I don't know exactly where I'm going with this, but I was just reading inkdragon's diary and I just want to keep telling her over and over that it's okay. I'm not sure what's okay, or why. But I think it is.
I come from generations of the chronically depressed and probably bipolar, although only my mother was actually diagnosed with the latter. Memories of my grandmother and descriptions of her mother make it pretty clear that this is not a phenomenon of the moment. I have been described as "prone to depression", which only means, I think, that I have never succesfully been medicated for it. I've tried it a couple of times, but didn't find something that worked, so I was better off without it. Others in the family have done better, and it's helped them, too. I do believe that this is a brain-chemistry thing, which is why we can inherit it, like any physical trait. I also believe that being raised in the atmosphere has its influence, too.
Which is just to say that I have spent years and years with such low self-esteem -- that's what I always called it, low self-esteem -- that I really couldn't imagine why anyone at all, let alone anyone I thought well of, would spend five minutes with me. It's a real sort of self-hatred, but it isn't fueled by reality so much as it is by brain chemistry. I used to say that I felt like something had a grip on my insides and was wringing them out, like a wet towel. On a daily basis, it physically hurt just to be me. I did not like that. I did not like thinking that I was raising children with a mother like that. I worked hard there, so I think I didn't burden them with it as much as I was afraid I was. Being a mother was one of the things that I felt I was doing relatively well, and I needed to hold on tight to things like that. I knew there were some things I was good at, like my job. For years, I threw as much of myself into my work as I could squeeze into the day because I felt validated doing it, and I spent every minute left over with my children. These were the things I was good at. These were the things I could be doing so I wouldn't have to think about what a terrible person I was but didn't want anyone else to find out.
Last month some time, there was a For Pieces of You topic that I sort of wrote about -- friends -- but never got around to posting. I just looked at it again, and here's some of what I found:
As Bette Midler said ...
You know, you've got to have ... friends.
I was an unbelievably self-confident, even over-confident, little kid. I was the baby grandchild on both sides, I was indulged, I was whiny. I was also very self-reliant, and friends were just people I could tell what to do, since I was the director of all activities in my little social circle. It was like that in school, too. I told everybody what to do. If they didn't do it, I cried. Mostly, they did it.
It's possible that little kids can't really have real friends because they're all too self-centered. Maybe. I've seen it in other little kids, too, so maybe I wasn't all that different. I never gave this a thought at all until we moved when I was 8 and the entire paradigm of my life shifted.
I lost all self-confidence in my first hour -- if that long -- in my new school. But I made a friend, a wonderful true friend, also in that first hour. I wrote about Jessica once before. It was my friendship with Jessica that established a kind of friend-pattern, a template, if you will, for my esteem-less self: I could validate myself, even a little, because of the friends I had. If Jessica thought I was worth having for a friend, I guess I was okay.
I could never see in myself what friends saw in me, or even why they were bothering to. I was aware of certain qualities I had: I was loyal, I was dependable, I was generally amusing. But I have had the incredible good fortune to have a few friends in life who are Charisma People: special wonderful people that everyone loves and wants for a friend. Everyone wants them and somehow they are spending their time with me. Huh.
Here I am, someone always wanting to be loved and validated, and fortunately for me, I never fell prey to someone looking to use people for what they could buy or do or whatever. I have another dear friend to whom that has happened more times than it ever should have, but it never happened to me. I have had some good good friends in my life, and still do. But more to come on that.
It's come and now it's gone for me, this need to see myself in the eyes of my friends just to feel like a worthy person myself. I remember a weird thing that happened, it was about 12 years ago, the year before the brain tumor. A year exactly, it so happens. Leaving my house for work one morning, I slipped on the icy steps and went down right on my back, which hasn't been so good since I slipped on the ice in 1974. It hurt a lot, so after work that day I went to an orthopedist, who gave me valium. What he didn't tell me was not to go to work or interact with other human beings. He should have.
By the next day I was tense. Real tense.
By the day after that I was nuts. I was so nuts that I was scared that I was having a breakdown or losing my mind, so I called my regular doctor and went there and told him I thought I was losing my mind. Only after fifteen minutes or so did I say "Oh and I fell on the ice the other day and went to doctor whoever and he gave me valium." He looks at me and looks at my chart and looks at me and says that people prone to depression can't take valium, it pushes them over the edge. He told me to stop and gave me something else for my back and said to stay in bed for three days.
I did that, and the nuts thing cleared up in a few days. The incredible thing was that each day after work, Chum and E would stop by to visit to make me laugh and bring me presents and have a smoke. When they left each day I would think "Oh God I must not be as awful and crazy as I think I am, because Chum and E are the best people in the whole world and they love me." That made me feel much much better about being me.
I don't so much do this anymore, not since the brain tumor, I think. Something about that whole time in my life kind of made me see that there are just a bunch of people who love me for whatever reason, and the reasons couldn't be less important. I'm just okay to them, and that's okay with me. I no longer haver to remind myself that people like me, so I must be likable. It's just okay.
The bottom line for me was maybe when I realized that it was all a revolving door: I could only feel self-worth when I could see that people I thought were wonderful really seemed to like me, but then if I really do value these people and respect them, then maybe they are just right, I haven't deceived them, and they like me because I actually am worthy of it. In other words, if I respect them and their opinions, then I've got to believe that they are just right. If they are right, then I am okay. I am okay to be me.
I'm not saying that this is profound or life-changing or even that it makes sense, except to me. It's no substitute for a good therapist, and by the way, that helps, too. Mostly I'm saying that I have felt like the lowest life-form there is, but it was probably brain-chemistry, and when that shifted a little, I felt better and now -- maybe it's menopause, who knows -- my brain-chemistry seems to have settled down some and I'm mostly good most of the time. Things change. We always need to remember: things change.
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I'm watching Simpsons
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Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
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