Email

I keep checking my email as if there's someone who cares enough to write or wants me to know how their day went.

Not that anyone is asking but I had a nice time today photographing the birds at my feeder.

Manipulate definition.

I never tried to do this with anyone. Manipulation has everything to do with lying and creating false situations to control someone. I was wrong to always think people were taking their friendships away and to confront them with it, or plead with them not to leave me when they finally had enough of me and did leave, but I never once lied or intentionally misrepresented myself to anyone.

manipulate
|məˈnɪˈpjəˈleɪˈt|
Verb
influence or control shrewdly or deviously • He manipulated public opinion in his favor
syn: pull strings, pull wires
hyper: influence, act upon, work
cat: prejudice, prepossess, imprint, form, militate, pull strings, pull wires, color, colour, swing, swing over, blackmail, blackjack, pressure, carry, persuade, sway, get at, fix, dominate
hold something in one's hands and move it
hyper: handle, palm
hypo: lay hands on
cat: field, fumble, manhandle
tamper, with the purpose of deception • Fudge the figures • cook the books • falsify the data
syn: fudge, fake, falsify, cook, wangle, misrepresent
hyper: cheat, chisel
hypo: mouse
manipulate in a fraudulent manner • rig prices
syn: rig
hyper: price
hypo: twiddle, fiddle with
control (others or oneself) or influence skillfully, usually to one's advantage • She manipulates her boss • She is a very controlling mother and doesn't let her children grow up • The teacher knew how to keep the class in line • she keeps in line
syn: keep in line, control
hyper: interact
hypo: wield, handle, manage
treat manually, as with massage, for therapeutic purposed
hyper: treat, care for
hypo: operate, control
cat: ply, pump, swing, sweep, swing out

I'm sorry.

I don't really know how to say this, but I have to; I really didn't mean to manipulate anyone. I just thought I was telling people how I felt. I thought that it was okay as long as I spoke about myself and not about the other. I've tried very hard not to tell people that they are responsible for how I am at anytime, but I do feel that people have a responsibility toward each other, and the truth is part of that responsibility, and I always tried to tell people the truth. Now I don't know what that truth is, but I'm pretty sure that trying to make people to do what you want them to do is wrong.

I was recently told that I've been trying to manipulate people when I write to them when I'm sad and lonely. ... First off, I will not take the responsibility for the decisions that anyone else makes. If someone makes the decision to not be my friend or to not communicate with me anymore, then that is on them, not me. I may be a difficult person to be friends with, and I may be all messed up, but it's not right to blame others for how you feel or what you do, and that goes both ways. I am responsible for my behaviour, not yours.

Now that that is out of the way, of course my behaviour IS my responsibility and if I have been trying to manipulate people to get what I need from them, then that is very wrong. I am sorry to anyone I have ever done this to. I am sorry that I have been unable to control the response I have when it seems that someone is taking away their friendship. Please believe me that at the time when I did these things I believed I had nothing to lose and everything to gain if I did my best to make you stay. Each and every time I felt that if I did nothing I was giving up and letting you step out of my life for good, and you all were just too important to me to let that happen without trying to do something to stop it.

I'm sorry I got it all wrong. I am so confused now; I don't know anything anymore. ... I guess it doesn't matter though, because I was told that I pushed you all away. I don't think I should try to make any more friends because it would be impossible for me not to think of them as important, and then I'd be afraid I was losing them.

I have Fizz, and I have my books and I have my computer games. Those things were once good enough. I can make it that way again.

And again, to anyone it concerns, if anyone has any concern left at all, I'm so very sorry.

Dar

Merry Christmas

To those who no longer want me in their life but who still are in my heart.

90 percent water

And at times like these none of this theorizing much matters. The loneliness and sadness I feel is very real.

No matter how mature someone is, if they're thirsty it's hard for them to not plead for water.

Conversation with a child

Is everyone as complicated; is it just me, or does it only seem that way because I'm pulling back the layers to see whats underneath?

Tonight I stopped myself from being swallowed by the sadness of losing my friend. There's the tiniest bit of hope that she might not disappear out my life forever. Yesterday, that was enough; today when things got difficult and I missed her very much, it wasn't.

It's so much easier for me to just let an emotion overtake me than it is for me to control it, and I've let it happen for so long now that it's a well worn path. The sadness I feel at such times is the truth, and in a way, I always figured I was honouring the importance of what I was sad about by allowing myself to experiencing it, so I let the emotion have free reign.  But when I do, I become that lonely kid that I once was, and I really do behave like her. I can't help but plead and beg, feel sorry for myself, and say it isn't fair! "Please come back. I promise I'll be good, don't leave me, I'll do whatever you want..." and at times when I'm in my adult self I've found such behaviour pathetic...

