31 Mar 06: A Much-needed Observation

Okay, I think I know why the ballet suddenly became so impossible (having ranted about this to Lissu and Auri long enough). I fell into the trap of a role; of measuring myself by the comments of others - and wasn't all blameless myself. It all started so well - a bit too well. Several people commented on how well I danced and how it could be seen I'd done a lot of it before. And not only that, but I raised the expectations even higher all on my own by bragging about how I'd soon enough be in the Advanced classes, probably because despite the nice comments I still felt insecure and fat and stuff. And so I created myself a role that would have required impossibly fast advancement and permitted absolutely no bad days. And when I felt I wasn't living up to the role... crash. Boom. Bang.

But right now - in the middle of the night, stressed over tomorrow's ball, desperate for junk food, and flu-ish - I came to a revelation all by myself. I say revelation, because even though naturally this has been said to me often, it's not the same until it's said by me. What the heck does it matter what anyone says to me in a particular class, on a particular day? I'm not there for instant gratification, I'm there for the long-term result. A bad day, a bad remark, will always pass. Better health, better shape and the ability to do dance projects are lasting things.

Dammit.

(Yeah, you can tell me I'm an idiot now.)

I've missed the sound of rain. (Though not the wet and cold...)

30 Mar 06: Bad Luck

Things haven't exactly been going my way for the past couple of weeks (or I haven't been going anything's way, maybe). Still, now I overslept the social office meeting (because I tried to stay awake overnight, being so stressed over it), and now I have a cold on top of that.

My subconscious may have cooked up the cold all by itself, though, to avoid next weekend's SCA ball. Not because dancing wouldn't be fun, again, but because by now I was supposed to be in shape and in a new Italian dress. Which clearly hasn't happened.

Or maybe it's just bad luck.

Someone, somewhere, has again claimed that psychotherapy doesn't work, at least not in any meaningful manner. Bullshit. Without the therapy I would certainly not be here anymore. Without the therapy I would keep repeating the same mistakes that drive people away and make me miserable. Sure, there have been problems with my therapy - the biggest that there were no official sanctions for missing sessions, so I could not use that to fight my fear of going, feeling I don't really deserve it after all, by the fact that deserved or not, if I didn't, I'd be in big trouble. But even so, I've certainly become more aware with it. Whether I have the strength to use that awareness to become a better person is another matter altogether.

29 Mar 06: Just A Book Note

Hey, guys? I suppose those who follow book thingies religiously might already know this, but I didn't, so some of you might not, either: one of the most hyped SF books of last year, Hugo nominee Accelerando by Charles Stross, is available online, free. Go here.

Also, short fiction nominees for various SF awards will probably be popping up as well, starting with the British SF Associaction Awards here. "Magic for Beginners" and "I, Robot" are also Hugo nominees. I wish someone could tell me what I missed in "Magic for Beginners" - it seemed like a fabulous beginning for a novel that didn't happen, so nothing really meant anything or connected to anything. Since it's one of the most highly praised stories of last year, I must have missed something.

(Even though this is still not a blog, I suppose it's polite to indicate my source anyway: Emerald City, which is also up for Hugos (semi-prozine and best fan writer for Cheryl Morgan, who I hear is a great friend of Finland; not that I would know, not being an insider in Finnish SF fandom... I just read books). And No, I did not start reading Emerald City through a certain geek blog associated with The Newspaper. I found it all on my own.)

28 Mar 06: ...And More Waiting

I really, really wish I could afford the therapy sessions right now. I desperately need someone to tell me it's okay not to get everything perfect and wonderful at the instant one gets one step upwards right. I'm altogether on a downslide in the mood department because I can't get myself to believe that, not really.

This is the small life that I really loathe. It's exhausting and unrewarding and even though I crave for encouragement, the actual thought of anyone saying "it's going to be okay, really, just push on" drives me crazy with rage. Because it's so... Mom. And nothing ever went right the way she promised it would. And all this feels so much like... settling. For less. For smallness. And it's just not worth it. With all this pain, and all this inability to be a good person, smallness just won't cut it.

See, I know my limitations. I know I can't manage not to feel deprived and to hate and to be petty, and pettiness is really unattractive. As if I wasn't unattractive enough already. I would like to be able to be gracious and forgiving, but I can't. And if I really can't - if I really can't be a good person - nor have anything else to give back to the world; brains, aid, something - then what use is any of this?

