionary of science, this delusion of grandness could still point to schizophrenia.

September 22, 1998
I may be looking at this blind spot problem from the wrong direction. While talking to another friend about one of these women who we both had problems with, I realized that I had warned this friend about her manipulative tendencies. Thinking it over, I realized I had warned other people of the destructive tendencies of the other women on my list, while I was still in constant contact with them. So, I saw their faults, but I ignored them with regard to myself.

Why?

I hate to admit it, but in practically every case I thought I could change them. If I could just show them a different way of handling their problems, then they would see the light and change the rest of their abusive behaviors.

I am such an idiot sometimes.

I know better. I know that you can never change a person who doesn't want to change. I also know that there are some people who pretend to change to keep you on their side.

Does the word "Codependency" mean anything to my subconcious?

Okay...maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself. In truth, the people I tried to change the most were the ones who tried to change me the most. Perhaps it's not as much a matter of codependecy as it is a battle of wills. Still a waste time no matter how you look at it . . .

September 27, 1998

God and I had a long talk today.
I've decided to stop letting other people's fears restrain me from doing what I know to be good.

I have always done sweet things for people. I have gone out of my way to give an "enemy" their coat. I have spent one birthday washing every dish in an apartment of someone I didn't even know, while my friends cleaned and painted it (we got permission from the land lady). I love doing "secret pal" stuff and I have never failed to blow the socks off of the people assigned to me. I have spent hours searching for just the right card to send someone I barely knew. I have walked across town to leave a birthday gift at a dear friend's door, because I didn't have a car of my own. Even as a child, I gave up a gift to a neighbor child who I knew was being punished unfairly for something his brother had done.

I have also written a heartfelt message to a friend and had another friend mail it from another city, so he could hear the words he needed to, without feeling uncomfortable with me. I have made things for other people, mailed care packages, and sometimes stopped by just to listen. Doing these things makes me feel good. Once, I was extremely ticked off and stressed out, I went to a craft store and got some dried flowers and other stuff. When I I got home from work, I made four little baskets and several magnets with little inspirational messages. I only knew who I was going to give two of the baskets to when I started, but within two months all of my little gifts had found a home.

So, not everybody is appreciative of my efforts - big deal. I do it because I have fun doing it and it makes me feel good.

THIS IS WHO I AM!!!!!And I'm not going to stop doing it because it makes someone else uncomfortable.

I have also decided that I will hug my husband whenever I feel like it. I stopped doing that several years back, because my husband told my therapist that he considered it a method of manipulation. Ever since then, I've been afraid to show spontaneous affection, because I didn't want to offend him. Well, tough! I like giving people hugs and my dear husband is just going to to have to learn how to deal with it. I have already warn him of this coming increase of affection.

As I have said, this is who I am and if someone can't handle it, then they can just go jump in a lake--the swim will do them good.

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