Wednesday Reflections #14 - To List or Not to List? That is the Question . . .

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but I go to therapy on Thursday afternoons. This is part of the reason why I picked Wednesdays for weekly recaps (aside from my penchant for alliteration). Thursday is as good a place to begin, as any. During my session, I was informed that my previous diagnosis of "bipolar disorder" may have been a misdiagnosis. My therapist thinks that instead, I may have a "personality disorder". This was news to me. I don't know where my official diagnosis paperwork is at the moment, but I don't recall the words "personality disorder" (henceforth: PD) having entered into it.

To begin with, I assumed that PD and Borderline were part and partial to one another. I began researching that angle and it turns out that Borderlines are your Fatal Attraction Glenn Close types. Cray-Zee. I was unthrilled. But then I fell down the rabbit hole otherwise known as Wikipedia and found that there are about 15 types of PDs and that I might just be of the Obsessive Compulsive variety (not to be confused with OCD, which is very different). While I still don't like the idea of having a PD, I have found this new information to be very helpful. It's given me some insight into why I do the things I do, and that knowledge has proven very powerful to me over the past few days.

Yeah, not so much. Source.

Apparently OCPDs are very fond of making lists. This was the first thing in the description that struck me. I have be obsessively making lists since at least the sixth grade - maybe longer. It began innocently enough: "Things to Do When You're Feeling Blue" (another aside: What does it say about 6th Grade Joyce that she was making such a list in the first place?) and "Summer Plans". But then, somewhere along the way "goals" were introduced and I began making grand lists of goals - weight loss goals, academic goals, financial goals, personal goals, moral, ethical, and spiritual goals. And I never met any of those goals. Not one. Or, if I did, it was inadvertently, long after I had given up hope for any success at all. Earlier this year I came to the conclusion that setting a goal automatically doomed said goal to failure. Formally declaring the thing proved to be it's very undoing, and I couldn't figure out why. Could it be that the planning became more consuming than the execution? Perhaps . . .

There's a lot more to this thing and I won't drone on about it, but suffice it to say that I had a rather successful and stress free day of cleaning, organizing, and purging on Tuesday. I will probably discuss this further in another post. The most important thing to note is that I am going to do my level best to keep my list making relegated to the "Things I Love" variety and not the "I'm Gonna Do This" variety.

About the rest of the week:

Friday was the beginning of j^C's four day weekend. He played video games and I watched the latest episode of Hannibal. While it was not as awesome as the previous one, this series has me totally in thrall. I otherwise spent a lot of time reading about PDs on the internet and waiting for the crimson tide to arrive; and arrive it did, just as I was contemplating marital relations. Perfect timing. On the bright side, other than feeling very achy, I did not suffer any  menses related ailments. I was sort of emotional on Thursday, but that probably had to do with everything that happened in therapy. Sorry for being cryptic. Again, more to come on that matter in a later post.

In thrall, or in lust? Six of one . . . Source.

Saturday and Sunday found both me and That Sprout feeling under the weather. I have been working very hard in the house for the past couple of weeks, and I've inhaled a lot of dust. As a result, I've been battling a sinus infection off and on for just as long. That Sprout, on the other hand, is getting her last set of molars, so she's clingy and cranky and generally not herself. Our biggest family outing this weekend was our trip to the soft-play at the mall after lunch at Papa's Pizza. Other than that, there was lots of snuggling and hanging out at the house. I spent a lot of time in my head, trying to make some sense of my life.

When I was still living at home, I used to wish that I was crazy - certifiable -and that one day I would crack and they would find me catatonic, rocking back and forth in a corner. This being a wholly unacceptable state of affairs would result in my being sent away - locked up like Zelda Fitzgerald herself. It would be a great escape. Now, I've been sent away. It's not so glamorous and it costs more than it's worth. I am crazy. Got papers and everything. And I'm tired of it. I just want to be okay. I feel stupid for ever having wished such a fate for myself. But I also wonder if I wasn't always close to cracking anyway. Even if I had, I doubt it would have resulted in the escape I so desired. After all, mental illness is nothing more than a moral failing. A sign that one is not spiritually well . . . So I've been told.

That thought, and the thought that I should get rid of my ratty old t-shirts, even though I don't really want to, reduced me to tears in the shower at some point over the weekend, but it was a brief episode that quickly dissolved into an unusually mild period related malaise. This has become rambling, hasn't it?

And still I wonder why no one reads the blog. Source.

Sunday I watched all of Arrested Development Season 4. It was good, but I would like to watch the whole series over from the beginning. On Monday, I watched the BBC miniseries of Daniel Deronda. I should like to read the book now. We also went to dinner at Molly MacPherson's. It was nice, and That Sprout was really good for most of it. After she went to bed, j^C spoke to his cousin and her husband on Skype. This is only interesting as I learned that I might be able to finish my Teacher Ready Field Exercises over the summer. j^C's aunt teaches in a year round school. I will be looking into this possibility over the weekend.

Tuesday began with me feeling very aimless. I wanted to write. I wanted to work on school assignments. I did blog, but that was all I achieved before lunch. The afternoon was fruitful though. I am proud to say that I worked hard and purged a fair amount of clothes and toys. I did laundry. I organized Trilby's room. I made some sense of my domestic chaos. Of this, I am proud.  I had hoped to continue the trend today, but That Sprout had other plans.

She woke up screaming at 3 am. I had already been having trouble sleeping, and when she crawled into bed with us, it was simply not going to happen. I tried to take solace in the living room but the clingy little Sprout followed me. She was wide awake by this point, so I decided to introduce her to Svengali. She sat through the whole thing. Probably because she was tired, but nonetheless, I was proud. After that, we started watching The Twilight Zone, at which point she fell asleep. Although the sun had already begun to rise, I decided to crawl back in bed and try to sleep. I am not sure if I ever really achieved that goal, and at 7 am That Sprout was once again wide awake.

At this point, I thought I would take her to school, I would nap until noon, and then I would continue my housecleaning frenzy. But she refused to go to school. So we went and had donuts. And she still refused to go to school. So we went to the beach. Despite copious use of sunscreen, I wound up rather sunburned. I don't mind though. That Sprout had fun playing in the sand and running as deep as she dared into the water. Sometimes I think she's utterly fearless - then she's screaming in the middle of the night. That might have something to do with her interest in dinosaurs and dragons and my lack of judgement regarding some of her media exposure. (Godzilla's not that bad, right?)

So . . . maybe it was a bit much for a 2 year old. Source.

It was a long, but fun day. While I'm none too keen on keeping her out of school when we pay so much for it, I don't mind these extemporaneous little excursions. I think she needs it. I worry that she's feeling insecure, what with the night time issues and the clingyness. I was asking her what sounds different things made today, and when I asked her what sound a Mommy makes, she said "crying". Yikes. She also tells me quite often not to yell. I don't think I'm yelling, but apparently she doesn't like my tone regardless. As much as I resent it sometimes, I have got to get some stability in my life. I cannot perpetuate the cycle of insanity.

So, yeah. Tomorrow I will no doubt hear more about PD. I hope to compile some talking points between now and then, but at the moment I just want to fall asleep to The Twilight Zone.