Molting

[I love how I write in my blogs while I'm at work...hmmm...is this how my body takes a vacation despite myself?]

It's important to listen to one's own body. Today, or actually throughout the night last night as well, I woke up with an acute, pulsing pain radiating from my lower back/hip/upper buttock and down the back of my left leg, almost to my knee. It didn't take long for me to determine that it was probably 'sciatica' and that I should make an appointment with my chiropractor ASAP, so that's what I did - I have one for later this evening. I also found my back brace/wrap and have been wearing it for most of the day so far. It is certainly helping, but hasn't completely erradicated the pain. [Update: I went to the chiropractor, he adjusted me and I'm not in pain anymore. People who don't "believe" in chiropractors are morons. Ok, that might be a bit judgmental/harsh...I mean, they're ignorant - and in this case, ignorance is not bliss.]

I'm trying to listen to my body in more ways than just to help with my physical pain. In recent years, I've noticed that my body is very sensitive to how I feel, whether or not I consciously know how I feel, and it lets me know in both subtle and obvious ways. I'm just now learning how to read the subtle physical manifestations of my internal pain and turmoil. I shall explain...

I've had a couple of posts now where I've directly written about my love addiction problems. In addition, or actually within the "love addiction" diagnosis, I have accepted that I am a "co-dependent." I have purchased Pia Mellody's book, Facing Codependence: What It Is, Where It Comes From, How It Sabotages Our Lives, as well as the accompanying workbook, Breaking Free: A Recovery Workbook for Facing Codependence. I've started the workbook and I'm quickly reading the book so I can do the exercises in the workbook properly. But DAMN - it's hard. However, I know how to do hard work so that doesn't frighten me. I know how to set and meet goals, so I'm pretty confident I can do this recovery. It's still daunting, though, because it's like shedding the skin I've had and grown since I can remember - it's just a huge task and I don't even know what the new skin will be like - it'll be something I've never known.

What has been happening to me lately has been remarkable - I'm tempted to say, "unexplainable", but I think the explanation is that I'm doing the work (my therapist even said this). I started going through the "withdrawal" a few weeks ago, then it seemed it would snowball when the girl I had been dating told me she didn't want to date anymore and I seriously thought I was gonna fall into one of my "major depressive episodes". However, less than a week later I was already feeling better - calm, serene and like I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, you know? And now, for the last few days, I've been wanting to go dancing, even! I've been listening to some great new music that I discovered via that Pandora app, I've been downloading the songs from iTunes and I also started a music blog. I am even feeling inspired to create some music and maybe even share it on my blog! Eventually, I'd like to do some performing again.

I guess I feel like I am listening to my body more - for instance, I ask myself, "am I ready to do such and such" or I imagine myself doing it and I read my physical feelings. If my heart starts to beat faster and I start to get nervous/anxious or feel small and insignificant, I think "I'll hold off on doing that for now", but if my physical sensations feel warm, my heart beat is normal and I feel like the same old me - strong and confident - then I think "I'm clear to go ahead". Of course, this is not necessarily always an option - I mean, sometimes we're faced with these choices and the option is do it or lose your job, etc., then of course you have to get yourself to that place where you can do it without falling apart, or letting it be detrimental to you. That's all about calming oneself down and I know some techniques on that. Mostly, though, my issue right now is in trying to figure out how to experience and share my reality moderately. In part, this means I must recognize what I'm experiencing - how I'm feeling. To do that, I'm listening to my body, because I can't trust my mind. I'm too intelligent for my own good! ha! What I mean by that is that I know what I should feel or what would be the healthy way to feel, but that is not always the reality of how I feel... I guess that might be obvious to others, but to me...well, I've grown up to be a perfectionist. I've grown up with the concept that if you know what's best, then you do it. There was no room for imperfection - imperfection led to pain.

Now I am trying to accept my imperfections. By listening to myself and allowing myself to feel what I actually feel, rather than denying it because I believe I should feel a different way, I am becoming more confident in my own feelings - because I'm valuing them? In any case, maybe because I let myself feel like absolute ass-wipe shit for the past few weeks and I didn't try to run away from those feelings or deny myself them, maybe that's why they're diminishing?

