Subtle Explosion

It's called an oxymoron.

What I mean by it is clear as day to me: it took only the most subtle, slightest movement in the corner of my peripheral vision to quietly ignite or, rather, diffuse the bomb standing next to me this past Saturday. Basically, another girl who is not the girlfriend of my most recent OOMA (object of my affection) came so close to my OOMA's face, almost to a kiss, and suddenly I knew. She's a cheater. I knew she was a liar, but only knew that she had lied to me and who am I, anyway, right? If I'm a worthless nothing, then lying to me means nothing. But a cheater - now that is proof of her despicable character! Because it's not me she's cheating on or cheated on - it's someone else, someone I don't care for, either, but at least I can appreciate the pain that this information may have or might still cause her.

She led me to believe that the reason she ended our friendship - a friendship she claimed was so special to her that she called me her "best friend" - was because I crossed a boundary by developing feelings for her. I didn't do anything about the feelings, except that when I was away in Cambridge for a month I had a bit of a mental breakdown and wanted her friendship - leaned on her friendship - more than usual, and I got upset that she wasn't returning my texts and phone calls. We argued about it on two different occasions. Again, the whole time, I thought it was all me, all my fault. And she encouraged that belief that it was all my fault.

Whereas I am in a constant state of re-evaluation and personal assessment (more so than usual  over this past year), she is without integrity, without true self-reflection, thus, without the ability to truly grow from her mistakes because, of course, she does not recognize them or claim them. Ok, then, I have figured her out - finally. I have gotten the resolution that I needed.

Since I started this post, I have found out more information. Since it's from the source (her), which is unreliable, I take it with a grain of salt - I have no idea how true or false it is, but must consider it as part of the pool of limited information that I have received. So she may not have actually cheated on her girlfriend - or, rather, ex-girlfriend - because they broke up at some point since I last knew her as a friend. When I found out this new tidbit of information, I immediately went back into a state of confusion - trying to reconcile it with other information I have that I know to be solid and true. Then I realized something. It's not the particular pieces of information that are the revelation here - it's the fact that she controls what information I am able to have (my therapist suggested that she probably does this with everyone, not just me - that, really, this is not a personal affront to me because this is her M.O.), she withholds information or blatantly lies to me, and then when I try to confront her about anything that may or may not have happened in the past, she claims something different from what I have known and understood to be true. This, I have come to see, is her trying to warp my reality - similar to the way a heavy object warps spacetime, creating the force of gravity. My sickness in it is that I haven't been able to see that she warps my reality (she and other girls like her - other "love avoidants"), and I fight to keep my sanity within this warped perception. It's this warping of my reality that angers me the most. How dare she try to control what reality I experience!

So it doesn't matter if she cheated or didn't cheat on her ex-girlfriend. What I felt above was a validation that our falling out wasn't all my fault - that this is a pattern of hers. She had to have at least been "intriguing" (a term used in SLAA to describe the flirtation stage of a relationship, before sexual consummation) with this other girl (who also happens to be the ex-girlfriend of hers prior to her most recent ex and is also on my rugby team) while she was still in a relationship with her ex. The other part is that I saw her about three weeks ago at that music festival (by shear "coincidence") and she was with her ex, holding hands, in fact, so it would appear that they were still together then. But, even if she never technically cheated - as defined by having a sexual interaction with someone other than their partner to whom they have made a monogamous commitment - it is that same type of "catch and release" thing that she's doing with all of us. So I do not feel anger towards the other girls involved,  except that her recent ex treated me poorly, as well, so I don't feel anything positive towards her, either. But I sympathize with my rugby teammate. I was present in March when my teammate was talking about wanting to prove to her ex that she was "independent" enough now (I hadn't known for sure that the ex that she was referring to was my most recent OOMA, although I knew they had dated and thus was one of her exes) which made me feel sad for her. That's the sort of thing I used to do for girls - try to change in whatever way they wanted me to in order to be with them - but now I understand that was part of my illness, my love addiction. I feel sorry that my teammate felt like there was something wrong with her just as she is, the way I used to feel and sometimes still do when I'm rejected.

