In Which I Embrace My Inner Bitch

Well, the fall semester has started and many interesting changes have come up.

For example, my ex, his girlfriend, and his mom all are quitting their jobs at my place of work. It’s all very mysterious and my boss hasn’t told me anything about why they’re quitting, which is unusual because usually he lets me know what’s going on.

My anxious brain is going into hyperdrive inventing explanations. Did his girlfriend’s dad offer them all full-time positions with his company, which I suspect my ex has already been working at part-time? Or are they moving to another province to be close to the rest of my ex’s family, as my ex had mentioned wanting to move out there for a bit even back when he was dating me? Did he get her pregnant (which really doesn’t look good when they work together and when one of the employees at another place was arrested for sexual misconduct)? Is one of them seriously ill? Did they get offered positions at another school? Did one of them mess up big-time and get told by my boss to leave, causing the other two to resign in protest? Or maybe each of them quit for a different reason? Him to work full-time for her dad, her to focus on school, and his mom to focus on her own business (which is always keeping her on her toes)?

You see, this is why I still think I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder even though one of the psychologists I talked to thinks otherwise. I mean, this kind of crazy speculation can’t be normal and healthy and I had thoughts of this nature even before we broke up, though I usually just pushed it out of my head and dismissed it as my anxiety playing up. And these kinds of thoughts spill into every area of my life. And this is the state of mind I’m while on medication; I was even worse without it.

Finding out they were quitting was quite a shock. I just felt like I’d been punched in the gut and my heart was just pounding because he’s leaving and I might never see him again, especially if he is moving away. (Though one staff meeting, I staunchly ignored him the whole time and it was very satisfying. And for some reason, he’s way friendlier to me when I’m not being friendly with him.)

But maybe that’s precisely why him leaving will be good. If I’m being totally honest, there’s a part of me that’s still a bit in love with him and wants to be with him, but even that part of me thinks that if him and I ever do get back together, it’ll have to be after we’ve had a few years completely away from each other, a few years to get past the feelings of hurt and bitterness and resentment and blame, a few years to understand and take responsibility for what went wrong with us, a few years to appreciate what we had, a few years to become strong in mind and character, a few years for God to work in us both. And if it’s not meant to be then it’s better for him to be removed from my sight completely.

Obviously, I couldn’t be happier to see his girlfriend leave. There were a couple times where she was actually okay, like when I ran into her in the bathrooms after I’d bleached my hair and she said it looked really awesome and I said thank you and asked what happened to her leg because it was all bandaged up and she told me about the hiking accident that caused it. It was almost like old times. But most of the time I feel like she’s rubbing my face in her relationship with him with these touches on his shoulder or thigh, or the comments about “when we get home” and then, after she asked someone where he went and I answered, she was all possessive when he returned and she was like “Let’s go” in a voice which I think she thought was cute and he was like “Do you think my mom will need help carrying that out to her car?” and she was like “She’ll be fine” and rushed him out the door while refusing to look at me.

And I don’t understand how he can’t notice how nasty and catty she’s been for the past over a year. I voiced this to my mom and added “But maybe guys don’t notice things like that?” Mom says that no, guys typically don’t notice that, but if any girl walked into the room she’d realize what was going on straight away.

If you’ve ever seen Vivian Kensington from Legally Blonde, she’s like that, except worse. And more subtle. And not as pretty.

Yeah, I know that’s really petty and really, I’d dislike her just as much if she were drop-dead gorgeous or somewhere in between that and the way she looks now, but when someone hurts me as much as she has, even neutral characteristics become reasons to dislike the person. Like with my mom, she originally found my father’s lisp cute and endearing, but after years of him abusing her, that lisp was just another thing that added to how creepy he was. His selfish and cruel actions tainted his neutral characteristics and I think that’s applying here too.

Clearly the past few weeks have been rather emotional and the following weeks until they’re officially done probably will be too. Sometimes I wish I could hug him goodbye and say a proper farewell, but I doubt that will happen since no one’s really acknowledged that they’re quitting and I don’t want to be the one to bring it up and wind up finding out that maybe the worst of my fearful speculations is true. Having anxiety and all, not knowing things can drive me crazy, but I think maybe in this instance ignorance just might be bliss.

I did pray, a short while ago, “Jesus, if this is where You want me to be, then make it possible for me to stay here and be happy and comfortable. I think this is where You want me to be, and that You led me to work here, but it’s such a struggle that I sometimes wonder if maybe I heard You wrong, since joy is supposed to be a fruit of Your spirit and it’s been rather thin on the ground lately so I’m wondering if maybe You actually want me somewhere else, though I can’t imagine life anywhere else. I don’t want to spend my life running from fear and discomfort. If this is the place for me, then show me and make it so.” I guess getting the three of them to leave is Him telling me that I’m still on the right track in terms of my career path and it’s just good to have a sign from Him and to know that I’m not so far away from Him that I can’t hear Him.

