Monday, February 8, 2010

Day 33

Is God against me or something?

What is God trying to do to me?

Maybe I"ll start the story from yesterday night. Yesterday night at roughly 10.00PM. I had just finished sorting through my mail, filing my bills, fiiling my notices and cleaning the table and a little around my room.

I turned on my computer. Went through all my mail. Had two very difficult emails. One I resolved in the most assertive way possible. The other I just replied with how I felt.

I was thinking of what to do. So I started to re-do my vision board. Take out all the things that were no longer relevant to what I wanted in my life, and put in a lot of things that were.

Anyway.. I get another email, to which I thought and knew that men and women just don't see eye to eye.

But yeah.. I finished off my vision board, felt great about what it looked like and all the things that I aspire to do, then went to sleep. Tried to anyway.

All the while, I actually stopped eating from 4.30pm on Sunday, because I was absolutely full and when I got home, I did eat.

This morning, I couldn't wake up. I set my alarm for 10.30 and just didn't wake up til 11 and didn't get out of bed til 11.30. I brushed my teeth. Then felt so tired. Went back to bed. Sat down for a while.. Then decided to lie down.. then decided to go to sleep again for another hour. I was just too tired.

I was hungry. That i'll give you. I set my alarm for 1.00pm, because I had another counselling session at 2pm today.

I got out of bed, eat one piece of toast with butter and pate. Just sat there at the dining table, thinking about things, crying and just keeping an eye on the time.

I left my house at 1.45pm. Got to the counselling place at 2pm.

The counsellor (look i'm just gonna call her Helen, pseudonym, cos I cbf typing counsellor all the time).

Helen came out to greet me. She asked me how I was, and I know she can tell from my tone that I was really tired and not with it. I just sat down in the chair and started to cry again. Told her about my concern over what is happening with me. It's just not usual that I would not eat and sleep, and from the whole situation with my grandpa, you would THINK that I have the half decency to KNOW by now that sleeping and eating are very very important.

anyway.. we talked about how I felt and what I thought could be a possibility as to why I wasn't sleeping. I said that I had been thinking about it last night. I think that my life is so stagnant. So not-progressive. Well in my eyes anyway. I am very very hard on myself. I expect more from me than from anyone else.

I just felt that I don't do much, and even when I'm trying to DO MUCH, the progression of it is not as fast as I want it to be.

So if there's nothing going on in the day, I just feel like I don't need to wake up as early... I mean what for?

On a physical level, I haven't been eatin well, skipping meals and eating very little. Anxiety provoked it to begin with. With the whole being upset because of my grandpa just made me not want to eat. And that has just kept going. I talked about my indigestion, well, i think my body is over it. It gave me warning signs, I ignored them, now they're trying a new tactic, called.. making you feel really sleepy.

I know this. I know it really well.. that's why I'm really concerned. But there's a greater force called "low self-esteem" or even just "The black dog" who tries to get in your way of life, and refuses to let go.

Like I said before, I'm playing a game with Death, called, "When is it time?"

Anyway. So helen and i started to talk about ways that I could relax and try to fall asleep at night. I was really uncooperative. Which is not like my usual self.

I answered the question that she set for me last week.

"What is your default position?"

I told her that from what had happened this week, my default position was being passive. Whenever I come across conflict or any situation, I am usually passive. Though, from my own experiences and from learning what I've learnt lately, I've realised that being passive was stupid, and I needed to be more assertive, to voice out what I need, want and feel, and communicate with others about my message and my stance.

It was very important to me.

Helen used the example of what I was talking about in the Day 31 (?) post about the person who pretty much made me feel like she wanted to use me. Helen used positives and negatives in relation to being passive and being assertive.

The result was quite fascinating, as the two correlating columns of negative-passive and positive-assertive were the same. The most important factor being that it was ever more important to me to bringforth my message across and to communicate my needs and wants.

I'm tired of being the passive person who just gives and does thing for others, but have me feeling like crap in the end. It's a good thing to help, but I over-help to the point that I lose myself in the process and end up feeling really drained really quickly.

I tried so many methods to try to get over it all. All sorts. So many of my counselling buddies have shared with me their methods.

Anyway.... because I was so used to being passive, it's really difficult for me to be assertive now.

and I have been. I have been assertive, but I didn't realise it. It was more and more important to me to make my point clear. To clearly put forth my stance, in the nicest way possible but at the same time offer advice or offer kinds words.

I am a natural helper. A natural healer, and the one thing I hate is seeing people upset. Seeing people caught up in their problems. Even if I have been feeling shit for the past two months, if I had the energy to make ONE nice statement full of support and encouragement, I would.