You see, love addiction is much more prevalent in the general population than most people know. In fact, I'm pretty sure that most people don't even know what it is or that they think it's a joke.  Obviously, to me, it's no fucking joke. It's hurt me badly and has caused me to experience deep loneliness throughout most of my adult life so far. It's why I have not been able to maintain a stable, healthy romantic relationship in my adulthood. It's also what led to my arrest in 2002. Love addicts are typically attracted to "love avoidants", a term coined by Pia Mellody. Love avoidants are just as sick with codependency issues as love addicts, but they deal with them in complementary ways, so the two tend to get together in a co-addicted relationship.

I'm tired of being attracted to love avoidants - as tired as I am of being a love addict! So I've been looking back and trying to see where the first clues were that I overlooked. I'm pretty sure I spotted it early on, but, again, due to my fantasies being triggered and not recognizing them as fantasy, I fell for it again. This is what I believe happened:

1. About a year ago I started facing my codependency and love addiction issues head-on.
2. Towards the end of July last year, I started going to CoDA meetings (Codependents' Anonymous).
3. I started working "the steps" of codependency recovery through Pia Mellody's very detailed and difficult workbook based on her book, Facing Codependence. [I got to step 3 when my therapist at the time basically told me I couldn't move on until I completely gave my desire to be in a relationship up to my 'higher power', something I said I really didn't know if I could ever do completely. Seriously, can you? Maybe you can if/because you're already in a relationship. I don't believe anyone that says otherwise. Everyone I know wants to find that "one true", loving,  partner to build their life with - whether or not they want a family, they definitely want a partner with whom to share the joys and sadnesses of their life. I think it's only natural. In any case, so I got stuck on Step 3. And haven't continued because I don't want to be false. But I'm feeling like it's time to resume...]
4. Then a friend of mine suggested I return to playing rugby with our old team, so I said ok. I re-joined the team at the end of August. She got pregnant and didn't rejoin the team, afterall. It was fine, though, because I'm a big girl and can make friends on my own. I thought and still think it was a good idea of me to do that - rejoin rugby - because it gives me both a new social outlet (like an instantaneous family, actually, which I already kinda had but hadn't been hanging out with), and another outlet for pent-up energy (a seriously effective outlet).
5. At rugby, I was very open and vocal about how I just started recovery on my codependency and love addiction issues, making it clear that I'm not dating (I was in a 6 month, actively no-dating period at that time). It was, in part, for the benefit of letting people know not to pursue me in that way, but also, in part, for the benefit of letting people know about codependency and love addiction - and give anyone who may be having similar issues the opportunity to see someone else dealing with them head-on, and maybe, if they wanted/needed, they could talk to me about it.
6. Two different women on the team showed a slightly personalized interest in getting to know me - in being my "friend". They both kept saying "we should hang out". Both innocuous, in and of themselves, but the timing of it and the level of personal interest seemed a little out-of-place for me, despite the fact that I absolutely loved the feeling of attention and that they were into me before even getting to know me that well. [Right here, this is the feeling I need to remember - the feeling I had when they each kept offering to hang out and be my "friend" - both the feeling of unease as well as the slight 'high' I felt from feeling wanted, desired, as if they could see how great I am just from the small snipits of information they had.] The thing is - it triggered fantasy for me, as you may recognize in what I just wrote - that last clause: "as if they could see how great I am just from the small snipits of information they had."

   Reality check: it had nothing to do with how great I am - they couldn't see that. And...ironically, they never will in this type of co-addicted interaction.

   Truth: my understanding of the dynamic is that they saw my vulnerability in my announcement that I'm not dating - and didn't think further about why I'm not dating. They saw a fish that was saying, 'you can't catch me'. Of course, I was also saying 'not right now while I'm just beginning to deal with issues that make this part of my life unhealthy and painful'. But..those things didn't register to them because all they saw was a challenge that, for their sense of self-worth, they felt they needed to conquer. [I know, this seems harsh, but I'm just applying Pia Mellody's theory, which seems to fit to an astonishing degree!]

