How to be Social?

I’m working on boundaries. I’m working really hard.

-I don’t want to. I don’t want to be the person who has to work hard. I don’t want to be the person who is called ‘brave’.. I want to have a normal life where I don’t have to be, where I’ve never had to be. Being called ‘brave’… just the undercurrent of that seems to be ‘I can see your life sucks hardcore, I’m glad it’s not me!’-

The ‘car’ is in the shop, I’m working so hard on it. I wish someone would look my way and take me for what I am, and what I’m trying to be.

I grew up with no boundaries. None. Not in a close knit family hug everyone way, but one in that they were so run over I didn’t know what they even were or that I was allowed to have them. I’m trying to learn that now. Further, I’m trying to learn what other people’s boundaries are. I’ve spent so long just careening everywhere, I didn’t know when or if I was crossing other peoples’. I try now, to listen really hard and straight lace myself. To not fuck it up.

See?

I grew up where, at school, no boundaries. I ate alone. At home it was loud too, the last wheel at the kitchen table every night. Not even my room was safe. I was told that basically, it was my parent’s house, I was just living in it. If my room got too dirty, dad had no problem going in and cleaning it to his standards. If one of my belongings didn’t match my mom’s standards, she gave it away.

I don’t know the etiquette of social media, either. (oh hey! This counts, right?) I want to have somewhat of a life online too, because in real life it always seems like I can’t do it. But I don’t know how to start.

Following old friends on facebook, for example. If they post interesting things, I want to say something, and contribute, even though I know that logically it’s a very, very bad idea. Not because they say mean things back. In fact most of the time they say nothing, and my contributions are dead air. It hurts to go onto the ‘acquaintances’ tab on facebook, because there’s the whole scroll, of what I’ve lost. So what can I post, and where, do you think?

The Tea Party Has Been Cancelled

Therapy has a new face, these days.

My therapist is going off of sensorimotor psychotherapy, by Pat Ogden. She’ll let me talk briefly what’s going on in life and then we get into it. it’s motion based. Today it was simple movement of her going back and forth towards me, what felt safe and what was not, as I tried to ward off attack. Boundaries.

It was terrible, readers. And I had to notice what I was doing, and what was going on with me as I did it, on top of all that, to tell her those things, and I couldn’t believe what was coming out of my mouth. Used to be that it was more of a tea party, where I’d just chat about my woes.

I felt sick. i still feel sick.

I know I want to talk to someone, to hear a voice to just drone on, but I also know that the only option, and I mean the only option, is my mother.

And that’s a phenomenally horrible idea.

Talk about boundaries. That was the point of the session today, really, was that I had no boundaries and why. I mean, I know enough when I’m being attacked, or even just a gentle version of people just talking to me (my ears still roar at that point) but not enough to know that I’m allowed to say my piece, either to be present or to repel them entirely. My mother violates these senses at every turn. I don’t know if I can say that I can call these senses boundaries though. I can’t. I have no defenses. Everything, even people being friendly, is just too much. Like, if they are being friendly, it’s as if they are saying I exist, I deserve it. It just narrows down to a car’s headlights for me and I just wait to get hit as they pass me by.

I don’t have many people left, that are wholly within my heart and I am wholly within theirs, with which I can be a whole and unguarded being, chosen family. My two young cousins up the road, my cat. The rest of everybody I regard with some darkness in my heart, for one reason or another. My mother, for instance, suffocates my soul, wants to know it all. She broke my trust badly over time. Now she pries constantly. Even physically, when she’s in my space, at my apartment, she’ll arrange it just so. I reluctantly give her pieces, which she gobbles up, wanting more, and I am left feeling robbed. She only hears what she wants to too. Neither her or my dad wants to hear anything whatsoever about manliness or transliness (I still don’t know what men wear for shoes, is a light example. I have old somewhat unisex girl shoes for the most part, and this makes me self conscious. But that is another story). This is not healthy listening, but she’s the only one in my entire existence who will listen at all.