Then And Now

This isn’t from my yearbook, but it’s from the year I would have graduated, had I not taken my GED and gotten out of Dodge a year early because I hated high school.  (If the curiosity about whose yearbook it is is too much to bear, feel free to email me at the address on my Passwords page and I’ll tell you.)

But this post isn’t just about high school.  It covers a span from somewhere around 3rd or 4th grade onward, until high school, and with some residual effects even now, although I hadn’t realized how far-reaching it was until fairly recently.

It’s about bullying.

There were several girls who enjoyed humiliating me in different ways.  I had a good friend named Tammy as a kid, and she used to say that the “popular” girls who look down on or humiliate others usually grow up to be fat and ugly.  I always had to laugh when she would say that, and I must admit a very small part of me that never grew up finds great pleasure in imagining these girls looking exactly the way they criticized others for looking.

Fast forward to recent months, when I have been writing on the effects of bullying that still fuel my inner critic to this day, albeit not with as much power as in the not-too-distant past.  I began to wonder whatever happened to those girls.  I joined classmates.com and looked a few of them up, but only found one.  Two others, who were particularly big on the humiliation thing, weren’t there.  The other day, however, I received an email from classmates, asking if I remembered Michelle (I’m leaving last names out).  The next day, I think it was, I got one asking if I remembered Anne.  I had to laugh.  Then I got curious and looked them up on facebook, and found both.  I saw their pictures.  Neither of them is fat, but they both look . . . tired . . . unhealthy . . . and kind of unhappy.  I felt bad for them.

An ex of mine used to say that happiness is the best revenge.  I’ve been experiencing a deeper level of happiness in my life, lately, than I had in a long time, possibly ever, but I no longer feel any need for revenge.  In fact, I wish them happiness, too.

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This is a rerun of an old entry that I wrote for my old online diary back in April of 2008.  I had run into another girl who sometimes picked on me, but didn’t leave the same lasting negative effects as some of the things Michelle or Anne or some of the other kids did.  This girl was fun to be around, and she and I were sort of part-time friends, in between our bouts of her turning on me and my disliking her for it.  I see that when I wrote the entry, I was pretty dismissive of my whole bullying experience.  That was before I was able to see so clearly the impact it had on my life all these years, and the role it played in my inner critic gaining the kind of momentum it has had all this time.  I guess I finally had to see it for what it really was before I could start to work on defusing the power of that inner critic.

I also noticed that I told a story that involved Anne and (I believe) Michelle, in that entry.  It’s the pencil-dropping incident.

Here is that entry:

34 years later
Wednesday, Apr. 16, 2008

A couple months ago, I ran into Peggy, a girl I went to school with from about the third grade or so. I think we went to junior high and high school together, too, but I’m actually not sure. I mostly remember her in fourth grade. That was when she made the biggest impact on my life. During that year, we were on-again-off-again “friends”, but she was also friends with some girls who were part of a group that didn’t like me, so I guess it’s safest to say that she was my friend occasionally, until she wasn’t again.

These other girls were catty and bitchy – you know the type. I didn’t have good skills for dealing with kids who picked on me. Mom said “Ignore them and they’ll stop because it won’t be any fun anymore.” I thought “ignore” meant “pretend you don’t hear/see/feel them doing whatever they’re doing.”  Boy, was THAT a misunderstanding of advice, and it didn’t work.

When you’re 43, looking back, it’s eye-rolling childish crap that doesn’t warrant much thought anymore, but when you’re 9, it sucks big time. They did the typical stuff (although it’s really tame compared to things I’ve read about what kids do to each other now) – whisper and laugh while looking at me, pull my hair, call me names (usually having something to do with my wiry hair, my glasses, or my weight), stuff like that. One time, I had a pair of shorts on, and I don’t remember anymore if they were more see-through than I’d realized or if they were too short or if they had a hole in them or just what the problem was, but evidently my underwear showed if I bent over.  So, one of these girls, while accompanied by a few others (I don’t remember if Peggy was one of them or not) dropped a pencil and asked me to pick it up for her. Sure, no problem. It rolled right over here by me. But when I bent over, I guess my underwear showed and they laughed and laughed. Again, when you’re 9 . . . Oh, and that was in the 1970’s, way before thong underwear, back when having your underwear show wasn’t a fashion statement.

