A whinge and a smile

[muckefuck]

Between the stock market tumble, rioters rampaging on the streets of the world's financial capital, and--locally--the continued heavy rains, yesterday had a particularly apocalyptic feel. The occasional dripping onto the ceiling of our kitchen has become constant and I'm having nightmare visions of wet plaster caving in all over the sink and countertops and a subsequent fight with the owner upstairs to get it fixed. I'm also fighting a morbid urge to check my retirement accounts. As with the house, I just have to repeat the mantra that I'm in for the long run. I can't think to hard about how, for instance, a guy up the street just dumped his two-bedroom valued at $150,000 for $80,000, even if it does make me feel just a tiny bit better about taking slightly less of a bath on my own sale.

lil_m_moses asked for tips on how to stay optimistic (specifically when it comes to meeting people) and I'm finding it hard to come with an answer that isn't full of bromides about not expecting too much, taking people as they are, and treasuring whatever good moments you do get. And in answer to dorisduke's question about what it is I'm doing to drive people away, two things occur to me, both related to hitting middle age. One is that I've learned to care a lot less about things I used to be neurotic about, like being well-liked. Tracing back the continuities in my behaviour over the years, I've got a pretty good idea by now what personality I'm stuck with, and if it doesn't appeal to someone now, the prospects for that changing are dim.

Related to that is a diminishing need to keep people around to shore up my self-esteem rather than because they are really good people to associate with. Anxiety is my chief motivator; take it away and I don't have the same appetite for all the work a friendship requires. At the same time, the challenges of being someone with three parents, a partner, and a good friend all in their 60s are becoming ever more prominent and I'm feeling a need to surround myself with others who understand this and can provide support when things get ugly. (It's hardly a coincidence how many people I'm on the outs with now were scarce during the long months monshu was undergoing treatment.) This is driving a wedge even between others in my family, so it wouldn't be surprising if it also had the effect of pushing away people outside of it.

That's more than enough on the subject for now. Shortly I will have to sit uncomfortably in a room while people who don't understand me or my work make speeches and pin some dumb pin to my chest for not being ambitious enough to seek employment elsewhere. But the weather outside is more gorgeous than it's been in months and soon I'll be enjoying it in the company of monshu.

Comments

[grunter.livejournal.com]

"At the same time, the challenges of being someone with three parents, a partner, and a good friend all in their 60s are becoming ever more prominent and I'm feeling a need to surround myself with others who understand this and can provide support when things get ugly."

No joke. I lay awake at night worrying about this exact situation practically every night. When John was near total blindness for those 2 years and the life just seemed to be draining out of him, the isolation and the loneliness hit me the hardest. Where were all these so-called "friends" who had been there when times were good? A huge part of why I stopped writing here at LJ was because I felt abandoned by what I had once thought was a community of "bears" who actually cared about John and myself.

I've struggled not to make that whole ball of anxiety make me bitter and more of an isolationist, but to be perfectly honest, there have been times when I've just given in to the resentment and the anger and let old connections wither out. Just recently we had a spate of about 8 frantic phonecalls in one day from a one-time "good-good" friend, one who had been part of a long-time couple with whom John and I used to spend most holidays in fact - but one who had ceased speaking to us about 5 years back. As the calls kept coming in that day, John kept wanting me to pick up the phone and try to re-connect. But I just couldn't. I was so angry and still so hurt over the fact that he could just cut us out of his life so thoroughly for so long that I wouldn't let it happen. (And all of this, ironically, after *our* conversation a few months back about exactly this sort of thing).

I don't know how to fix where we've come to over the past few years. The demands of my job keep me too long apart from John on a day-to-day basis, and saps my energy for trying to be "social" on the weekends. But in those late nights, when the worry is at its peak, I know, deep down, that I *have* to reconnect; or else, as you say, things are bound to get truly ugly.