Bully Women and Emotionally Unavailable Men

10:04am                            Writing Practice                             37° Boise

No writing yesterday. I dithered around in depression all day, didn't feel very good in the afternoon but didn't nap, got some bills paid with the soc sec deposit and figured out how I want to switch up my credit cards for optimal interest rates.

I interviewed a little gal for the back bedroom (I did get in there and make the bed and dust, so I guess I did something), but then found out that the POs who were here in January wrote an 'uncomfortable' report on me and now I have to try to get that fixed. It's true that I was very uncomfortable with them when they showed up. Kaelen was at a meeting in his mother's car and they had a no-contact order on them.When asked how he got to the meeting, I wasn't prepared to lie about it and the whole thing made me squirm. But how do I tell them that. They don't know me. I could ask them to get a reference from James Du Tois and see if that helps. But in the big picture, even though it made me feel bad (really bad, almost sick) I really don't care today if a Drug Court kid can stay here or not. She didn't have any money so there I was going to be, stuck financially helping someone in my house. If the situation gets resolved, fine. If it doesn't, that's fine too. I still have a room and I can find a temporary person with actual money to stay there if I decide to.

So after the depression of the week, I realize that I'm being affected by the insights that are coming to me because of all this writing --- the bully mothers in my family (including me) makes me very sad for Gerald, Mark, Nathan and Stephen. Also, all the men in my life have been emotionally unavailable: Dad and Hubert Hesseltine, my fathers, Bob Willems and John Sandknop, the men I married. So was Rick Lawlor and Louie Kingman, for that matter. So all six of the major men relationships in my life have been emotionally vacant. That also includes both of my uncles, my mother's brothers, Bub and Pep. I'm just now realizing that I have no idea what an emotionally healthy man looks like, I don't know any! Although I have a suspicion that the neighbor, Eric Rhodes, is emotionally healthy. At least he seems so from here. Wow! I wonder where I would have to go to meet someone who was emotionally healthy? And would I recognize him if I did? Or her ... are any of us really healthy in our emotions these days? Have we ever been or did the constraints of society make it seem that we were?

 Ah! I just got the tag ... I can only spot what I got! Thanks for the reminder, Stephen! Now I wonder if bully women and emotionally unavailable men make a match and that's why they are the only men I know.

So control issues = bully behavior. When Pam pushes me around with her control issues, I feel the resistance and want to push back. But people with control issues are hard to confront, it's easier to smack them back with passive aggression. That's where I learned my skills, at the feet of my mother. So passive/aggressive behavior is the flip side of control issues, it would seem.

For years I've declared myself a recovering control freak, swearing to watch for control issues when they crop up and learn to release resistance and be more flexible. I think I'm getting better, or at least I thought I was getting better. You know, all this new perspective on my family dynamics is causing me grief, as if I need more of that! Years ago I decided to change my childhood and to view it in only the best possible light. I stopped looking back at it, at the sad parts or the control parts.

All of this is very interesting but I can't let it stop me from progress on my project. Yes, it's enlightening and interesting and insightful. Yes, the ability to see these memories clearly will help me in the long run to make sense of what happened to Stephen and that's the most important part. But in the end, it's the story I make up for him and the combination of genetics, home environment and all of his other relationships that opened the door to who he became and what he did with his life. Also, there was the Acutane and the side effects of that stuff need to be factored in. He took that prescription during a crucial time in his hormonal development and that may have turned the tide on his feelings and his willingness to check into and entertain thoughts of suicide. It's actually listed in the literature as possible side effects. It's a fact that he changed after that, but he was doing the puberty thing, the Acutane side effects got lost in the haze of teen angst that ensued. It's also true that he never really recovered from it, not until he did the neurofeedback therapy.

But hey, these are all good avenues to explore. Yes, it was a combination of events and experiences and inner turmoil and genetics that caused his eventual demise. It wasn't just me, the horrible, bully mom. I certainly did contribute but I was also the only one who ever tried to help him overcome himself. So there is that.