23 January 2007

Hormonally Balancing But I Still Can't Tree

Yeah, I hate that stupid tree pose...hating it, putting energy into hating it, will surely prevent me from ever accomplishing it but for now I'm just wondering how come I can't put my clogs on for this pose? Because for some reason I can hold it just fine with shoes on but barefoot I am a stumbling drunk with no glass. I'm an excessive supinator, I wear out the outer edges of my shoes; I'm actively not concentrating on standing properly, on engaging my bondas (sp?) while going through my day, on undoing all this spinal curvature attained through years of emotional self defense -- I've been all puffed up for years -- and the further damage done by pregnancy. I'm beginning to think that yogic behavior, not just going to the class, might be the final piece of the puzzle.

The second-to-last piece I obtained four days ago, on Friday morning, when I received my first Lupron injection and my HRT pills, free of charge (the pills -- the shot cost a fortune which prompted me to thank the insurance goddesses for helping this all happen); I have so far had no side effects: No beard, no obesity or the excessive appetite they claim might cause it, no migraines...I have had some minor agitation but it's laughingly managable. I spent Thursday night terrified, out of sorts and focus; I was teary with inquiry at the doctor's office where I was told, "stop reading so much and clear your mind," I was injected and went home to collapse for a couple of hours before waking up euphoric -- not always a good sign but I confess to being a euphoria junkie, regardless of what it may indicate -- and I had a great night at work. Roby, ever her encouraging self with her uncanny charisma and easy presence, noticed my spunk and complimented it.

Saturday was full of productivity and small-boy patience and kisses and a shared lunch at Whole Foods; even PetSmart, where we went to purchase yet another collar and ID tag for Kamaji (whom I'm convinced sells these like passports on the black-cat market), was relatively stress-free but I was indeed spent at the end of the day. I slept quite soundly, woke up at 7 to shower and break fast with a flax waffle and one piece of turkey sausage but I was waylayed by the boy who needed butt-wiping and hugs and cartoons, all of which made me late for class but Heather was forgiving, smiling, happy to let me disrupt. Still, missing those first ten minutes left me sore by the end but I changed clothes and walked down the street to Slainte, where Brian and Fergus were waiting with dozens of others, cheering Arsenal over Manchester United; I ordered blueberry pancakes and lots of water, then took the boy out at half-time to walk around Fells Point, freezing and tired but peaceful. We made our way back to the car after stopping for a soy chai, a Naked juice and some kind of cookie without chocolate; we also procured a rubber jellyfish, a rubber seahorse and two sets of training chopsticks that I've half-heartedly scoured nowhere for...Fergus fell asleep in the car with his coat and hoody on, made his way into the house and collapsed on the couch where he slept in his outdoor clothes for several hours and I joined him soon after. Brian made his way home from the pub at some point and also slept; we were woken by, "guys! It's snowing!!", at which time we geared up and headed out to the ghostly - er, grocery - store where there were no customers and even less food. We made do, though, and were home in time for a good dinner and some dancing.

I think I might be getting better, finally.

16 January 2007

the End of Violence*

*I believe this to be the title of a film that I have never seen nor am I familiar with its theme or subject matter. It just seemed fitting for what's happening in my head right now.

Ahem. I'm going to try and be very vague here for purposes of anonimity; if anyone feels that I've crossed a line -- and you'll know who you are if I should do so -- please contact me and I'll edit this or delete it.

I had to address a peer last night with regard to an incident that occurred between him and another peer; it would seem that the two of them had a disagreement that was occluded by contradiction and he-said-she-said and it was confusing and exhausting to sort out. The sorting took a couple of days, both parties approaching me for audience and mediation, and I cannot say that even now I fully understand what happened. Two unique stories were told and with all the objectivity I could muster I concluded that the middle story -- the one I didn't hear -- is the true one. I have also concluded that further pursuit of said truth is futile and fruitless and that ends can be achieved without further evisceration and ibuprofen.

Verbal aggression and character attack, in the spirit of defense and backpeddling, was perpetrated by male peer upon female peer; female peer responded not with counter attack but with injury and tears and confusion -- absolutely acceptable and expected, likely how I and many women I know might react confronted by the same situation. Life of violence and whatnot...women either become harder and more aggressive, impervious to such attacks or we become brittle and glassy and expose our soft spots regularly for anyone to memorize for potential target.

