Up and Down like Ocean Waves
Life is strange, full of ups and downs, sometimes meeting extremes within a week. Fortunately, I haven't met any extremes recently, but definitely ups and downs.
An up in the form of cat insanity:
Cats will "sing" occasionally, which sounds like they're dying. Many like to do this in rooms that echo and amplify this sound, like bathrooms—the amplification part is simply awesome in the middle of the night. My cat will turn eleven years old this fall, and she has just discovered the bathroom acoustics. She's been hanging out in there regularly for the first time in her life, for which I have no explanation besides a shrug because she's a cat. It's only the last few weeks that she's been up to her new shenanigans.
For some context, I live in a very small apartment in a large building full of very small apartments. The walls aren't super thin, but if you're right next to certain walls, you can hear a lot. One of those walls is in the bathroom. Sound filters through well enough that, if I'm in my bathroom and it's quiet, I can hear people talking on the other side of the wall and even the echo of someone standing to urinate.
I have no idea if my neighbors know anything about cats, which is a legitimate concern at the moment. This is because my cat is not singing in the bathroom—she's screaming like we're actively murdering her. I'm half expecting the cops to show up and want to know if I'm murdering cats in my bathroom.
Cats are nothing if not an adventure.
A down in the form of adventures in medication:
I've declined in strength and stamina over the last few weeks. I've had several falls and the last one wrenched my shoulder. After two days of care and cautious use, it's feeling fine, thank goodness. The decline seems to have stabilized, which is also good.
The only issue is that a few weeks ago, I started a new medication that might be responsible, but it also seems to be causing a very rare side effect for this medication—visual hallucinations. They're very mild, basically seeing something out of the corner of my eye that's either moving or out of place, always inanimate and small, or maybe my cat or an insect. When I check, whatever I was seeing isn't there. Thankfully, I am aware that these are hallucinations and it's not impacting my life really at all. It's more annoying than anything, and I'm okay with continuing to take the medication if this is the only issue. But if the medication is impacting my safety, I might not be able to continue, which really sucks.
An up in the form of my self-exploration:
The process has so far been fairly surface-level—things I like in media like books and music, the kind of decor I like, my personal style in clothing and hair, and using my knitting and crochet to work toward a new look. I've shared several things I've made myself recently, and I have two large projects in progress and two small ones, all of which I'm very excited about.
Watching tutorial videos has helped with this so much, and most of what I'm currently working on has something to do with a tutorial video. I've also been checking a lot of pattern books out of the library to look for fun projects and taking note of things I might want to make in the future so I can snag the book again when it's time. Thus the plethora of pattern book reviews.
The whole thing has been a lot of fun.
A down in the form of my writing:
My progress in all my projects has all but halted completely. This might be temporary, and it might last a while. Writing is so much a part of who I am that I feel almost lost now that my muse seems to have taken an unexpected vacation with no itinerary provided. All I can do is be patient with myself and just let it return when it returns.
The mixed bag:
I am a pack rat, and our apartment is way too small for the sheer number of boxes in my possession filled with things from my childhood I refused to get rid of when I moved across the country to live with my new husband thirteen years ago. I realized not long ago that I have no idea what's in most of those boxes, and they haven't been opened since I packed them before the moving company picked them up two days after my wedding.
I need to sort through them and get rid of as much as possible. I intended to start that process around now to get down to my limit of how much I can keep. It needs to fit into my closet in a specific way and amount by the time I'm finished.
A few weeks ago, I had another realization: all of this stuff I've been lugging around for two decades are mostly items to allow me to cling to a childhood I never had. I think it's likely that most of the items inside the boxes are tied to my abuser in some way—my attempt to hold an iron grip on the good parts and ignore the negative.
In recent years, I've done a lot of work in therapy to understand the extent of my abuse and how it affects me. I've learned about narcissism in research for my books enough to know that my father at the very least had narcissistic traits that I can explore in a later post. I'm not diagnosing him; I don't have the qualifications or objective view required to do so. It's simply an observation of his patterns of behavior. My therapist has since confirmed that his behavior is classic of a narcissist, though she cannot diagnose him either because he's not her patient.
I need to let go of all the things I'm clinging to that don't bring me joy. If it's not a treasure related to joyful memories, and that will likely necessitate my father not being involved in any way, I can possibly keep it. If it's painful or only involves my abuser, it goes in the dumpster.
When I explained all this to my therapist a few weeks ago, she suggested that I open boxes only during sessions with her so I can process the painful or happy memories associated with the items to protect my mental health during the process. It's something I need to do for the state of our home as well as a purge for my mental health's sake. I agreed to open the boxes in sessions with my therapist. While it will make the process take a lot longer, it will be safer for my mental health--the most important concern in the process due to the nature of the items in the boxes.
I went through the first box in a session a few days ago, a standard-sized box in the US called a book box. It's generally 17" x 12 3/8" x 12 3/8" (41 cm x 31 cm x 31 cm), so even full of the titular books, it's not too heavy for the average adult. This one was light, and a good choice for the first one, which was lucky since it's the first box we grabbed. Everything is still sealed up from our bed bug nightmare last year, and we're now feeling that it's been enough time (well over the required time) to open the seal. It was the first box chosen to open the sealing (which we could not see through), and it happened to be one I needed to sort through.
The box was full of my abuser, figuratively speaking, and his abusive mother. Most of it wasn't terrible, and one thing was actually related to something I found fun at the time, but because of the association, the item wasn't fun anymore. However, there was a horribly triggering item that I only had to see folded to know exactly what it was due to the color and single button visible. I buried it in other things already pulled out and destined for the dumpster so I only saw it for a total of under two minutes between shuffling it around before my husband took the box out to the dumpster with the item inside.
The only thing I kept was a surprise discovery of a Halloween costume my mom sewed for me a little over thirty years ago: Belle's yellow ball gown from the animated Beauty & the Beast released by Disney in 1991. I loved that dress and wore it far beyond that one Halloween for dress-up play until it didn't fit anymore. It's a joyful memory associated with my mom and a treasured object, so out of a full box, a child's dress was the only thing not thrown in the dumpster.
It felt really good to get through the first box. Now we'll just see how the rest of it goes.
An interesting thing in the form of clicks:
For quite some time, it seemed as though I was being targeted by bots, mostly from Hong Kong but some from China--or they appeared to be originating there. When I opened my blog dashboard for the first time in several months, the massive spike originally struck me as genuine new readers. But then I noticed specific trends--hundreds of clicks each week from Hong Kong but each new post had the same number of readers I would normally have before my break. It led me to believe that most of the clicks were only on the main page, not my actual content. A disappointing discovery, but not devastating. However, it blocked much of my ability to see the real stats for my blog because it was such an overwhelming number.
A few months later, the bots have pretty much disappeared, though I might have some left. It's dozens of clicks per week instead of hundreds. Now, the real stats are noticeable, and I want to mention the trends I see. I see waxing and waning numbers from around the world--a few here and there, steady for a while and then fade away, or rising and falling in waves. There have been a few select places where numbers have remained steady over several years.
I am always grateful for readers, even those who come and go, because that's someone who found my thoughts, feelings, and interests of worth, which baffles me. That may sound strange considering I write a blog, but I guess it's similar to why I write novels. I like sharing my life in a limited but creative way with a specific purpose in mind, but I have so little self-confidence that I convince myself no one will be interested.
That's why I study the stats and how I notice small trends. So, dear reader, if you are one of those people giving steady numbers, even a handful per week, I have noticed, and I am grateful.
Comments
Post a Comment