Vivid Musings

I am loved.

Deeply.

By more than one person.

It doesn’t matter who doesn’t love me, so I will no longer waste time on that.

It only matters who does love me, on some level, regardless of whether marriage, friendship or bloodline is the reason for our connection.

I don’t even care if it sound like bragging. I’ve spent my entire life talking myself down and struggling to find anything positive to say about myself. So, if it is bragging, fuck it. I’ve earned it.

I am going to now cast a suspicious eye towards all my insecurities, self-loathing, shame and guilt and do an honest assessment. If I’m as awful as I think, why do such amazing and fascinating humans think I’m not? I trust their opinion on everything else- events, movies, books, foods — why not their opinion of me? Oh, right… a life time of conditioning (according to T-Pain, my therapist) leaving me with the core belief of, “I am not, and never will be, worthy.”

I have grown bored with carrying this belief around and constantly measuring myself with it. So I now choose to measure my inner beasties by the same logic I use when considering other people, rather than the much harsher scale I use for my own actions/inactions.

I’ll also be granting myself benefit of the doubt, as I do for everyone else. Hell, even those that have “wronged” me whether in person, verbally or on the ‘Net.  I pick up on things that people think I won’t, and I know more than people think. Still, I’ll be choosing my battles more carefully and only expend energy in areas that merit it.

Is it odd that it hasn’t even occurred to me before to give myself the benefit of the doubt? Regardless, I’m not wasting time on wondering why not, I’m just going to do it from now on. Now, it must become the standard. I know my motivations. They are to leave a positive imprint wherever I go. I may or may not be successful, as I am a puny human, but I must try to make things a little better for my fellow Earth-trapped neighbors.

I also choose to be more selective where I spend my time and to plan less. One of the simplest ways to gauge a relationship, after all, is if people make an effort to spend time with you. Not while they are in the midst of a crisis or busy time of their own, but besides that. Friendship is a two-way, sometime three-way (or more) street.

I am releasing myself from the burden of believing it is all on my shoulders to feed and water friendships on my own, except in extremely rare friendships (you know who you are), where I am not the only one that appears to be doing the heavy lifting. I am rich in True Friendship and will not criticize or judge those that don’t reside there. I choose to try and have fun every where I go. I want to laugh as hard and as often as possible and make deep connections with people. You do your thing, I’ll do my thing, and hey — let’s have fun when we’re together, regardless of possible past drama! Life is too short not to be snorting in laughter more than is considered Appropriate.

I choose to make no time for hate, manipulation or lies in my day. How others choose to spend their finite time on this Earth? Beyond my control, so letting it go.

I am humbly grateful for the things that led me to this today, for it is a good day to know. The path ahead appears to be mired in confusion, sadness and chaos.

Luckily, there are some people showing up to help us find our way in the dark, as we have tried to do for them in the past, so we will eventually be right as rain*.

Now, off I go to scale Mt. Laundry and clean LT’s now-empty room. (Sidebar: Boys are gross. But damned if I don’t love ‘em!) Counting down to Wednesday evening, when I get to see him again for a few days before he returns to his distant home.

Today Shall Not Be Wasted. **

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Note: After typing that long used phrase, I immediately wondered what circumstance “right as rain” came from. Here’s what I found, for those interested.

**And if you are unfamiliar with the humble battle cry of heavenly hobos, I again recommend Mur Lafferty’s Afterlife Series. The quote is, I think, from book 3, called ‘Wasteland’. But you must start with the first one, I insist,  called ‘Heaven’. It has helped me embrace the Universe in a different way since the devastating loss of my mother six years ago. Plus, her phrase, “Turtle Tits” from one of the books, is in my top 5 curse word phrases.

So therapy has been interesting. As I hit more and more health snags, hubby’s frustration in various areas grows stronger and I finally take on some losses and some progress on my stirred-up past, we are also surrounded by some of the most important people in our lives going through such pain, grief and turmoil as to be unbelievable.

All of this has caused many unknown Dark and Uglies to surface. Strangely and understandably given the circumstances, my City of Heroes gamer girl training kicks in, and I use the various tools available to me in the given situation to try and “heal” or “buff” the troubled person or animal. For those that never played a Defender archetype in the specific MMORPG I’m talking about, you can find the entry from the City of Heroes Wiki below my blatherings.