7. I was turned off almost immediately by one of the two girls because I heard she was in an open-relationship, something I have had experience with and it rarely works out well. I didn't want to get involved in that sort of thing again. Plus, to be honest, she wasn't really my "type"; she has dark hair and also has a doctorate. Turns out, I like blondes who have had "a lot of life" (read: trauma) to go through (and I almost always assume that it's allowed them to grow immensely and build character) and who are not as highly, traditionally educated like me but are clearly very intelligent, nonetheless. The reasons why I'm attracted to that is also very likely mired in sickness - my mom's blonde (and society claims blondes as objectively more beautiful than darker-haired women), I have a lot of guilt about my privileged placement in this life, and I like to think I find the "diamond in the rough" or that I'm some sort of "rescuer" or "savior". [I know this is really unhealthy! Now the harshness is directed back at me.]
8. Obviously, I fell for the other girl, the one that fit my “type” quite a bit better – she has naturally blonde hair, she had a rough childhood, which basically caused her to raise herself and her baby brother, and she is very intelligent despite not having a formal higher education like I did. As I got to know her, I discovered that she fit even better into what I have always admired in others: she’s passionate about making the world a better place, she’s at least superficially compassionate about others (she gets people to “sponsor” starving children in third world countries as her job - [she got me to!]), she’s strong-willed, opinionated, appears to be very emotionally stable, and seems to have a very high sense of self-worth. Then, even later, I discovered that she is a burlesque dancer and former erotic/exotic dancer/stripper – as in, she’s very sexually seductive, which is something I have often needed to spark my own sexual interest. All of these things built upon each other like a gathering ocean wave, which eventually grew into a tidal wave and then... tsunami. But…it just began as a wave of intrigue from her. That was the beginning. The rest is history (and pretty well documented in posts on my blog as well as summated in this one).

According to Pia Mellody and the literature on Love Addiction, these OOMAs or ‘love avoidants” were attracted to me because I presented myself in a very vulnerable position. They saw an opportunity to control me by getting me to fall for them, which they knew would be easy. They used their power of seduction, which has always worked for them, something they learned early on in their lives as a method to get their needs met (it was a survival mechanism as a child, now it is a maladaptive/unhealthy behavior as an adult), which appears to me, the love addict, as them being attracted to me – showing me some form of love, which I so desire/crave, and of course get hooked on. Love avoidants have a conscious fear of intimacy, the kind that is enmeshing, due to being enmeshed as a child by their adult caregiver – maybe because they were basically made to be the caregiver of their adult caregiver, as a type of abusive role-reversal. This is all in the literature – I am merely paraphrasing. I suppose I could just reference people to it. The uncanny thing is how well it fits for my situation. I mean, yes, there are some differences in the details and probably no one has all of the characteristics or backgrounds described for either love addict or love avoidant, and many people have characteristics of both which can come out in different situations or interactions. [I think I was a love avoidant in many aspects with my most recent ex, which was an interesting flip of an experience for me. The thing that got me about it was how much I knew I didn’t want to be with her, but how hard it was for me to sever the relationship (love avoidants tend to stay in these unhealthy, co-addicted relationships out of guilt or a sense of duty). That relationship for me was most definitely a mixture of love addiction and love avoidance.]

In the end, as I have written, I am truly grateful for this experience as a necessary learning experience in my recovery from love addiction. I have come a long way in that I can see what is happening, almost in real time, while it’s happening. I haven’t quite made it to the point where I can always stop myself from participating, though. I realized over this past weekend that one major obstacle that keeps getting in the way for me being able to stop my maladaptive behaviors is drinking and smoking marijuana. Therefore, I have made the decision and begun my journey to get sober from alcohol and marijuana in order to help me maintain sobriety in love addiction. I do not take any of this lightly and will surely be writing more about that later. However, I felt a need to get this story out now. I am thankful that this explosion did not consume me this time. I'd like to think that sharing my experience may help others to come to terms and understanding with their own, similar experiences. I now know that this kind of sharing is critical to our recoveries.

I look forward to the new life that I am at the beginning of creating for myself! 

