The God That Is Jensen Ackles - MBV3D

We saw My Bloody Valentine 3D tonight, Hubby and I did. As far as movie content it was extremely predictable. Typical slasher movie complete with standard cliches and only very minor plot twists.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~SPOILERS~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The most notable thing about this movie is that he turns out to be the bad guy at the end. In fact, he turns out to be a psychotic bad guy who didn't even know he was the bad guy. And Jensen does such a fabulous job of it!

Now bear in mind that I practically worship this man both as an actor and as a guy. Not only is he so gorgeous that I melt when I watch him, he is a great actor and every evidence I've ever seen or dug up (and I have done a bit of digging) indicates he's just a really great guy.

So... Tom (his character) in this movie isn't Dean. He isn't Jake. He isn't Alec. He is Tom. I was very impressed. There are some familiar facial expressions and body language but the entire air of the character is vastly diffferent from any other character I've seen him play. And I've seen all of them except the brief stint in the Sweet Valley High show (way before my time of cyber-stalking him).

Then came the end, and we saw Tom become Harry and KA-POW! I am now furthe rin love than before. Jensen pulls off this angry, evil, unrepenting, totally senseless, madman murderer with a ferocity that made the screen boil and the hairs on my arm stand up. There was none of his other characters there either - not even Pissed-Off Dean or Murder-Machine Alec.

I think I am going to swoon now. Maybe if I'm lucky I will dream of him......



This is Alec from Dark Angel when he lost his temper. The closest I could find to a different character that is like Tom when he became Harry. And they aren't the same.

Random Thoughts (Deep Thoughts Edition)

Baby turns 2 years old in a month. Baby isn't such a baby any more. To that end, I am changing her "name" from Baby to Kid-5. Since she lives here, she may as well be one of mine and even when they move out (why is "if" sticking in my head?) she will still be a huge part of our lives. In keeping with that, Baby-Mommy's "name" will be changing to BFF.

I seem to have slept off that anger that gripped me so tightly since last weekend. I got up this morning not quite as irritable and kept the idea of biting my tongue in the front of my thoughts. I got the kids off to school and I came home and went back to bed. I couldn't sleep because the phone kept ringing and the sun was too bright and blah blah blah... But I stayed under the covers and I hid from the world. I let my thoughts roam where they would and now, 12 hours later, I can't even remember what all I mulled over. At noon BFF called me and indicated with limited (though attempted) subtlety that I should get up. Twenty minutes later, I did. And when I did, the anger had melted away. I didn't have to suppress it or bite my tongue or anything - it just wasn't being triggered. YAY FOR SLEEP!

Things to ponder:

Why do I base so much of what I do on what other people want me to do, regardless of whether or not I want or need to do it? (I have been helping BFF edit poetry all day. Ick.)

Why do I not do things I know I need to do? (From household chores to personal goals.)

I just filled out this extensive symptom questionnaire for the new Med-Shrink. There's a LOT of information there. I think I am going to share it here, see if I can make some heads or tails of it, save a snapshot of where I am at right now, and use it to draw up the road map that I have to do without The Shrink's guidance. Personally, it fascinates me - all the information it contains in one concise(-ish) little packet.

I think everyone bases their world-view on a question (or, for some people, more than one). I am a "why" person. I want to know why things work, why people think and do what they do, why things are the way they are. It was a bit of a surprise to realize that most people don't think like this, even people that I thought would. I wonder what I can do with this knowledge...

Where is my life going? I live my life for my kids right now. Everything I do from the details (like what to buy at the store) to the big picture (like bothering to stay alive at all) - it's for my kids. Do I want to change that? Is it possible? Why? How?

MOOD: tired but pensive
PERFECT SONG: Heaven Forbid (The Fray)

Courage Doesn't Determine Outcome

Having the balls to ask for what I want has been a hot topic in my head lately. With my current angry mood, requests tend to come out as criticisms or sarcasm or snipping or otherwise not an effective means of communication. So I have to mull something over for quite some time to be able to phrase it appropriately and in a tone of voice that isn't an attack.

