Yesterday we drove down to Fairmount, GA, to pick up my brother, bring him up for a doctor’s appointment, and then take him back home. Everything went well, but it’s a 1 hr. drive there. So we were in the car for 4 hrs.
Yikes.
Today I will go to the grocery store. And further ponder sus out why how to establish a routine. I have never really done this to my satisfaction. I’m one of those persons who desperately wants to be on schedule and organized but my natural state is toward sloth entropy. I will go forever and not even notice that the lamp beside me every time I sit down to watch tv hasn’t been dusted it what may be many months. Or years. I will go forever before it occurs to me to do something that I’ve been planning and planning, putting on my to-do lists.
And where am I exactly? Where do I go? What is it inside my head that pulls me away. And away. And away.
Who knows?
My current DBT goal is to integrate. I disassociate more than your average person, but I’m not spooky, going around and “losing” time and not recognizing myself. And yet–
I have said all-too-recently, “it’s like I’ve lost time, like I’m not making new memories,” and I was deep into writing about all these people with amnesia when I realized WTF? What is happening to me?
Lost. Lost in what? I suspect that I am always in deep imagination though I couldn’t really locate my imagination on a map.
If I opened the door of my ear, climbed in and up to my brain, would I even know where to begin to look for the circuits, the wires and bolts containing my imagination? This construct of my…woe. Fear. Beauty. Soft and buttery pastures and the blue sky hanging by threads, floating over me. The sky follows me all day, repositioning itself over my house, my head, the blue blue swimming pool in my center vault where God lies sleeping on the rubber raft.
But not just imagination. Rumination. Chewing over and chewing again the past and the future. What did happen and what might?
Exhausting.
I have also realized that when I talk to myself, which I do so much, there is a YOU who talks back to me. This appears to be the superego bless her little vicious heart. But the point is that I do this SO much. I become 2 in a way. I am not just 1; I am also a part of me that has splintered off and speaks to me. And I speak to it. To the “you,” the “her.”
For years I wrote essays in 3rd and 2nd person and this obviously was a way of deflecting the pain created when I wrote about my past. Thinking of it now though, I have realized that saying this–“you can do what you want. you can binge as soon as you leave the house,” is very, very different from saying this–“I can do whatever I want. I will binge as soon as I leave the house.” I have learned to pass the buck to “you.” A not-so-tidy trick.
I do not think I always did this, except I thought back to 8th grade when I was really beginning to chomp down on the writing bit. I wrote in 2nd person then, too.
And for over ten years I talked to Lulu constantly and when she died perhaps I shifted her presence onto a part of myself because I was so lonely for her. She couldn’t answer me in words…good lord, best not to go there.
But that’s why I’m in DBT (dialectic behavioral therapy). To learn skills to cope and make my life better, which means to make me better better-equipped to live my life, which is sometimes a very hard row to hoe.
When I was working through some of the exercises for class, I noticed this–“what are you willing to do.”
Well.
There it is.
What am I willing to do? Not a lot at the moment. I did something I did NOT want to do on 1/1/23. I quit smoking (we, my husband and I. I only quit because I was worried about howmuch he was smoking). I am glad that I quit, but lately I have been wanting a cig. more and more.
I get angry when I have to do things I don’t want to do.
And I can do a list of things I am NOT willing to do–
- I am not willing to give up sugar;
- I am not willing to cut back on calories;
- I am not willing to plan meals;
- I am not willing to cook all the time;
- I am not willing to go to church;
- I am not willing to clean on a regular basis;
- I am not willing to stop buying things I could do without;
- I AM NOT WILLING TO ESTABLISH A ROUTINE. NO routines. Not of any sort or any variety.
Perhaps I feel hemmed in by routines. Which is funny because I am not a spontaneous person. But I am impulsive.
Ah ha!
That’s the thing. If I establish any sort of routine, I will have to may have to give up will need to confront my willful, stubborn, outsized impulsivity. These adjectives are not a veiled attempt to beat myself up. I think they are accurate no matter how much I dislike them.
Now. That’s right. Good going.
This is my DBT is so good for me (so far). I have to really think about things–take them apart piece by piece. Not as with rumination. No. This is not spinning my wheels and working myself up to frenzy. No. This is a level-headed application of learned-skills. This is “skillful means,” as Marsha Linehan put it. I wish you skillful means.
Above I used a learned skill, though I’m not sure which one. There are very, very specific skills in DBT. But I suppose I did a sort of pros/cons, which is a powerful exercise.
I am going to do a pros and cons of ESTABLISHING LISTS. Right now.
Onward and upward my dear petunias.
roger roger roger
~r.