Woman is confused, cannot understand what she might have done to trigger such a hostile reaction from man; they are friends and they are young and this is new, peer fighting, and it is frightening and confusing: She believes that she has instigated this attack, brought this on herself, and without revealing any details I will say that she did instigate it a bit, if only through her passive aggression, her indirect and feeble response to his violent babbling and excessive volume. In no way am I suggesting that she is feeble but that her response is and that seems normal, to me. I try and reassure her that she is fine, she is worthy in character and response and address and search for audience with me; I am not sure, though, that I have the entire story. I will admit to being hesitant to doubt a woman, I will admit that I will almost always blame a man. I believe the stories of the oppressed and hold a grudge against the oppressors -- I'm a compulsive, convicted being.

Man is also confused, both about how things could have gone awry so quickly and how his reaction could have been construed as anything but normal. According to the story, from both parties, things started out normally: That is to say that both parties (there is a third and a fourth party that are barely players in the story and since I'm not actively telling it I'll leave them out) passively acknowledged a conflict, man attempted to rectify it with ambiguity and double-entendre, further confusing the situation, woman became quickly frustrated and felt powerless to calmly handle the situation and became heated, in her own way, further incensing man and instigating his loud and aggressive verbal attack. Ends were not met, feelings were hurt and confusion continued, continues, even with two separate attempts on each of their parts to convey their versions and possibly to win me to their corners.

Thoughts and a possible point:
~Some things are irreconcilable, two half truths converging at an invisible point to never reveal the whole thing and attempts to excavate it are likely to be boring and futile. Let it lie: Its destiny as cosmic compost is to be quickly met.
~If you are a man and you are an aggressor and you are very young, examine it and own it and stop it. Not only will you fail to progress socially, you will likely wind up addicted and lonely, or sociopathic and successful and still lonely, or you will just be lonely. The ultimate outcome of aggression is loneliness because no one, not even you, will be comfortable in your company. You will lose jobs, you will lose friends, you will lose faith in yourself...loneliness is a hopeless prospect. If you don't have a family, if you are alone and don't understand your resources, ask for help and a phone book: It is your responsibility to be compassionate and humane and to exist harmoniously with the other humans and to not intimidate women (or anyone, really) in order to achieve your ends.
~If you are a woman born of violence who has not healed and still lives in a state of helpless passivity, please know that you are not alone and that you have [limited but effective] resources available to strengthen you and help you reveal your true worth. Know that there are women in your presence, constantly, who are born of or have fallen into the same violence and have achieved peace and safety or who are, at the very least, working on finding it and achieving it and will guide you or who want someone's hand to hold while they're walking through it. Women: Stop fearing other women, start leaning on each other. We cannot collectively heal and progress without each others' assistance and compassion.

Seriously, you two: Stop it.

15 January 2007

Victory Is Mine!

PayPal found in my favor, refunding me every cent I paid for the turntable -- including shipping -- with no orders to return the merchandise.

I should return it, right? So I'm not that person that he accused me of being, the one who's "[sic] trying to get my money back and keep the product"? or whatever he said, it was something like that...plus, it's the ethical thing to do, not to mention the thing's broken, anyway.

Or do I just count this as blessing, of sorts, and get it fixed? I can buy another turntable for $100....


***Edited to say that I can't even believe I'm questioning whether or not to return it...of course, I'm returning it. I was caught up with dancing in the end zone, I was gloating. I'm not a jerk, I'm returning it.

9 January 2007

Roberta Flack is My New Doctor or Why I Hate Ali G

It may be that all my charting and worrying has paid off -- I am scheduled to receive new treatment next week that will supposedly put me in a place where I not only feel normal (as normal as one can feel, I suppose) but where I will be motivated to take the steps to help myself in cognitive, non-chemical ways. In other words, this new treatment will drive me to seek out a new therapist, only I neglected to tell the doctor that I don't want therapy -- in fact, I flat-out lied and said, "I am looking for a new therapist," at which time he whipped out a card and urged me to make a call.

This new doctor, I like him; he tells me I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which -- along with years of drug abuse and self-neglect -- has instigated my other diagnoses, like Major Depression and Panic Disorder w/Agoraphobia. He teaches me about hormone imbalance, that while it can occur naturally it is often triggered by upsets to the system; in my case, I am imbalanced because when one grows up in violence, one grows up in fear and one is virtualy soaking wet with fear-induced adrenaline (oh, would that it were the kind that one gets from taking risks and defeating them...I hate taking risks, it reminds me of, well, violence...) and the brain decides that adrenaline is much more important than estrogen or progesterone or testosterone. In the beginning, between puberty and, say, one's mid-twenties, those hormones are in overdrive much like every other pubescent being on the planet but more people than not grow up in households with morals and ethics and guidelines with regard to keeping it in one's pants...add to that a set of loving parents who don't beat a body on a regular basis and generally keep their hands and minds off one's tender parts and you have a balanced, sexually-normal being who will go on to progress in the average succession of good choices, occasional alcoholic benders, college, job, marriage, children...okay, so I'm constructing that part from societal templates of normal -- I know that lots of us grew up in safe places and didn't follow that particular tradition.