But in a second of clarity today, I tried to do what the book said I should. I put aside my thoughts that it was a foolish thing to do, and I talked to that lonely child inside of me. I told her that I understood her sadness, and I cried for her. I told her that it was okay, that she didn't have to worry, I was here to take care of her. And then I told her we weren't going to beg our friend to come back to us, because it's not right to try to make someone do something they don't want to do, and if we really wanted her to come back, we had to behave like a grownup...

A few more minutes of crying, and I started thinking about how I had been worrying about losing my identity during therapy. Suddenly it seemed so silly to me that I thought such a thing in the first place.

I didn't lose my identity tonight. I kept it intact.

Eenie meenie miney mo

How can I not know who my authentic self is? This is all too much for me to comprehend. I'm afraid to abandon the self I know, and agree to being changed into whoever it is someone else says I'm suppose to be. How can anyone do that ? How will I know that I've ended up with the right me?

Idenity crisis

Everytime I think about this I want to heave. THIS is too much. First the book tells me that I need to moderate my behaviour in all regards because I have no boundarys, then it tells me that my adult self isn't even authentic, that my adapted child self, who filled in as my hurt child's protector is now posing as the adult.

What am I suppose to do with that? I like who I am. I worked hard to be the best me I can be, and that included trying to be open and 'real', but now I'm reading that all of it is suspect. If what I'm reading is true, then how can I trust anything that I think or feel?

I'm not sure about anyone else but I have a basic instinct to protect my indivual idenity, and being told that how I am isn't truly my authentically adult self, and that all that I am needs to be fixed, puts me into protective mode. I'm feeling a bit like I'm the only individual left in George Orwell's '1984' and I've half a mind to give Big Brother the finger , and tell anyone who thinks that I'm not the way I should be to just take a hike and be done with it.

And yes, I hear the childishness and hurt in those words, but I was a lot less mixed up before I began trying to fix myself, and right now Im feeling that the only one I have in my court is that adapted child protector.

Too Much....

From: 'The Intimacy Factor' written by Pia Mellody & Lawrence S Freundlich 

"When we become boundaryless, we allow in too much from another person or send out too much from ourselves. We may be too loud, too sexual, too emotional, or too overwhelming with our opinions or learning. When we are sending out too much stuff and bombarding our partner, she becomes vunerable, victimized, resentful, and miserable. We have broken through her safety zone and caused her discomfort and pain. "

Holy crap.  This is me: too sensitive, too emotional, too overwhelming, too opinionated, too deep...  If all of this is a dysfunctional boundary problem, then who the hell am I? 

A time to heal

I am overwhelmed by how much work I have to do. The book I am reading, 'The Intimacy Factor' says (paraphrased) that I need to identify the specific time the trauma that happened to me as child, happened, so that I can address that child appropriately for her age, let her know that she's important enough to be listened to, tell her it's okay to be who she is, and then guide her into adulthood ...  but there isn't just one time or one injury. The problems I had growing up, existed the whole time I was growing up; my father belittled me from the first day I can remember, till I left his house. My mother's inattention confirmed his contempt, and told me that I wasn't worthy of being loved again and again.  And as an adult, because the injury never healed properly, I've been hurt again and again whenever I've had an opportunity to develop a close friendship.

There's something that happens to me when I am lonely. I don't know if I am experiencing a post traumatic response to how isolated I felt as a child, but I get it in my head that the friend I am missing the most is avoiding me on purpose. One thing leads to another, and eventually my friend pulls away. whether it's bit by bit, or all at once, each time they do they prove my father right, I am too deep, I am too much, I am contemptible, and I'm not worth loving. 

When I wrote what I did on my Facebook page, telling people to keep away because I might need them. It was out of hurt; I had just lost a friend, someone who I thought I could share a close friendship with for a long time. She left me because I did that thing that I do when I'm lonely; I accused her of not seeing me as a priority and making a choice not to be there for me. I made her feel like a shitty friend, even though my sudden need for her to be there was because she is a great friend, and I trusted her enough to feel love for her.  As soon as she confronted me about my accusation, I felt remorseful.  The things I said to her were so ridiculously uncalled for, I had no other choice but to see the truth of it. But I couldn't tell her that what happened wouldn't happen again. 

When I told people to stay away on my Facebook page, I said it out of hurt and without conviction, but I'm really not capable of maintaining a close friendship at this point; I have no control over these inappropiate post traumatic responses, and I am not going to do that to myself or another friend again. I can't, and I won't.

Just like my knees that were injured this spring and never got a chance to heal all summer because I kept using them as if they were well and strong, I've been walking around all my life with an injury to my whole-self that has never healed properly.

I don't mean to say that I will hide away from people like I am something 'poisoned'; I still intend to interact with any friends I still might have, but I think it's for my own good, as well as for everyone concerned, that I pull back on the intensity and focus my attention on healing those injuries myself, rather than looking for others to prove to me that I am worthy of their attention.