It's not like I never allowed myself to feel what I felt despite believing I should feel a different way - I usually eventually caved into my feelings - but I think I used to get so upset with myself for feeling that way that it would be like a downward spiral and just the fact that I was feeling like that (usually a negative feeling), I'd actually make myself feel even worse, so much that the feelings would overwhelm me and become unbearable (I guess that's 'shame'). All of this is described in Pia Mellody's book on codependence. It's really due to childhood abuse, even though I don't believe my childhood caretakers meant to abuse me nor do I believe they even knew they were doing it (except maybe my Dad, some of the stuff he did would be obvious to anyone, although I'm sure we all minimalized it). So part of this whole process for me is recognizing this abuse, mourning/grieving the cost it had on me and setting it free in the form of forgiveness (of the abuser as well as of myself).

It was Pride last weekend here in San Francisco. Sunday is the Pride parade and usually the most fun activities at the festival which takes up all of the civic center and a few blocks surrounding it. Pride in San Francisco is humongous - I mean, SF is the gay capitol of the world! (pretty much) But Pride in SF has become so huge, so corporate, so not terribly gay anymore, that it's become more of what feels like an obligation than fun for me - especially because I get very anxious in crowds. Also, the last two Pride Sundays I had were with my ex-girlfriend where we fought and broke-up. In fact, last year I was so angry at her for ditching me at the parade (for no apparent reason) that I broke up with her right in the middle of the street, in front of her BDSM/kink community tents, telling her that I didn't love her anymore and that it was truly over (and yet it wasn't...)! I was so angry that I was shaking. I had to go up to a medical marijuana booth and buy a medical marijuana lollipop (they didn't have anything else) so I could calm down. That was a really dark day for me. I behaved like someone I didn't even want to know. I wanted to kill myself when I got home. Instead, I got so f-ed up that I passed out. So this year, although I felt like I was supposed to want to go and party, I didn't go to Pride Sunday. I went to work and back home. I did, though, go to a local BBQ so I could meet some new people. It was a good day - just my pace. I felt good about my decisions. I listened to my body and followed the path that felt the most peaceful and comfortable to me. I was rewarded with genuine, warm and sweet feelings. Yay!

I'm Like Me

I'm single - really single - again.

I dated a girl briefly - 2.5 months or so. She made it clear from the beginning that it was not going to be a "serious" relationship and that she was definitely on the rebound from her recent break-up from a four year relationship with her first girlfriend (at the age of 37 - she said she's "slow", I'd say more of a "late bloomer"). Anyway, so she said she was dating other people at the same time, but that she's not like that normally. She said she's like me normally - naturally monogamous, easily attaching, etc. She said all of these things. And that she liked me a lot and that she wasn't having sex with anyone else.

Until right before she left for 2-3 weeks after her semester ended about a month ago. She had sex with some other girl that she was dating. That's funny cause she totally turned cool around that same time towards me. I noticed it cause I'm very sensitive to people's actions, which reveal their true feelings. She told me this the other day to explain why she cannot date me anymore. She said she felt badly after she had sex with this other girl - that it made her feel like she wasn't being true to herself cause that's not who she is. Well, that's interesting cause...as it turns out, she did that and therefore, that's who she is. At least, that's all I know her as. My problem is that I believed her when she said she was like me - cause I wanted her to be. But she wasn't - she isn't.

I'm like me.

I'm going through withdrawal from my love addiction right now. It's horrendously painful. It sounds ridiculous - withdrawal from love addiction? Come on! But...it's almost as bad as one of my major depressive episodes. Except that I know it will be over at some point, which is not how it feels when I'm going through a major depressive episode - although, admittedly, this has felt pretty daunting at times, as if I'll never get through it. The only reason I know it is temporary is because I have Pia Mellody's book, "Facing Love Addiction", which explains that this 'withdrawal' is part of the recovery process - as long as I don't cave to the feelings and try to do something about them.

