littleduckie's Blog

Update: I talked to my friend this morning & apparently this is a highly treatable form of cancer & he is expected to make a full recovery!  :)

I just found out that one of my two best friends (real life, not on EP) has colon cancer.  I'd like to ask everybody who reads this to say a prayer or send good vibes or at least wish him good luck.  Thanks.

I just read this article & wanted to share it with everybody at EP because I think it makes a couple of really important points:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/10/05/o.happening.in.your.life/index.html

Basically, the idea is that people have a tendency to pick one problem to focus on because it's more comfortable than dealing with the real problem(s).  I noticed years ago that I did this -- my "designated issue" has usually been a relationship problem of some kind.  Moping over unrequited love or a troubled relationship is a perfect designated issue because romantic troubles are so easy to obsess on and because the problem is likely to be chronic, providing a time-consuming and long-term escape from the problems I really should have been focusing on solving.

The other point the article touches on is that an individual can become the "designated patient" in a family -- the one that everyone else can point to as abnormal so that the rest of the family can ignore their real problems.  I've seen this in my own life, too -- people whose issues are exaggerated or ridiculed by their families, making them scapegoats or jokes for the others.  The role probably becomes comfortable for at least some "designated patients" -- those who are looking for a good "designated issue" to distract them -- but it can also be extremely abusive.  It forces the person, who may have some real issue to deal with, into a social role that they can't escape from and yet cannot benefit from.  How can you earn approval for filling a role that is defined by the disapproval of the people closest to you?  And how do you make any real progress when your function in a family depends on your being dysfunctional?

One of the things I love about EP is being able to play trivia to help shelter pets & donate to other causes.  (If you don't know what I'm talking about, see it here: EP Trivia Game.)

Here are the other sites I have bookmarked & that I've used myself.  There are some others out there, too, but I haven't played them yet.  :)

(1.) Freekibble: You can answer one question each day for dogs & one for cats & they donate food.

(2.) Free Rice: This is a vocabulary trivia game -- it's really fun.

(3.) Jogo Green: This one is trivia questions about the environment & international issues . . . for every ten answers you get right, they plant a tree, up to 30 trees a day per player.

(4.) Free Flour: Geography trivia.  Kind of repetitive, but they donate one spoonful of flour for each correct answer.

(5.) Trivia for Charity: Various topics.

(6.) Free Poverty: This one is really different -- it gives you the name of a city or landmark, and you click on the world map to show where it is.  They donate clean water.

(7.) Click for a Change: This one has various Flash games -- you can register, but I don't think you have to.

(8.) HelpThirst.com: This one gives you a number to memorize & then enter & donates clean water.

(9.) Charity Word Game: There are several different causes you can support (click on the icons on the right-hand side of the page).  Kind of a different word game.

(10.) Club Bing (from Microsoft): You do have to register for this one.  They have a few different games & you earn tickets which you can either redeem for prizes or donate to charity.  You can choose the Humane Society of the United States or something else.

I am so frustrated . . . I can't bear to see people hurting and helpless, and yet I'm not in a position to help as much as I want to.  For that matter, I can't seem to get the help I need myself right now.

But seriously, can't we, as a society, do better than this?  Can't we do better for people who are homeless, or being abused, or trying to start their lives over?  So many women are stuck in abusive relationships because they have nowhere to go.  So many children are abused and have no one to help them -- or they get into the foster care system where they're abused and neglected by the very families that are supposed to be taking care of them. 

I have opened my home -- when I had one -- to people who needed help getting back on their feet.  Why can't more people do this?  Why can't we build a network of people who are willing to do more than sympathize or donate to a charity -- people who are willing to do something practical to help -- and give people some real options?

People talk about "building community" a lot these days, but it seems like it doesn't mean much more than having pleasant little block parties in the summer.  The point of having strong communities is to provide a safety net for people who find themselves in need of help!  I can't be the only person who wants to do something meaningful as part of a community. 

I've seen my ex go through three relationships now: the one before "us," ours, and the one he's in now.  I suddenly realized that he does the same thing in every relationship . . .

He cheated on the GF before me, ran personal ads, experimented with same-sex encounters, went on dates with women he met online, etc.

During our relationship, he ran personal ads, had a fake identity online, and -- like most guys who get caught pulling this crap on the 'net -- swore he never intended to meet any of them and wasn't corresponding with anyone.  (Yeah, that's why the email address for his fake identity is now his default address -- WTF?  Was I really supposed to believe something that preposterous?)

Now, after sabotaging our relationship, he's been dating some girl . . . and talking to me behind her back about the possibility of getting back together someday.

No matter who he's with, it seems, he has this irresistible compulsion to keep looking.

What's at the root of this?  He has a sensitive conscience and, I honestly believe, he wants to do right.  But he apparently CAN'T.  What goes wrong to make someone do this?  One thing I have figured out for sure is that it wasn't the craziness of the one before me (though I know from personal experience that the girl is seriously disturbed), and it wasn't mistreatment or neglect on my part.  I suspect it has nothing to do with the woman he's seeing now.  It's something inside him that is never satisfied.

