A Lil' Card Game

I shuffled the cards in my hand. I hate it when they’re not organized. He’s trying to read my mind, I know he is. I continue to organize my hand, trying to figure out what the next strategic move should be.

“Are you gonna go?” he politely asks.

“I will, give me a minute. I’m trying to make a decision and figure out what I want to do.”

“Your making this more complicated than it needs to be.” He calmly states while playing with his white beard. He adjusts his robes and takes a sip from his cup. “You always make things more complicated than they need to be.”

I confess, “I know. I guess it’s a trait of mine.” I set my cards down and look at him straight in the eyes. “Why is that? Why do I always have to complicate things? Make things more than what they really are?”

“Why don’t you tell me.” He says while peering over the top of his glasses.

“Great!” I think. Here I was thinking I was invited up for a lovely game of cards, and it’s turning into a chance to analyze my behavior. I hate it when he does this. I shift in my chair. Although it quite comfortable, I suddenly am no longer able to relax and enjoy it. “I don’t know.” I shift my feet, look off to the left, and hope that he doesn’t continue to probe this suddenly uncomfortable situation. I really hate it when he explores my psyche . . . I just wanted to play a game!

“Yes, I think you do.” He states as a Father wanting his young child to admit why he did something.

“Because, well . . . I guess it’s because we always tend to make things more complicated than what they are. We were supposed to just love one another and follow the 10 commandments, and now there’s volumes and volumes of rules and restrictions. They were put in place by councils of men trying to exercise a form of control over another group. We always have a tendency to judge and the need to be right -- so much so that we’ll even kill for it. I don’t know why we do it, but we do. What this has to do with my card game I’ll never figure out.”

“Simple,” he smiles gently, takes another sip, smoothes out his robes, and adjusts his glasses. “You are trying so hard to make the right call, judge what my motivation is, that you are getting lost. You’re so tied up in trying to make the right decision, that you are not enjoying what you are doing. This game was meant to be enjoyed, to leisurely pass time. It’s not to guess what's right, what’s in my hand, and what will happen. Just play the game with joy, play the game with zest, and play the game with love. When hosting a game such as this, treat your guests well. And as a guest, be generous to your host. The rest will take care of itself.”

I pick up my cards and fan them out again. Suddenly, I’m much more rested. I take a drink and then wryly state “You’re not just talking about cards. Are you?” After a long but comfortable pause, I ask “Do you have a Queen?” I giggle.

God smiles. There’s a flash in his eye. And he says “Go fish.”

"Message for you sir!"

5 pts to whomever guesses the movie I quoted first.

One of the joys of getting to bounce between working days (yuck!) and nights (yea!) is that your sleep pattern becomes a bit, shall we say, distorted. Well . . . today my brain wanted to wake up about 6am (booo!) and didn't want to go back to bed. To Ragan's delight, we took a short walk (side note -- it was low 60's this morning!! Beautiful!!!) and then came back in. I do what I always do when I can't sleep, I begin to fiddle around on the computer.

So, I get on my messenger, just in case anyone else for some unknown reason to man is up and coherent this early on a Saturday morning, and then check a few updates. Read Nillas recent posting (too cute btw ~ and loved Wayne's comment) and Lucky's telling a very intriguing (and I'll wager naughty) story in 2 parts. Thom & Dave are taking a little vacay ~ and Ike & Rob & Garry & Scott are all moving. As I'm perusing, I begin to stumble across pages that peek my interests from their friends, so I send invites. I bring mail back from the evil mailbox and it hits me. I don't get jack in this damn thing except bills & junk. BJ's are supposed to be stimulating and exciting ~ this one's not fittin' the bill.

Here are the 5 things I got in junk mail over the past week.

1. Addressed to "Mrs. Currin or Occupant" ~ Come join us at Curves . . . Um, there is no Mrs. Currin here (I don't do drag!) and if all I am is Occupant to you, then you get no business. Am I being stereotyped?? Besides, I don't want to go to an all women's gym. No motivation there . . .

