Instead of begging Firewood Man for more wood, I texted him a photo of my nearly empty rack. Today, he surprised me by filling it to overflowing and bringing me another dozen GREEN eggs. I needed them because my family ate through two dozen and I am wanting to do some cooking to try and use up all the perishable leftovers.
For one, I have been eating lots of salad and vegetables, as those are what is left over the most. When Firewood Man brings wood, he brings a friend to help unload it and stack it onto my porch. I sent his friend home with the tomatoes and string cheese that was left over, along with some Hostess cupcakes. And I gave him one of the two bags of Haricot Verts because there is no way that I am eating both of them. I've got asparagus, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts still to go. I did not cook as many vegetables for my guests as I planned ... somehow.
I was a bit disappointed to see that mascarpone cheese does not last very long, or at least all the containers in the store had close best-by dates. So, I am focused on using up the rest of that most lovely cheese. I Googled and Googled and Googled, before settling on Sweet Potato Mascarpone Bourbon Bread. For starters, I would really like someone to tell me why it is bread and not cake.
Doesn't that look like cake? It sure does to me! But what about how it tastes??
Probably the moistest bread (really it is cake) I have ever tasted! Slightly sweet. A hint of sweet potato. Much like an interesting pound cake. It was a good use of some of the mascarpone.
Amos is a good cooking companion, even though I wish he could actually cook with me. For one, with Becky's resting pad, he now keeps me company in the kitchen. For another, when I am sitting on the couch resting, waiting for the timer to go off, I do not have to worry about missing it because when it does go off, Amos leaps off the couch and races to the kitchen. If I set the timer, I now do not have to worry about burning something because Amos has learned that the timer means I need to go to the kitchen.
I cooked because I want creative ways to use up the perishables left over from the Grand Visit of 2015. I cooked, too, because I am very unsettled still and the fire and the candle and the tree just weren't enough to get me through this day.
One of the things that has come up in counseling is the counselor's working thought that the reason I feel so cold inside is not just my disassociating but my subconscious noticing that I do not feel ... a ... a bond ... where I think there should be one. She talked with me ... gently and briefly ... how we learn bonding when we are young and what I experienced thwarted that learning.
When she was talking, it sounded like she was talking about the attachment issues that children in orphanages have. I asked her if that was what she meant. Her nod felled me. I mean, I don't want to be the person who has attachment issues!
But what she said made sense to me. She talked about how I clearly had empathy and compassion, which she found remarkable and promising, given what I have shared with her. But the things I have talked about that lead me to feel as if I am an alien or a monster (I worry about being a psychopath deep down because of how much of a chunk of ice my heart is) are the very things that fit with struggling with making attachments, with bonding.
I mean, Becky and I have been friends for over twenty years now. The hard part of the friendship, I think, is my inability to remember it. So, we do not share the same history. Trusting is difficult for me and the lack of a history of the relationship making trusting all the harder. My lack of trust is surely hurtful, on some level to Becky, through she has been remarkable in her adapting to what I need in reassurance and reminders. She has taken my lack of memory in stride and has honed her communications skills, I think, because of it. But because of that, if nothing else, I cannot fathom why she would be my friend all this time.
For me, the moment I heard that I needed a pacemaker, I wanted Becky there. My counselor said that speaks to a connection between us, even if tenuous. However, for me, the scary part is that I know I care about Becky and I wish good things for her, but I do not love her. I do not think that I love anyone. Gosh, sometimes I am most certain that I do not even love Amos, though how I feel about his is world's different than Kashi (which oft makes me feel guilty).
It is the same with Mary. Often I long to speak with her with my whole being. She is funny and smart and has such an interesting and intriguing mind. However, I worry that the main reason I long to talk with her is just all about me ... not about her. I LOVE the way she says my name. It warms the cockles of my heart and fills me with ... with something I cannot put to name. I love how she can translate myself to me. I love how she can speak the sweet, sweet Gospel to me. But do I love her? I do not think so.
I care about her and her family. I worry often about her husband and the demands on his time. I care about her children and worried fiercely about her youngest's struggle to thrive after being born. It was such an immense relief to learn she finally packed on some significant weight. I care about her career as a writer and speaker. I wish her success and peace in her homeschooling. Good things and much health ... but, to me, in my heart there is just ice still.
When her daughter was just not well, all I could think was that if she died, I would be unable to help Mary in any way, to comfort or console her, to be any sort of good friend to her. Ought not my concern be more about her baby living rather than worry about how I might hurt Mary if her baby died and my block of ice heart had no comfort for her?