Okay, got that out of my system for now. Books, then (about the only thing I've been good for, besides watching figure skating). I finished A Storm of Swords. I want to write about it, but for some reason my English is stumbling right now. Not because of the book, just - I'm not good enough to write literary reviews in English, which I'd like to do now. And in general. I noticed that Kalle is rereading McLeod's "Engines of Light" trilogy, and realised I can't remember anything of it, except that it was probably rather cool. Maybe. And it bothers me that I have no record of the reading experience, just to remind myself. But my English will never be on a level high enough to write real reviews, and I hate poor attempts at anything.

For the record, I still feel uncomfortable with Martin's world. Too many people are awful, and everything always goes wrong in terrible ways. I'm sure a lot of readers love it for just that, but it wears me out. Either I identify with the victims, which makes me unhappy for understandable reasons, or I identify - unwillingly - with the Bad and the Ugly, which depresses me when I can see the same awful traits in myself and read vivid illustrations of what it looks like from the outside, and where it leads. But even if I try to leave my own neuroses out of it, what really gets me down is how good intentions always lead to bad things; nothing good that is tried ever gives happy results. Okay, I can think of one exception concerning Samwell Tarly.

Still, I'm now invested enough that I want to read the rest. And, I suppose, impressed enough that I dreamed of it last night. A silly dream, really, but interesting in that I was a man in it, a proper young hero, too. Can't remember having such a dream since I was thirteen.

I'm tired. Of everything.

23 Mar 06: Small Step, Big Victory

I was inches - minutes - away from not going to the employment office this morning, but I did. I won the fight. And it was not a short or easy one, but I did win. I did go.

It wasn't completely useless: I get to go into the personal rehabilitation survey, which is rather thorough and should be worth it. We'll see. It may even be that they recommend that studying would be the best rehabilitation for me (or at least the lady said it's one possibility). We'll see.

I just felt so old this morning. So old, and I haven't even got around to living yet.

(Evening) Fuck. Fuck. Can't I try anything fun and social without added stress?

No, I'm not going to explain. Sorry.

(Even later) This is not a life. This is so not a life. This is nothing at all. How do I wake up? Where's the damned surface? No, I'm not panicking, I'm just frustrated beyond belief. Though I suppose it's quite well on this side of belief, if one's read all of my ramblings. Who wouldn't be frustrated, churning in this swamp for ever and ever? But this. Is. No. Life. And won't do.

But how do I change it? How?

22 Mar 06: Worn out with Waiting

There hasn't been that much to write about. All this getting-your-life-in-order stuff is scarier and more exhausting than one should think. It's so easy to assume that just getting out of the worst nothingness is enough, and then things begin to work out all by themselves, or at least there's enough hope and good mood to make them feel so. But that isn't at all how it works. Every step is just as hard and may still turn out wrong, or just not move anywhere. And every step takes a lot out of you, every time, and whether you get anything back is doubtful and must be trusted to some future hope. People like the social worker last week are a rare luck.

See, I had an appointment at the employment office about the rehabilitation program, and it was useless. The lady was nice and upbeat, but basically she just kept telling me to do it all myself, so she was no help at all. Oh well, I have another appointment for her tomorrow, so now I've gathered up enough steam for a week, I may come up with enough courage to tell her that if I could work these things out myself, I wouldn't be there, and to do her job.

Still, not much else. Got the money, even though there was a mixup that required enough courage out of me to call and ask for more money - mine quite rightfully, but even so, it was terrifying. Still have not been able to cut the excuses and get to dance class (so have now botched flamenco as well). Eating not good. No therapy news.

If it all stops here, nearly okay but not quite, as I feared it might, it wasn't worth it. Isn't worth it.

Finished the massive Otherland series by Tad Williams (four books, about four thousand pages). I don't know how much lasting literary value it might have, but it was highly addictive, and I practically didn't put the last book down at all. It's about a fantastic but problematic virtual reality network and the people who stumble upon it - but that is a poor description: this is not one of those books where VR is just a frame for fantasy adventures. No, instead this is about the network, its history, purpose and the lives of people who get tangled up in its fate for various reasons. Though it's just as much about the people. It takes quite a bit of patience and time to get through it all, so I might not recommend it to people short on those, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. Even the Big Explanation was rather satisfactory, and that's a lot coming from me, as you may have noticed from my earlier comments about books.

