Photo: my favorite tea cup from my collection, and my favorite macarons from my favorite local bakery. Disclaimer: this photo was not taken recently. I am not sitting here eating a pile of french macarons. 🙂

I guess I am in some kind of hella writing mood today, this week, this month?

Blue Eyes and I have had a really strange week and it started with watching a crazy movie called ‘Welcome to Me’ starring Kristen Wiig. Blue Eyes picked it. The character has borderline personality disorder. I have been dealing with my sister and her BPD for 45 years, so no biggie for me. We liked the movie, for what it was, a bizarre “comedy” about a woman with a mental illness. Kristen Wiig did a great job, but Blue Eyes was triggered numerous times by some of the character’s behavior. It reminded him of the moods of his last acting out partner. I kept asking him what the name of the movie was, I just couldn’t remember it… ‘Welcome to Me.’ In one scene, Wiig’s character severely burns herself because of her own negligent behavior and is hospitalized. She seems surprised at how the burn even happened.

Fast forward a couple days. I am lying belly down on our bed, blogging. I have been having some issues with my upper left side, a pinching and painful feeling in my upper left back, then pain in my upper left arm, especially when I try to lift it up above my shoulder, and a little bit of numbness in my left hand fingers. I looked the symptoms up on the internet and it might be bursitis? My mom suffers from bursitis, who knows. Anyway, I am right handed, so it is not so bad during the day, but as the day wears on, it gets a little worse and I am often looking for positions to relax in that don’t hurt. So, again I was on our bed relaxing and Blue Eyes brought me a teapot of herbal tea, still brewing, and a coffee mug. Very sweet, I know. He put the pot and the mug down on the bed next to me to the left of my laptop and then he came over to my left side to give me a kiss… as this was all occurring, it feels like almost in slow motion at this point, I am thinking that is a very precarious place to put that hot tea pot, because, you know the bed is not a hard surface, and I need to move it. As he leans in for the kiss I am careful not to move the bed too much, I kiss him back, and then he plants his left hand firmly on the bed (going in for another kiss), tipping over the scalding hot water onto his hand and forearm and lets out the biggest yelp I have heard from him yet. Well, yeah, he has just fucking burned his arm. Then things went into fast motion and instead of wiping off the hot water, he runs around yelling “what should I do, what should I do, should I run it under cold water?” I say, “yeah, I think that would be a good idea.” I didn’t realize he hadn’t actually wiped off the hot water and I’m pretty sure this exacerbated the problem, although by this time, no doubt it had cooled down. In the back of my mind I kept thinking, geez I knew that was a precarious place for that tea pot, why didn’t I just do the sensible thing and move it immediately. But then I also kept thinking, who sets a tea pot down in a precarious place, and then proceeds to do something that will most certainly cause it to spill all over on you? Blue Eyes runs to the bathroom and we both start googling scalding burns on our iPhones. He runs cool water over his arm for about 15 minutes. Being pretty much the sole cook in our household for 30 years, I have burned myself numerous times… on scalding hot water, on the oven, on a hot burner, etc… I know it is incredibly painful and Blue Eyes’ burn is over his entire left hand and about half way of the upper side of his forearm. I have never burned that much of my body at once. After soaking in the cool water, he takes some Ibuprofen, and elevates it. By this time it is maybe 11:30 at night and I am exhausted and ready for sleep. Blue Eyes is in too much pain, so he wants to watch some episodes of ‘Silicon Valley’ on HBO. We both find this program to be quite hilarious, so I agree even though I really want to go to sleep. Then the whimpering starts. Blue Eyes’ is literally whining like our mini aussie when he wants to go for a walk, or a small child in pain. He keeps trying to google more solutions. Unfortunately, burns hurt, that is why we should all try to avoid them. After THREE episodes of the television show, I cannot keep my eyes open. I tell him he can keep watching, but I must go to bed. He agrees, it’s time for bed. Somehow he manages to sleep. The next morning I can see a very large blister forming on his arm and smaller blisters on his arm and hand. I suggest he call the dermatologist. He has second degree burns. He is not in any pain, but still completely obsessed with his burned arm. I put some antibiotic ointment on it and cover it in plastic wrap (to hopefully protect the blister) and he is scheduled at 4pm at the doctor. In my mind I keep thinking how would he handle this if he was alone. I know he could handle it. I guess it is nice to have a companion that reminds you to call the doctor and wraps up your arm for you. The doctor gave him some cream to apply and some soft gauze to cover it with. It’s a burn. At one point Blue Eyes did say, “I am so stupid, I shouldn’t have put the tea there. I shouldn’t have rested my hand on the bed.” My response was yeah, but what’s done is done, you need to be more aware and not do it again. It hurts. Thanks, Mommy.