This just ... I am not making sense, not even to me. It is hard to explain. But it is like living as if you are always on the outside, looking through a pane of glass at the folk on the inside. Separated and disconnected, puzzled as to how to be sitting with them on the inside.
I like that, often, when I try to explain the secret fears of my heart, the counselor understands. I like how gentle she is being about explaining. However, much of the time, I do not like what I am learning about myself. It seems so unattractive and inhuman, even. I feel more the outlier and even more unworthy. I just want to be normal ... or par for the course. But I am not that.
The education I received as a child makes me anything but par for the course. Well, I am that when in the company of millions who have been sexually abused, but not for rest of the world. And since sexual abuse is most often hidden and kept silence, that rest of the world seems like the entire world but me.
How do I make connections if I struggle to trust?
How do I make connections if I do not love?
How do I be a friend if I do not make connections?
I pretend, all the blooming time, to be better than I am. I fear, to be honest, that I pretend, all the blooming time, to be a friend when I am not.
This is a photo of the wood from the tree that fell during the ice storm.
In addition to the piles in the front yard and here on the side of the property, there are piles across the street in both directions because the tree completely blocked both streets. This is the wood after a full day of using the chipper to toss in what took more than two days to cut up. I am not sure if the chipper is coming back, but folk have been loading up their vehicles with the wood from time to time, so maybe the city is waiting to see just how much might "walk off" before finishing the job.
Anyway, the day of the storm, when the tree came down, the crew worked to cut it until the wee hours of the morning. We were having spells of torrential rain and it was near freezing outside (ice had felled the tree). I worried about the men. I posted on Facebook asking folk to pray for them. I told my counselor about the tree and those poor men and she used that as an example of my at least having compassion. Not many, she said, would have given them a second thought.
I care about my UPS driver. I offer him drinks in the heat and thank him for his service all the time. I love that he laughs at Amos and calls him "Cujo" because of his barking. I ask him how his family is and could tell you a lot about his life (such as he was born and raised in Alabama and oft misses the South the way I do).
So, maybe I am not the psychopath. Or a monster. I cannot really be an alien. But I am not ... human ... either. At least that is what I believe to be true about myself. So, what am I? Not being an orphan, with an easy to talk about excuse for struggling with making connections, I am lost as to how to speak of the lack within me that I know should be there, but isn't.
Yet another reason why I long to be a hermit for real.
Anyway, I have been thinking muchly about her initial words on attachments, bonds, making connections, and what I did not learn when I was young, as opposed to what I did. I think, in a way, what the nurse said was harder for me to bear because of the conversation about bonding. Perhaps wrongly, but I feel the failure for not trusting, not loving, not ... bonding. Hearing the failure of wrong thoughts, too, was too much in 24 hours.
It is helpful, to be sure, to learn things about myself. After all, that is the reason I love The Courage to Heal and think every adult in the entire world needs to read that book so that they, too, can understand and help encourage and support the millions and millions struggling with sexual abuse. It explains so much about the whys and wherefores of the patterns in your life, which helps in the effort to change those patterns. But learning these things about yourself that highlight just how not normal you are is rough and discouraging.
On a completely different note, today was the most painful day since the second day after my pacemaker surgery. I am not sure why, but every movement that involved the upper half of my body in some fashion hurt. I mentioned that to someone with whom I was chatting and she said that I was going negative and to return to the light. That hurt because I was stating a fact, not being negative. My day was filled with pain. When you battle pain all day, it helps not to be alone with it, to know someone else is aware and at least pulling for you to get better. I was too chicken, however, to speak how I felt about the admonishment. I write about it here because I think it is a good example of conversing with the chronically ill and the need to understand that speaking of their physical struggles is not—and should not be viewed as—negative.
I will also know that Sears is shameful in its ablism. I drove there on the errant advice of the Land's End representative who told me, wrongly, that I could return my shoes there instead of mailing them to Land's End at my expense. The order was more than two years old and, thus, cannot be addressed in the store. Anyway, when I got to Sears, I was astounded to discover that the double-door entrance had not a handicapped door assist on either of the two doors I had to walk through in order to enter the store. Despite struggling with opening the heavy doors, no one helped. Sears assumes all their shoppers will either be able to manage the doors or will be with someone who will help the disabled.
Panera is the same way.
Shame on them!
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