Singing my life with his words... This guy -- and I should clarify here that although I love a lot of men, I have a decidedly dubious view of men as OB/GYNs and was very apprehensive about seeing him -- knew my life, told me what I'd gone through, told me how I'd been excessively promiscuous in my teens and twenties, told me how I'd been a drug abuser of the highest caliber but never an addict, how I'd gone through one year of meds, quit, went through three more, quit, and am now back on them, probably at least through menopause. I'd given him a brief medical history through an email but hadn't said anything pertinent to my past but he knew, this is his specialty: Mentally Ill and/or Traumatized Women. He went on to tell me how raising my son is a challenge, emotionally, and how he pushes my buttons more than the child of a "normal" mother might push hers; he kept going by telling me that if I don't help myself now, that when Fergus reaches the age when my abuse started (and as of right now, I couldn't tell you when that was -- there's a lot of rubble on top of those memories) that raising him will become impossible and it is likely that I will abuse him out of nothing more than a Stockholmian compulsion. I am rewired to react, like it or not. Brian and I discussed that the best part of being us is that we are at least aware enough that our behaviors, as they pertain to "abusing" our son (and I can assure you that we do not but I will not lie and say that things don't get loud around here a little more than either of us are comfortable with), are wrong and that we both experience a profound sense of sorrow after hollering at him or losing our tempers over things that he cannot help...and make no mistake: Neither of us believe that the affection with which we shower him after such episodes will erase the things we've done but that our awareness of such detriment might keep us on this side of the physical violence and might help us to undo our own compulsions, in time.

Anyway.

My, ahem, problem has mostly abated since I've started taking the Cymbalta but I still experience an uncomfortable degree of hormonal rage on exactly the 15th day of my cycle that lasts for, um 14 days, and I spend the first 14 days of my next cycle doing penance for my bad behavior during the previous 14 and I am still trapped; the Cymbalta has curbed the guilt, to a degree, so that I am not wallowing in apology for two weeks at a time but the elevator shaft is still an elevator shaft, whether they put a big inflatable pillow down there at the bottom or not: Contrary to my father's wisdom, sometimes it is the fall that kills you -- they've got F/X guys to buffer that sudden stop at the end. Thanks, Big Pharmacy; I can now do my own stunts.

So I get a quarterly injection of hormones, low dosage, I keep taking the psychotropes that I currently take, and Dr. Flack says it will all even out, that I will probably feel better in a matter of months (hey -- it's not magic, here) but that I will have to go to therapy and I don't know -- I'd rather just write. I want to write, go to yoga, buy a pool membership, possibly stop smoking (although I make no promises in that department because certain horses cannot pass by that particular carrot without taking a huge bite out of it and regurgitating it on me over and over again), spend the next nine months really enjoying Fergus before he's off to preschool and start being happily self-absorbed, rather than miserably self-pitying.

I'm optimistic, I guess.

3 January 2007

This might be unethical but I couldn't give a fuck.

I bought a turntable on eBay for xMas for bRian; it was advertised, Like New! Never Used! but the belt was broken, the cartridge useless and it was obviously used (like in the way that most turntables are used: They sit on the top of the cabinet and the dust cover is scuffed, pretty badly...anyway, I contact this guy and he says that he will gladly refund me the purchase price but that he is keeping the shipping -- $35!!!! I realize that one of the downfalls of eBay is inflated shipping costs but seriously?! He charged me for a 15lb shipment when the whole thing actually weighs less than 9lbs, and the shipping is under $15 (as quoted by the post). He also lied and said, "[sic] I clearly stated in my original ad that I didn't know whether or not it worked because I didn't have any records to test it with [/sic]," but it says that nowhere in the ad. I gave him two options: Either refund me my full purchase price plus the shipping (around $100 total) and I will gladly send it back to him, or I trash it and leave him negative feedback. In no way am I suggesting that he refund my money and let me keep the piece of shit -- I'll send it back to him. But I'm not giving it back unless he give me my money back -- all of it. He claims that he can't give me the shipping back because he spent it to ship it to me!

Is this guy a moron or is there something I'm missing?

So since I feel that he's grossly misrepresented his product and I'm $100 poorer, I've filed a dispute with PayPal, who will mediate for me if I so desire. His last communication accused me of being a dishonest buyer who wants my money back and wants to keep the product -- again, not true. He can keep my money, but I will leave him some of the shittiest feedback in eBay history. He says, "I've been scammed like this before."

Please, someone, show me how I'm scamming this guy! Also, if I'm being totally unreasonable, break it to me gently, wouldja?