But that isn’t the point of this entry.  It’s just backstory, to set the stage.

So, Peggy was fun and cool, and kind of quirky. She was famous in our class for holding her breath until she would pass out. That was always cool. At recess every day, one of us would usually ask her to do it. She’d ask someone to stand behind her and catch her, and someone always did. I could turn my eyelids inside-out, which brought mixed reactions (the boys liked it much better than the girls did), but Peggy could pass out!  Wow.

I went to church once or twice with her and her family.  It was my first experience at a Catholic church, and I thought it was really interesting and different from what I was used to.  I had a dress I wore to church, and once in a while to school, that was grape-bubble-gum-purple with tiny lime green polka dots. It had a belt made of the same fabric as the dress, and the buckle was a huge lime green plastic apple. The fabric the dress was made of was thick and coarse and didn’t move or bend very much.  Peggy called that my “cardboard dress”, and we would laugh about that every time I wore it.

Those are my main memories of her – the passing out, going to her church, my cardboard dress, and her peripheral connection to the girls who picked on me.

And then there is the big memory I have of her.  The one that made such an impact.  She was the first person to ever call me a lesbian.

I still remember her sitting there at her desk, turned sideways so she could look at me, her braids hanging down in front of her shirt. She kept looking at me, and finally, when I asked her, “What?”, she said, “You’re a lesbian.”  I didn’t know what the word meant, but from her tone of voice, I knew it couldn’t be good, so of course I said, “I am not.”

Then I went home and asked Sister, who was 16 and an authority on everything, I believed, “What’s a lesbian?” She said a lesbian is a girl who loves other girls.  Well, that didn’t seem so bad to me.  Not bad at all.  So what was the big deal?

I don’t recall Peggy ever bringing it up again, but a few weeks later, when I was staying over at my friend Cindy’s house, I made the mistake of telling Cindy that when I grew up, I thought I’d be a lesbian.  Cindy told her sister, who told everybody, and I spent the next seven-or-so years learning all about homophobia.  I never experienced negativity from anyone as an adult, when I actually did have relationships with women.  But I experienced a whole lot when I was too young to really even know who I was.

So, I saw Peggy once, several years ago, in a craft supply store, but she was too far away from me to say hello, and I was too nervous anyway.  Then I saw her a couple months ago, and I didn’t even know it was her until she told someone her name (she was picking something up).  I turned to her and said, “Peggy (Last Name)?”  She didn’t recognize me.  I told her we’d gone to school together and then I told her my name.  Her face lit up and she hugged me.  It seemed genuine.  Sometimes adults do the hugging thing to be nice, but it meant a lot to me anyway, since it was something that “those girls” in school would have frowned upon her doing, back then.  It was acceptance.

She quickly blurted out a short bio of her life now – where she works, how many kids she has, etc. – but I didn’t catch most of it because I was lost in my own memories of my cardboard dress and her braids and her being the first to ever call me a lesbian.  I seriously doubt she remembers any of the same stuff I do.  It would be weird if she did.  That isn’t the way it’s supposed to work, anyway.

But she will probably never know what a huge impact she had on my early life.

*   *   *

And on an unrelated note, did you notice I finally succeeded at NaBloPoMo?  Yay!!  What a beautiful thing that is!

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Cleaning Up The Chaos

I started this entry back in January and it’s been sitting in my drafts since then.  I finally wrote another entry that touched on the topic, so I guess I’ve “broken the ice” of discussing this publicly, although this is still really, really hard to admit.  There are a lot of other things that most people would probably consider far more personal than this that I would be more comfortable writing about on the Internet (and actually have written about in the past, on my old online diary, though those entries are password-protected now).  I’m willing to write about this here for two reasons:  It might help someone else who has similar issues, and it will probably be healthy for me and may even help me to stop feeling so ashamed.

