Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Random ramblings, memories and fears

 Triggers.


It’s a word that’s used in everyday parlance these days but to those of us with an addiction, the word is more than simple things which upset us. Triggers bring up a myriad of emotions which we are seldom prepared to deal with. For me, they bring up shame, regret, pain, and denial among others I can’t even specify right now. I’m working on one right now, the worry about being judged by others which is a constant for me. I’m sitting in the Starbucks near Anthony’s house. I am wearing shorts and have psoriasis breakouts on my shin. The other people sitting at the communal table with me aren’t staring at me or anything but I have my headphones in and can’t hear what they’re talking about. Who am I fooling? Even if I could hear what they were saying it wouldn't matter. I feel like I know what they’re thinking. 


Mind reading is a big problem for me. It has ruined friendships, old and new, but I have an incredibly difficult time taking people at their word especially when they have been shown to be anything less than totally honest with me in the past. I am currently working on this problem with a friend right now and it’s bothering me a great deal. She is telling me to believe her whole at the same time admitting that in the past she’s had difficulty being honest with me. Even now, in her last message, she admits this, saying “I value our friendship but I get those actions don't reflect that, unfortunately I'm not able to give my best self to people right now”. 


Right now. There’s a whole episode of How I Met Your Mother about this phenomena the characters called being on her hook. I fully admit this is a woman I wanted more than friendship from and was very honest about that fact. When she said she didn’t feel the same way I was totally prepared to just be friends but she gives me reasons to not believe the things she tells me quite often. I simply don’t know, at this point, if walking away is the correct thing to do or should I show more patience and empathy for her. I’m torn and I suppose that there’s no real way to know if the decision I make is the correct one in hindsight let alone right now as I make it. She struggles with mental illness as much as I do and is going through a great deal of strife at the moment. Having said that, she has decided to shut me out rather than be open or even honest with what’s going on in her life. She calls me fascinating but treats me as an afterthought. Another good friend has told me that I deserve better and I wish I could accept that but I’m having a difficult time with the idea that I deserve to be not unhealthy let alone happy. 


And to say that all of this emotional bullshit has me torn and triggered is an enormous understatement. It’s a good thing I am self excluded from the majority of my online gambling websites I used to use. That said, I know my Pokerstars exclusion has run out. I purposefully deleted it’s password from my manager and in the past ten and half months I have (thankfully) forgotten my PIN used to sign into my account. But today of all days, while I’m stone sober and simply sitting in a coffee shop, something inside is urging me to log in and access the slots once again. I am sweaty and breathing hard. Not quite an anxiety attack but a bout of general nervousness from being in a public place with forty or so people I don’t know. 


Instead, I have just sent Pokerstars a request to self exclude for two years. I need this. I accessed my account and found out my last self exclusion expired on January fourteenth of this year and I could gamble if I chose to. I wish they would email me back, 


In the meantime I am doing a remembrance of different times, specifically my days hanging out in the swing music scene. Times when I drank too much, danced too little and took life a little less seriously. I miss the music, the venues, the people and being able to walk up to any woman and ask her to dance without her thinking it was a prelude to a sexual advance. I do wish that, during the years the scene was happening, that I’d lived in Vancouver rather than the outskirts because I’d have been able to immerse myself even more. I miss the dances, the concerts, searching for vinyl at Krazy Bob’s Records and just riding in Gord’s car listening to the new swing compilation CD one of us had picked up from My Generation records and tapes in the Willowbrook mall. I guess we all have memories we yearn for and that we all think our memories are better than everyone else’s but in my case, they are.


I got my confirmation of self exclusion from Pokerstars for two years, to expire on March 30 of 2025. That’s a relief. I was able to distract myself long enough to get through the stress I was feeling until it came through. It’s hard to describe the feeling, the craving, the urge to log in and put ten dollars down on a few spins of the slots that the site has added. I don’t even want to know which ones they’ve added since May of last year because I’m sure that one or two would be favorites from when I was going to the casino. I feel as though I’ve experienced something that psychotic dictator Shan Yu wrote:


“He said "live with a man 40 years,

share his house, his meals, speak on

every subject. Then tie him up and

hold him over the volcano's edge.

