Flu

Sick with the flu. Feel worse today than I did yesterday. Thought I was getting better. Hard to concentrate. Bleah.

Breaking up is hard to do

It seems everybody I know is breaking up. Found out last Sunday that my ex from nine years ago, whom I lived with for eight years, is moving out this weekend and ending a eight-year relationship. I'm really upset, I thought they'd stay together. Turns out she's having the same problem with him as I did. I'm convinced he's suffering from long-term depression, although you wouldn't know it to meet him. You'd only know it from living with him for a while and realizing he doesn't want to do anything but eat, sleep, work (not really) and watch TV. No interest in anything else. Actually that sounds like my father. Except in my father's case his whole life was working. When he was forced into early retirement and all he did was sleep, my mother got him to see a doctor and he was diagnosed with clinical depression. He's been on anti-depression pills ever since!

Called up my ex's old friend to tell him and found out his wife is moving into a new apartment that he rented and furnished for her. He doesn't drink or do drugs anymore but she continues to do so and refused to go to any more counselling.

So that's 3 couples breaking up since December. Don't know why it upsets me so much.

Relationship problems

I've been thinking a lot lately about how painful relationships can be. How two people come together with different expectations, different histories, different priorities. It's a wonder couples stay together at all... I've been reading about how many of the more hurtful conflicts in relationships stem from childhood problems with parents. Have you ever got really upset about something and can't figure out why it affected you so badly? How you got incredibly angry at your partner but you're not sure why?

A friend is going through a very painful breakup. I feel so bad for her but there's nothing much I can do but listen and suggest she not have any contact for a while. She somehow thought she'd be okay seeing this person on a friendly basis after being intimate for many, many years. Turns out it's too painful for both of them. She just had a total meltdown when she found out some people were going over to his place for dinner. It's sad how we sometimes think we can be logical about certain things, then the emotional, illogical part of our brain takes over our good common sense.

I've found writing down my problems, hurts, upsets, etc. really help me sort them out in a more logical way. I'm overemotional at times, and don't quite get out what I'm trying to say in a very coherent way. Writing it all down, editing it so it makes sense and then speaking to the person I'm having a problem with really helps.

I learned a lot when I took a CBT workshop for about four months. It taught me about organizing my thoughts on paper, looking for some logic behind all the emotions and figuring out exactly what emotions were coming into play. For example, I learned that a lot of the time when a woman cries, it's not from being sad, it's from being mad!

I've also been working on being more assertive, but that's not going so well. Sometimes it can take a while to get the right balance between passivity and being overly aggressive. I used to go along with everybody and everything and sometimes get resentful but not speak out. Now, unless it's something not worth bothering about, I will say right away if something bothers me. If the other person starts getting defensive, which most of us tend to do, I have to be careful not to escalate the discussion into an argument. Because I find it very hard to state what's bothering me in the first place, I tend to get upset when the other person takes it as a personal criticism instead of acknowledging my right to stop whatever behaviour that's upsetting me. Guess this will be a work in progress for some time to come...

New blog

The problem with starting a blog is what to write. What subject to choose. Write a daily journal or write about something specific?

mus·ing (myōō'zĭng)
adj. Deep in thought; contemplative.
n.

1. Contemplation; meditation.

2. A product of contemplation; a thought. "an elegant tapestry of quotations, musings, aphorisms, and autobiographical reflections" (James Atlas).

mus'ing·ly adv.

One of the most interesting people I've ever read about:

Frida Kahlo.

Frida Kahlo, New York, 1939, photo by Nicholas Muray. She sits on a white bench, wearing traditional Mexican clothes in the heavily ornamented and embroidered style that became her signature.

From Lisa's History Room website. Very interesting website about fascinating people.