Last night I was listening to a Jim Carrey commencement speech on my phone. So weird I have mentioned Jim Carrey twice in one week on my blog, so incredibly strange. The speech was linked on my Facebook feed. He presented it in May of 2014. I think it is a pretty inspiring speech and the students were lucky to get such an entertaining speaker to listen to at their graduation, and I gleaned a number of good nuggets from the speech (no more linking videos for me for a while, I don’t want to open that can of worms again, and I am not advocating for anything Jim Carrey may have said or done in the past. I’m just talking about this commencement speech). At one point he is talking about his father, the inspiration his father was for him and he says, “I watched the affect my father’s love and humor had on the world around me, and I thought, that’s something to do, that’s something worth my time.” A few lines later he says, “How will you serve the world? What do they need that your talent can provide? That’s all you have to figure out.” Somehow, those words ended up being a trigger for me. As I sat on the bed next to Blue Eyes as he was playfully having our dogs do “tricks” and giving them treats, I thought, where is the man I thought I knew? Where is the man who provided laughter and entertainment to lots of people just merely with his quirky personality. Where is the man that I thought would do no harm. Where IS that man I thought I knew. And then, I thought, how many times have I sat next to him in moments like this and instead of actually being present with me, he was thinking about his addiction, or plotting ways to feed his addiction, how many thousands of lies had he told, and the pain seized me up. There is no answer to my dilemma. That man, that I thought I knew, does not exist, and yet he does. I never know when something is going to trigger me, but I need to deal with all the triggers. Blue Eyes was unable to help me. My night was fairly ruined (not Jim Carrey’s fault). But today is a new day.

I know I share a lot of personal stuff on my blog and so far Blue Eyes has not complained. It’s personal, but again, talking it out helps me. Blue Eyes sent me this from work in an email this morning (along with a bunch of other sweet texts and messages):

I want to control things. I want it to go away. I want to make you feel better to make me feel good.
Always question my motives, where are my words and thinking coming from?
I can change, I can change, I can change.
I cannot control, I cannot control, I cannot control
I can acknowledge and take responsibility.
I can just listen, I can just listen
Do the work, Do the work
Can I step into your shoes
Can I step into your shoes
Reality has changed,
Can we rebuild YES
Do I want to YES
Some days are tough
no control the new reality I have created
Sorry doesn’t do it
Just listen, Just change
Don’t crumble in
Create a cookie that we can share
that Kat gets first bite
a glass of milk too

This was my response:

Yum. I want a cookie now.
I don’t want you to step into my shoes.
I want you to live squarely in the shoes you created for yourself, accept those shoes for everything they represent. Really look at those shoes. Don’t pretend like they aren’t soiled and worn. You do not get to have new shoes, you only get to repair the shoes you have. Those shoes need to take you into the future, and beyond.
I want a glass of milk too.

And we just keep trying to talk it out, because we need to to feel connected in this recovery journey. And also, I have a wicked sweet tooth, and he knows it. Bringing the cookie into the equation really helped. Just kidding.

Since Blue Eyes burned himself, the rest of the week has been difficult and Blue Eyes has been a bit ungrounded, reminding me of the movie ‘Welcome to Me.’ Blue Eyes has called his addiction the “disease of me.” Everything was about him. Everything was about filling his own needs, whether he was hurting himself or others in the process. Even now, he protects himself very nicely behind his little Blue Eyes’ suit of armor. Most of his behavior in the past, although completely focused on himself, was hurting him. Now, hopefully, he can still focus on himself, but instead of focusing on his “disease of me,” he can focus on his “recovery of me.”

So I have titled this post ‘The blog of me’ because that is what this blog is about. That is all it was ever meant to be. Me talking it out. Me having an outlet. I get a lot of free encouragement and advice. Sometimes I am judged. That is the risk of having a non-private blog. Obviously I can delete comments on my own blog, but I never do. The damage is done once I read them anyway. But do know, I am not made of steel. Sometimes the actions of others irritate me, and sometimes they hurt.

I march on!