Lost in Translation Part II (Per Lui)

Work

Shutting down and emotionally isolating was not a conscious decision for me. At times, I was very social, talked to a lot of people, and went to lots of social activities. However, I never really shared my true thoughts or feelings with other people. It just never felt appropriate.

When I say the isolation began when I started working, it gives the impression that the workplace caused me to isolate. But, in fact, it is a little more complicated than that. The week that I got hired, and the day before I went to "orientation" for my new workplace, one of my friends overdosed on heroin and his family had to make the difficult choice to take him off of life support because he was brain dead. He was only 22 years old, and he had been clean and sober for the better part of a year.

About two weeks after that, my best friend nearly died. She went into her garage, turned on the car, and sat in the car until she passed out from carbon monoxide poisoning. Her girlfriend stopped by her house, noticed her dog was locked away in the back bedroom, thought something was amiss, and called 911. Then she broke into her house, went into her garage, and found my best friend unconscious in her car. Her girlfriend and the first responders thought she might be dead. I got a text and a call about it just as I was finishing up at work. I met up with my mom for support, put on my "brave face," and went to the emergency room.

For the next three days, I was in the hospital or in an ambulance every hour of the day when I wasn't either sleeping or at work. She was moved from hospital to hospital as she kept having seizures, and it took days for her to be medically stabilized enough to go to the psychiatric hospital. It was a mess. Her girlfriend dumped her in the hospital, and as she had no family or real support,  so I had to emotionally carry her for a while after that crisis, and it was hard.

I remember going to meetings and saying that I thought there was something wrong with me because I didn't feel anything. I got so many compliments for being so even keeled in the face of crisis. I wanted to respond, "Oh, it isn't hard, I'm just completely emotionally dead inside. I learned how to do this when I was a kid"

At the end of the day, this is true. Watching someone I loved die in front of me when I was a kid may have been a little too much for my little kid psyche. I didn't cry, I didn't say much, I just put on my "brave face" to make things easier for my sister. I also did that a lot when my Dad got deployed. My sister cried herself to sleep every night, and kept a picture of our Dad next to her bed. She wrote to the president and asked him to bring our Dad home. She wrote to my Dad nearly every day.

I didn't cry once. My Dad told me to be brave for my sister, so I did that. I just shut off my emotions and pretended like everything was OK in order to stabilize the people around me. However, I felt very angry with him on some level, and I think it took me the better part of 20 years to forgive him for leaving.

An ex of mine used to say that I was good "in the pocket"--which is military speak for "good in a crisis." And, in a sense, that is a complement. I just wish that on the day to day I could muster the courage to text people back or open my mail. I seem to struggle with the most basic stuff that other people seem to do with ease--without even thinking about it.

But being emotionally dead inside isn't necessarily a bad thing. When I was in college, this girl collapsed in the hallway. No one did ANYTHING because no one knew what to do--they just stood around looking at each other and staring at her with their mouths open and fear in their eyes. I checked her vitals and started doing CPR while barking at other people to call 911 and try to find help.

I digress...

Around the same time, that Aaron died and Cara nearly died, my husband told me that he loved me, but he was no longer "in love" with me and that he wanted a divorce. Obviously, this same conversation happened when we first separated a year and a half before. But, on some level I had always hoped that having some time and space from each other would help us to calm down and decide to work through our problems. Instead, he decided that we had caused each other enough pain. He told me that while our wounds had healed with time, space, and air--had scabbed over and become scars--that I was essentially handing him a knife and asking him to reopen my wound and make it bigger. I couldn't argue with his logic, and realized he was probably right, but that was a difficult pill to swallow. It was hard for me to accept that my marriage is over.

On Valentine's day I started dating one of the men I mentioned in my last post. There was no spark and no connection between us, but the reason I dumped him was actually a little more unsettling than that. One day I forgot to tell him what exit to get off on the highway. He flew into a rage, stopped dead in the middle of traffic on 417 in his tiny VW GTI, screamed at me, and drove across traffic and over a median to get off at the exit we missed. His car even got stuck in the median for a little bit, and it took everything I had in me not to laugh while he was enraged. But I decided to break up with him that second. I already had one ex-boyfriend (a valedictorian of UF, with a PhD from an Ivy League school, who is currently a professor of Ethics at a major university) strangle me until I was unconscious. I wasn't about to sign up for round two of that bullshit. I like both of those guys, and I'm not upset with them, but I'm definitely NOT going to date someone with rage issues. I don't hate myself that much.