I still can't figure out how people manage to have jobs, lives and books at the same time, though. And I'm pretty sure I won't be able to give up books.

13 Mar 06: The Absurd Relief of Being Caught at the Bottom

Oh God. It finally happened to me: someone official who started to take care of me - actually started out taking care straightaway. The social worker lady (girl? she was certainly younger than I was) welcomed me by asking how I was feeling, and when I said I was scared, she asked why, and started reassuring me at once. Not once did she question my need or right for basic support - and not only that, but she pulled out my job listing (from the state pension office) and asked me to look at it, and if I really thought it belonged to a person who was good at nothing... She congratulated me on having the courage to get as far as I'd got with all the applications, and the particular courage of having got up in the morning and come to the meeting. She was concerned with my health; with whether I have friends; with how I'm going to manage all this getting-back-to-life process. She suggested we meet regularly for a while at least, to help me with it, so now I have another appointment in two weeks (and a few days). She thought that if I don't get the therapy funding, it might be possible to add something to the basic support for that - only once a month maybe, but even so. And I should have money for basic survival by the end of this week.

There are no words. The sky is incredibly blue and the air is brilliant and smells of mysterious otherworlds and the sun is bright and warm right here. And I'm alive.

(So... where's the inevitable knock-down? It has to be right behind the corner, just waiting. Feeling this relieved cannot be allowed; it never is.)

(Night) Still, now that the immediate survival crisis seems solved, and the self-worth crisis seems at least potentially solvable, I notice that my basic existential crisis is no nearer to solution. I mean, what's the point of it all really? What contribution can I make? What is it that I actually enjoy doing, if I can afford ordinary leisure activities? And at the moment, the answer to all of these seems to be... nothing. But we'll see how I feel in a week or two; if it gets any easier with getting back to the regular depression medication. It seems hard to believe - facts are facts, and it's facts I feel I'm dealing with here - but I'll give this situation the benefit of doubt. It's always been difficult for me to see the effects of the meds myself, so...

But at the moment, books bore me, there's nothing interesting on TV, the idea of ballet classes feels pointless and there's been a bit too much of a break in the flamenco, too (I suppose because I realised I'm never going to look good doing that one, either), SCA feels uncertain because I don't know if I have a place where I feel comfortable there, after all, and there are no exciting larps anywhere in the future. And I'm not even going to go into the frustration of finding anything worthwhile for real life; that's a bigger issue, but if I can't find enjoyment even in enjoyable things, what then? What point is there in anything then?

12 Mar 06: The Paradox of Edge and Desert

Another knife's edge, another night of howling terror alone: I have an appointment about the basic support tomorrow morning. It's half past one, and I'm highly doubtful of the outcome and therefore of my chances of actually getting there.

So, nothing new, nothing changed.

...There are so many things that I'm afraid they're going to make into an issue, and yet I worry over the fact that I'm not properly thin, like I of course should be if I had been so poor I couldn't pay my bills - how are they going to believe someone whose whole physical presence proves they haven't needed any discipline on themselves? And if I try to explain the Eating Thing, why should they a) believe me, as I'm sure it's not mentioned in the psych. report, because I never bring it up, having lived with it so long b) care any more than they should care about someone who spends their basic support on booze? (The issues I actually should be worried about include not having had the courage to find out about my debts, and other stuff like that. Well, mostly that.)

How exactly does anybody's life become this absurd?

I've come back to wishing I could be able to pretend enough to slit my wrists, but I still can't. It would be a stupidly transparent attempt to get attention, and would be seen as such by anyone with half a brain. No games about this: either live or don't. I just haven't got any better at knowing how to do the former. I've understood many things about what stops me, but I haven't learned ways to stop all the stopping, and I don't know who or what could teach me anymore, now that it seems I won't be getting any more money for therapy.

Yes, I'm terrified witless.

No, I don't know if I can get myself there at ten am. I may be scared enough about missing it to counter this particular set of scared, or not. I don't know yet.

11 Mar 06: Bittersweet Dreams

Had another one of those last night. Those dreams of longed-for acceptance, of connecting with people one knows are beyond one's reach by now, for various reasons, but never stopped feeling sad for it. It was wonderful, ecstatic even - sweet and natural and seemnigly real - and it was just a dream.

