A Day For Giving Thanks . . .
11.27.08
On a day of giving thanks, today I found myself doing just about everything but. To make what could be a long story that a public audience might not have much interest in hearing short, after about ten months of skipping my period, I got a prescription for hormones that would induce it and started taking them about eleven or twelve days ago. The period-inducing process takes a lot out of me. Well, it puts hormones into me that seem to cause a lot of intense and sometimes irrational emotions, exhaustion, physical changes in my body, and basically all of the other crap you go through during puberty. The ten days of hormones is followed by a regular menstrual cycle and when you haven’t experienced this in almost eleven months, it is really intense. At least it is for me.
So today I woke up particularly sensitive and irrational. I had kind of been dreading Thanksgiving here. My sister, Adi and I made plans but throughout the morning little things kept setting me off and I kept finding myself on the verge of tears. I felt tired and not very good in my body. I felt lonely and isolated, nostalgic for France and generally difficult, unresponsive, cranky, distant, disconnected and sad. My Thanksgiving plans involved going to two separate Thanksgiving meals. One was at a friend of Kt’s and the other was at a friend of Adi’s. Neither of these households are places were I feel especially at home or like I belong. I mean, I’ve never actually been to Kt’s friend’s house but in general both places just felt like places that I was tagging along to. As a youngest child I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling like the tag-along who isn’t necessarily wanted or invited but who shows up anyway or who gets invited as an extension of another person.
As an adult I still find it hard to relax and to be myself in certain social situations and as today progressed, I felt more and more anxious and full of dread about going to be social with people I don’t really know on what traditionally is my favorite holiday because I spend it with people who I love and who I know and can feel care about me. I didn’t feel so much invited to these places and in some ways it felt like intruding on someone else’s holiday. And the worse I felt throughout the day, the more I felt like whether or not the intrusive feeling was in my head and stupid, my mood was such that I would not be fun, happy, talkative, social or enjoyable as company. The thought of showing up and having to make the excuse of not feeling well or having cramps was enough to make me periodically burst into tears. It’s one thing to make that excuse to people who know you, who really know you well and around whom you feel comfortable just being yourself. It’s another thing to make excuses and then sit in the corner quiet, feeling like a total alien, forcing a polite smile from time to time.
I cried harder this afternoon than I have in a while. I think that I may have cried that hard within my first week of moving here. Everything built up and suddenly I felt like I was ruining Thanksgiving, letting people down, hating myself for being upset, hating myself for not being able to have an easier time being social, and not living up to expectations. The part of today’s plan that involved going Adi’s friend was harder for me than the part that meant going to Kt’s friend’s. I have met Kt’s friend once or twice and had pleasant interactions with her. It felt really low stress and low key. It was with people I hadn’t met before and could easily never see again. There was no pressure, no real importance to going there specifically other than it was where Kt was going and since she’s the only family I have here, it was important for me to be with her on Thanksgiving.
Going with Adi to her friend’s house, on the other hand, felt a lot harder and more emotional for me. When she invited me, she made it clear that it was important to her that I go with her because it’s important for her to be able to share other parts of her life with me. I’ve spent time around her and this friend before and have not really clicked with the friend. Usually when we’re all together I feel left out or like it doesn’t matter if I am there or not at all. It’s like watching TV in a way because they have their dynamic that has been established and rather than being a part of that dynamic or what is going on, I am observing it from the side. They clearly get along well, share a certain sense of humor, care about each other and have fun. I haven’t felt like I’m a part of that. I take responsibility for the fact that I don’t always go out of my way to make a huge effort. Unfortunately this has happened a few times when I just have been low energy or not in a great mood to begin with anyway. I just can get really shy and quiet around new or different people and it’s not always easy for me to find a way in. And if my experience has been that I don’t think I’d be friends with this person in other circumstances, it makes it even harder. But at the same time I get that Adi wants to bring together two parts of her life that are important to her. So it leaves me feeling guilty for not trying harder, torn about not necessarily feeling like I have the energy to do it and sad because she actually has community, friends and a life here in a way that I don’t feel like I have.
That last bit is a challenge because that is totally up to me and I can’t get mad at her for that and I’m not mad at her for that, I just have a hard time when she tries to involve me in those things that I feel I am totally lacking here. The few times I try to put aside feeling anxious about being around new people, feeling super conscious of it being important to Adi and making a good impression, well, I’ve not really been able to put it aside. Today I kept thinking about how if I needed to spend the day in bed crying, she still had somewhere to go where there would be people who wanted her there, who invited her, who would welcome her and around whom she would feel comfortable and cared for. I, on the other hand, felt like my options were to stay home, to tag along with Kt or to tag along with Adi. And that’s not to say that I didn’t want to spend the holiday with them because I really did want to spend the holiday with both of them. It’s just to say that I feel limited here in a way that I am not used to feeling.
Anyway, emotions, hormones, nostalgia and life collided today and made it really hard for me to feel much in the way of gratitude. I did finally go to Kt’s friend’s house with Adi. It was nice and low key. There was lots of good food and we played cranium. Then Adi and I stopped by the other party. I spent the whole drive over telling myself that I would go in with a positive, open attitude because I strongly believe that you get what you give. I thought really hard about going in with a smile on and trying to make it genuine. I thought about trying to make conversation and to really get myself involved. I thought about how despite my feeling less than enthusiastic about being there and interacting, it was really important to Adi and therefore needs to also be important or taken seriously by me. Then we got there and I felt invisible. I’m sure I contributed to it and at one point I had to duck into another room to make a phone call home. I think what happened was that I tried to make conversation a little at first and it got interrupted or side-tracked or just died because I didn’t know what to say. After that I felt like I wasn’t even there or didn’t need to be there. Conversations picked up and I didn’t have anything to say, any way to relate or any way to get into what was happening. When I was on the phone in the other room I could hear everyone laughing and chatting away and I thought about how it didn’t matter if I was in there with them or on my own on my cell phone.
And as I write this it sounds really whiney, victimy and immature to me, but sometimes you just feel the way you feel. That’s how I felt. And in addition to feeling that way, I didn’t really realize how I was feeling or why I was feeling like that. I didn’t realize until I started writing this really. I just felt bad. I guess I felt like I wasn’t make enough effort or doing enough but I also felt so invisible and little that making an effort felt impossible or just like something really unappealing at the time.
Anyway today was just rough. One bright spot in an otherwise dark, rainy, snowy day was finding a missed call from Sue on my phone and having a message from her wishing me a Happy Thanksgiving. I think she saw that I had written on my facebook that I was having a hard day because she said something about hoping that my day had gotten better. It was a nice reminder that there are people in this world who do care about me and know me and around whom I can just be me. There are people whom I might not see or talk to on a regular basis but who I could call if I needed to and who will reach out to me if they discover I’m in need of it. I might not feel as though I have much in the way of community here in Santa Fe, but I have a network of people all over and for that I am beyond thankful. Maybe tomorrow I will take some time alone and do some writing about what else I am actually thankful for as an exercise in gratitude and an attempt to reframe my attitude and to adjust my emotions.