Knowing what I do about his background and childhood, I guess I can see how the tendency developed -- I can understand a deep emotional hunger resulting from things he has been through.  But what I can't understand is the lack of self-control.  I really do believe he wants to be a good man and wants to do right.  Why can't he?

And do people like this ever overcome the problem?  I'd like to hear from anyone who has struggled with this behavior in his/her own life and succeeded in stopping it, and from the partners of "serial cheaters."  Anything you could share that would help me understand this would be greatly appreciated.

I've realized lately how little substance my ex-BF really had.  I gave him credit for a lot more character and depth than he really possessed.  I didn't choose him for his looks, but he was breathtakingly beautiful.  Long, curly, almost black hair; eyes as big and pretty as a girl's; a fine body, perfect proportions, perfect muscle tone--although he was about double his ideal weight, I could see the beautiful form behind the fat & never minded the extra weight.  (Although, ironically, he was constantly making derisive remarks about heavy women that we saw in public places.)

But in the final analysis, that was all he had: looks.  He was the most selfish person I had ever met, although it took me a while to see that.  He was a seething mass of fears and neuroses.  When a crisis would arise, he made no attempt to discipline his emotions, but got a case of "the vapours" like a high-strung Victorian lady.  For a long time after I realized just how troubled he was, I felt sorry for him, blaming it on his difficult childhood, etc.  But there's more to it than that.

A LOT of us have gone through horrible experiences in our lives and still managed to make something respectable of ourselves.  Many people, instead of allowing their suffering to make them self-centered, develop a heightened sensitivity to and compassion for the sufferings of others.  Perhaps some of the difference in the way people respond is a matter of how much natural inner strength a person has.  But some of it is also a moral choice.  It is morally wrong to allow oneself to become a self-centered, whining, manipulative perpetual victim and emotional bully. 

Yes!  It is actually a moral failure to allow yourself to wallow in negativity instead of getting a grip on your emotions and making a healthy, useful human being of yourself.

Now, I'm not talking about people's responses to a particular crisis.  I'm not saying people shouldn't have normal human feelings, or that they shouldn't grieve for losses, or feel pain over experiences in the past.  I'm talking about a general approach to life.  There are two choices when life has been unfair to you: you can give up and let it destroy your potential and use your painful experiences as an excuse for your irresponsible behavior, or you can accept your situation and determine to make the most of yourself despite it. 

The latter course isn't the easy one, but it's the only ethical one.  We all exist in a social matrix; we all benefit from living in human society and thus we all have obligations to society.  There is not one single person who is completely independent and therefore exempt from moral obligations.  Even a hermit who goes off into the woods and lives off the land is not really independent of the rest of humanity.  All the knowledge he took with him, all the manufactured goods he took with him, everything that makes it possible for him to survive in apparent isolation -- it all ultimately came from other people and he is in some way indebted to them.

Reflections like these are what finally allowed me, just in the last several weeks, to feel that I was really over my ex-fiance.  It took me eight or nine months to even stop feeling the pain every moment of my life, and I couldn't figure out why, because no break-up had ever affected me like this before.  And suddenly one night I realized what was different this time: I hadn't allowed myself to judge him.  I had been determined to be "nice" about it & never express my anger about the way he treated me -- never even feel anger, if I could help it.  THIS IS UNHEALTHY.  No, we shouldn't make snap judgements about people -- but that does not mean we shouldn't judge.  We should.  We must.  We have no other way of protecting ourselves from the unethical actions of others.  If we insist on not judging, we have no basis for objecting to the way others treat us.  It's strange how modern culture insists on never judging anyone and at the same time tells people to be assertive and stand up for themselves.  We can't have it both ways!

Someone will probably say, "But morality is a private matter."  Actually, it's not.  Morality is ENTIRELY a social matter.  There is a wonderful book by Matt Ridley called The Origins of Virtue which explains how human ideas of right and wrong are deeply rooted in our biology -- in short, they are a group survival strategy.  Morality does not come from "God" -- it comes from the realities of living together in complex social groups.  Such a lifestyle only works if people follow certain rules.

This is not a cohesive essay, and I apologize for that; I'm just sharing some thoughts.  My point is that it was allowing myself to judge my ex's conduct as not just hurtful in a personal way, but immoral in a larger sense, that allowed me to stop grieving.  I wanted so badly to think the best of him and never criticize him, and I took that to such an extreme that I was destroying myself inside. 

DON'T DO THIS TO YOURSELF.  I think it's an excellent virtue to be able to withhold judgement until we are sure of all the facts; ultimately, I believe that we are all perfect spiritual beings who cannot be harmed by others, so in that sense judgement is not justified.  But judging the conduct of the person who hurt you is a necessary part of the healing process.  You won't feel better until you have processed all the facts and come to some conclusions about what really happened.  Whatever your higher spiritual ideals may be, the "anger phase" of the grieving process is a part of human nature, and it serves a purpose.  If I had allowed myself to feel the anger in the first month after the break-up, I would have spared myself an extra seven or eight months of anguish.  Remember that the grieving process has evolved over time, and each step of the process serves a purpose.  The human mind is incredibly complex, and it knows how to heal itself.  Let yourself feel whatever you need to feel as long as you are on a path to healing.  At some point, of course, the healing must be complete, and you must let go and move forward . . . but don't think you can just skip the anger and judgement in the process just because it's not "nice."  If it didn't serve a purpose, it wouldn't be a universal feature of human psychology.