The doubts about bothering to live are proving to be more constant than old friends, having returned and set up house. I had a graphic reminder that I really had botched even the larp thing last week. And anything else - it was worse at the employment office than I thought, and I haven't really been able to improve on the bed-sofa-kitchen triangle much. Not on my own, that is: in all honesty, I should not complain about lacking friends, because I do have some who constantly come through, and I wouldn't want them to feel I don't appreciate that. Or them. On Tuesday, Suvi took me to see Memoirs of a Geisha, and on Thursday the Q's invited me over to sauna (would even have come and got me from home, but luckily I made myself go to the dance practice I've been accepted to - but that's no achievement: I could hardly start botching that at once!). Paula has been a constant rock, and so has Mirka. I should learn to be happy with what I have. It's just that there are so many more people who I miss desperately - people who own a piece of my soul, wil they nil they (most of them probably neither, but oblivious to the fact). And it keeps eating me. And I keep missing them. And it's not as simple as daring or not daring to contact them, but much more complicated and confused.

It also keeps eating me that I don't dare to participate in more-or-less public conversations on something that interests me, because I'm not intelligent enough. And other people are.

07 Mar 06: Prognosis Doubtful

Since I wrote what I wrote last, I have been in desperate need of reassurance. Not only desperate, pathological. Just understanding something terribly painful is not enough for it to heal - on the contrary, actually realising it means that you are now face to face with its emotions: a child's howling need not to feel put aside, unloved, unimportant. It doesn't help at all to try and rationalise it. The monster is here and drowning out all sense and reason: I am worthless, meaningless, un-loved, unable to make people like me enough to stay, or to accept me, or to bother anything for me. And so my world has narrowed down into bed, sofa and constant craving for food. I can't make myself go to classes or anywhere at all, really, because at the moment a ballet class can't compete with the desire for donuts. And even the desire for donuts can't manage to compete with how hard it is to dress up and go outside, even to the grocery store.

On Friday, it was also made absolutely, totally clear that the Tikkurila psychiatrist firmly believed I was a lazy parasite that just didn't want to work - since after all I had been able to "participate in those roleplaying projects enough to get to magazines even!". I was literally dumbfounded: how could she not see the pathologically low self-confidence; the one where larps were maybe the only thing I was good at, and even that I botched badly, many times? Or maybe such a thing didn't exist at all? Maybe my self-hate was just an excuse? Maybe I am a lazy parasite worth nothing, maybe I just don't like to work and therefore deserve exactly what I've got?

And so the bed, the book and the dreams of eating everything sweet, creamy and fulfilling in the world.

So don't expect a happy ending any time soon. Or much writing at all. I fail even in this, even in the attempt to write an educational true story: there is nothing to learn from something that doesn't progress. I was so close; I had all the keys for becoming okay, but I can't. I can't do it when it means nothing; when I mean nothing.

02 Mar 06: Tiny Wonders of Being & More Analysis

...Is it normal that when placed on the steel covering next to the kitchen sink and filled with hot water, the teacup sings? This is the second such occurrence I note, so has this always been happening? Do other people's teacups do this? Am I hearing things?

There was a singing ring in an extremely weird and twisted mini-series on fairy tales that I watched yesterday and today, but I think the happily, highly humming teacup has it beaten. If for nothing else, then for the fact that it actually does it on my kitchen table (well, not mine, but you get the idea).

There are more clothes to buy away on the sales pages.

(Later, but still early in the morning after an unslept night) I have just had another very, very big revelation. The issue itself is not actually new anymore, but something that the therapist already introduced, and that I've been pushing around in my mind, doubtful, but now, right now, it actually hit. I got a grip on the emotions connected to it.

Now this is going to sound so frakkingly Freudian that some of you probably won't believe me either. But it's got to be true because it hurts so bad. It hurt when I wrote it down to a letter to friends a moment ago, and it hurt thinking about it after that, and the thing currently connected to it hurts, and all is just a big huge mess of hurt.

I believed that I was not as good as my brother. That the newcomer, the younger child, was better, more importantly talented, worth more, worth loving more. And by default then, I was not worth much at all.