Science Has Been My Religion

I've been trained as a scientist. I grew up with a father who is a physicist and a mother who is a psychologist - both earned their Ph.D.s in the subjects. My mother is a clinical psychologist, so she does not really think of herself as a scientist, per se, but clearly has the capacity to perform science and interpret it. They were my foundation in this early life and from that, I believe, came my insatiable curiosity. Yes, insatiable. All the science in the world cannot satiate it, but religions made a mockery of it, too.

I realized the other day that I'm angry at my decisions in life that have led me to this place that I am in - a career that consistently feels alien and alienated from the parts of me that have brought me so much joy in my former existence (as a child). I've been holding onto this anger as part of the necessary process - aren't all scientists angry that they have to do this shit day in and day out? That most of the time their experiments don't pan out the way they thought they would? That technical difficulties hamper most of what they do and once they get over that, they run out of time/money to really do anything fun and interesting with it? Then they have to write it up even though the story is so small, with so many holes that they have to pretend the holes are fewer and further between than they really are so they can hopefully publish it, so they can hopefully show that they've been productive and hopefully be able to get a grant so that they can live another year doing this same shit over and over again?

I'm depressed about it, too. I decided to stay home from work, using the excuse that I wasn't feeling well yesterday but still dragged myself in to work so I could take some pictures of slides I made so I can write up a report. I have another report to write, so I figure I can do that at home where I don't feel like stabbing my eyes out every other minute. I feel like I cannot breathe when I'm there. I'm living a lie there.

Then I feel badly because I know I'm privileged to be able to do science, to be able to have had the education to get me where I am - and I'm not enjoying it. I feel badly because I don't deserve to be here if I don't want to be here and someone else who may want to be here may not be able to for reasons having nothing to do with whether or not they have the qualifications. I feel guilty.

Maybe, also, I'm scared to change. I know there is a part of me that has wanted this, at least to enough extent that I made it this far - I've been pursuing a scientific career for over 12 years now, not including college. Everyone (other scientists) says that if you step out, you essentially cannot step back in. The competition is too fierce - it is even if you never step out. But slowly, over the years, I think that part of me that thinks I might change my mind again and want back in is coming to the conclusion that it's not likely to happen - only that I might be scared to have to worry more about money again. But I worry about money now, anyway. I've always been bad with money - I also learned that from my parents.

We believe science will save us from everything - just as we used to believe religion could. We've just changed belief systems, but still don't recognize the problem: no one/thing can save any other one/thing from anything. We either save ourselves or we don't get saved. That's the bottom line. I mean, I'd even say that sometimes a blieve in something greater than ourselves helps save ourselves (like science, the universe, God, etc.), but I think that's just us allowing ourselves to save ourselves. What do we need to save ourselves from? Ourselves. We put rules down to follow, we set up obstacles in front of ourselves that divert our paths - but we never believe it is ourselves that are doing it - we think it's someone else. But then one day we wake up and find ourselves in a place we never thought we'd ever find ourselves and we wonder - how did I get here? What happened?

Then we have to backtrack - what were the steps that we took that led us here? And we find...that each and every step was our own decision, usually between a known and unknown and we usually took the known out of fear of the unknown. I'm afraid of the unknown. It's true. I think we all are and some of us admit it while others do not. It's scarier to not even know what you feel. In any case, that's not a huge problem of mine, although it is something that I recognize is not a given, either (to know how I feel) - it's something one must often work to figure out. There are layers of truth under the surface of truth. That doesn't make them untrue - it just gives those truths more depth. In any case, I've followed the known path out of fear of the unknown and now I've come to that place where I wonder how, why, where, what am I doing here? I'm miserable here. And finally I've decided that the unknown cannot be nearly as frightful as the misery of remaining in the known just because it's known.

In making a change - a huge change - I am facing the fear of the unknown. Breaking it down into its component parts and addressing them - let's go from unknown to known. Or at least address each part that is unknown and demystifying it so that I can see myself knowing it.