I’ve been feeling for years as if I’m really only capable of either holding down a job or handling the rest of my life.  The last time I was organized in my personal life was in 1994, when I was laid off from the job I had at the time and was out of work for a few months.  Since then, it seems that my energy (physical and mental) has been able to go into only one part of my life or the other, and in the last several years most of it has gone to trying to hold down my job and not screw up.  When my focus is on work, I tend to be clueless when I get home.  I look around me and see things that need to be done, but I just can’t seem to get from the point of recognizing it through the planning stage to the doing stage.  Likewise, if I focus on personal things that need done, they are still on my mind at work and all I can seem to think about at work is what I would be doing if I were at home.

But I’m learning.  One step at a time.

I wrote an entry in my old online diary, back in September of 2003:

One night, I was watching “Oprah After the Show” on Oxygen, and I missed the beginning but she was talking about “the papers” – these papers she has in a room in her house that I guess are all over the floor or something, and she was trying to figure out what was symbolized by her inability to deal with them (they were talking about people’s strange habits and quirks and the underlying reasons for why we do what we do).  She said she would go into the room, all ready to tackle it and take care of it, only to look around and then leave, closing the door behind her.  This made me laugh and also made me feel better.  See, as I was watching this show, I was sitting at my desk in my office at home, surrounded by a sea of papers, boxes, and assorted crap that is never where it’s supposed to be.  For the most part, I am not much of a self-starter.  In fact, the more I have to do, the harder it seems to be to get started.  Once I start, I’m ok (for a while), but I can sit and look around at everything that needs done and whatever synapses have to fire in my brain to make me get off my ass and get started just don’t fire.  The night before last, though, I found the office floor, and I had forgotten what a nice big room it is.  I separated some of the papers into separate boxes based on where they go and what they pertain to, with one box for stuff to shred. What was left, I put into another box to sort through this week.  If doing that removed the intimidation factor, I may actually get them sorted out AND maybe, just maybe, have my files reorganized by the end of September.  I wonder if Oprah ever figured out what the papers mean to her.  I don’t know what mine mean, but it doesn’t matter — I just want to get it together.

I actually never finished that project.  It snowballed into the one I’m dealing with now, six years later.  A few times during 2004 and 2005, I had things looking neater, but they still weren’t organized; I had simply scooped up everything that didn’t belong where it was and shoved it into boxes that I hid away somewhere, so that I could have company over without being ashamed.  Then came 2006 and I haven’t even done the “fake neat” thing since.

It must have been around the end of 2005 or the beginning of 2006 that I began to systematically shut down parts of myself.  2006 was a particularly rough year, during which most of what was wrong in my life reached its peak.  It was the year before I finally figured out my gluten intolerance and those symptoms were at a high point; I was a few years into premenipause; my antidepressants had stopped working after taking them for an extended number of years and not knowing that this could eventually happen over time, and I was still fumbling in my attempts at what to do about it; my PMDD had not yet been diagnosed or treated; I was not in therapy yet, so many older issues I’d been carrying with me for years were still problems I didn’t have clear understanding of or solutions for; and I didn’t know I had ADD.  My physical, emotional, and mental symptoms were all sort of jumbled together and it was impossible, at that time, to determine what was causing which symptoms, and everything I tried seemed to help for a short time and then stop helping, as I was not yet anywhere near close to seeing the full picture.  To top it off, in 2006, I got involved in a relationship I was not healthy enough to begin, and for other reasons, neither was he, but neither of us realized it.  The failure of that relationship felt like a “final straw” to me, and sealed my conviction to never again open myself up like that; to never make myself that vulnerable again or let anyone become that close to me again.

Looking back, I can understand why I shut down.  I don’t actually think I had much choice.

I’m opening up again, though, bit by bit.  It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it started, this re-opening.  I suppose there was a lot of behind-the-scenes changing going on all along, since I started therapy, and since I began to find various answers to the various physical and mental symptoms that have been problematic for so long.  I’m sure it was all leading up to this, but it began to become aparent to me in the last few months.

. . . And it is allowing normal to want to return.

