Introverted Adventures at University

So I started back at school full time last week, (well, technically two weeks ago, but last week was the first full full week). The last time I was in school was 7 years ago and it was a completely different can of worms. It was a small Tech school and I was the youngest person in my program. Now I find myself at the second largest University in America, and I am one of the oldest people in my classes. I'm not THE oldest in all of them, but I am in some of them. And I'm not trying to say I'm old or anything, in fact, until going back to school I didn't feel old at all (ok, maybe I felt a little bit old when my baby sister graduated from High School). But now I sit in a group with kids in their early twenties and I think 'was I ever so young and naive?' Mostly I'm grateful for all the growing up I've done, I'm grateful to be who I am. I am grateful to be a 29 year old who finally has an idea of what she wants, I'm grateful to be so far along in my recovery that I can actually learn, I'm grateful to know myself well enough to know (or at least have a pretty good idea of) what works for me. I'm glad I don't feel like a freak for not liking classes with 200 kids in them.

Still, as much as it helps to know that being an introvert isn't going to kill me, and that I don't have to try to be like everyone else, or change my learning style to fit everyone elses (and its helpful to know that about half of my class secretly agrees with me), I can't help but notice how extroverted my school is. Its as though it has extroversion as part of founding tenets. I imagine a school founded and run by introverts would never even imagine offering a class to 200 students at a time. The good news about my giant class is that it only meets once a week, I only have to sit in a room full of 200 kids 13 more times.

I also have a class of about 100. I wondered for a moment why that class didn't make me as anxious, was it because my threshold for crowds was more than 100 but less than 200? I don't think so. There may be 100 kids in the classroom, but we are all sitting at tables with about a half dozen other students, and on the first day we were encouraged to get to know the people we were sitting with as they would be the group we would be working with for the rest of the semester. That immediately brought the class from feeling like a rather overwhelming 100 students to a much more manageable 7 students. One of the things I strongly dislike about being in such big classes is the feeling that I am just one in a crowd, that the professors don't actually care about me, that I am in no way shape or form special or unique, that it wouldn't matter to them if I never showed up at all. And part of what I hate about that feeling is that if it doesn't matter to them if i show up or not, it probably doesn't matter to them if I am actually learning anything or not.

At the end of this week I was exhausted. I didn't realize it until today, Sunday, when I finally had a chance to breathe. There is a fabulous Trad Irish musician in town playing a house concert tonight and as much as I want to go, I am too tired and lonely to be in a crowd of people. I have a whole week of being in crowds ahead of me, I need to rest up. This is the only part of being an introvert that I really dislike; when there is an event that I actually want to attend, but don't have the energy for, due to using my precious social energy all week on things like sitting in class, and walking down crowded sidewalks.

I do, however, feel very very blessed to finally have a best friend who gets it, who knows I want to go, but just can't. I am glad to have someone to whom I can say 'i'm too lonely to be around people right now', who understands it, who doesn't need me to explain (because lets face it, when you try to explain that to an extrovert they look at you like you are insane or just making excuses). I extra-love my best friend because he is going to record the concert for me. Which means that I will eventually get to listen to the music without all the hassle of the crowd of people I am acquainted with, but don't want to talk to. The sound quality might not be as pristine as it will be live, but I will actually be able to enjoy what I hear, whereas if I dragged myself out of the house tonight the whole thing would feel like a chore.

Knowing myself is a wonderful thing.

Totally Freaked Out

So I was doing much better. Much much better in fact. Now suddenly, I am not. I am back to being mysteriously hungry all the time (heres a clue: if you don't eat enough, you are always hungry) somehow I am having a hard time admitting that my eating disorder has rallied and is back for round three. I thought she was gone, I thought I was doing ok without her. What I realize now is that I was pushing her out the door so hard that I was actually leaning on her back. Although I was chasing her away, all I was really doing was following her lead.

But I am taking what I have learned while I wasn't listening to her. I learned that the best way to deal with a problem is to deal with it, not ignore it and hope it will go away. So, step one, eat. I wonder if I didn't have all these other random scary emotional things popping up right now if I would be able to do this no problem. I'm scared.

If you are doing something you already know how to do, you are not really doing anything at all.

Holy fuck. I am scared.

But did I mention I love my team? They allow me to be scared, without them I wouldn't even let myself be scared, being scared means you admit there is something to be scared about.