I’m just going to be relieved once it’s all done. As much as I’ll miss my ex (since on some level, I still treasure the time I spend in his presence), it’ll be so relaxing to not go through the same emotional roller coaster every week (a hellish ride amplified when his girlfriend is there too): spending the days before I have to see him mentally steeling myself for the worst, spending the time I am seeing him trying to balance my dignity with my kindness and my desire for closeness with my need for distance in every interaction, and spending the days afterwards recuperating from seeing him. I think having that space away from him/them will free up a lot of time and energy so I can focus on other things. With them gone, I’ll feel comfortable getting more involved at work and in the classes we offer there and I look forward to furthering my learning in that area.

On that note, one of my goals is to finish up Break-Up Survival Guide by the end of this year. It’s not by any means perfect and sometimes I feel like I’m losing my touch when it comes to my writing here, but I’d really like to just finish all projects related to my break-up so I can get it out of my head and get on with my life. Whether or not I’ll actually finish it that fast, I don’t know. I’ve been working on it for about a year, much longer than I’d like, because I have a lot of responsibilities and the content is emotionally exhausting to write. Now that I’m back in school, I’ll probably have less time than in the summer, but I might have more time because having them all gone may result in me needing less time for self-care.

I also cut my hair short a couple months ago, then last month I bleached my hair because I was going to dye it blue. Why blue? Well, I once told my ex as he was dropping me off after a date at his place that I was thinking of cutting my hair short to donate it and then maybe dying it red and he said, super flirtatiously, “I’ve always had a thing for redheads.” Then a year after we broke up, my hair was long enough to cut and donate and afterwards I contemplated “Hmm, what’s the opposite of red? Blue. I will dye it blue just to spite him.” I’ve made several friends of mine laugh telling them that; one of them exclaimed, “You’re so sassy!”

Anyway, I didn’t wind up dying it blue because after looking at hundreds of pictures on Pinterest and Google, I discovered that there are a lot of blue hair looks that actually look really great with long hair, so maybe I’ll try that out once I’ve grown my hair out a bit.

So I dyed my hair red. My friend’s mom has been using her hairdressing expertise to dye my hair and I joked that I wanted to dye it red to scare his girlfriend one last time before she leaves because surely she knows about his “thing for redheads”, seeing as she’s a ginger herself. “Oh, you bitch!” she laughed. I just shrugged and said “Well, she’s being making me uncomfortable so I’m returning the favour.”

Then my friend’s dad burst out “You’re not trying to get him back, are you?!” I told him “I don’t think that would work.” Really, if he’s only going to notice me because I dyed my hair his favourite colour that’s not really something I can work with in terms of relationships, so no, I’m not doing this to get him back (though I still want him to see how gorgeous a redhead I make). I’ve already done all I can to fix things with him and none of it has worked; the change must come from him, from his heart and his mind.

Anyway, I’ve always wanted to try red hair, at least since high school, but I never did because I was growing my hair out to donate and I’d heard that places didn’t accept dyed hair, plus I didn’t know anything about hair dye and I thought maybe it’d be too much maintenance. But there’s this man at work who calls me “Romanoff”, so I wanted to dye my hair in time to dress up as Black Widow for Halloween so he can see me as the actual Romanoff. And I have very pale skin, which is typical of redheads, so I thought red might look more natural on me than my sandy brown hair, which can sometimes look a little mousy with my skin.

My hair turned out much brighter than I’d intended– more Wendy’s girl than Black Widow, not the “Romanoff Red” I was going for– which is probably because the dye was put on over the bleach rather than over my natural hair, though sometimes I think maybe God thought I deserved it to turn out wrong because of that part of me that wanted to dye it to make Ex’s girlfriend worry.

Despite it looking rather unnatural, I’ve gotten lots of compliments on it. My mom and her parents think it adds some colour to my skin and lets my unique personality shine through. People at work, both parents and kids, have complimented my new hair. One of the parents said her son has now started calling me “the girl who’s always changing her hair”. “But I’ve only changed it twice,” I said. “He’s only been here twice,” she replied. I laughed: “Fair enough.”