I remember feeling normal.  It feels like part of another lifetime, to me, but I remember it, and occasionally I get hits of it, out of the blue, when something reminds me what it felt like.  In fact, it has been happening more and more lately, as I have opened up in other ways.  I may suddenly remember a day when I had a friend over and I’ll feel how calm I was and how spacious the apartment felt because the clutter and chaos was not there.  Sometimes I get a sudden sensory memory of an unidentified fall day, when I would have had the windows open, and I can feel and smell the cool breeze as I aired out the apartment, and again, I can feel the spaciousness in the apartment.  Memory-moments like that make me want to feel normal again.  I want to feel as if I am in control of my environment.  I realize that in fact I have been all along; it’s just that I’ve been using inaction to control it and keep it small and fortress-like, rather than using action to control it and make it feel welcoming and pleasant and free, so that I can invite friends and family over for something as simple (to most people) as coffee and a visit.

In the last two-plus years of therapy, we’ve gone over this many times, and I’ve tried to figure out the psychological reason(s) for my chaos at home.  I’ve come up with so many plausible reasons, and I think that all of them play a part in it. ADD; ingrained resistance to structure and routine that began with perceptioins gleaned from having been bullied; paralyzing obsessive indecision; hermit-dom and the completely illogical but still strangely irresistible obsessive-type thought that, somehow, if I get everything in order, I’ll have no way to stop the throngs of people from inviting themselves in  (I don’t even think I know throngs of people).  One day a few months ago, I cleared my front hallway, allowing me to walk through without stepping over anything or feeling like I was running an obstacle course, and out of nowhere, I was hit with this halting “Wait a minute” kind of feeling that went with the thought, “What if I forget what it felt like?”  After I thought that, I realized I’d had that same thought a lot of times before, when I’ve made a little bit of progress. I didn’t (and still don’t) understand why it would be so important to me, at that point (just barely clearing one little spot) to worry that I might forget how it felt to have so much stuff in my way all the time.  I can understand feeling that way after cleaning the whole apartment and not wanting to slip back into old ways by forgetting how awful it feels.  But this felt like I was purposely keeping it that way, so I won’t forget what it feels like, and that doesn’t make any sense.  It feels horrible.  Why would I want to keep feeling that way?  And why wouldn’t I remember how it felt, when I’m still perfectly able to remember what “normal(-ish)” felt like, prior to 2006, in its absense?

I recently began to talk with my therapist about obsessive thoughts, and I’m beginning to see how many of the items in the previous paragraph fit into that category.  I’ll write more about that in a future entry.

For now, though, I’m just going to say that opening myself up again has led to the beginnings of a beautiful new relationship and a whole new reason to finally dig myself out of the chaos and allow myself to start feeling normal again . . . this is my project for September, and a good topic to blog about for NaBloPoMo.  It is even fitting that the theme for the month is “beautiful”.

Bliss List – Item 4

I am aware that I’m going to be giving away what a strange child I was with this entry, but oh well.

I used to love to watch the bug truck out my bedroom window.  It always went by after I was in bed.  My bed was up against the wall by the window, and I would get on my knees and peek out as the truck went by, watching.  Sometimes I’d open the window just a little and put my nose up to the screen and smell the combination mosquito repellant and window screen.  I really don’t know why, but it’s such a pleasant memory for me.  (Maybe the mosquito spray messed with my brain?)

I do remember the time when some of the neighborhood girls who picked on me were walking past when the bug truck was going by, and one of them saw me, looking out.  She pointed me out to the others, my little face and messy sleepy-hair framed by the window, and they all laughed.  I’m not sure if they were laughing because I was in bed at that hour (I got picked on for being raised with somewhat rigid structure) or if they were laughing because I was watching the bug truck.  Who knows, maybe they thought I was looking out at them, longing to be outside as well.

The other night, when I was beginning to do some thinking about what sorts of activities might be fun to my inner child, I heard the bug truck go by outside.  Of course, I peered through the blinds and watched it the whole way, feeling that old familiar excitement and watching the foggy spray in the air.  I didn’t open the window, though.  I remember what it smells like.