Before the Party

I want to do good. At my old job i was doing some good, but mostly i was getting shit upon, which isn't good for anyone. In a week I will be going back to that place for a party for my comrade. I am terrified! I keep dreaming about it. I keep thinking about it.

Part of me feels strong enough to go back, to see the place that slowly sucked the life out of me. To see the people who hurried that process along, and also those who saw it happening, but couldn't do anything about it, and even those who saw it happening, and could have stopped it, but didn't. This part of me knows these people have lost their power over me. My one boss, who I pity more than anything else, lost her ability to hurt me when I stopped working for her. My other boss, who I don't quite trust anymore, and probably never will again regardless of whether I work for her or not, I am no longer dependent on for protection (which was rarely given, though often promised), so she too has lost her power to hurt me, by action or inaction.

But there is another part of me, which is scared and shaking in her boots. Its the little girl in me, the one who doesn't want to go to the doctor because the last time she went in there she got a shot and it hurt, even though they said it wouldn't.

The only way forward is through. I will face my fears. I will look into the faces of those who hurt me the worst. I will smile, I will say charming things, I will tell them the truth about how well I am doing, and if they ask me to come back, to help them out, even just for a little while I will say no, I learned my lesson there, I don't want to learn it again.

Perhaps what I am really afraid of though, is seeing the people who loved me there. The ones who were just as helpless as I was. The ones who saw me falling apart but could do nothing to help me, and nothing to stop it from happening. How do I tell them they just weren't enough? that as much as i loved them they were not worth it. or that they failed me. how to i accept that? that they both loved me and failed me?

Stay On Your Own Mat

In yoga they tell you to stay on your own mat. Practice your yoga, not your neighbors, or the yoga you did yesterday or three days ago or last year. This is a principle I try to keep in mind whenever I hear about one of my friends moving on to bigger and better things and the jealousy starts to creep in. I get cranky, I want to be moving on too! I want to be living my dream! I want to be buying houses and getting married and getting my dream job! WTF! When do I get to start living again!

Then I remember that if I were given any of those things right now I would be a bleeding mess, I would sabotage it and end up back where I am now anyway. It is better to build a proper foundation before trying to build too high up. Still, this laying foundation shit is not glamorous, nor does it give you much to talk about at parties.

I am so pissed at Edie for taking so much away from me, for setting me back so far, I almost feel like an athlete who tore some kind of very vital ligament and is now on the bench for a few years until it fully heals. I know that if I get back in the game too early it will just set me back even further, but it is so hard to see all my teammates out there living it up, becoming better athletes. Soon I think I will walk away from this team, change sports, or careers, see what else there is out there for me.

But that is terrifying! Leave the life I know? For what? I suppose I have already left, I just need to let go. If I don't belong here, where do I belong? Where do I look for friends? How do I meet people?

If I was ready for a real job, I'd have it. If I was ready to live alone, I would. If I was ready to fall in love again, I would. But this is what I am ready for, I am ready to learn how to set boundaries and stick to them, I'm ready to figure out what I need and want and how to get it and then how to hold on to it. I am ready to learn what I can give and what I need to keep. I am ready to figure out what I want to do, what makes me happy and how to avoid the things that destroy me. So, that is what I am doing, I am in a place where I can learn all of those things before its too late. And when it comes down to it, I wouldn't trade this for anything right now.

Containers

Tonight in Art Therapy we made containers, which was something I had been looking forward to, until it came down to doing it. I had thought, what a convenient thing, a place to put things, recovery things: emotions I don't know what to do with, hopes, fears, momentos, whatever.

But when it came down to decorating it I froze momentarily. There was the magic threshold of self expression, and what did I really want this container to be for anyway? for the good? the bad? the ugly? What I really need is a container for the confused, the lost, the unknown. But in order to have a container of these things I need to be able to hold them, to put them away, which is where the real problem lays. If I knew what these things were I would be able to put them in their proper containers in the first place.

There was something else bothering me too though; I am tired of putting things in containers, I just want things to be, I want to just be, I don't want to be contained. Also containers seem so stagnant and still and what I am trying to do is a process, it cannot be contained, which is part of why it is so hard, and hard to describe to people who are not going through it.

I ended up thinking about what I need to do to recover, and I realized that I need to let some things die, I need to let them go. Years ago I missed the Samhain celebration here because I was too afraid of what I really needed to let go of. Thats when things started to go wrong.

