The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl-Volume 61: “Debbie Downer” is no more (I took a dose of my own medicine)
So maybe I said the blog was on hiatus, but I decided I still have lots to say and luckily I have rediscovered my sense of humor. I could have called the blog the B*tch is Back, but I am really not one of those (except when forced into it). I also could have called it the very lengthy title of “How I Realized that I am a Woman of Incredible Strength and Awesome Problem Solving (when I am not on the defense)”. After a rough two months I admit I was beaten down with no reserves and I had become my own worst nightmare-a “Debbie Downer” pessimist always talk about negative crap person. How I snapped out of it is the focus of this blog. But first……….
My WTF of the week is the fact that my Kinda Gay Husband has gone straight. After 17 years of friendship, I am now a relationship advice giver and sounding board about my Kinda Gay Husband’s relationship with A WOMAN. As we are talking I am thinking wait a minute we are supposed to be talking about the latest entertainment gossip, or the Housewives and Bravo programming or what clothes you recently purchased or what new movie or music we like. There are no books to help me handle this new transition. I looked up titles like When Your Gay Husband Decides to Swing the Other Way, Divorcing Your Gay Husband or Am I Still a Hag? But alas, since there are no tomes of advice, I am on my own. Really, I am handling it well and only want him to be happy. And I give pretty good relationship advice and truly want it to work out for him. But I squirm a little when the intimate details are discussed (and do I need to hear about the piercing thing--my ears are burning). Please don’t be mad person about whom I am speaking who reads my blog because you are family to me.
This week I can’t get enough of Lana Del Rey. Who cares if her real name is Elisabeth Grant or that she comes from an uber-wealthy NYC family. Her Born to Die album is completely awesome and her contralto voice is mesmerizing. I am singing several of her songs now. Plus she has a 60’s Nancy Sinatra/Jane Fonda vibe and wears some amazing vintage clothes. And her hair is in that wave I recently attempted at my women’s event. Ok, so maybe I am just a little envious because her wardrobe is Ba-nanas and I would love to be able to sing like her. Check out her YouTube videos and download some songs and then admit it-you want to be her or be with her. Also I just heard a rumor that Trader Joe’s is gracing our hamlet of Columbia, SC with their presence. I actually yelled and jumped up and down like a giddy school girl as my child screamed “mango mochi” when I heard this. First Whole Foods, then Trader Joe’s, we have arrived!
This year has been no picnic. As things blew up and fell down around me, much of it out of my control, my energy was sapped. Pair that with not getting much sleep or much food and you end up with a person in survival mode. In survival mode you are just trying to get from one day to the next. In survival mode you have no reserves, you are depleted. It is like you are raw and everything affects you. It is difficult to think clearly and rationally and allow your cognition to lead you to a better place. In survival mode you hunker down to protect yourself, which means disappearing for a while and disengaging. You have no energy for socializing or being involved or connected to others. And for some, survival mode means we sometimes vent all the crazy and emotional stuff that is going on. If we don’t vent, we explode or implode. The release that venting brings gets us through to the next day. So, survival mode is where I have lived for the past 9 weeks. And I have found that it is possible to be in survival mode and still be growing personally, although I am not sure how I was pulling that off.
The problem with survival mode and the rawness of that emotional time and the venting is that you become, or I became, a Debbie Downer. When I did talk to people all I did was talk about all the negative stuff going on in my life. Maybe because it was really difficult to find positive things to talk about. Interestingly, I am usually a really optimistic and positive person who can typically laugh at my situation. I can find the humor in the tragic. But I learned when things get really bad, you lose your ability to laugh at things or let them roll off your back. I am a person who complains about people who are downers and who are pessimistic and only talk about bad stuff and take a “isn’t my life horrible” attitude. And yet, in the midst of my crisis, I became one. And have now learned that sometimes, being a Debbie Downer is unavoidable. But what I also learned is that there has to be an end to it, a way out of it, and you have to gather yourself and get out the other side. And that is what I did.
About 9 days ago or so, I hit the wall. The wall caused me to give up, throw up my hands and surrender to the Universe and to God that I was powerless. And it was in that surrendering that I found a way out. All of a sudden I saw a way to solve the issues at hand and my rational; problem solving resourceful self was back. The solution is going into place next week and I think it will be a good thing for my daughter and me, even though I gave up time with her. I got to a solution and saw my way through the forest because I focused on what I could control, stopped feeling sorry for myself, and stopped seeing myself as a victim under attack. These are all the things I work with clients to do, and yet, for weeks, I was not doing them myself. I regained my power because I shut down my emotional self, took lots of breaths, and popped into my rational brain, and that brain tends to work well, even under stress.
Now that I am back and not in survival mode all the time (some days are still rough), I can focus on thriving. That means once again thinking about myself, my place in the world, in what I want to be involved and how I want to reconnect with people and the community. And for me, it is also time to ask myself the ongoing question of how to do all these things as a differently abled person, which presents different challenges. That part of myself I cannot deny or ignore. I am not sure what this next phase will look like. I just know it will look different. Hopefully it will be surprising in a good way.
Keep Moving Forward,
Beth (BLOVI) Medlock
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