See other Bliss List entries

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Structure, ADD, and Ingrained Attitudes

This entry contains some revelations that are intensely personal to me.  Part of me has hesitated to put it out there publicly like this, while another part of me can’t help but think it may be good for me, to do so.  And who knows, maybe it may help someone else at some point.  (Some of what comes up in this entry is what I was referring to back in February when I said there would be more about what I was writing about in my next post.  Yeah, it took me several “next posts”, I know.)

Two weeks ago, my therapist and I talked about structure. I kind of freaked out (“kind of” being a little bit of a minimization).  That was due in large part to some other stuff that isn’t related to this post, but I can see that some issues I’ll include in this post played a part in some of my reaction.

About a year ago, I took my parents with me to a session, and then another time within the same period of weeks, I took my sister with me.  (I’d wanted my therapist to meet them because they are very supportive of me and I thought it might be helpful for her to meet the people who are my immediate support system, and it was.)  The topic of the lack of structure in my life came up during one of those sessions, but I don’t remember which one it was.  (This was long before I knew I had ADD.)  It was either my mother or my sister who commented about being concerned that my job seemed to be my only structure – the only thing that made me do something at a specific time.  And it’s true, as much as I hated (and still hate) admitting that.  If I won the lotto tomorrow and didn’t have to hold down a job anymore, my life wouldn’t have any structure at all.

My therapist and I have talked about schedules before, but we talked some more about the fact that having a list or a plan or knowing that “today is Wednesday, so that means I need to do this and this today” removes a lot of the decision-making that trips me up so badly.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked out of a grocery store emptyhanded, for example, because I didn’t know what I needed or wanted and couldn’t make a simple decision.  It’s why I eat essentially the same thing every night for dinner (with a few variations).  If I were to try to plan something different each night, or run out of something that is required for making one of my few standard dinners, I’d be likely to have so much trouble deciding what to make that I’d end up eating ice cream for dinner, or tortilla chips out of the bag.  Yes, I’ve done that, on way too many occasions.

My inner critic, while having lost some ground in some areas, is still going strong in others, and the issue of structure and schedules is one of the latter.

I’ve figured out where some of it comes from.  I was one of those kids who was picked on.  I’m not saying this in a “Feel sorry for me because I was picked on” way.  The bullying that went on when I was a kid was tame compared to what goes on today (kids being beat up and having the whole thing videotaped and posted on YouTube for the world to see over and over again – how horrible), and it was 30+ years ago, for crying out loud.  It shouldn’t still be an issue now, and for years (many years) I thought it wasn’t, but I guess some ghosts are harder to “cross over” than others.

One of the things that those kids used to do, which I think was actually worse than the general name-calling and fight-picking, was to pretend to like me and to pretend that they wanted to be friends with me, and then laugh and yuk it up when I, the little fool that I was, fell for it and actually believed that they (choke) could really (gag) like me.

And so my inner critic still chastises me over foolish thoughts and emotions, like hope, for instance, or trust, or even spiritual faith, and these have become even more deeply ingrained resistances of late.

Some of the kids who picked on me (and who I really wished would like me) had little or no structure at home.  I was raised with structure.  My sister and I had set bed times, chores, rules, routines, and my family ate meals together.  My parents have always been very structured people who find routines comforting.  These kids had absent parents, few rules or routines, and were allowed to do pretty much whatever they wanted.  I was in awe.  I wanted to Be Like Them.  And somehow, during those years, I came to the conclusion that routine and structure at home was for “nerds” (or whatever such kids are called now; we were nerds back then).  I thought that being able do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to do it, represented the height of maturity and freedom.  Once I reached adulthood, I pretty much threw out most of the structure I was raised with and I became even less and less structured as the years went by, without even being consciously aware I was doing it, or why, or what a negative effect it was having on my life.

Or how so many of my other attitudes have formed around those feelings associated with those kids, as well.