I went into work the next day, sleep deprived because I had just broke up with someone, and a little rattled because the incident had caused me to start thinking about the stuff with my ex. That just happened to be one of those days that my supervisor was on my ass about every banal detail he could think of--stickers, tomato seeds, etc. In my head, I'm trying to just convince myself that I'm not in any immediate danger, and that no one is going to try to kill me again. That is a struggle when I'm sleep deprived. I wanted to be more acquiescing to his concerns because he looked pretty pissed at me, but at the same time, I couldn't muster up the appropriate level of concern about the stickers or the tomato seeds--I had a lot on my mind. He looked at me angrily, and I looked back at him blankly, said "sorry" and left it at that. What the hell was I going to say/do? Tell him all the nonsense going on in my life?

If I was going to tell anyone about anything, it would have been him. It just didn't feel right or appropriate. With my coworkers, I wasn't going to tell them much. Although I look like I'm close in age to them, I'm actually not, and I think it would have been hard for them to understand what I was going through. I brought that concern to a meeting once, and I was basically told not to share my personal struggles with coworkers because they are not going to understand--they are not addicts.

This conclusion to keep my mouth shut in the workplace was solidified in my mind as gossip ran rampant in that store. I felt like I knew everyone's business--sometimes because I was told, and sometimes because I overheard other people talking. The funniest part about it to me was that two people would be saying really hostile, mean-spirited gossip about other people at work, and a few hours later they would be saying hostile, mean-spirited shit about each other to two other people. It was too much. I tried to be positive, I tried to say nice things about other people, I tried to create unity and cohesion. Unfortunately, I got sucked into the negativity quicker than any of my efforts to create positivity were able to take form. Positive attitudes and negative attitudes are contagious. I was beginning to feel very nonspiritual and angry by the end of my time there, and that is not where I choose to be today. There is so much to be happy about and grateful for, and I don't want to lose sight of that.

Finally, I didn't want my personal life and personal tragedies to become fodder for other peoples entertainment at work. I also did not want other people to feel sorry for me. That makes me uncomfortable, particularly because I am OK with the way things are in my life, and the way I am. I do feel like hiding who I am and keeping secrets generates an internal sense of shame (i.e. if people knew about me or my life, they would definitely judge me and talk shit about me). However, at the end of the day I realize that they would have talked shit about me anyway (and, in fact, they did), regardless of whether or not they knew what kinds of things I was thinking about or dealing with.

I think I get comfortable in recovery because we are encouraged to be honest, be who we are, not judge others, and do the right thing. Gossiping is not spiritual, judging others is not spiritual, focusing on the negative is not spiritual.

I think my lesson in all of that may be just to remind myself to trust my instincts. I felt a really negative vibe from the first day I started working at that place. The people there were clearly on a different vibration than myself. I felt uneasy. And a lot of my initial suspicions and observations turned out to be correct. So perhaps the lesson: trust my instincts (God/nature created them for a reason), and surround myself (as much as possible) with people and circumstances that allow me to be the best version of myself, and allow me to feel safe enough to be who I am. It isn't healthy to feel "different than," and to willfully deceive others. I'm not the kind of person that actively lies--I don't just make things up. I OFTEN lie by omission. I leave out relevant facts and details, and I allow others to believe things that are not true by not correcting them.

Per Lui

On a final note: after I left that job and stopped stuffing my emotions and hiding who I was, my sponsor suggested that I needed to be really honest with someone at work. I have not done that. As I mentioned in my last post, I felt a connection with a person that had recently come into my life. The person I felt a connection with was someone at work (the place I recently left). So this last part is for him...