In fact, I've decided I'm going to set the goal of getting through this "love addiction" to a healthy-enough place in the next six months such that I could try dating again at that time, hopefully. The problem with that is that I don't tend to feel it for many people. But maybe that's all part of the love addiction, cause apparently love addicts are attracted to unavailable people - Pia Mellody calls them "Love Avoidants".

I didn't think this girl that I was just dating briefly was a "love avoidant" - I actually thought she was pretty healthy. However, now that I really think about it, she did display some of the characteristics - unavailability, lots of boundaries. Maybe she isn't always that way, maybe my "love addiction" behaviors pushed her that way, but that's how she was with me and therefore, that's not healthy for me. (..not to mention my own unhealthy behaviors...despite the fact that I tried not to display them. I guess I'm just not quite there yet.)

So I actually want to be friends with her, for real. I like her as a person. She is very cute and can certainly pull at my attractions....but if I'm going to be friends with her I want to let go of the notion of ever having a romantic, dating relationship with her again, even though I wouldn't say never to the idea - I just need to let go of it. So I actually did something I've never done before: I told her I needed some time to deal with my feelings for her before I can be just her friend. That was hard butI have to say that I am proud of myself. I'm trying to do what's best for me - and I need more friends!

Waiting for Me

Someone once called me "a big ball of sadness." Full disclosure - it was an ex-girlfriend. One of my fears is that I am and will always be that.

It seems that sometimes I'm always on the verge of tears. Clearly that sentence is a contradiction in terms, but it does sum up how it feels for me.

Lately I'm trying to unearth some serious demons inside me that hold me back from getting the thing I've always wanted just by the shear need I have for it - to meet, fall in love, and have a sustained, long-lasting, healthy relationship with another healthy, beautiful woman. The truth is that I'm not as healthy as I want to be or really, need to be for this to happen. Also, I have to stop wanting it - needing it - so badly. That's the hardest part. I cannot lie to myself so what can I do to truly feel something I don't really feel or know how to feel? Well, that's where the therapist comes in, hopefully, right?

My therapist diagnosed me as a "love addict." Feel free to look it up. I don't feel like defining it cause if I were to define it I'd say a "love addict" is a spineless, hopeless, selfless (in the true meaning of the word), sick, pathetic human being (at a stretch) that will do anything - endure anything - just to be loved and to be "in love." I hope it's needless to say but I sure as hell don't like the idea of me being a "love addict." However...although I don't think I'm the extreme case, I have come to the acceptance that yes, indeed, I am a love addict (as much as it sickens me). Sadly, too, I've been told it before - by a different therapist (two other therapists, actually, who were also the best other therapists I ever had.) So three therapists agree: I am a mother-f-ing love addict. Yay. Woop. Ee.

So the only good thing about the diagnosis is that there is a method of "recovery" from love addiction. The thing is that I have worked on many of the symptoms before through cognitive behavioral therapy - you know, when you actively re-direct your obsessive thoughts, keep yourself busy doing things that help you re-focus on yourself instead of on the other, work on self-esteem, etc. I actually progressed quite a bit with that therapy - I thought, in fact, that I was "healed", in a way. Clearly, however, I wasn't. All that had to happen was: 1) move 3000 miles away from where I lived for my first 28 years of life 2) have my heart broken by a girl that I truly believed would become my wife 3) not have a good therapist to help me for 3 years 4) meet another girl that I was super-attracted to and who seemed to fulfill my fantasies... and voila! I was sucked back into the love addiction for two years.

But the truth is that I never really was all that "healed"! I had just learned a bunch of techniques on how to appear healthy to others. Inside my head and heart, however, I was still the same broken girl I'd always been. I don't want to be broken anymore.

So bring it. Let the demons come up - let me face them so I can expunge of them forever! I want to stab them like I sometimes think about stabbing myself in the face.