My therapist says not to give myself permission to not do what I need to do.  It makes me think of times I have heard my mom talk about something she is “not allowed” to do, referring to something a doctor advised her against doing or something she knows she shouldn’t do for health reasons.  Her wording has always reminded me of a little kid not being allowed to do something, and I have always made a point of not wording things that way when referring to myself.  Sometimes Mom will ask me about a particular food product and will ask if I’m allowed to have that.  I often want to answer by saying something like, “I’m allowed to have whatever I want, but I don’t eat gluten because it’ll make me sick,” but I don’t because I realize how bitchy it would sound and I wouldn’t want to make my mom feel bad for being concerned and considerate.  I’d never thought it out like this before, but saying something like that would also make me exactly like those kids who talked down to me for everything I did and said.

Not allowing myself to do or not do something is not only a foreign concept to me, but the thought sets off a part of my inner critic that berates me not only for not doing what needs done, but also for even considering the idea of not letting myself off the hook (talk about self sabotage – damned if I do and damned if I don’t).

When I hear someone say they like to set their watch ahead ten minutes to “fool” themselves into thinking they have less time, that cynical part of me wants to say, “Gee, if you can fool your own self, what does that say about  you?  It’s bad enough to be able to be fooled by others, but to be able to be fooled your own self?”  (Of course, we all know that I never fool myself about anything.  Eyeroll.)  It’s that whole “being fooled” thing again.

Well, for the last two weeks, I’ve been consciously working on keeping a more regular sleep schedule, and I made some other schedules that I’m working into making a habit of following, both at home and at work.  These are the stepping stones for making noticeable progress on my more obvious and limiting problems.

My life (or my running of my life, more specifically) is in a shambles, plain and simple.  Granted, it’s better in some ways than it was a few years ago, but the same or worse in others.

In this entry I’m mostly going to refer to one aspect of my life that is out of control.  This is the part of this entry that is so intensely personal and difficult to admit publicly: My apartment is in chaos.  Similar to (but on a lesser level than) the photos you may see regarding compulsive hoarding, except that I’m not compelled to collect or acquire more things.  Years ago, I can remember things I did that make me wonder if I may have been headed in that direction, but I didn’t.

This article breaks Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome down this way:

Dr. Randy Frost defines Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome based on three criteria:  accumulating and failing to discard perceived useless possessions, cluttered living spaces, and significant distress or problems functioning caused by hoarding.  Sufferers exhibit an obsessive need to get and save objects, and have anxiety throwing them away because of a possible need or value.  They also may form emotional attachments to the objects, leading to saving things for ‘just-in-case’ scenarios.  The feeling of doubt sets in; what if I need this and I’ve thrown it away?

This compulsive collecting of and attachment to objects and anxiety around getting rid of them seems to be the main criteria for Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome.  I don’t feel an emotional attachment to most of the stuff I have, unless it is a sentimental item that was handed down in the family or that someone gave me, and even then, there is a line of distinction.  I actually enjoy getting rid of stuff I don’t need or want.  My thing is (mostly) becoming overwhelmed by the clutter (which sounds like such a benign little word for describing something that is such a life obstacle) and not knowing where to start.  Of course, my lack of structure plays into how it gets that way to begin with.

It begins (for me) with procrastination.  (“Here’s this big pile of mail I just took out of the mailbox.  Most of it is junk mail and needs to be thrown away, but I’m doing something else right now, so I’ll do this later.”)  Later never arrives, and the piles get bigger, fall over, spawn new piles, occasionally get picked up and dumped into boxes, bags, or plastic storage tubs, but they still need to be gone through so that the important stuff can be sifted out and filed (or shredded, if it contains information that shouldn’t be included in the regular bag of trash).

Since my “situation” differs so much from that definition, I don’t think I fall into that category, except for the similarities of the results of the clutter.

The second criteria can go unnoticed.  Living spaces become amply cluttered so as to prohibit activities for which those spaces were originally designed.  With more possessions going in than coming out, it isn’t unusual for the build-up to cause narrow pathways where clear hallways once were.  It can easily pile up, taking over everything, from floors, counter-tops and chairs, to entire rooms, prohibiting the use of bedrooms, kitchens, or garages.  It becomes impossible to use the rooms for their actual purpose.