Now that I’ve washed it, it’s a little less intense. It’s still very bright, but I have seen a few natural redheads almost this colour, though it’s still obviously not my natural colour seeing as I have brunette eyebrows. If I decide to stay redhead, I might look into a way to dye my eyebrows to match. But not right now; I want to play around with my hair more first, because I haven’t tried blue hair or purple hair or pink hair yet, or all the many shades of blonde there are, or all the different combinations of highlights and lowlights…

 

 

 

The Break-Up Survival Guide (Depression and Anxiety Edition): Have a Little Faith

So, today I want to talk a bit (that is, a lot) about faith. Since faith does include religion and the spiritual, I am going to be talking a lot about my thoughts and experiences as a Christian, so most of this post will probably be most relevant to other Christians. However, since faith also encompasses things that aren’t strictly religion and because there is a lot of crossover between the psychological and the spiritual, I’d like you to read the full post even if you don’t identify as Christian because I find faith, spiritual or otherwise, is essential in combating depression.

Firstly, this break-up has had a huge impact on my prayer life. I did pray regularly before, yes, but my prayer life has definitely been more constant and frequent this past year or so. Honestly, I can’t work out all my thoughts on prayer and I still have a lot of questions about how it works, whether it works, why it works, whether it’s real, all in my head, or both. I’m the most skeptical Christian I know.

Despite that, prayer is what I automatically turn to in times of trouble. It’s instinctive, like pulling my hand away from a hot dish or calling my mom because I’m hurt or scared and I don’t know what to do but maybe she will. And though I don’t have, y’know, scientific proof or anything, I find that for me, prayer does help, which is part of why I do it every night and several times throughout the day.

But I have to do it right. Prayer isn’t just spiritual. It’s cognitive. It’s a thought pattern and has a real effect on your brain.

Sometimes when I prayed, it was an obsessive thing, a desperate bid for control in a situation where I didn’t have any. And when I mean “obsessive”, I mean “straying into OCD territory”.

See, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is characterized by obsessions and compulsions. “Obsessions” refer to distressing thoughts that you can’t get out of your head. “Compulsions” are things you do, both physical acts and mental ones, to get those thoughts out of your head. You feel compelled to do them, that terrible things will happen if you don’t do them and though you can’t say how those things will happen, you know it will be awful. So when you perform the compulsion, you feel a sense of relief because you’ve done it now, it’ll be okay… for now. Until the obsession returns and the cycle repeats.

Just to be clear, compulsions are different from actual problem-solving skills. If, say, I have a small swelling on my eyelid and I’m not sure what it is, there’s a few things I can do to deal with it. I can enter my symptoms into Google, ask my medically-minded mom or nurse sister what it could be, or, if I’m especially concerned and it hasn’t cleared up after a few days, go to the walk-in clinic to see what the doctor thinks. I can make sure to wash my hands frequently, especially before and after touching my eyes, make extra sure to get nutrition into my system, sleep when I’m tired and wear my glasses instead of my contact lenses, and stop wearing makeup until my eye returns to normal. I can ask myself “Are my contacts or my makeup getting too old? Did I wash my makeup off properly? My sister had pink eye a few weeks ago, maybe I caught this from her? Do I have allergies? Is this a response to the constant smoke in the air?” to put together a history for the doctor.

These are all normal, healthy actions to take given the situation. Clearly, taking action to handle a situation is a good thing and if I don’t make changes, my eye infection will get worse.

However, compulsions aren’t like what I described above; they’re more like “I have a swelling on my eye, so I can’t step on any of the cracks on the sidewalk or else I won’t get better. And I need to wash my hands for a full ten minutes under scalding water every time I touch something.” That is, compulsions are time-consuming, harmful, and not realistically connected to the problem you’re trying to solve. The not stepping on the cracks is not realistically connected to the eye swelling. The handwashing, though it is connected, is cripplingly time-consuming and, because of the damage it’s doing to your hands with the heat and frequency, is actually harmful and could result in introducing more infection.

So, now that we’ve defined obsessions and compulsions, you might be able to see how prayer can be a compulsion. I’d find the thought of my ex with his girlfriend constantly popping into my head and what if they stay together? What if they never break up? What if they do break up but he won’t consider me again anyway and just jumps straight into another relationship like he did last time, or he does consider me but I can’t be with him because he’s done too much and I’ll just be waiting for the other shoe to drop the whole time?

And this whole nasty train of thought rips through me and so I pray, please, please God, don’t let it be so. I would beg and plead for God to break through to this man I love so much, if there was any way, any way at all to have him back, for us to be happy together, please, please, please…

But a prayer like this will not bring you peace. It will torment you, waiting for an answer. And though I believe a sense of control is important to your health and perhaps is even part of being made in God’s image, trying to seize control through prayer may only give you the illusion of control and with that illusion comes responsibility and with that responsibility comes stress, because that’s a responsibility you’re not meant to take on.