2. You have been selected to receive a special, once in a lifetime opportunity, to get Playboy at a special, unprecdented price . . . No thanks Heff. I'm really not into your . . . um . . . political and entertainment magazine as the mailer indicated. I don't read Playboy for the articles, or pictures. Now send me a good deal on Unzipped . . . we might be talkin'

3. Thank you for voting me into your state legislature. I'm Annie Tietze blah blah blah . . . Did anyone else think of those tse tse flies in Africa when you read her name?? I did! I didn't vote for her, because I didn't know her. I didn't know any candidate running in my district, so I didn't vote for it. What a vain bitch to think everyone in her district voted for her. I looked it up and she won only 54% of the vote.

4. Addressed to "The Currin Family" ~ Come enroll now at Kimball Academy . . . If I was paying for a private education, AND knowing how much that costs, I'd be PISSED that my money was being wasted in a generic mailer to everyone. I know for a fact that I have ZERO rug rats runnin' around, so got the wrong household on that too. (Shudders at the thought)

5. 47 credit card/refinance/loan offers. I'm pretty sure I don't need any of them. It'd be one thing to get these offers from the company I currently use for such things, but I don't. I get them from all kinds of companies.

I actually didn't pick up my mail out of protest for a solid 2 weeks, and got a nasty gram post noted to my front door from the postmaster . . . . heh heh heh . . .

Now it appears the junkmail fairy has moved into cyberspace . . .

Ding (love that sound from Messenger) new mail icon and subj is Ginger want to be your myspace friend. OMG really!!! Ginger spice wants to be my friend!!! I love . . . WRONG! Yeah, I'll make my way over there and delete that in a minute. I'm reading Wolfy's blog right now.

Ding -- Sexy Suzy wants to be your myspace friend. Ummm, right. 2 things there Sweetie-kins . . . I don't know a "Sexy Suzy" and if you and got some hair on your chest . . . I ain't even remotely interested. Okay?? Guess that's 2 deletes in a bit. Checkin' out Moose's blog at the moment . . .

Ding -- Natalie wants to be your myspace friend. Ding -- Tina wants to be your myspace friend. Ding -- Lisa wants to be your myspace friend. Ding -- some other random ho wants to be your myspace friend.

I'm tired of it! Junk mail in cyberspace pisses me off almost as much as junk mail in real space! The only reason I don't get tired of it in cyberspace as much is because my mail account filters out ALOT of spam. (Thank you at&t Yahoo!) I usually empty my SPAM folder in my email account once a week, and I emptied out 1237 messages today from that folder. WOW!

Gonna go check my email now . . . got a ding from a real person sending a real message. I still get excited when I see that . . . Hugz!

Why Yesterday was a Personal Milestone

Thom is ever so observant. I discussed in my previous post about how yesterday marked a personal milestone, and yet really didn't explain why. I thought I had in previous posts, but looking back thru them, I really didn't. So, here is a bit of an explanation on why yesterday was a personal milestone.

Your mind is an interesting, and often complicated thing. People often go thru their lives and don't really take the time to consider, or are even aware, of how powerful the mind is. Some of us experience it's power, and it's very intimidating. Almost humbling . . . and this is how I learned to respect it.

No big secret, I'm a survivor of childhood abuse. Won't go into the gory details, but it happened from the time I was 6 until I was 12. Funny thing is, the memories surrounding the event used to not be there. My mind buried them, deep deep deep. I know while it would happen, I would just shut down. The way I learned to cope and live thru it was to supress it and not ever be able to recall it. The interesting part was that I couldn't really remember anything from my childhood around that age. It was just kind of a fog. Come to find out this is a very common coping technique.