I haven’t used my office room as an office in a few years.  My computer is on my dining room table.  I still use my other rooms for their intended purposes, but going from room to room, or even from one part of a room to another, is like running an obstacle course.  Step over this and around that.  It’s extremely frustrating and claustrophobic.

The third condition involves the anguish caused by hoarding.  People who have Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome have trouble with problem solving and processing information.  The irony is that sufferers are actually perfectionists who are in constant fear of making a mistake.  To avoid mistakes, they take longer than normal to make a decision because they face severe difficulties in doing so.  In fact, a lot of time is spent “churning”; moving one pile to another, instead of disposing of anything.  Social activities are also hindered as embarrassment prevents sufferers from having company over.

The last couple days, I’ve been entertaining the possibility that maybe, just maybe, a small part of my reason for isolating (which I’ve only touched on in this blog and I’m not really ready to write about in any detail) is because I try very hard to appear “normal” to most people, as if I have structure and normalcy like everyone else, and (1) by the time I get home I’m exhausted from trying to appear normal all day, and (2) if anyone saw my apartment they would know I’m not normal and I wouldn’t be able to fool myself into believing that I’m carrying out the illusion anymore.  For awhile, my therapist wondered if the purpose that my clutter serves for me is to keep people away, and it may be, to a degree, but it does seem like it works the other way as well, that I keep people away to keep them from seeing not just the clutter, which is embarrassing enough, but the truth of what it represents: that I am not normal.

I did make a fair amount of progress on organizing and cleaning out stuff several months ago, but then I let it come to a screeching halt when a situation I’d been looking toward as a deadline was changed, and I’m just now picking up (close to) where I left off.

A part of me actually has been wanting (craving?) to establish a detailed schedule and live by it, and the inner critic, voice dripping with condescension, usually says something along the lines of, “And do you get a gold star for everything you do on your chore list?”, making the whole idea seem childish.  Only children need schedules.  Adults should know what needs done and do it.  (Typing that last sentence reminds me of how many times, growing up, I heard my mom tell me that I should know what needed to be done in the house without being told; that I should be able to see that the furniture needed dusted or that the floor needed vacuumed and just pitch in and do it.  She shouldn’t have to ask or tell me to do it.  But the thing was, I was always oblivious.  I don’t know if that is part of the ADD thing or if I’m just clueless, but even now, I need reminders in order to know what I need to do in most situations or I’ll completely forget.  ”Out of sight, out of mind” really applies to me in a big way.)

I have tried, though, over and over again, over a period of several years, to come up with a workable schedule that I know I can use.  Sometimes I’ve gotten lost in the details while making the damned things and other times I’ve made nice-looking schedules that I couldn’t seem to put into practice.  It took me until one night the week before last to realize a big part of what I was doing wrong.

I figured out that I was making them based on what I should do every day once I’m already on-track, like dusting on Mondays and vacuuming on Tuesdays, or whatever.  The thing is, right now, dusting and vacuuming can’t happen until stuff is put away and not piled up everywhere, so the schedules always looked nice but weren’t practical at the time I made them.  The one I’m working on now is in phases, so it includes the getting-things-together phase before the maintaining-things part.

I took 51 pictures in my apartment the Thursday before last.  My plan is to take new pictures every other week and watch my progress.  Being in an actual room, it’s easy to not always “see” everything around me because I’m used to seeing the same stuff all the time and I’m usually looking at just one spot or one object at a time when I look around.  Still photos, however, are glaringly honest, I am realizing.  Even though it’s hard to capture a large amount of space in one shot, the shots nonetheless capture and preserve every single detail with absolute, in-alterable, in-your-face truth.

I may or may not (no promises being made here) post a few of the pictures here at some point, and I most likely will eventually share them all with my therapist, but not until I have the final “after” pictures to go with them.  It seems that will take the sting out of sharing them, if there is a “but look, now it’s better” version to go with them.

It’s interesting that, for years, I have said that I couldn’t imagine living with the level of self-imposed regimentation that my mother lives with, but ‘cha know, living with none at all, while simultaneously beating myself up for trying as well as for not trying hasn’t exactly been a piece of cake.  You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result?

Perhaps it is time to try something new.