Lessons Learned this Week

1. One person who I expected to be there for me in an emergency wasn't. Two people that I didn't really expect were...
2. My beloved pets are going to die someday. I will have to continue to live after they do, if only to care for the surviving ones. I need to accept it and I will - but it will be easier to accept if I feel that they've lived long and happy lives. I need to let go of our "pact" - they will not be able to live as long as I do. I can only hope that I can help them to live happy and joyous lives, full of love.
3. Certain of my neighbors have become good friends. Sometimes just being friendly turns into true compassion.
4. My issues with Ph.D. vs. M.D. expertise (and respect) need to be resolved. I'm not an M.D., nor am I a V.D.M.. I'm intelligent and a good scientist, but I'm not a clinician and I should never think I know how to be one without any training. I've been humbled.
5. Love trumps shame.
6. Even my mother cannot always be there for me the way I'd like her to be.
7. Sometimes I know what I need to do better than my parents. It's time to start trusting myself.

My Prayers

I don't pray to God or Goddess. I don't pray to Jesus. I've never met them and I cannot feel a connection to someone(s) or something(s) I don't even know exists for sure. I do, however, have monologues with my sister, Jodi, and my good friend, Abby, who both died at the ages of 19, 18 and 15 years ago, respectively. Mostly, the monologues are in my head but sometimes I accidentally say something out loud. Sometimes it's in a written form, usually in the form of a letter that, of course, never gets sent.

Today I prayed to Abby. Abigail Bates Rinehart. I named my cat, Bates, after her. I got him in 1998, two years after her death. Well, he was born on November 15, 1998. I think I may not have actually gotten him until after the new year, but it was love at first sight/hold. He clearly wanted ME as his mom. I think Abby told him to go with me. Maybe. Who cares if she did or didn't, I'd like to think she did so there. It comforts me. They have a connection in my mind so that's all that really matters. And he's been with me ever since. He is my baby. Bates. My handsome boy-cat - beautiful white long-haired fur with gray tips (it's called "blue point"). He's extremely affectionate and sweet. When I've cried and cried over broken hearts or whatever, he'd come up to me and lick my tears away...(ok, granted, he may have been more interested in the salty flavor, but still...it felt very loving and sweet.)

Bates is at the vet right now. He's not doing so well. They have him on dialysis and are watching him overnight. [update: he was not on dialysis - they were just flushing his system with fluids via IV - dialysis would be $15,000 and they'd have to send him down to San Diego or something!] He has a mixed bacterial/yeast infection in his ears. I gave him approximately 50mg of ibuprofen for the pain cause he seemed to be in a lot of pain over the weekend and then almost immediately afterwards I realized I made a mistake and looked it up online to find that even at small doses, ibuprofen can be toxic to cats! So I brought him to the emergency vet on Saturday. The animal poison control said that the dose (for his weight) was under the kidney failure dose but since he's 12, they wanted to do some blood work to make sure his kidneys were functioning normally and at that time they were. However, they said to bring him back 48 hours later to check again. Well, today, Monday, is 48 hours later and I brought him to another vet emergency and they did more blood work, but this time they said he seemed to be showing signs of toxicity. Also, he has anemia and may have some other chronic issues that could explain his semi-frequent vomiting. So tomorrow they're going to run more tests. It all worries me immensely and of course costs a small fortune. Well, to me, at least. So far it's already at $1350. It's probably going to be another $800 on top of that, if they keep him another night.

I prayed to Abby to have him pull through. I don't even know if she has any way to help but I still prayed to her. I want him to have a full life - I feel like he should have at least 6-8 more years with me! I'm moving to a place with a yard (well, hopefully - it's one of my stipulations) for him! I want him to be able to have his adventures outside that he always seems to be dreaming about! I'm not ready to lose him....not that I'll ever be but it'll be easier to let him go when he's already enjoyed a long, wonderful life!

The night before I found out that Abby died (so it was either the night that she died or the night before she died), I prayed to my sister, Jodi. I also tried praying to Jesus and God if they existed and were listening. I don't really know who they are but I know who my sister is and she's a loving being - always was! I pleaded, I begged. To no avail. But I know it's not my sister's fault Abby died. I don't even care about blaming anyone, though, cause what's the point? She's gone and blaming someone (such as the doctor who may have done her last two radiation treatments too close together, thus frying her lungs) won't bring her back. Anyway, doctors are only human, too. It's just hard to swallow when their fuck-up leads to the death of someone you love. Also, radiation therapy is pretty brutal. It's like taking an axe to a house to kill an ant infestation or something. It's just not very specific - but neither were most of the chemotherapies back then. Although, they're not that much better now, either.