And on that day you will finally meet

the man”


I was just over the volcano’s edge and my thoughts went to a better time in my life, full of friendship dancing, music, and joy. Does that mean my current life is that bad or the life I had back then was so much better? I often hear people say that their lives get better the longer they live but I honestly don’t feel like that. I have a better, more honest connection with my friends and those family members who have stuck by me, as few as they are but I have so little control over what I’m doing each day and how I’m surviving. I am literally living at the whim of my government and the charity of friends. Strange that my thoughts would turn to that time in my life though because it is full of so many regrets. As I say that, Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel just came on my spotify, remembering the innocence of late high school for me, my first crushes and thinking I knew so much about the world when I really knew so little. Maybe ignorance truly is happiness…


It feels like I’m letting spotify write this journal entry for me. Lavay Smith just came on, swinging away and I’m reminded of my trip to San Francisco to see my friend Cory, who hasn’t spoken to me since I told him that I have an addiction to gambling and that I stole fifteen thousand dollars from my mother. I found it ironic that he reacted the way he did because he’s dealt with mental illness and addictions of his own. Maybe that’s why. Perhaps he was made uncomfortable by my actions or perhaps it was the compulsion itself that he couldn’t handle. One way or another, we’re not friends on facebook any more and, as often as I see his profile suggested to me, I haven’t had the guts to send the friend request in an effort to rekindle the friendship. He once accused me of being too proud to accept his help when he wanted me to be part of his hockey pool and he had offered to pay my way in. I told him I wasn’t too proud but couldn’t bring myself to admit it was actually shame that stopped me. Now, I guess it’s fear that’s stopping me because if he refuses my request I’d be shattered.


Over the last twenty years I’ve seen friends come and go. Some I’d known for decades while others I’d known for months but losing friends due to my gambling feels different. I spent the majority of my life building a wall of lies because I was terrified of letting people see who I truly was and being rejected for it. Every time I embrace another level of honesty I am making myself more vulnerable and I am being forced to accept that some who I have truly respected have chosen not to, or are unable to, reply with the same level of respect. Maybe it’s learning to respect myself that is the only path to happiness. If that’s the truth then I’m in serious trouble because I don’t even know where the path to that respect is let alone how to navigate it. Every time I have tried to get help with that goal, especially recently, I have been thwarted by something and as Randy Pausch once said, some brick walls are made out of flesh. He said that the brick walls were there to give us the chance to prove how badly we want something. My issue isn’t with that concept, it's with the very concept of self empathy and without that how can I be expected to find a direction. I feel like I need to borrow someone else’s compass to at least begin with a direction to go. 


Did you ever play those text based adventure computer games from the early days of the computer era? They were like a Dungeons and Dragons game style but no map was given to the players so they’d have to either draw their own as they played or would have to memorize where everything was as they played. But at the very least, when playing those games if you said something like “go east” you could know that you were facing east and were headed in the intended direction. I’m hoping I’m on the path and am facing the correct way but I have little evidence to support my decisions. I haven’t gambled in over ten months but I’m not even sure if that’s a direction. All I know is that I’m not currently going backwards but, again, that isn’t an arrow I can follow and it’s likely that, were I to step backwards, I wouldn’t know of it until it’s too late. 



I have a short amount of time to decide if I want to take the neuropsychological assessment that the counseling team wants me to submit to. There are two possibilities, I suppose. They’re either going to find something or they’re not. If they find something, maybe that will help and maybe it won’t. Ironically, I don’t think I’m afraid of what they may find. I’m more worried that they may find nothing and find out this crap my mind is feeding me is all in my head once again rather than having a rational reason. I trust my mind so little already. I don’t want to find out that every fear of delusional thinking is well founded because my brain is simply messed up and there’s nothing which can be done about it. I mean, I think I’d rather be schizophrenic than have what I have because there are medications which can help and the idea of taking pills to help my mind has never bothered me. What bothers me is a doctor telling me there’s nothing that can be done to help me and that I’m destined to be like this for the rest of my life. 






Friday, March 10, 2023

Neena's Homework

 


Is my victimhood a comfort response? 


I’m having a great deal of difficulty with this concept; victimhood. 