I remember a morning riding the vaporetto to school in Venice, Italy. The sun was rising, there was a cool wind across the lagoon, the colors of the sunrise reflected off the gold and glass windows, and there was this beautiful stillness and peace in my heart. It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw, and I felt truly alive and vital for the first time in my life. It happened again when I was walking through the mountains in the Lake District of Northern England. And again when I ran with the bulls in Spain. And again when I walked through the McDonald castle on Loch Ness in Scotland. And again one time when I looked at my dog, and saw what a loving/lovable perfect creation she was.

I cried each one of those times because I felt like the luckiest person in the world to be able to behold something so beautiful. I felt very connected to something much greater than myself, and I knew in my heart that everything was going to be OK--that things were EXACTLY as they were supposed to be.

In my last post, I talked about crying after kissing some guy because I realized that I had feelings for someone else. That person was him--the guy from my work.

 I had a very similar experience to the ones I described above. I felt true happiness and gratitude for being able to feel the way that I felt about another person--to be able to see the beauty and perfection in their humanity and imperfection. To that person I want to say:

You are perfect just the way you are. You are beautiful inside and out, and it gives me peace to know that you are just out there in the world.

You are no more mine than Venetian sunrises, or the calm quiet perfection of the Lake District. No more mine than a perfect piece of literature or a piece of art that touches your most internal essence. And you don't need to be mine--it isn't important. I just feel lucky to have known you, to have seen you, and have connected to some small part of your spirit.

I know I will return to Venice, Pamplona, Scotland and England. I know I will read the Sun Also Rises many, many more times. I know I will see a film that will touch my heart and strike the innermost aspects of my spirit.

I don't know if I will see you again. But it gives me peace and comfort to know that you are somewhere out there in the world. And I know that some day someone will see exactly what I see, and will feel like the luckiest person in the world to have you in their life. And I want to tell you this because you deserve to know--and if I withheld a truth like this, it would be a terrible lie. And maybe, to have merely crossed your path was the reason for that entire experience. It gave me hope. It awakened me from an emotional death. And whatever has come of it, or will come of it, it was worth it. I am lucky to have known you.

Lost in Translation

lost-in-translation

Adjective

(not comparable)

1. (idiomatic) Unable to understand due to having been poorly translated.

Lost in Translation has always been one of my favorite movies. Like the book, The Sun Also Rises, it is a piece of art that made me feel less alone in the world. It is a movie about two people that share an unlikely, but meaningful connection to each other during a period of disconnection from their own lives. I love it because it perfectly encapsulates the disconnection I've felt at times of major change or adjustment. Right now is one of those periods.

I tried to make myself feel depressed yesterday. I listened to Olfar Arnalds, Blonde Redhead and Radiohead, I watched a bunch of depressing shit on TV, I walked around my neighborhood in the rain, I read some depressing poetry, I thought about really horrible shit that has happened to me, and I thought about depressing shit going on in the world. I just wanted to feel something other than indifferent. I tried, but I just wasn't feeling it. I ended up just laughing at myself for making such a trite effort to feel something that I didn't feel. And I guess I felt a bit disheartened that I was so out of touch with myself.

I told that to several different people today, but they either laughed or looked at me like I was crazy. I can understand their reaction, and I'm well aware of how insane it sounds to try to make yourself feel depressed. I just wanted to feel something other than indifferent. I feel like I just don't give a shit lately, and I find that troubling. 

Usually when people say they don't give a shit, it means that they do--real bad. Everyone gives a shit. Even I give a shit about not giving a shit. I never believe people when they say they don't give a shit, that they don't get jealous, or that they don't internet stalk people. Come on, basic neuroscience and evolutionary biology render all of those statements impossible. So what are you trying to tell me? Are you trying to tell me that for thousands of years, biology, evolution and socialization have compelled the human species to reproduce and be territorial, but you somehow missed these biological imperatives? Wow! What are the odds of that? Are we the same species? Even sociopaths give a shit about things, just not the same things as normal people. 

So let's establish: I DO give a shit. I just don't know how to articulate how I feel. The best way to describe it is disconnected. And the best way to understand it is by watching the movie Lost in Translation. But I don't know if everyone is going to understand the sentiment portrayed in that film. Obviously, some people do, or there would be no market for that film.