But that's the thing. Some times when I say something assertive, it makes the other person feel upset. Because I wasn't the accomodating passive person that just sucks in every bit of my confusion, hurt, pain or what have you, and just do things for you, and screw my feelings.

SO i've been this assertive person lately. and it feels weird. I feel confused.. last night I had this strange feeling. But Helen reassured me and told me that this was normal. This is the feeling of change. I never knew that changing was so difficult and felt so strange.

I'm doing things that I don't normally do and it feels weird. I even accused myself of being selfish and evil, because i'm no longer caring about people's feelings.

And that's why I go crazy. Cos I feel so damn hurt, that I hurt someone else.

Which reminds me of the time when I was a kid, and I slammed the car door shut, not knowing that my grandpa had his hand between the gap of the door.. and I smashed his finger.. I felt so bad, I just cried. I cried and I cried.

That's why I hate being in the wrong. I hate doing wrong to people. I always want to do what others want me to do because it's the easiest way. I'm doing right, so therefore I"m not hurting people.

But it takes a toll. And it's only now that i'm learning the biggest lesson in my life, which is to take a step back and let others do what they need to do.

I can't control how others feel. I really can't. I can only just be myself and do what is right by me.

Without my own physical and mental health and strength, I cannot help others. I cannot bring happiness to others. I cannot love others.

So I was actually feeling really good after this counselling session. I really felt very thankful that Helen really made an effort to illustrate to me and normalise that what I'm feeling is normal. That change feels like that. That I need to embrace this really uncomfortable feeling because this is what it feels like to finally empower myself to be myself and speak up in the most assertive way possible without offending others.

We even talked about setting goals - immediate, short term and long term goals.

And i just imposed a question, cos i thought it was really interesting that -

"Do we need to be able to plan our life in order for it to be happy?"

Just last night I was thinking about the things I needed to see immediately to be able to feel happy. How funny is that, we need to plan a goal for each day, so that when we achieve it, we feel happy. It's really strange..

Anyway.. i don't want to go on too much about it.. I"ll talk about it next time.

Anyway.. so i felt good about everythng.. thought about how I would explain the situation to the person I had an email from... but before that, I was going to go to Coles and buy food. I need to eat right, so I need to buy the food to eat it.

So i did. Walking around looking at different products. Going home with two big bags full of food.. It wasn't the healthiest of food, but i'm sure my body would be more happy with something rather than no food at all.

When I got home, I had to return a call. Put all the food away. Turn on my laptop to check emails.

A few were about a trip that we were planning. An email from that person, which at first I didn't really read it.. just skipped over it. Then I got to one email from my aunty.

That's when the entire of my afternoon became still. Very still.

I spoke of the family dinner I had on saturday. But I didn't tell you, that we were talking about our uncle.

People in VN are usually really scammy and really someone to be weary of. So we were talking about this one family in VN, a relative, a close relative and how they have been really strange lately, and may be trying to scheme up a bad thing..

That's what we all thought. I don't want to get into too much details but it was all associated with money.

It was a classic example of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". It really was.

So from word of mouth, my uncle had a heart condition. It would be stable, but then required surgery..

No one was willing to go with him to another neighbouring asian country. As you would guess, open heart surgery was not something people could perform in VN.

We all thought this was dodgy. That this was strange. We didn't understand why they didn't just sell their property in VN to use it for the surgery.. if that was even necessary.

Anyway.. this email from my aunt. What happened at the end of the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. The boy gets killed. This is the same ending with my uncle. He died.

I was absolutely shocked.

Too shocked. I think I only just recovered some strength and some feeling. I was so numb for a while. I didn't know how to email one of the emails back. On the one hand, I was trying to be as appreciative and grateful as I could, but at the same time, my head was not with that situation anymore, it had wondered off into a tragic death.

It just countered everything I felt that day, or even felt in the last week. What is more important in life. To be right, or to be able to be alive and just love. To bring happiness into people's lives.

I'm so confused.

I worry so much about when my grandpa would die, and this happens. Someone else dies in the process.

I'm really really confused.

There's been too much discovery going on. Validation. Great empathy, kind words. And a shocking end to our family.

I didn't have a good relationship with this uncle. I didn't know him well. But I still feel. I feel for his family, no matter how dodgy they are. I feel for my grandparents, who lost their son. My dad for losing his brother.

Life is still moving on though. My mum and dad are still doing their usual routines... my dad out in the backyard gardening, my mum in the kitchen. But I took time out to write this. To share my thoughts with the interweb.

What does this mean now.

That on my family tree, I will now have to put a big cross over my uncle. Now on my family tree there are two crosses. My uncle and my grandmother.

Life is ever so fragile.

That one minute you could be fighting, you could be hating, that you could be scheming..

The next minute, that person isn't there anymore.

fuck.

Black Lisianthus x

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