Essentially, one of the most powerful heals you can deliver using the empath defender powerset is “Absorb Pain.”  I played the powerset almost exclusively as a “Healer” for several years and learned through many failed Atlas Park sewer runs or missions scattered across the Hollows — that you never, ever take Absorb Pain as early as it is offered (level 2, FFS).

Ever.

Unless you are well-practiced, you are just likely setting up your team for at least one complete wipe, if not countless wipes because you targeted and fired off AP on someone in trouble right before a Vahzi or street thug hit you from behind. Down you went, no longer able to keep your heals going to power the team. No buffs. Nuthin’ but “Sry guys!”  They are disastrous, confusing, hilarious team wipes, if you are lucky and have good team mates. (I was quite lucky in the team mates that we played with the most often and I learned all the most fun ways to end a battle in a cataclysmic way that left us laughing and w00t’ing long after went back for another attempt.)

This was especially true because, not surprisingly if your moniker is T-Pain (pseudonym of my therapist), I would watch everyone else’s health bars except my own. My hubby’s most frequent statement during a balls-to-the-wall battle royale? “Watch your bar, Shuro (my main’s shortened name)!” Everyone else would have full bars, but I’d be on the edge of wiping. I finally had to rearrange my entire screen layout, to ensure that my wipes were less frequent, and to prevent from negatively impacting the team.

Make no mistake, I’m a lapsed player and I have no idea if anyone even does those xp rich runs anymore. I’m sure there are better places now to muck about in my favorite way in that game. I miss the intense chaos and my pulse racing as we danced near the edge of a team wipe and Super Hero Greatness. And it was a full year at least before I risked my own health bar to vastly enrich a targeted player’s health bar. It sounded like suicide, and this was my only my second MMO. Once I finally girled up and chose Absorb Pain as a power, I never looked back and it became a game changing and favorite tool in my empath tool kit.

The point is, during therapy last week, T-Pain was trying to break through one of my core beliefs in a way that would allow me to reconstruct it in a healthier way.  As we talked, she expressed that instead of feeling bad for someone when something bad happens, I actually make myself feel their level of pain, as fully as possible. I’m not 100% convinced she’s right, but it is certainly seeming more and more likely.

Even just last night, I had to remind my immediately broken heart that the death of the grandmother of one of my best friends was not my death to grieve. This reportedly amazing woman that I never met was not my grandmother. I had to remind myself of this because I was shutting down and starting to deeply grieve the loss of a woman completely unconnected to me as if she were my own flesh and blood and lifelong source of love.

[Sidebar: I think the timing of our discovery of his grief is somewhat interesting. I had been having extremely intense feelings of loss and grief of closeness with the couple in question, so powerfully that I messaged them, trying to express that I loved them and hoped for more fun with them in the future.]

Hell, when watching Game of Thrones this season, I was beyond devastated by the death of Lommy, an inconsequential-yet-named character on the show. (Note: If that’s a spoiler, sorry. But when you read here, that may happen. Also, WTF, get caught up so you can listen to my GoT podcast, SpecFicMedia.com Presents – Beyond the Wall: A Game of Thrones Podcast! (Or as I like to call it, SFM.comP-BtW:AGoTP.)

Here’s the crazy lady part: My magnificent nephew has hair (when much younger) that was identical to Lommy’s. When they showed him, I would smile to myself and think of his blond curls and wonder how he’s doing. When he died, I lost my shit. This nephew, who I have always referred to as GK, is in the military and although stateside, my fears for him are not difficult to figure out. I cried and cried and cried and cried. Chooch heard me say, “They killed (GK)…”, and he said, forcefully, “That is not (GK). He is safe and fine.” I repeated that over and over until it sank into the dark corner it needed to, and then felt like a fool.

Well, when T-Pain finally made her point in a way I could process, I started laughing and said, “Holy shit. I’ve been using Absorb Pain instead of Ally Heal.”
T-Pain gave the expected puppy dog head tilt and I explained it to her quickly. She clapped her hands and said, “Yes! Exactly! That’s it!” She then leans forward in her rocking chair and says, serious as a heart attack, “Don’t do that anymore.” I cracked up, and a discussion followed on how to halt an (who knows how long) unhealthy habit.

