Wish vs Reality

Perception.  Perspective.  Whatever you want to call it, sometimes mine is off.

Good news is that at least I'm now starting to recognize when it's presenting an inaccurate picture!  If only that could happen a bit more frequently....

Here's an example.  (Disclaimer: I am not a Trekkie, though I did enjoy the two most recent films.)  My therapist and I were talking about emotions and how some people are better able to manage theirs, while others (like me) are managed BY their emotions.  She suggested I watch Star Trek (yeah, she's that awesome, you can be jealous) and pay close attention to Kirk and Spock.

So I did. 

And as my therapist and I reflected on the movie, I realized that I am such a Kirk - my emotions are ever-present, driving much of my day.  However, Spock, on the other hand, is pretty darn emotionless, living among an acute sense of logic.  (Reminds me of Sheldon!)

I want to be Spock.

Reality is, a balance of both Kirk's emotions and Spock's lack of emotions would be more appropriate to strive for, but, with my extreme "Kirk-like" emotion, even if I shoot for Spock's opposite extreme, I'd likely end up in the middle.

Here's another one.  Earlier this week as I was walking out of my house, I gave my usual cursory glance to make sure everything was set.  This time, though, I noticed that while I got rid of loads and loads of excessive "stuff" over the past two years, I still have more to get rid of.  In my mind, I see myself as a minimalist.  My house says otherwise, though.  No, I'm not by any means a hoarder.  I can't stand the pileup of superfluous stuff.  I'm more of a pack rat.  Kinda comes with the teaching territory, you never know when that really cool plastic take out container might come in handy.

Years into therapy, I can now see that my perception of myself and my world is very much twisted and, well, pretty messed up.  Knowing this, though, is going to help me change the prescription of my lenses, so to speak, and help me see reality as it is, not as I wish it to be.  Thank g-d there's still years of therapy to come......!

Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

I can't resist a chance to bring a little mathematical logic into the blog-o-sphere, and today is one of those mathematically magical days that will only come around two more times in my lifetime.

Image from heodeza.blogspot.com

Today is October 11, 2012.
That makes today 10/11/12.

Now, with my fascination with numbers, I wanted to post on 10/11/12 at 13:14:15, but I kinda forgot.  But just because I forgot at that moment, didn't mean I was going to let this day escape without at least a little acknowledgement.

And you know what?  Today was a pretty good day.  I had an *awesome* therapy session, one where I left actually smiling instead of with a wad of tissue, blotchy eyes, and a runny nose (which happens more often than not.)  No matter how my therapy goes, I am always grateful for my therapist, who puts up with my incessant need to re-hash topics over and over and over until they get through my thick skull.

I'm one lucky person in the grand scheme of things, because even on my worst days, I know my team will be there to pick me up when I need them.  And on the better days, like today, which are still few and far between, I can record these moments so as to remember them on days when my team IS picking me up off the floor....

Happy 10/11/12!  See you on 11/12/13!

Arielle's Word-of-the-Day: FIGHT

June Blog Challenge Day 21: FIGHT

I am involved in an ongoing fight that I call the battle between my heart and my brain.  My heart plays the emotion department cards, while my brain pulls out all the stops in the logic arena, and it is never a fair fight.  When it comes to work and school and others, my logical brain generally wins.  When it comes to me, to my body?  My emotional heart wins, hands down.  Doesn't matter how much logic my brain throws out there, or how much that logic makes sense, the emotions always win. 

Outside of my head, I'm not a very confrontational person (and if you ask my therapist, she'll probably say that I'm not one to confront myself, either!)  I don't like to make waves.  I don't like to argue (unless you are my parents....) because rarely can I keep my emotions in check, and as I said before, no matter what is going on - happy or angry or excited, my response is to cry.  Therefore, I try to avoid arguing all together.  I can't yet speak up, even to myself.  The negative, mean spirited voice always takes over, and resist as I might, it always wins.

Through the work I've been doing with my team, I'm learning what it feels like to have someone fight for me.  To have someone value me enough to fight with me (figuratively, of course) about the importance of taking care of myself.  I finally have something worth fighting for - fighting myself and my behaviors in order to keep my team.  Ultimately, the goal is to fight for myself because I'm worth it.  But for now, I'm fighting for myself because my team is worth it.  Without them, there'd be no point in fighting at all.

I know that somewhere, buried deep inside of me, is a person who wants to recover, who wants to be healthy, who wants to be happy. Otherwise, I would have given up the fight a long time ago.

Prompt: You can talk about the fight through recovery, for your life.  You can talk about a fight you’ve had with someone. With yourself. You can talk about fear of fighting with others, the inclination to be reserved and avoid confrontation. The word “fight” can hold so many different meanings depending on how you look at it.

Arielle's Word-of-the-Day: LOGICAL

June Blog Challenge Day 9: LOGICAL

I love math.  Math is concrete.  Math makes sense.  Math is logical!  No matter how much I try to make it different, 3 + 3 will always equal 6.  Even if you put it in a different context, say, 3 meals plus 3 meals means I have six meals (even if I didn't eat any of them.)

Ironically, I didn't use to like math.  I loathed it.  It was so freaking confusing!  Math tortured me from fourth grade through my fourth year of college, where finally, I had a professor that made sense of math.  She made sense of all those numbers and signs and concepts that I struggled with for-ev-er.  I mean, what's the purpose of an imaginary number?  Thankfully, as an elementary teacher I don't need the answer to that in order to instill a love of learning math in my students.

Where does logic come in to play in this story?  Well, if I take a step back and look at the big picture of my math experience, it kinda makes a lot of sense.  Logically, how was it possible for me to understand, much less enjoy, learning about something *that* challenging when my day-to-day life is was challenge?  How was it possible to learn anything that is not incredibly simple, when struggling to get out of bed, much less get through the day?  Yes, I was just a kid, but life happens at any age.  Now that I can look back, it makes sense, it's logical that I was strong in reading and writing, and struggled in math.  I spent my time escaping into books and journals.  My safe haven.  My respite.  Numbers never made sense and I didn't have the energy to focus any time on learning them.

Now, I love logic.  I love things that make sense.  I love looking for connections between things, whether there are clear paths or not.  I like finding the logic in things.  I like making things make sense.  (hmmm... control anyone?)  In fact, I have gotten so good at logic, that I can logically rationalize just about anything, including recovery.  Unfortunately, while logical thinking is helpful in many places, recovery wise?  It just tends to get me into trouble.  Then again, maybe that's the fact that my self-logic is rather faulty.  I'll get there though.  After all, it only took 13 years for me to catch on to all that math-logic......!

Prompt: Are you logical? Do you wish you could be? Do you respect people who are or find them lacking? Does logic  have a place in recovery? These are all examples of things you can write about.

Vacation?

Have you ever felt like that before?  Like you want to leave the world behind for a little while, including yourself?

I'm ready.  I'm ready to leave my self, my life, my world- all of it, behind.  Just for a little while.

Life has been so exhausting these last few weeks.  Logically, I know there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and the tunnel won't last forever, but right now, in the thick of all this?  I'm tired of feeling the constant ache.  I'm tired of feeling lost and logic isn't helping.

There's way too much good in my life, in my world, for me to feel this down.  That makes it all the more frustrating.  I DO see the good in my world, all the happiness and positive things that are there... I'm just at a place where the rest of the stuff, the not-so-good stuff, is overriding the good.  My generally optimistic attitude is being clouded by pessimism. Not a big fan of this "half-empty" thinking.  I just don't have the energy to change it right now.

I gotta change that.  And soon.