I'm not a scientist at heart - I've always said that I'm an artist/musician at heart. I want out of science. It doesn't mean I'm not curious or intelligent or that I'm wasting my intellect. It doesn't mean I hate science or that I am throwing it all away. It only means that my true self wants to come out and live a little more than it has been able to in the past 15-20 years. It doesn't mean I made a mistake - I think there were good reasons for why I did what I did, possibly very profound reasons, in fact. So it's ok. It's ok to walk away and never come back. It's ok to walk away and look back or even wander back ever now and then, too. I cannot let other people's fears become my own. They do not know what it's like to be me. And I do not know what it's like to be them. It's all good in the end because we are of the same essence and we will know all of it in the end (my belief).

Music is my hot, hot sex

I want to talk about music. First, let me explain why I think music is maybe the most special of all forms of communication or expression. The evidence is in how we process music in our brains. Since there are many overlapping regions of the brain where we process music and where we process language - specifically, spoken language - I've decided to start with language.

We process language in several different regions of the brain - the first part usually being of the auditory regions or temporal lobes on either side of the brain, but it could also be the visual cortex if it's from written language being read - then they route through language comprehension regions like the Broca's  and Wernicke's areas. Well, the speech producing (or expressive) region is the Broca's area whereas the comprehension is more the Wernicke's area, but  I guess both regions are important for both functions. In any case, these are both towards the temporal regions of the brain, one side is the more "dominant" side while the other is sub-dominant. It's mostly in the cerebral cortex - the speech producing region being located in the frontal lobe, therefore being a newer outgrowth in evolution - while the comprehension of language is a little older - this makes sense in a way, the way I remember learning languages (I could always comprehend more than I could express!)

Of course, we process music first through the auditory regions of our brain (obviously - we hear it!), and of course we process the lyrics of music in the same regions that we process language, but the myriad of other elements in music require a myriad of other regions of the brain for processing. For example, check out this map of the brain (horizontal cross-section) below of the different regions used to process different elements of music:

Most importantly, one region of the brain that is important for processing rhythm is the cerebellum, which is located at the base of the brain, at the brainstem. It's the oldest (evolutionarily-speaking) region of the brain, often called the "reptilian" brain. Check out a review of Daniel Levitin's book, This Is Your Brain on Music. I haven't read the book, but I've read several reviews and really, I only cared about the fact that processing music is such an ancient, basically fundamental process to life.

What I'm trying to get at is that music is special - it's ancient to life. Music is more instinctual than language - take the example that children can learn a tune before they learn to speak their first sentence. I've met a few dogs that could whine/sing with someone who was singing (my own dog, included)! Sadly, my dog doesn't talk to me using verbal language (well, other than the usual barking, which tends to be non-descript). Even birds sing!

I feel like each of us has had a spiritual experience through music at some point in our lives (with, maybe, the exception of deaf people - although, I knew a deaf girl once who loved heavy metal because she could feel the vibrations of the music, which she enjoyed.) Of course, I might be wrong in this assumption. I might just be biased because music has had such a profound effect on me, since I can remember. In any case, it clearly has had a profound effect on a multitude of people across space and time, cultures and civilizations.

But what I'm really getting at is that music is my soul. When it's a piece of music that reaches me, it touches me deeply, to the core. I feel like it gets inside me and my soul rides it like a wave. It makes me move - maybe dance, maybe just sway, maybe just a chemical (emotional) reaction leading to a tear welling up in my eye or the feeling right before a tear wells up. Good music like this gets inside me and changes my essence, through resonance? Probably. It resonates with me and I expand, like the amplification of a wave when combined with another, similar waveform in phase with the other... Sometimes that expansion feels like a hug from an invisible teddy bear or a blanket that some kind, anonymous being drapes over my shivering body.