It is not so much that I want to feel depressed. I just want to feel something. I've been feeling so flat and apathetic lately. I feel disconnected from other people. I don't like feeling like that. 

I think this started when I started working in late January/Early February. But it seems like it has gotten worse as the months have passed.

I posted a few months ago about obsessing over some guy. It turns out that he asked me out and we dated for about a month. I broke it off. After all of that obsessing, the first time I kissed him, I felt nothing. I wanted to feel something, but I just didn't. I kept dating him for another month, but no matter how much time I spent with him, he always felt like a stranger. He said and did all of the right things, but there was this superficiality and emotional emptiness behind all of his kind words and gestures. And in the end, I ended up feeling lonelier around him than I did was when I was by myself. I tried to break up with him via text message, but my co-worker told me that it was not very nice to break up with someone over text. On some level, I guess I knew that, but I didn't want to deal with a conversation. I had nothing to say. 

I started talking to another guy directly after that--he was nice, funny, good looking. There was no reason for me to be so apathetic, but I just was...and it fizzled out. 

I decided to not date anyone for a while. I was really overtired and overextended because of work, so I tried to just focus on myself for a while. I spent a lot of time by myself, and I really enjoyed it. I surfed, I did yoga, I read a lot, I listened to a lot of music, I wrote in my journal. For the most part, I was very happy in my own space--but I always felt disconnected from other people. I didn't know how to explain what I was thinking about, feeling or experiencing. It didn't seem like anyone around me was in a similar place. Even if I knew how to explain myself, I didn't know if anyone would understand or relate. I guess, on some level, I just felt really different. And in all truthfulness, I probably was in a really different place than everyone around me. It wasn't depressing--but I was thinking about heavy things. I felt interested in a lot of different things, but nothing I wanted to share with anyone else. I guess I was just thinking about, and reflecting upon my life in a very detached, unemotional manner. 

I didn't share much (if any) of my inner world with anyone. I felt completely secluded and disengaged from other people. I wasn't telling other people how I was feeling or what I was thinking. I wrote a lot of it down in my journal, but felt no need or desire to share anything with anyone. It wasn't because I was afraid that I would be judged. It was because I was afraid that they wouldn't understand, and that would make me feel even more detached than I already was. 

 A couple of times I broke down and confided in my supervisor. I didn't want to tell him anything, but it reached a point where it was absolutely necessary for me to communicate my state of mind to my employer. He strikes me as a very intuitive person, so I got the sense he already had some idea that I was working through some things in my head. It was kind of an odd situation because I didn't even really know him--but I knew I could trust him. And, in fact, that says quite a lot about him because I don't trust very many people. And I especially don't trust strangers. But he seemed to get the gist of where I was without me having to be too specific. I felt very grateful for that. I also felt odd, because I shared my most personal thoughts and feelings with someone I didn't even know--on one particular day, I told him more about my state of mind than I had shared with any of my friends or family.  I felt understood and I didn't feel judged at all, but I couldn't help but feel a little vulnerable after being so candid with someone in the midst of a long period of emotional silence. And on some level, I don't know if I was entirely comfortable with someone else knowing how lost and overwhelmed I felt at that point in time. It was a risk. Had he been an unkind person, he could have hurt me deeply with the information I had shared with him. But he kept it to himself, and he never used it against me or brought it up again.

After a little time passed, I started to warm up and open up to some of the women at work. I didn't tell them everything that I told my supervisor--and I still haven't--but I was able to build friendships based on common interests and worldviews. I also started opening up to some of my friends in recovery. It was a step in the right direction, and although I was starting to talk about things, I fragmented my truth. I brought certain pieces of information to certain people. I gave a lot of people a piece of the picture, but I never shared the entire picture with anyone other than my sponsor (whom I rarely see). I have continued to do that to this day, and the end result has been a continued feeling of indifference, isolation, and just a lack of cohesion in my life. One of the reasons for this blog is to stop me from engaging in that particular behavior: never really letting anyone know who I am, or where I am--especially not enough for them to hold me accountable.