Well, I've been thinking for quite some time that I am rather jealous of the format of Baby-Mommy's therapy. I totally love The Shrink and would follow him to the ends of the earth but I often wish he (make that WE) were a little bit more linear and consistent. I like predictability and having a plan. I want the flexibility to ditch the plan as needed but I do want to have a plan. It's so easy for me to wander or drift away from (or flat out dodge) the things I need to be addressing. I end up having coffeehouse sessions. (The kind where we sit around and rehash events but don't make any progress in any direction - nice but not useful in the big picture.)

I want to make myself tackle things in a more direct and aggressive manner. But I let fear hold me back and instead of addressing whatever issue I need to work on, I freak and bail. And The Shrink doesn't hold me to it. He's very Carl Rogers about the whole thing and just goes where I'm at. He is very good at relating wherever I'm at to my bigger picture problems but he doesn't guide or direct.

So I thought, if I could just muster the nerve to say something about it, that maybe he do a little more of that. I've been telling myself this for weeks and never gotten the nerve to actually do it. So, yesterday I sucked it up and I made myself do it. I asked for what I wanted, relatively directly and without the need for him to guess or mind-read to figure out what I was saying/wanting/needing.

YAY ME!

Except............ he shot me down. Crash and burn - no survivors. Honestly, I don't remember exactly what he said. The gist of it is that we do have plans and goals and we are working towards them but it's not his style to be as formal as Baby-Mommy's therapy is. What wasn't said but is now blatantly obvious is that if I want structure, I have to provide it, if I want more aggressive tactics, I have to initiate them, and if I want a road map, I have to draw it.

So I tried to ask for what I want, I managed to keep my nerve up, and I still got shot down. At least it was in a safe atmosphere. He shot me down without me feeling attacked or belittled and with minimal feelings of being a complete and total idiot asking for unreasonable things. I'm still disappointed and I still feel stupid and like I asked for something I shouldn't have, but it's not like other situations I have been in where a "no" answer was a much more traumatic experience.

*big sigh*

That's Not Me!!

I love psychology and read voraciously anything to do with it. That includes a lot of psych blogs. One of my top favorites is ShrinkTalk.net. I highly recommend it for a good laugh with insights behind it.

In this post about the therapeudic effects of personal blogging, he interviews another blogger who delves extensively into her personal issues and has been for 10 years. I hadn't read her before and her blog didn't make me wanna rush right out and read all of her stuff, but what ended up in Dr. Rob's post hit so close to close to home that I promptly had an anxiety attack and struggled with nausea off and on the rest of the day.

It could have been me writing this part:

...I came from a decent family; had two loving parents who'd been raised in stable homes. My family was good folk. Hardworking folk. German and Irish immigrants mostly, with a little bit of Iroquois. My parents had been married 30 years and I had an extremely close relationship with my mother. I probably hadn't had an idyllic childhood, but that was my own fault, because there was something inherently wrong with me at my core, from birth, and that was the reason I was suffering. I was too stubborn, too sensitive, too selfish. Nothing particularly bad had ever happened to me; I was merely inferior to everyone on earth, and there really wasn't anything good about me. Because of this, I was eating disordered, in and out of controlling and abusive relationships with jerks, addicted to a handful of different substances, alcohol, pills, sex - anything that would put me out of myself, to be honest. Not to mention, I was at war with a depression that had gripped me since before puberty, the source of which was just...fate, I guessed. I was in a lot of pain, and I had tried to commit suicide twice the previous winter. Because I was bad at everything, I failed at both attempts, but I was pretty certain I wouldn't be alive much longer. I couldn't take the hurt because I was weak.

I use a totally different way of getting out of myself. Instead of drugs and sex and things, I dissociate, sometimes to the extreme. Other than that - this could be me, right down to the geneology!

This just... clicked. But then I read this paragraph:

Its difficult for people to understand how you can think you are a bad person when there is no evidence supporting that fact--I got straight A's and no detentions, and truly believed I was a bad kid. But you're brainwashed. Your ability to self assess is taken from you, and feelings are not allowed. No one can feel. If they did, they walk the fuck out, so it's declared selfishness to feel things. Moreover, the message is: you do not matter as a person, beyond the material, or your ability to sacrifice for the family, and so you further suppress feelings. Sit on them. That's a dangerous way to move through life, particularly if you're seeing things through as cracked a prism as mine.

And that's where I lost it. Because that is me all over the place. I truly believe I am a bad person and that I was an evil kid. And yet if I try to explain this to people, they don't get it, they never get it. I've never yet managed to successfully explain where this deep-seated confidence in that reality springs from but I know it is there.