Definition:the condition of having been hurt, damaged, or made to suffer, especially when you want people to feel sorry for you because of this or use it as an excuse for something


I have barely, in my life, begun to accept that my brain doesn’t work the same as most people’s and now I have to potentially ignore my diagnoses and just pretend like I'm neuro-typical again. I told myself that lie for years while I was lying to others. My BPD tells me that I deserve to be left by others, especially when I care about and trust them. My anxiety tells me I don’t deserve to be happy. My depression tells me I don’t deserve to live. 


And if it’s a comfort response then I don’t deserve to be on disability because I could work, despite barely being able to function most days.


Do I not want to accept my responsibility to myself and others? 


I accepted my responsibility when I was 15 years old and I had to start working full time so I would have clothes on my back, while my mother was having panic attacks in the local grocery store. I accepted my responsibility when I began to care for my mom when she stopped cooking and cleaning for herself. 


The premise of the question implies that my worst fear is true; that I am a leech on society and on my friends. I am a burden to those I care about and the world would be better off with me either getting off my ass or killing myself. This feels an awful lot like those people who told me to suck it up and just get on with my life.


“Get busy living or get busy dying”


I’m desperately trying to find reasons to keep trying and my counselor is basically telling me two things: I am my own worst enemy, which I already knew, and I don’t do enough to deserve to live.


So I write, trying to figure out which is true while attempting to put my thoughts and feelings into words that make sense to myself and, hopefully, others. But is expressing my thoughts to others simply another version of victimhood and am I unworthy of having my thoughts and feelings validated? Do I want to be understood or pitied?



What I asked Neena to do was help me understand why I don’t feel like I deserve to be happy and she basically implied that I’m a failure and none of it is due to my illnesses. To say that her response seems to be unhelpful is an enormous understatement.

She wants me to identify a concrete goal for me. I feel like I gave her one and she told me I was wrong and that feeling like I deserve to be better is the path, not the goal.



Why am I getting in my own way?


Another implication that my illnesses are my fault. I keep comparing what Neena has said to me as if she had said it to a cancer patient and I’m pretty sure she comes off looking like an ass in the process. I admit that my thoughts and emotions are what is holding me back but I’ve always been told that they are uncontrollable. I can challenge them. I can ignore them. But how the fuck do I change or silence them. 


I’m sitting in Starbucks in a Rick Rypien jersey because it comforts me, a reminder that even from the depths of the worst life can deal us, good can come. Wanting it gave me hope for years. Owning it gives me strength to get through the day. Wearing it makes me feel like I belong in the world. Sitting here, with my headphones in as I type with a movie playing doesn’t mean that I want sympathy or pity from others. It means that I am more comfortable with the sounds of a coffee shop in the background when I want to write rather than the silence of a home or even my friend’s basement. 


What am I afraid of? 


I am afraid of almost everything. I am afraid to live. I’m afraid to fail. I’m afraid to love and care, especially for myself. I’m afraid of others' words and actions towards me. I’m afraid of judgment. I’m afraid of smelling bad on the bus. I’m afraid of suffering a stroke and becoming even more dependent on others. I’m afraid of getting up and getting a refill on my coffee for fear that the redhead across the Starbucks will see me and judge me for my size. 


But I’m not afraid of death. 


Death and nothingness feels like a release from everything this world has cursed me with. That’s what I crave. I crave not feeling anymore. That’s what I felt while I was gambling. I felt nothing, whether I won or lost it didn’t matter. I could feel nothing and I loved it. It’s why I drank when I was using alcohol to self medicate and why I still crave it all too often, both the alcohol and the gambling. 


I am reminded of when I ended up in CRESST. The night before, I had a panic attack but as I lay in bed, with my heart pounding and unable to breathe, I couldn’t rule out a heart attack. It was then that I realized I didn't care if I lived through the night. I wasn’t any better than I was four years earlier when I planned to take my life, I just hadn’t made any effort to do it. That’s how I feel these days and I find myself only surviving, and not living. 


I tried to tell this to Neena, to explain it to her but she dismissed what I was telling her. She told me I was doing more than simply surviving because I was shaving my beard and dressing and showering every couple of days. She doesn’t get it and I’m doubting now that she ever will based on what she’s asking of me. I told her I wanted to make my life mean something by helping others but she doesn’t understand that either. I just want to mean something to someone and if it isn’t me I want it to be someone else and I don’t understand why that’s so hard for her to comprehend.