While I’m proud of myself for catching those — a result of her making me examine every negative reaction to determine the appropriateness of my natural response –, I feel as though I short-changed the friend and the grief his family is experiencing. So in exchange for dodging possibly debilitating grief at a time when there are things in mid-air about to crash to the ground in some areas of our life, I ended up in a shame spiral. I still call it a win, because I caught and adjusted the framing of the loss. And I’ve finally worked through the shame, thanks to My Viking.

So, yeah. I’m going to burn a respec and drop Absorb Pain from my powerset, until T-Pain tells me otherwise.

And I need to see if I ever posted about my prison yard epiphany. It keeps getting proven true.

Happy July, Dear Readers!

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City of Heroes, Defender Archetype

The Empathy powerset is available as a primary set for Defenders. The following table shows which powers are available and at what level:

	Power	Level	Effect
	Healing Aura	1	PBAoE, Team Heal
	Heal Other	1	Ally Heal
	Absorb Pain	2	Ally Strong Heal, Self Moderate Damage (Special)
	Resurrect	6	Ally Resurrect
	Clear Mind	8	Ally Resist Disorientation, Hold, Sleep, Immobilization, Fear, Confusion, +Perception
	Fortitude	12	Ally +Defense (All), +Damage, +Accuracy
	Recovery Aura	18	PBAoE, Ally +Recovery
	Regeneration Aura	26	PBAoE, Ally +Regeneration
	Adrenaline Boost	32	Ranged, Ally +Endurance, +Regeneration, +Recharge, Resist Slow

Chooch and I spent Friday night through last night purging, packing and cleaning our home in anticipation of going to closing in the next 2 weeks. The non-stop work was driven by our fear that we would cause a delay in closing due to not being finished. We worked tirelessly and through exhaustion and countless complications.

Because we are moving to a much smaller living space, we have to do an extensive, two-step purge. Step one gets the house empty, while step two gets our remaining belongings moved out of storage (where the are now) and into our new home.

We are purging as we go, but as the family archivist/museum, I have thousands of photos (not an exaggeration) to sort through and choose which will be digitized and then do so. There are also family items that I will no longer have room for and that my family does not want. Those items I will photograph before selling/donating. Since I’m bearing the time and financial brunt of this process, it is taking a long time. Progress is halted for now as we have to prep for the move.

I cannot express how hard this has been, as it is the first true purge since my divorce. Even so, I am finding boxes that I packed over 20 years ago that need their fates determined. And of course, nearly every box has a ghost or two inside, either of my Mom, grandmother, my kids or my ex-husband. Finding the hand-made calendar that documented the last month of my Mom’s life was particularly hard.

We arrived on Friday night and intended to stay until the house was done. We were approximately 8 – 10 hours away from being done with clearing out and cleaning for the buyers when we finally received a tentative closing date. Instead of the beginning of March, as we expected, it looks as if we may not go to settlement until March 31st.

That revelation sapped our momentum, as it was already 7 pm and we were going to have to work through the night and then sleep a few hours and return to NextHome in the morning. We instead took our third cargo van full of donations and final trip to storage before returning  to our future home and beloved house mates.

After some brief but intensely awesome time with Tiny Expert and Feral Dancer (our housemates’ daughters), I went for my weekly therapy session. It was a great session, and just in time. She continues to support me giving back as good as I get, meaning if I am treated poorly I do not bend over backwards in hopes of getting better treatment. I put a period and move my energies to where they will matter and be appreciated.

If I am treated lovingly, I reciprocate. Now, I continue to do acts of kindness, but have learned that some will never appreciate or reciprocate. And I am getting to where I am fine with that. I know that if that were the sole requirement for my acts, that I would have a precious few to do those for. I allow myself to feel good in doing the act, rather than in holding my breath for any type of acknowledgement from the recipient.

I find that I still have a long way to go with accepting the now long-term limitations that I have. I now acknowledge that I cannot just jump in my car and go run errands, or make plans that involve me driving, or to even be the sole adult when caring for the young and extremely intelligent and active girls I live with for extended periods of time. As a result, it doesn’t ever feel like I contribute enough to those around me, especially my husband. I feel intense guilt when I am unable to do the things that I must do, let alone the things I want to do.

