Overcooked

[darkemeralds]

It's been a peculiarly stressful week, beginning with a short visit from my brother, who flew up from Santa Barbara for our oldest sister's milestone 60th birthday.

(First of all, oh my god how do I have a sixty year old sister?)

I both love and like my brother, and we get along well. We had a nice time together.


from left to right: DarkEm, niece, younger sister, niece, niece, Mom, niece, brother, the birthday girl



But everyone was aware that the number of times our mother will see him again in her life is probably quite small, and there were the logistics of car rental and getting around town, and there was attending a big noisy party where people I went to high school with FFS were present.

As much as I love my family, I've got a permanent trigger warning stamped on large gatherings of them. I don't know why, but there it is. I needed a day to ramp down after that, because I was pretty activated.

Then came the Supernatural season finale. I loved it--don't get me wrong--but it was One More Thing.

Then I was reduced to tears by a fire in a building 6000 miles away that I visited once three years ago.

And then the Portland Water Bureau found E. coli in one of our reservoirs and issued a citywide boil-water alert. Stores were emptied of bottled water, misted produce was discarded... It was more of a shame and a hassle than anything else (nobody got sick) but it felt apocalyptic.

And then came the shooting in Isla Vista.

Now, as an American, I'm numb to mass shootings. They upset me the way traffic fatalities upset me. I try not to get involved because, again, I just get activated, and there's not a fucking thing I can do. My outrage-o-meter is broken.

But somehow I got drawn into the whole #YesAllWomen hashtag event on Twitter. And it was wonderful, it really was. It clarified a lot of things for me, and it seemed to do the same for other people, some of them men. (A good article about it appeared on Time.com.)

But I'm feeling kind of overcooked, you know?

On the positive side of the ledger, I at least knew that I was activated and took some steps: tapping, extra sleep, quiet days, a couple of good bike rides. And, of course, I have the priceless blessing of not having to go to a stressful job anymore.

And chocolate. And Netflix. I'll get by.

Comments

[scribblemoose]

I really hear you on the overcooked thing. We had a ridiculous set of elections to throw in the mix over here as well.

So I'm going to follow your example and put some decrompression days into the calendar this week!

*hugs*

(My sister is 70 this month. I cannot process that at all!)

[darkemeralds]

I've been following your elections a bit, and yeah. Discouraging, to put it mildly. Neoliberalism seems to be taking over the world.

I would imagine that your sister is considerably older than you, right? In my case, my sis only has 18 months on me. Eeek!

[blueraccoon]

*hugs* I hear you on the overcooked thing too. I had to leave a fun gathering of friends on Saturday because I was just way too wound up to enjoy it :( Although a lot of that is just my fucked up brain chemistry.

Take care of you.

[darkemeralds]

Brain chemistry is everything, isn't it? I don't even know anymore where normal ends and fucked up starts, but I'm grateful for the calm times. I'm glad you knew to leave when it was too much.

[blueraccoon]

fucking brain chemistry. Ugh.

I knew when to leave in part because my husband looked at me like "are you okay? do you want to leave?" and I said "um...yeah."

[darkemeralds]

In our other conversation, about housing options? Here's one of the many moments in life where living with someone who knows you well would be a huge advantage. I'm glad he's tuned in!

[blueraccoon]

He's more tuned in to my moods than I am half the time. It's kind of scary.

[darkemeralds]

How wonderful, though!

I've got a friend like that. We're not super close, but we worked together for a long time, and he's just...observant in a very special way. He likes people--way more than I do--and he notices little things about them. I often has the feeling that he's figured things out about me--patterns and tendencies--that I can't see myself, and is too polite to point them out!

[cathexys]

All the familial issues notwithstanding, y'all look really wonderful together in the pic. (especially you :)

[darkemeralds]

Aw, thanks! What a nice thing to say.

We're a pretty great group of people, if I do say so. I love them all. (And your Stilinski Feels icon is making me misty-eyed!)

[tehomet]

Lovely photo.

All those stressors accumulating like that... not pleasant. At all.

[darkemeralds]

Thank you. Some total stranger was wielding my phone! It was iffy.

The whole series of events has given me some perspective on how far I've come, how much my mental health has improved, and how much better my life is today than ten years ago. And the whole world has been improving along with me. Not only do I know what triggering is, but I can talk and write about it, and other people know too. I've gained at least as much from the blogs of strangers (and friends) online as from psychotherapy; as least as much from the feeling of community support on LJ/DW as from doctors.

I guess I'm trying to express how grateful I feel to be living in the 21st Century, with so much information, so much solidarity, so many opportunities for exploration.

Not to mention the phone that takes pictures.

[ranunculus]

Oh boy do I ever understand about the big-party thing. Noise is one of my triggers, I like quiet environments and a really loud place is fine for about 15 minutes. If I have to work in such a place I find that focusing strictly on my job, or some physical thing helps reduce the impact. That is hard to do in a family situation where I always feel I need to remain "open" to the environment.

I suspect that part of your trigger was the bedroom remodel. It was a lot of change and stress not long before this party.
Mom worked at a family planning clinic for a long time. When girls would come in concerned with changes in their monthly cycles the doctor, a woman who was the mother of 12, would ask if the patient had any big changes in her life. They would often say yes, but that the change was all to the good, at which time the doctor would say firmly that it was *still* a big change and it *still* had physical effects.

[darkemeralds]

Yes, noise is very triggery, isn't it? And draining. You've hit perfectly on the difference between working in a steadily-noisy environment and having to be open to a noisy social environment. Huge difference.

I think you may be exactly right about the lingering depletion of my bedroom project. I thought I was well-rested from it, but I don't think I'd full re-aligned all the little neurons or whatever. Resiliency is slow to return. Thanks for the insight.