About Being Honest

Remember in my first post when I said I would call myself out when I wasn't being honest? Well, this is me calling myself out. Not for being blatantly dishonest, but for lying by omission...a lot. To be fair, if I hadn't left things out of my previous posts, those posts would have been incredibly long and probably ramble more than they already do. However, I chose to cut out things that probably shouldn't have been: my feelings. Not my thoughts, but my feelings, my emotional reactions to my experiences so far. Instead I stuck to a description of the events. It's something I've always done. I give you the facts and the description of the experience from afar, and then I let you, the reader, supply the emotion. (This may be why I enjoy reading Hemingway. He does the same thing.) Sure, I've said things like "I felt like" or "this made me feel" stuff of that ilk, but those weren't emotional reactions. They were cerebral.  I think the only actual emotion I mentioned in my last 3 posts has been fear. And then, I just barely touched on that fear and then backed off. That's not being honest with you, or myself. So, this post is about my real emotions, well, as much as I can admit right now.

Let's start with last week's post. Let's talk about my emotions during my first group session. I already mentioned that I was scared. What I didn't mention, though, was how embarrassed I was, too. Why was I embarrassed? Because the first time I opened my mouth to participate, I cried. Cried enough that I couldn't continue speaking. I took the tissue I was given and covered my face with it until I could speak again. I was mortified, I felt ridiculous and little. Not little like a child, but little like inconsequential, stupid, and silly. I don't even cry in front of my family and friends unless I have a really good reason, like when my niece died. (I've become very good at only letting one or two tears leak out while watching sad movies AND very good at wiping them away discreetly.) How could I have lost control in front of strangers? People whose names I don't even know. It's been a week, and I'm still embarrassed.

Something else I felt during the meeting was disgust and anger. I've already mentioned that I'm pretty sure almost half of the people in my group are only there because it's court ordered. How am I supposed to feel comfortable exposing myself to people who I had just heard in the lobby bad-mouthing the therapist and bitching that the court made them come? What were they going to say about me when I wasn't around. You see, I'm pretty introverted now. I don't spend very much time outside of my home. (Heck, I don't even talk to my friends very often anymore.) When I do spend time outside my home, I do everything I can to keep my contact with people minimal. If someone says something to me, I'm polite, but I don't do anything to keep the conversation going. I have been called stand-offish and stuck-up because of it. I accept that people say that about me, and I even understand why they think that way., but I don't think I could handle it if my group mates were saying those kinds of things about me when they are the ones who should know better than anyone why I sit off by myself in the lobby. (Because I will be doing that from now on. I can't bear to hear or feel the negativity they express while waiting for group to start. I'm perfectly happy spending my waiting time crocheting by myself, in a corner, on the other side of the room.)

Let's move on to the post about my intake interview. Like I said in the post, I don't remember most of the questions; however, I was dishonest about how I described what I did remember. Again, it was a lie of omission, not of fact. I told you what I remembered talking about, but not how it made me feel to talk about them. While I'm not yet ready to tell you about watching  my brother's accident, I can tell you what I didn't tell Joyce about it. I didn't tell her that my depression didn't start with this event, but it was most definitely escalated by it. I had nightmares about it for many years after it happened. I know what that means: PTSD. I learned all about PTSD while working on my Masters project. My project was about Ernest Hemingway's treatment of PTSD and gender in his novel The Sun Also Rises. I also know people who have been diagnosed with PTSD, and I, though I exhibit symptoms, don't feel like my experience deserves that diagnosis. It makes me feel like I'm trying to grab some stolen glory, some of the PTSD spotlight. It makes me feel like a fraud. So, whenever I get anywhere close to admitting that I have indicators for PTSD, I back off...way off. Do I have PTSD? I don't know. Maybe. And maybe I shouldn't feel the way I do about thinking I might have it, but that's not the point. The point is that I do feel this way, and I'm not ready to figure out why. (Honesty, man this shit is hard.)

--Oh yeah. I should have also told you that I curse...a lot. I'm pretty good at keeping it under control when it's appropriate to do so, but this is just another form of me not being honest about myself, isn't it? I'm not going to NOT curse anymore. I will, however, keep it to a minimum and only curse when I feel to not do so would be dishonest.--

I guess now I'll tell you about my niece. She died on September 9, 2008. She was exactly 2 months shy of turning 12. I'm not any more ready to talk about her life and death than I am to talk about my brother's accident, but I should have told you that I'm still devastated by her dying. I still ugly cry when I think about her. I still get angry at her for not letting me see her one more time before she left, and I feel guilty for feeling this way. I cried when I mentioned her in my interview, just like I'm crying as I write this. It's been 7 1/2 years, and I still grieve like I did the night she died. I should have told you this is how I felt when I mentioned her.

These are some of the things I omitted in my previous posts. There's more, but I'm too tired to go on. It's time for me to use some escapism (Netflix) to bring my anxiety back down.