Well, the thing with supressed memories is that eventually, your mind recognizes that you are old enough to process them, and they suddenly reappear. In my case ~ vividly. So much so that my body would actually experience them with me . . . from the heart racing to the very detailed and I won't explain here. My mind decided at about 27, I was old enough. One day while at work, as I put it, my mind exploded. Come to find out that this is known as PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

So, after all these years, I begin to remember my childhood. And lucky me, it gets to be this! Stating that I didn't handle it so well would be an understatement. I don't think anyone would actually handle this well though, so I handled it the best I could. These memories drove me to seek out help, in the form of a psychiatrist. Well, actually the fact that one of my friends found me in my house using a knife to cut small cuts up and down my arm drove me, literally, he drove me. (not a suicide attempt, i'll touch on this a bit later)

So ~ we go thru some testing and lots of talking and we come up with this ~ the PTSD diagnosis and the diagnosis of depression. He's not so sure that the depression isn't something else, but we go with it for now. I begin therapy and taking medication. The memories start out way too much, way too fast ~ and that triggers nightmares. It gets to the point that I sleep with nightlights.

Shortly after all this, I get offered an opportunity to leave Texas. While I'm not all that keen on having to find new dr's and such, I'm rip snortin' ready to get the hell away from my family. I wanted a chance to get away from everyone trying to pull me in 100 different directions and have the chance to just focus on me, and sortin' this whole mess out. So I take it . . . and that's how I end up in Topeka, KS.

I get really tied up in all the commotion about starting up a new facility and living in a new town, meeting lots of new people, and I stop taking my meds (b/c I ran out) and don't find a new doctor. So, my little cutting habit intensifies. I had been doing this for about 2 years, but I went into overdrive. It's not an attempt to commit suicide or even a cry for help (as some people think). It's different for everyone that does this, but for me it was a way to have my world make sense. I would start having a memory, and the emotion would start. Then the body responses. Then the adrenaline would hit. The only way I found to stop it was to cut myself. It was kind of like shocking my system into having to suddenly take care of me and therefore, the memory loop would just stop and go away. I could understand that physical pain and take care of myself ~ where I couldn't understand the previous mental pain at all. It just made sense to me. I always pretty much just fell asleep afterwards, I think because at that point my mind was overloaded and just shut down.

Well ~ after a few months of this, I knew it wasn't right again. So I went and got a new dr, and she in turn hooked me up with a new therapist, and we started again. Couple of changes though . . . remember when I mentioned that my 1st doctor wasn't so sure about the depression diagnosis?? Seems that he was seeing me bounce between my super highs and drastic lows. (Gave new dr. permission to look at old dr's files . . . good idea.) New dr adjusts diagnosis to bipolar. This was probably the first huge step in recovery, because the meds changed and I started to feel better. Way better . . . and I began to learn what bipolar was and am able to identify it now in myself and deal with it. This was a huge relief.

So, continuing with my therapy (she specialized in those that suffered severe trauma) I was able to process the memories, emotions, and such safely. I was headed down a path of recovery. But, with all things, there were relapses. Rome wasn't built in a day. So, I'd hit a rough spot, take a few steps back, and get frustrated. But I learned that this was normal, and then I was able to forgive myself for, and slowly trod ahead.

My last relapse happened 8/1/2006. I was at work and the memory loop started. This hadn't happened since I lived in Texas. I didn't know what triggered it, but I couldn't stop it. I just knew I wasn't good, and I wouldn't deal with this well. I just knew it. I instantly had the urge to cut myself, and I didn't want to do it anymore. Looking back, this was probably the first time I didn't give in to my impulses, and the ensuing crash makes sense. I was determined to handle this the right way, and not revert back to my old behaviors. So, I checked into a hospital. Three days later I checked out, and by the end of the month, I was out of the partial hospitalization program (where you spent all day at the hospital, but got to go home and sleep in your own bed) and back to work.

So, cut to today . . . I've been able to accept who I am, and have really started to become happy with who I am. It's the first time I can really remember being able to say that. I'm completely off medication, and have handled some pretty tough issues medication free. I readily identify my triggers and am able to appropriately take care of myself. Most importantly, I know I don't have to do this alone and know who to call (both personally as well as professionally) to get the help I need. My success in this journey isn't measured in no symptoms or no triggers, that's unrealistic and impossible really. It's measured in my ability to handle it in a healthy and constructive way. I've been able to do that now for 1 full year.

Today is the first day of year 2 . . .