But she felt that way too. And she had so many things similar in her life to what I had in mine. And she ended up screwing up her life in so many ways, as did I. But she came to the conclusion that it was her LIFE that was messed up, that it was her LIFE that was bad, her situation - not her. And she came through the other side and is starting to see herself as not a bad person and that maybe she wasn't a bad kid.

Honestly, that very concept terrifies me - that maybe it isn;t/wasn't me after all. Maybe I'm not bad and it was the circumstances that were bad. The conditioning is so strong from The Mother - she built it right in there that psychology, therapy in particular, is awful because it introduces the concept of "toxic parents" (her terms not mine) that assume the problems of the child are because of the parents. She used to say I was a perfect example of pop psychology bullshit (also her terms) because nothing in my life necessitated the way I behaved and the depression I fell into. It had nothing to do with her and yet they labeled her a toxic parent and how stupid and horrible that concept was and she would go on and on about it. It never occurred to me to dispute her because that would have put me right there with the infamous "them" which she railed against so strongly. It's built in to never question her role in my failings and always place it squarely on my being a bad person and fate choosing me randomly to assign "bad" status to.

But if she can walk away from the cult mentality and work towards a better life and self... and I saw so much of my own thoughts in her words... what does that say???

I'm Angry!

Okay, no I'm not really angry. I'm just irritated. By everything. Frequently. Ugh.

I don't like anger. I don't handle it very well. I don't know what to do with it. For the past week I have been biting people's heads off. It's like my filters are nonoperational. I'm probably no more snippy than anyone else who gets snippy but it has a bigger impact on people because it is not usually there. This constant irritability is very out of character for me.

My MO is to seek and destroy. I will find out what is getting me mad and eliminate it, either by thinking my way out of it, turning it onto myself, or tossing it over The Wall to make it not exist at all. I have been informed this not exactly the most healthy way of handling things but old habits die hard.

So I've been trying to figure out where the anger is coming from. To this end, I have been examining what types of things are irritating me.

The kids have just been driving me up the wall. They are constantly fighting with each other, physically and verbally. They are refusing to pull their own weight around the house. And the whining!! OMG - the whining is going to be the death of me!

Alright, from the POV of Jung and his immortal Shadow, that behavior in them is getting to me because I hear and feel the same desires and reactions inside my own head. I don't want to do the crap around here that needs to be done. I hate it like I hate very few other things. The very thought of cleaning makes me tired and irritable and whiny. And when people say things that bother me, I have the urge to lash out at them instead of blow it off. Everything in my head wants to be acting like they are. Thus when they do act that way, it bothers me intensely.

Other than the claustrophobic fighting with the kids, in the past couple of days, I find myself irritated by life in general. The past 6 months have been full of complications. And the more of them that pile up, the louder the cries of It's not fair! and Why me??? become. And then I start trying to answer those questions and the only answers I can come up with fill me with despair and - yup... more anger.

I keep thinking that life shouldn't be this difficult. It's like I have this assumption of entitlement. Life shouldn't be this difficult and it isn't fair that my life is so complicated. I want to give up. I want to throw my hands in the air, tell the world to stick it where the sun don't shine, and take my leave of absence from it. I won't. Because I can't destroy my kids. But I so completely want to. And being thwarted in that arena as well just builds the frustration.

Of course, realizing that I'm raging at the world and at life in general actually creates more friction in my mind. It's not like being angry at someone for something they did and being able to confront them and resolve the situation. Who am I going to confront? God? So I feel impotent. And I cannot stand feeling like I have no power. Even when I know I have handed my personal power over to someone else, I still feel like it is my power and I made the choice to hand it over. But when I'm pissed at life and the random bullshit that it has been dishing out lately - I have no control over that. There is no power to take back here.

And so the anger builds, the irritation bubbles to the surface and I have been getting snippish and having to bite my tongue. Instead of turning the situation around until I can manipulate it, I am sitting on it. It's like riding a roller coaster - up and down and too fast and too jarring. It makes my stomach feel gooey and while I'm not scared, I'm not having the "fun" I was assured I would experience.

Anger is NOT cool. It's NOT okay. I DON'T like it and I want it to go away.......