So now I’ve been doing different prayers. I still pray for my situation and that my ex’s heart will soften and that people will hold him accountable for his actions, that he will come to the end of his stubbornness and pride, that God will introduce people into his life that will help him become the man he’s meant to be, and provide him with the good, godly friends he clearly needs. But I pray it, then I let it go. Just pray it a few times throughout the day, just a short quick prayer on that subject, then move on. (As opposed to the constant stream of worry that my prayer was before)

Now that I’m praying less about that, what else am I praying about?

I started by focusing my prayer mostly on myself. That might be an idea that takes getting used to; I know many Christians are taught that praying for yourself is too selfish. But God loves you too as much as He does anyone else and wants good things for you and I don’t think He has any problem with hearing your wants and needs from your own lips. I mean, my mom likes it when I open up to her about the things I want and would much rather me tell her what I’d like for my birthday then say “I dunno, you pick, whatever.” and if that’s how my mom feels about it and God loves me even more than my mom does, I’m guessing He would like me to be as open and honest with Him as I am with her.

I pray for strength and for wisdom and guidance. I pray for God to speak to me and teach me and prepare me for the work I am to do and to help me become the person I’m meant to be. I pray that He will keep my heart soft and my thoughts and actions kind. That He will heal me, and bless me. That He’ll fight the battle on my behalf because I’ve done my best and it’s still not enough and I can’t do this anymore.

I think this has been one of the most useful prayers for me because it’s a prayer of laying down my burdens and laying down responsibility that maybe never should’ve been mine to begin with. Ultimately, prayer should be a place for you to lay down your burdens. If your prayers are obsessive like mine were, you will instead be picking up burdens that aren’t your responsibility and it will wear you down instead of build you up.

I think of this one verse where God says His yoke is light and this depression has been so heavy on me. It’s not His. So I’m asking him to lift it off of me and place His yoke on my shoulders instead because His yoke is one that I can handle, because it’s the one I’m meant to carry. Your prayers should not weigh you down. If they do, I think that’s indicator that maybe you’re not doing it right.

See, prayer is as much for you as it is for God and remember, joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit. If your prayers are depressing you, they’re probably not thoughts from God.

And remember, prayers are thought patterns and the Bible tells us to think upon things that are good. I once read that the Hebrew word translated as “good” actually translates more literally as “life-giving”. So by this translation, we’re instructed to think thoughts that give us life, that make us feel alive and want to be alive and helps us do things that spread life to others.

Really, the more I think on the Bible I realize that a lot of the verses aren’t necessarily about sinfulness but about how to live a life of health. Which is why I’m going to leave one of my general rules of dealing with mental health here: “If it’s not helping you, don’t do it.” Seriously, if your prayers are making you that miserable, take a break. God understands and He’s not sitting there waiting to smite you with all the powers of heaven and hell the moment you stop praying. Just say, “Hey, I’d like to be closer with you, but I’m really a mess right now and I don’t have it in me to talk to you right now.” I’ve done that too; it’s okay to need your space for a while.

Now, my prayers doesn’t always “work perfectly”, even if I’m “doing it right”. Sometimes, it gets to a point where I don’t know what to pray anymore or what to ask because I doubt that I can even figure out what’s best for me because I look at all the possibilities for my future and don’t really like any of the options I see. Then my prayer becomes really simple: “Please, Jesus, work in the hearts, minds, and lives of everyone involved in this situation, even in mine. Have your way here. And help me! Bless me! Please! Amen.”

The power in this prayer lies in the fact that I’m trusting God to do what’s best for me. And maybe you don’t have a relationship with God or believe in Him, but I believe the element of trust is necessary to your recovery regardless. Maybe you trust in God, or fate, or chance, but it’s so important to have some trust in and faith in your life getting better, that maybe your future will be something beyond what your limited depressed brain can come up with right now.

I’ve come to the point where I can say “I am depressed. My brain is broken. Sometimes I am wrong. And I have faith that I will be wrong and my life will turn out better than I think it will.” Beyond faith in God, I have faith in the world, in the existence of true goodness, in my family and friends, in the kids I teach, in the next generation, in our ability to learn from our mistakes, and in myself. All this faith gives me such strength and resilience so that I must declare it a necessity. It gives me life.

To wrap up for today, I’d like to leave you with a verse that is really annoying when people quote it at me but really speaks to me and lifts me up whenever it pops into my head on its own: Jeremiah 29:11–“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.“