At the end of my session, my therapist always asks how I’m going to be kind to myself / what am I going to do for me every day? I don’t know why I never have an answer ready, and the question always takes me by surprise. I guess that’s proof I still need to go, huh?

All I can do is to continue to work around my limitations, put one foot in front of the other and never stop trying to be a better person. And only I get to define what that means.

*beep*bop*boop*boop*beeeeeyyyyouuuup*

Sorry for the lack of posts here. I’m having an internal crisis of late, and am torn in different directions. I’ve been starting posts and leaving them unfinished. I’ve been writing titles that interest me, never to go back and write the post. I’ve been outright deleting posts after I start them, due to their lameness or lack of interest to even me, the writer. I respect your time too much, Dear Reader, to post anything more than mildly boring, rather than an outright snoozer.

I’ve been wondering to myself about the recent months of perplexed thoughts and actions, and have come to no conclusions. I turned 42 last year, and know that if I’m to find the answers to the great questions, I’ll have to find them myself. This has grown even more necessary recently, and I feel that I’m having to discover myself all over again. This is a surprise as I’ve already done that a few times in the last decade:

• When my ex-husband became my ex;
• When I finally met my soul mate and resigned myself to an ever-expanding blissful existence at his side;
• When my Mom died;
• When our home no longer had my children living in it.

I had thought I had all points mastered, in spite of occasional but intense bursts of sadness from the last two. But it’s possible I’m still in the midst of the identity crisis of not being a “Daily Mom.” Yes, my kids live, laugh, breathe and have experiences every day, but my role is no longer daily. I’m still haunted in our over-sized home by the silence that used to include game sounds, arguing about homework, and footsteps or music pounding from above. That is something that we have made progress on, as our next home has a combination of characters each more magnificent than the last.

Lately, I’m coming to think that it’s hormonal changes, triggered either by my weight loss and subsequent regain, or perimenopause ~ the beginnings of menopause. *tick*tock* I don’t fear that change any more than I’ve been fearful of any of life’s other mileposts. I just have to find a way to organize around it an move forward.

I have more love in my life than ever before, and am accepted for who I am by more people than ever before. And yet, I’m finding that some of my old stumbling blocks still cause me to stumble, and the old insecurities still leave a nasty mark when they come out swinging. When folks have installed our panic button, they can tap it easily and often if they so choose.

Many of these things were so private that only my husband knows about them since I keep nothing from him, no matter how gruesome. Although I’d love to share more here, I’m afraid that while I am wholly honest , I can only be so revealing. We don’t know each other that well, after all, so can you blame me?

I’m trying to rapidly sort myself out, especially as I’m letting those around me down. At least, I feel I am, but I’m told that those that really love me are never as hard on me as I am on myself. That being said there are many strange currents in my life right now, and with fewer than a dozen exceptions, I find I don’t know where it is safe to expose my heart put my trust any longer.

With all the changes occurring in my life right now, it would have been awesome to have had stability in some corner of my life. Well, I do have it and I know I’m blessed. It’s one corner of my life, but it’s a big one. There is no passive aggression, there is no negativity directed at me, there is only love and support shared from person to person. If I am to be judged harshly for finding joy and appreciating it, so be it. Just because things are hard doesn’t mean you can’t find laughter along the way. In fact, I am very sorry for you if you cannot find it when you need it most.

The focus for me now is therapy. To figure out all that is causing me to continue self-destructive behavior. To fight some lifelong demons to the ground and disarm them once and for all. To live and laugh without occasionally stop to rub my head from the weight of all the guilt and stress I feel over things I have no control over. To try and make failing relationships work with those I love and miss.

So, it’s late. And I don’t know what I’m trying to say. But, I will say goodnight now and hope that my next post makes more sense.

Oh, and see Paul, if you haven’t already. It’s freaking brilliant. Simon Pegg, Sigourney Weaver, Sci-Fi conventions, ’nuff said.

Related forms
pow·er·less·ly, adverb
pow·er·less·ness, noun

Synonyms
1.  ineffective.
2.  feeble, impotent, prostrate, infirm.