As the months went on, I started getting really overtired at my job. My fatigue and lack of balance in my life eventually caught up with me. I knew I wouldn't be able to sustain that lifestyle while in school, so I wrote a letter that is affectionately referred to by my friends as, "Liz's communist manifesto." I spoke my truth, to some extent, about my workplace. I felt heard, and I was satisfied with that. I was proud of myself for taking the time to attempt to articulate myself--I also was able to see that I DID still care about people and things going on around me. It was a step towards integrating myself with other people again. I wish I had handled it more gracefully than I did, but it is what it is. I did the best I could with where I was at during that time. I ended up moving to a shop closer to the University. I had a very blunt conversation with my supervisor my last day there. I felt a little rattled by the content of the conversation. He seemed to want me to be blunt, so I was. It was hard though--sometimes I don't know when I'm being insensitive. I definitely can be too straightforward, and I don't realize that I'm doing it. I did it the other day, and I felt really bad because I was apparently too direct in my delivery.

The day that I left the old store, I went on a date with a guy that I had had a vague interest in for quite some time. We talked for a while. It was easy and comfortable--but the whole time I still felt a bit indifferent and unsure of what I wanted. He asked me if he could kiss me. I asked him if I could think about it. He looked at me like I was insane. I ended up kissing him, and when he left, I cried. I cried because when I pulled away, I realized that I thought I was kissing someone else--someone I had spoken to earlier that day. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I pulled away and looked at him like, "who the fuck are you?" 

I cried the rest of the way home because I realized that I did have feelings for someone--I wasn't entirely detached and indifferent. It was shocking and bittersweet. It felt good to realize that I still had the capacity to feel anything like that--in all honesty it had been quite a bit of time since I had felt that way about anyone. But, it was also sad because it was an impossible situation and I knew that there was nothing to be done about it. I readily accepted that fact.For me, it was enough to just FEEL something like that for another person. In a sense, it gave me hope. The timing and circumstances just don't feel right, and so much in life is about timing and circumstances.

And although it felt really good to feel like that about another person, the impossibility of the situation made me feel a sadness in equal measure to the happiness. I just can't imagine what that would mean in application to my life--and for whatever reason, I just don't let my head go there. My life is complicated enough as it is, and for all I know, the connection I feel with that person could be entirely on my end, and not at all on his. Nonetheless, it has been the only time I've gone outside of my rather small emotional range in quite some time. 

A few days later, I was telling my husband about all of my dating debacles. We had a good laugh. I asked him if I could kiss him. I did. It was nice. I didn't cry. It was like all of our other kisses--with deep love and affection, but not in a romantic sense. I guess our relationship was never really like that. And at the end of the day, I can't fault him for wanting something more for himself. 

And since that day, I have continued to feel a bit aloof. I wouldn't say that I am cynical. I'm not. I don't carry such a heavy weight from my past that I've become jaded or fearful of letting anyone too close. It isn't anything like that. It is just not that easy to connect. I can't force a connection if it isn't there. I'm not lonely; I don't mind being alone. In fact, being alone is preferable to being with someone I don't connect with. 

Recently, I started dating someone new. I like him, and I can feel a steady affection growing. I have been really honest with him about my emotionally availability, and he has been very respectful of my need for space. I find that very hopeful.

So in response to my last post: yes, I've been attempting to distract myself from my divorce. However, I do think that my husband deserves to feel a more passionate, romantic love than what we share. I want the same for myself. I just don't know if I'm going to get there--especially as I struggle to connect in my relationships with men, and when I do, the situation is stupidly impossible.

I thought I would have more figured out by this point in my life. I guess I feel a little lost. I don't know how to share, or "translate", my inner world to another person. I guess I'm waiting for someone who doesn't find it necessary for me to do that. And until then, I can snuggle my dog. 

Charlotte: Evelyn Waugh?

John: What?

Charlotte: Evelyn Waugh was a man.

John: [shocked] Oh, c'mon, she's nice. What? You know-- You know, not everyone went to Yale. Its just a pseudonym, for Christ's sake.

Charlotte: Why do you have to defend her?

John: Well... why do you have to point out how stupid everybody is all the time?

Charlotte: I thought it was funny. Forget it.