Firebird1976's blog

Love others as you love yourself...

Abusive relationships are borne out of our insecurities: if one is insecure, one will search for an abusive partner in order to be punished. Or, one will become abusive to make up for those insecurities.

This is true not only of romantic liaisons, but of all human relations.

Ergo: One must learn to love oneself. To accept one's weaknesses, accept that one has them, or work on them. Or one can never have meaningful relationships with significant others or indeed with the rest of humanity.

Or, to quote the alcoholic's (the ultimate in insecurity and abusiveness) mantra:

God grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Yes, this does mean we are all abusive to some extent. We all hurt one another one way or another, at one time or another. Which is why we must learn to forgive each other as well as our own selves.

Learn to love yourself, and you may learn to love others, and be loved.

Demeaning your enemies does not make you a better person

PAIN

How I loathe thee, let me count the ways.

I hate how you sneak into my dreams in the middle of the night, and I regard you as as an intruder, you don't belong in this dream: I try to kick you out, but you just won't go. Finally, you are so insistent, that I wake up, in the middle of a raging migraine, and I know it's already too late: too late for the medications to kill you before you become excruciating agony. I take my pills, knowing I will be screaming in pain, because the screams manage to push the pain to the flesh beneath my face, so that my head can have a little respite from you. I wait. I wait, and every minute is an eternity while I wait for you to go away. An hour is impossibly long, how can anyone survive for a whole hour with you?

You stab me, left right, right right, middle all around; you make my eye tear and swell, my nose leaks. There isn't enough ice in the world to cool my head. Just the right side. I put my head out in the rain, it soothes, for a second. I stick my head in the iced up snow. In the freezer. I take a cold shower, sit in the car with the a/c pointed just to the right side of my head. Then it's too cold, and the cold, instead of soothing, aggravates the pain. Sometimes walking helps, rocking helps. Laying down or sitting up, there are no rules, I have to find out what works. This time. For a few moments, before you decide that what I do will not help me, it will hurt me. I scream, I cry. Bizarrely, reading helps. What kind of game is this? I chose not to play, and the rules change constantly, but here I am playing, victim to your every whim. The darkness always helps though. Light and sound are my enemy. They feed you. They stab at me.

There is a thunderstorm in my head, and I don't know how to stop it. I used to be able to make pain go away, by ignoring it, by being stronger than it: there is no ignoring you, though, is there? You are impossibly demanding.

The medication kicks in: it constricts my blood vessels, but not only in my head, and they touch my head last. The rest of my body weakens, I feel my blood vessels thinning. There is a pain in my chest, I am told it is normal, but is it? I hate that the drugs I use to deal with you are almost as bad as you. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Today, I have taken 2, the maximum dose, unless I want to chance a heart attack. And you are still here.

I hate you, for ruling and ruining my life. Everything revolves around you, and I am no longer in control of my actions. I find it bizarre how I still manage to think: I need to work, I need to clean my room, I want to watch tv, see a friend, see my love. But I can't because you are there. The simplest task is forbidden to me because of you. I can't think, I can't remember, I know that while raging through my mind, you are destroying it. I lose words. I forget things.

Now, I will have to start a new medication that sounds worse than you: I will lose yet more words. It will interfere with my birth control, so I can't make love to my love the way I want to. I will be angry, angrier than usual. I will be sick, I will lose a ton of weight, and I may not get it back. I will look sick. I will be dizzy, will I be able to drive? Will I be able to work? Will it change my personality? Will I lose my love?

The few hours that my head is completely pain free are rare, I cherish them. How funny what we find ourselves grateful for when what we take for granted is taken away.

This was written on March 21st, 2009

I drove down to Phoenix's grave today. It was a good long drive, much better with the new car. I took the wrong exit, and promptly got lost, but after the initial trauma I realised it did not matter: the trip, and enjoying that trip is what matters, not how long it takes to get there, and eventually I knew I would find my way again. As in life: i took a few wrong turns in the past, but they did make the trip more interesting, and getting flustered solves nothing. Life has no lesser value because of it either.

The trees are bare. I wondered what the cemetery looked like during that snowstorm earlier this month (6 inches), with all the graves gently covered by a soft white blanket.

I saw a movie last night (reign of fire - awful): I quickly realised I had already seen it, but could not remember most of the movie. Then i remembered that i'd seen it with Steve. I started to piece the memory together: I had forgotten most of it. That we had had an argument. That he was most likely drunk or on valium (those were the worst). As for the rest, I'm speculating: I must've gone upstairs and missed the middle of the movie; at some point I must've gone downstairs and sat down with him to watch the rest of the movie (a memory pops up: Steve calling me or seeing me come downstairs and asking me to sit with him, acting affectionate, the argument completely erased from his memory, but that could've happened any other time. All the arguments were alike after all: insane).

I needed to see that movie, just so this memory could resurface, if all broken up. Like an archeology dig: finding pieces of crockery and wondering what must've happened. And I needed this memory just so i could remember what the fighting was like, so I could never forget again. Talking with Steve has been so nice since we are no longer together that I almost entertained the idea of getting back together with him. But I thank God that something inside me still recoils every time he proposes that idea, even though in my head I might be okay with it. Now i have this memory to help me never be tempted again.

So much of me died. I have ideas in my head that I know come from him, ideas I used to argue against vehemently, but that I now accept as my own. Have I just grown up and find myself agreeing with him, or have I been brainwashed? But maybe nothing died, maybe it's just buried. Steve would say that all humans were evil, while i believed that everyone has goodness in them. I now see more of the horrors that people inflict each other, and I see why he holds that view. I was naive, but I hope i never lose some of that optimism, some of that faith that while evil, we are still capable of miracles. We're not all awful. My friends prove it to me every day. I was brainwashed into believing that the US is evil. (I can't believe I had to write that I ever held such a view): it's not perfect but it's not that bad. And it was here, after all, that I was allowed to restart my life, to heal, to rebuild myself, to be reborn.

Dear God, I never want to be Steve's girlfriend or his wife, ever! Friendship is ok, no more. The idea that I should ever be in such a toxic relationship, hating my life, myself, my family, it scares me. I have learned to forgive him, but I cannot live like that ever again.

It feels good to sit at the cemetery and write. It's cold but the coldness feels good, it reminds me I'm alive. I have been needing to come here for a long time now... on the way in, there was a large branch blocking the dirt road that leads to this small pet cemetery. I almost decided to just park there, just because i felt embarrassed to drive through the branch. But i wanted to sit in my car next to Phoenix (it affords some privacy from the highway right next to the cemetery) and eat my lunch there, and listen to some music. So i drove through. I know it sounds like a banal anecdote, but i need these small lessons to get me through life. Don't be such a coward, don't live in fear of being laughed at, don't put yourself last just because some people might snicker at you don't live by other people's judgment, live by your own in your life, it's the only one that really matters. I felt that if I didn't drive though that branch then I would have no right to be happy.

I could stay here all day, it's so peaceful. I wish i could come here often. It's so far it's like a pilgrimage. The long drive allows me to think. It reminds me that i am in control of my life. It becomes a spiritual journey, and at the end of it i feel reborn, like a Phoenix. Thank you Phoenix, for saving my life. Thank you, God, for bringing him and the other cats into my life to help save me from myself.

And as i offer this small prayer, the sun finally warms my back.