I've been realizing lately that what I've been grieving for these last eight months has not really been my ex-fiance or our relationship.  As much as I loved him, quite frankly, the relationship was rarely satisfying.  I think he had good intentions, but he just didn't have what it takes to have a successful relationship.

No, it's not all that I've been missing.  It's ME, the person I was before I got into that relationship.  Two years of broken promises, constant rejection, and being made to feel like a burden made me forget, for a time, who I really am and what I'm really worth.  I went into it very proud of the person I had made myself into and of what I had accomplished . . . by the end of the relationship, I thought nothing I had to offer was of any value whatsoever.

My heart is healing now -- because I'm coming back to myself.

I love it when I re-discover an old favorite song I'd totally forgotten: 

Yes, as I've confessed, I'm reading the "Twilight" series.  The first book was surprisingly good . . . the second a bit heavy on the romance for my tastes . . . I'm about half-way through Eclipse right now.

My dad was making fun of me for reading them & I remarked that they were "good vampires."  He said, "What are they, fruit bats?"  Hahahaha!

I haven't been spending as much time at EP in recent weeks.  Nothing bad happened to make me want to stay away -- my mood just changed.  I've been reading a lot, experimenting with new exercise routines, sewing, and, in the last week, knitting a lot again.  Sometimes I want to be here, but I want to do something else more.  :)  I think that's a positive sign, though.  I'm really getting back to myself and feeling an interest in my old hobbies again.

I don't really have anything important or profound to say.  Just wanted to give a status report.  I think, overall, that I'm doing pretty well under the circumstances.  It will be a relief to get back to work and get my own place again, but meanwhile, I think I'm making fairly good use of my time & keeping myself pretty healthy emotionally.

Just a little while ago, I noticed a stray dog in my neighbor's yard . . . she had been in my yard, too, and had bolted, based on the tracks.  She was a small German shepherd or shepherd mix.  Anyway, she did have tags and I was trying to lure her back to my yard so I could see them & call the owner when I noticed a van driving by slowly & someone whistling.  A-ha!  I flagged the guy down & it was in fact the owner . . . the poor doggie was so scared & acting so timid, and he said that was totally unlike her.  At first, he was afraid she'd been hit by a car because she was lying down, but when she saw him she got up & trotted happily back to the van, tail wagging, and with no sign of injury.  Let's hope nothing becomes apparent later.  

My dad knew I was trying to help this lost dog & dismissed my concern that she could be hit by a car, but the owner, once he showed up, said she has been hit before.  This is a busy street, and she was nearly a mile from home.  It was so easy to just stay with the dog and try to help her get home.  I couldn't imagine just leaving her out there to be hurt or killed. 

So I'm asking everyone who has a pet . . . please keep your dog or cat safe.  They don't have the ability to protect themselves in traffic, so we have to make sure they're never put in that situation.  And if you find a stray, approach cautiously and see if you can get close enough to help.  If you can't do it yourself, at least call animal control to come out & get the dog or cat to a safe place.  Don't just leave them out there!

I had a wonderful morning & early afternoon.  I woke up to find the house empty, and I spent a few hours listening to loud, raucous "sex music" ("sex music" for me being things like early Whitesnake, Aerosmith, Nazareth, etc.) while doing yoga & lifting weights, working on a sewing project, and reading a Henry James novel.  (I'm reading What Maisie Knew and despite the cover blurb about it being one of the finest of James' later works, I don't particularly care for it.  It's a good concept, but honestly, the quality of the writing is disappointing compared to some of his others, like Portrait of a Lady.  But I digress.)

I just had so much energy this morning.  I was actually happy for a while this morning.  I felt free for the first time in a long time, and more okay than not with my breakup.  (Yes, I know it's been five months.  I'm as surprised as anyone else that I'm not over it yet.  It's never taken me more than a couple of weeks to get over somebody.)

So I lay down for a nap just about the time everybody was getting home & slept for a couple of hours.  Woke up, finished the sewing project, listened to some more music.  Talked to a friend.  Had a good dinner.  Felt pretty good.  And then in the last hour or two, I kind of crashed.  Nothing bad has happened.  I'm not exactly depressed.  I'm pleased with the things I've accomplished this week.  I'm just suddenly blah, dissatisfied, and not sure why. 

I just found this site & wanted to share it:

Dealing with Depression: Self-Help and Coping Tips

Some of the suggestions they offer are things I can vouch for.  Depression can make us feel helpless, but there really are things we can do to help ourselves!

This article is part of a larger site called Helpguide.org, which has lots of self-help resources that look really solid & useful.

I'm posting this not so much for the practical advice, but because it's very funny:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/12/16/o.houseguest.hell/index.html