Catching Up (a post in brief)

I have other things I want to talk about. But I also think I need to give a brief update to catch anyone (including me) up to speed that may need it. So this is going to be quick and without analysis. Perhaps I will go into more detail later, perhaps not.

- I am home from the hospital. In fact, they only kept me 7 days. The doctor got me back to a semi-stable place and then sent me home. The fairies have gone. The memory is back. As near as I can tell, the entire fiasco can be boiled down to a 2 drug interaction. NOTE TO SELF: DO NOT MIX XANAX AND AMBIEN!

- We are back home. We had that horrific ice storm the week before Christmas. It knocked out our power which in turn meant we had no heat. We were staying at The Mother's - 10 people crammed into a house that is used to running for 2. Then a pipe froze in our heating and flooded the living room. And I lost my mind. And Hubby was gone with the railroad most of the time. We had Christmas at The Mother's and New Year's at The Mother's. Well, things are repaired and warm and everything and we are back in the house.

- Kid-1 still has not stabilized. His mood and attitude have spiked. We have had the police out twice to contain a rage and we are always butting heads with him. I am so far beyond frustrated that it isn't even funny. We have been back to the psychiatrist and tweaked his meds but we are not there yet. And not all of this is going to be fixed by meds - he needs an attitude adjustment.

- My cousin, or rather Hubby's cousin, had an accident. He raced motorcycles in the motocross thing. Well, he flipped over his bike and landed on his head. He is now comatose, on a respirator, and not sure what will happen next. His vitals are stable but there is still pressure on the brain and all sorts of complications. It's going to be a long road and I am praying both that he does wake up and that he won't be sorry he pulled through when he does wake up.

- Hubby got laid off. On the train they call it "put on furlough" but it means the same. They are expected to be called back anywhere from 6 months to close to 2 years. It all boils down to the economy. The trains are supposedly the last to feel it, but they are feeling it. How soon he gets called back will be determined by how quickly the economy bounces back.

- He has returned to his former job for now. Lucky for us they are having a rush and need more help than they have. He has only been taken back contract and we don't know about the number of hours they will give him or how predictable those hours will be. But at this point, at least there will be some income and something for him to do. We can try to fall back on unemployment if we need to but I don't think that will be sufficient - we were barely making it before. I have applied for the state's health care plan for the kids. I think it is too soon to apply because we have no idea how many hours he will be getting. But we shall see what we shall see.

I think that is all the major plot developments for now. There are some other big minor ones I didn't touch on, like my asthma spiking and the current status of Baby and Baby-Mommy. But I can go into those at some other time as necessary.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Does anyone know where I was during these times? I know I ended up at the BIL's once while the power was out. And I was inpatient at the psych ward for a couple days once. Currently we are living with my parents because the ice storm took out the power which took out the boiler which froze the heat pipes which flooded at least one room of our house. We have heat now but we aren't going home because Baby-Mommy has her BIG TEST sometime this week and can't watch all 5 kids and Hubby is in and out (more out than in) with the trains and I can't be left alone.

I keep forgetting everything. I don't remember people or places or things I've done. I have no memory of Christmas except the evidence left behind. They can't leave me alone because there is no telling what I may do, from going back to bed (leaving the 2 year old unattended) to thinking I haven't taken my meds and taking them again (and again and again...) Mostly I disappear into my head or into a book or into a book that lives in my head.

They are sending me to the hospital. I don't know exactly when. They have been making plans for who will cover what duties while I am gone - it's like eavesdropping on someone planning your funeral. I think we are waiting for insurance confirmation of which hospital is covered. Or maybe to see the doctor Monday. Or maybe to find a new doctor like we were talking about.

I'm very scared. The hospital takes away everything I treasure. I can't see my kids or my family. My freedom is gone. The things I like to do are forbidden. Most of those things are the only ways I know to calm myself down when I'm scared. I can't use MAC (my laptop) or BOB (my Nokia) or watch any of the television shows I like to watch. I hope to be able to take a book that I like to read but I have trouble concentrating when I'm upset. I can't have my writing notebooks and ink pens. I don't know about sketchbooks and pencils and erasers. No Dog-Dog or Fuzzy blanket to hide with. No music to calm down my head. They will even take away my wedding ring! At the same time, they will probably stop all of my meds and then get cranky with me when I totally fall apart.

I want to hide. I want to sleep. I want to go away so far into my head that no one ever finds me again. But they won't let me.