And don't read me wrong: I am not trying to play the blame game and say my parents actually treated us unequally in any significant manner. No, they were neither stupid nor uncaring, though this was the result nevertheless. I can see how it happened, through a chain of events that no-one could really have picked out, particularly not beforehand. Dad was naturally more inclined to relate more closely to a boy that was more active physically, and particularly more inclined to relate to a child that had remarkable musical talent even as a toddler. At my parents' time, it was quite natural for the father to do father-son things together with the son and for the mother to do mother-daughter things together with the daughter, and all was supposedly well. The hitch came because Mom formed such a closely symbiotic relationship to me from the beginning, and because Dad was away so much: his approval became much more important, while Mom and I were hardly separate at all for there to be a question of approval (and also because through that connection I absorbed Mom's own ambivalent relationship to Dad: partly setting him very high up on a pillar, craving his approval and deferring to his judgement, partly tinged with resentment for his absences). And so Dad's attention and approval were the defining factor at my preschool age, and since he (trusting that it all evened out between two parents) paid more attention to my brother...

I already got in touch with the inferiority I then felt unthinkingly because I wasn't as spectacularly musically talented as my brother. Yes, my stories were liked, but my brother got a frickin' piano (which very emphatically and repeatedly was stated to be his; I don't know why). But I didn't believe that the bigger issue that the musical thing reinforced was really that overwhelming. Now I feel it was.

This should explain to a lot of people something about my troubled relationship to a certain younger friend of mine. (No, I'm not trying to be flippy or to hide things, I just don't think people who may not have read this diary from the very beginning need to know about every old argument. Those who have, certainly know.)

More maybe later. Right now I can't deal with anything more.

01 Mar 06: The Endless Psyhoanalysis...

...sometimes gets to be really tiresome. It would be awfully nice to be able to fool oneself, to close one's eyes to one's own faults. And those of others as well, of course.

For one, I don't for one second believe that I wouldn't be more envious than a good person is allowed to be. When others refer to some brilliant piece of writing, my reaction is not to agree and to point it out on my own turn, but to hate the author for being better than I am, and myself for not having written it myself. Though perhaps those two actually happen the other way around.

But it would also be nice to be able to put selfishness to good use occasionally, and learn not to get emotionally vulnerable with people who can easily be seen would be hurtful to one. I mean, to me particularly. I should think I'd know myself well enough not to get into situations that have the potential to hurt me. But no. I don't seem to be able to make that assessment - it gets buried under other, more confused emotions.

Another thought. I don't think life is supposed to be painful by default. If it is, there's something wrong. It is not always that that wrong can be taken out and righted, but the default state of a human being is not pain. We should strive to remember that, and when things hurt, take it as a properly serious sign. I may be a complete screw-up, but that doesn't mean other people should be in the same state.

(Night) I have an issue with something. A big issue. It's not that I don't have many issues anyway, but this is a new one, or at least newly recognised. When someone hurts you extensively and then, on top of that, leaves you, that does not feel... fair. Fair is the exact word - or unfair, of course. I can see why this would happen more easily in a love relationship, but even so, the word that comes to me is unfair. That after recognised hurt one doesn't even want to make it up to you, but adds to it by rejecting you completely. And when this happens in a friendship...

I don't know what to think. I don't know how to react. I'be been hit on the head with a log, and even if the log should have been anticipated, it still makes me feel dumb and dazed and lacking any thought.

That this, on top of everything else... is unfair. Unfair.

And writing about this suddenly made me terrified, wanting to erase everything, because if it's fact that a friend decides not to be my friend anymore, I must have done something not to be worth friendship, and so everyone else will now reconsider me as well... Terror. Complete. Black. Screaming.

Yes, I'm beginning to understand that people all around the world experience fear, most of the time. Bad, paralysing fear, that is. But why do I have to be afraid of just being?

It's not going to get any better. God, is this really necessary any more? Couldn't I...

No. I'm begging for attention. I'm not yet quite that far. At least not right this moment.

...Unfair.

(Later, after restart of thought processes) ...Though, of course, quite logical. One is just the continuation, or culmination, of the other. The leaving happened already with the first conscious hurting: if one wants to be with someone, they don't risk it by doing something they know hurts the other person. That they stay beyond that is only for circumstantial reasons.

Anyway, it wasn't only a miserable night. Auri visited, which was good, and dug into my sale pile, which was also good. I can sleep a bit more easily about affording ballet now.