I had a most remarkable experience this past weekend - a musical experience. Well, it was more than that... I got to experience the music of my new, favorite band, (The Naked and Famous) performed live! I actually saw them play a little over a month ago in a much smaller venue (The Warfield) where they were the headlining band - the show was crafted for them, so they sounded and looked amazing! This past weekend, they were the first headlining band of the festival (Live 105.3's "BFD"), not the last (the headlining-headlining act), and thus were not set up ideally. The sound wasn't mixed well and they weren't lit well (it was still daylight and it was at an amphitheater - Shoreline Amphitheater, to be precise). Specifically, at some point early in their performance, the sound was amplified more and it just felt like it was out-of-balance as far as the levels were concerned for different parts (for instance, the lead male singer - Tom's - voice was a little louder than normal) and had more feedback and distortion. I think it gradually got fixed throughout the performance, but I found that kind of odd. I kind of felt bad that there weren't more people in the seats watching them - although it filled out more throughout the performance. This is all besides the point - despite the fact that it wasn't as good as their performance at The Warfield in April (which was set up for them, so of course it was fantastic!), I still had an extraordinary time! It kind of felt like a sort of spiritual experience!

Well, I guess I neglected to mention the best part - I got to meet them!!! I didn't know I would have the chance to meet them until my friend who came with me to the concert told me the night before that they would be giving autographs at some point. I couldn't believe it - how exciting! So I was suddenly ten times more excited about the concert and had trouble sleeping the night before. I woke up early and in a state of euphoria already - thinking to myself, "today I get to meet my favorite band!" It felt like Christmas morning when I was a child...the anticipation was palpable. So when we got to the festival, after watching one of the other new bands that we wanted to see ("Of Monsters and Men"), I wanted to get in line for the autograph signing, but it was still two hours away! After doing some other activities (like eating, walking around, chatting with friends), I finally got in line at about an hour before the autographing. During that hour, I just chatted with my friend and neighboring fans about how great The Naked and Famous are and how I'd love to live in New Zealand (where they're from) because not only are they from there, but New Zealand has the best rugby team in the world (the All Blacks) - actually they have the best record of any sports team in the world! - and they also have another really great act -  the extremely funny "folk rock comedy" duo called "The Flight of the Conchords" - plus, the country is just absolutely gorgeous (as I can tell from pictures and movies that were filmed there such as the whole "Lord of the Rings" trilogy!) In fact, the guy in the couple standing behind us in line was from New Zealand, which I didn't find out until after I already gave my whole schpeel for why I want to go/live there, so I'm sure he was tickled by my comments!

Anyway, by the time the autograph signing started, my heart felt like it was going to jump out of my body. I didn't know what I wanted them to sign at first, but eventually came to the conclusion that I wanted them to sign my t-shirt (a tour t-shirt I got the month before when I saw them at The Warfield). The problem was that I was wearing the t-shirt, and it occured to me just as they walked in (and I almost passed out from excitement) that they probably wouldn't sign it while I was wearing it. Luckily, I had brought another shirt to wear ontop (a striped, button-down, long-sleeved shirt), so I took my t-shirt off while I had my friend hold up my other shirt to shield me from the band (rather than the hundred or so people waiting in line behind us)...it was amusing, I gather - I was amusing, I mean! Anyway, I really wanted my picture taken with them, but apparently pictures were not allowed (although, my friend was able to sneak a few with her iPhone as I approached the long signing table.) In any case, I was walking on clouds as I met Alisa first, then Tom, and then the rest of the band (at some point, one of the helpers had to tell us to move along 'cause I was talking to Tom - I told him that he's the "prettiest boy" I've ever seen and that I'd date him even though I'm a "big ol' lesbo"!! He liked that - he said it might be the best compliment he's ever had and asked if he could quote me on it, which of course I said YES! Then I said, "tell 'em drjams said so!" - clearly, he didn't get what I meant by that and I realized I probably said too much...but it didn't get me down!) I was so extremely high after that interaction! Oh, and of course I told them that they're my favorite band and that I listen to their music every day and often on repeat! I didn't give a shit if I came across as gushing and all in love with them - who cares! I didn't hurt them and I'm one of the reasons why they're successful! So...I know it's all good.

But yeah, music....it makes me feel alive when it touches me so deeply - like I'm in love, but not with a person. With...a feeling? a sound? just the commonality of human experience? of conscious experience? I don't know. Luckily, I don't need to know! It's one of the only things in my life that I accept just as is, without question. Without needing to know in any other form. It's the purest of all feelings to me.

So yeah, I'll just leave it like that. And here, I'll share another song that I'm really into right now (maybe that'll be enough to speak to you):