So I went back to that place of letting the leaves fall and moulder and protect the growth that was yet to come. I came back to where the leaves turn to rich loamy soil. It occurred to me that that process was just one part of the wheel of the year that turns so effortlessly. So I put a bit of winter ontop of the autumn (time to mourn that loss, and understand it) and had to follow that with the spring of course (turning that loss into something beautiful and new). But I left the summer for the inside of the container. That is what I want to contain: flowers and growth and beauty.
Looking at my container all you see is process (some of it not so pretty). That is what the world sees right now, a girl still too sick to drive herself around, a girl hiding at her parents house. But inside, there is all kinds of growth, it is beautiful and rich and colorful. If you are lucky I might let you peek inside.

Tunes

I have been having a tough time with nurturing lately. I have been resentful that I am always the one to have to nurture myself. I get angry at my mother for not being there for me when I was growing up and I get mad at my best friend for being too busy to see me (seeing him gives me a break from holding myself up and together). In getting angry like this I realized that if I were stronger in myself I wouldn't feel the need to be nurtured and held. I also realized that the more I truly take care of myself the easier it gets.

So tonight after doing a days work on myself and trying desperately to hold onto the progress I have made in recovery thus far, I looked through my iTunes to find something nurturing to listen to while I read, I wanted something that would hold me, wrap itself around me and keep me warm and safe. And of course I turned to tunes. Depriving myself of tunes because I am afraid of loving them too much is one of the worst things I can do for myself, it is almost worse than avoiding food.

So I flipped through my tune collection and came across a band called Lunasa, lovely lovely, warm and safe and comforting. Complex without being complicated. Exactly what I need.

Someday I'll be Dancing Circles Around Her

As part of my full life reboot I have moved into my childhood home with my childhood dad and all my childhood issues, behaviors and habits. It has been a tough transition for me. I am mostly able to think of it less as 'moving back in with my parents' and more as 'doing what I need to do to take care of myself' but still, its tough, a big change. As part of this big change I am still trying to figure out how best to fit my apartments worth of stuff into my one bedroom.

I never lived in a dorm room (I skipped that part of the college edperience) but I imagine my room looks a bit like a dorm room might. It is packed from floor to ceiling with all my worldy possessions. The closet is packed (mostly with yarn) to the spilling point. The only furniture is my bed, my desk, chair (a relic from my childhood), the bookcase (also packed to the spilling point), my dresser and a few milk crates which serve as my bedside table as well as storage for more books, art supplies and knitted things which are waiting patiently for winter to come around again.

One of the nice things about moving is realizing what is actually important to you , what you clearly value, for example, I didn't realize just how many books I own until I had to pack them and then find room for them all. I apparently also have a liking for black boots (I own 4 pairs). I'm not even going to go into the yarn and knitting supplies (although I should mention that at least a quarter of my books are knitting related), of course there are the art supplies of all types, and my cd collection is much larger than I had thought it was.

You are also given the opportunity to cull your belongings, you come across things you realize you have no use for, no desire to own. I let my fabric collection go to goodwill (when did I really think I would find the time and patience to learn to sew?), I took a bag of books to the used book store (I took store credit of course, who needs cash when it will all be coming back to them anyway?)

But there are some things I cannot let go of quite yet, some of these things have just gone into storage (cook books, momentos), but some of them I keep close to me. Things like my dance shoes.

You would think that a pair of shoes wouldn't be such a big deal, but dancing is one of the things that Edie (where are my manners? World, meet Edie, my eating disorder. Edie, this is the World, none of them like you, get used to it) has taken away from me. I used to dance, before i got sick, and I had just started to get back into it, and realize it was something I actually enjoyed when Edie showed up. For a while I thought I could have both Edie and my dancing, but I was terribly mistaken. So as Edie took on a bigger role in my life my dancing took on a much smaller role until one day, I looked over at my dance shoes and realized they were covered in dust and I didn't have enough strength to brush them off.

I refuse to put these shoes in storage. In fact they are not even shoved to the back of the closet, they are sitting where I can see them every day. I don't want to forget about them again, and even though I cannot use them to batter out the once familiar rhythms like I used to, I can still use them as weapons against Edie. And someday when she has faded like an old girlfriend into the backdrop of my life I will pull those shoes out and step up to be the woman I knowI can be.