Medicine is a lot less specific than people think - we theorize how specific it should be, but we hardly know what other things than the primary target is being hit and even if the primary target is the primary hit, we also don't completely know if that's specific to the disease, either! Unless we do - unless it's a microbe or parasite or something foreign to the body - but that's not cancer. Cancer is the body gone wrong. Or really, just gone "right" but pushed to the edge of "right". I mean, it's really just micro-evolution. Our cells are just stressed to the level of selection for the fittest in that stressful situation, and then the selection is made - the fittest cell lives longer, at least long enough to have progeny, right? That's the definition of "fitness". But most cells are not supposed to have progeny. Most cells are done dividing and are busy doing stuff. It's when they're pushed to divide for reasons not entirely known - maybe repair - such as in the lungs, repairing the epithelium lining the airways due to the toxins and reactive oxygen species (ROS) in smoke which cause the cells to die. So cells are induced to divide more and then selected for their ability to divide under stressful situations - thus selecting cells with heritable aberrations in the expression of certain genes that may regulate the cell cycle, cell death, cell migration including adhesion, etc. Also, some cancers are, at least partially, due to heritable genetic mutations - but usually only heterozygous mutations cause the homozygous ones probably would not be viable. In any case, that's also just evolution at work - survival of the fittest. Unfortunately, people with those mutations are not as "fit" as people without them. If we step back and look at it from a population's perspective - we want those genes to be selected out of the population! We don't want more people with those genes! But...then in some cases, maybe we do, so they're heterozygous mutations (one allele inherited from one parent has it while the other from the other parent doesn't and may require that the other allele be mutated spontaneous and then, when under selective pressure, it becomes homozygous and thus that cell has a major advantage micro-evolutionarily! Anyway, so that's how cancer happens. It's part genetic and part environmental or sometimes it's almost entirely environmental that changes the readout of the genetic makeup - or even directly mutates it (as in the case with UV light - it causes cross-links in the DNA).

Wow. That was a bit of a tangent. It's so much easier for me to talk about biology than to talk about loss. I really miss my sister and Abby. It's really painful to think about how I can never just hang out with them again. It's also been a long time since they were around so the pain is different. It's just a sadness now. Just memories. It sucks - I would really like to have more, to be able to experience more of them. I don't want to lose Bates. I want more with him. He's my buddy. He's my boy-cat. He makes me feel like a girl sometimes cause he's the only boy in my life on a daily basis - I mean, boy that's close to me. Well, he's a cat and kinda effeminate sometimes although also masculine. I don't know. I really love to cuddle with him and kiss him and he kisses me! (no tongue! Well, not my tongue!)

Anyway, I guess I'm coming full-circle here. I prayed to Abby. I just looked at her yearbook page again to double-check that I spelled her name correctly. She has "Abigail B. Rinehart" in the yearbook. But I know what the B. stands for. It makes me feel kinda special. Even if I'm not. Or ever was to her but I'm pretty sure she knows how special she was to me and maybe that means something to her now. I will have to write the post about why I'm pretty convinced that our consciousness exists even after our body dies. I guess I would say our consciousness is equivalent to our soul. And not only that - well, there's so much about it but really I mean to say that I know that Abby had a life-review when she died and she would've felt how I felt when she saw/felt the parts with me in them. Maybe she would have seen/felt how I felt when I told her I was gay....and she thought I was playing a joke on her cause she's bi but I didn't know that! I had a crush on her! But I was dating April...and she had a boyfriend, too...Greg. Yeah, and he was in a band. I think their band was named "Rail". Yeah, and Abby quoted from a song of theirs in her senior yearbook page quote! I had two U2 quotes but I didn't attribute them to U2 or Bono, per se, I used his real name - Paul Hewson! Aw man, now I'm blanking on Edge's real name - Dave Evans...got it! HA! And I just confirmed it on Google...

Ok, to be fair and honest, I've been getting progressively stoned as I've been writing this. So it may not be the best post ever but now I've decided to conclude it. Essentially I pray to Abby that Bates pulls through and gets better and lives for at least 6-8 more happy years with me!

River Runs Through Us

On a different, yet similar, note from my post about River Phoenix, I thought about my deep feeling of connection with River Phoenix for some time and I have come to the consideration that perhaps when we feel strongly that we see ourselves in another person - their personality, their facial expressions, the way they display their emotions, even maybe similar physical features, too - maybe we literally are seeing a little bit of ourselves in them. We are a considerably homogenous genus (Homo) - there is only one of our species in existence anymore - sapiens. Other genuses have multiple species such as dogs/wolves - Canis familiaris (dog), Canis latrans (coyotes), Canis Lupis (wolf), Canis mesomelas (jackal). But us humans only have the one, Homo sapiens sapiens. Apparently, there were two other subspecies - archaic and neandertalensis as well as other Homo species. However, these species and subspecies all died out 30,000-1,600,000 years ago. Back to my point: we are a considerably homogenous genus/species. We are 98.4-99.4% identical in genetic sequence to chimpanzees. Uh-oh...I just ran into a snag in my thesis here - this paper that I just referred to for my sequence identity suggests that chimps should also be considered part of the Homo genus because of these identical sequences. Well, that really does throw a snag into my argument except I don't know how well-accepted that new classification is. I don't keep up with taxonomy or phylogeny research.

In any case, my point was more about how similar we are to each other - humans - and that we, therefore, easily share many of the very small variations in our DNA that give rise to our subtle differences in characteristics (which include personality, facial expressions and emotions as well as physical features that we can see or susceptibilities to diseases) even if we cannot easily connect our family lineages to each other. Therefore, I hope my train of thought is clear: maybe when I look at pictures of River Pheonix or watch him in movies or read interviews with him and I feel like I can see a little bit of myself in him...well, maybe there is a little bit of him in me, you know? Purely genetically speaking, of course.

If we agree with my suggestion above, the next obvious question is: what makes us the different beings that we are if we share nearly 100% of our DNA sequences with each other (it's somewhere in the 99.99% range, I think, although I would honestly need to do some research on that - but if Chimps are up to 99.4% identical to us in DNA sequence, then it's certainly higher than that in our similarities between individual humans)? It's an intriguing question - of course, it includes the assumption that our DNA determines who we are, which there is ample evidence that is not the case - take identical twins, for example - they have almost 100% identical DNA sequence (except the DNA in lymphocytes which need to change in order to produce the diversity of antibodies made in order to protect against exogenous agents in the body and mount an immune response) - they still have different personalities. - sometimes wildly different! We know that personalities are a combination of something innate (encoded in our DNA?) and experience - there are anecdotal cases of people who have almost complete amnesia and do not remember who they are or any of their memories but who still know how to talk, write, all motor skills - people from their life (who they knew before) describe that these people have somewhat different personalities from before they had the amnesia which suggests that your personality is shaped by your experiences and memories formed from them as well as whatever is innate.

Anyway, these are just thoughts, you know? I'll write more about the concepts of personality and what makes us who we are - our consciousness? - in a different post. Time to post this one!

Slightly Embarrassed

Hi, I'm a wee bit embarrassed about my previous post regarding Charlie Sheen. Here's why:

1. I predicted that he was near death and he hasn't died yet.
2. We all may have been taken for a ride - it seems he knows how much he's worth regarding pop culture, voyeurism, the paparazzi and how to milk it. He milked it and will probably continue to milk it.
3. It's just a bit embarrassing to be caught up in pop culture trash. I am only human, though.

So that's all I'm going to say regarding C.S. I don't really care what he does with his life, I really just find it disgusting that we, as a culture, get caught up in the media train-wrecks that are shoved in our face. I wish we were stronger than that temptation to look and stare, but I guess we are not. At least, I'm mostly ashamed that I am not.