Daily Insanity April 14, 2022

Daily Insanity April 14, 2022

My insanity poking through … 

I was raised by a mentally ill woman … I learned how to deal with people through watching her… She was a very angry person and always was on the defensive … I picked up those same traits … trying to disarm them daily … but they got me this last weekend … oops! 

I was in Tucson Arizona, at the San Xavier Mission and there were fry bread stations out in front … OMG … I love fry bread!

I was super hungry I had not eaten all morning and it was 1 PM already …

The temperature was in the 90s and there was very little shade… I spied where there were some shade, where I could eat my fry bread and I headed that way … 

When I arrived into this little shaded bench area, I made the comment “I’m just looking for a little bit of shade to have my lunch…” 

A woman who was sitting with her husband, on the right of me, said “we will share… ” 

My crazy head thought she was saying she wanted to share my lunch … I was hot and hungry and wasn’t going to share my lunch with anybody … immediately I was triggered into past experiences where people thought it was funny to say they were going to take or eat some of my food, without me inviting them to do so … 

I am very generous in a lot of different ways… I love sharing food with my friends… I will give my food to homeless people… But I get pissed when people want to take my food and I’m hungry or they feel entitled somehow to have some of my food or they are being sarcastically “funny”, I do not find anything about sarcasm, funny … I do not do well with sarcasm at all … 

Sarcasm is confusing to me as you are saying one thing, but meaning another… I grew up with that kind of confusion… it throws me off as to what you really mean… so it tends to just piss me off or turn me off immediately … 

Back to our story: San Xavier Mission, looking for shade, couple, saying they’ll share … 

I retorted “ I won’t” …

They gasped aloud …

“You are going to say that in front of the church” the husband said … 

“Especially in front of the church“ I throw out defiantly … 

“Why so you can sin and go in and confess?” he challenges

I don’t buy into the shame and blame game people try to put on me and I don’t believe the church is about that anyway… That is their stuff, not the church’s … Or I should say that is not of Jesus… Some churches may preach that, but that is not what Jesus is about … Jesus is not about producing guilt he is about producing love 

This pisses me off further … I reply, “ look you started this, I was just honest about it all” 

He says “you’re right I would ask for nothing more“ 

We left it at that … 

She started squirming and commented that it was getting hot around there they got up and left …

I was so proud of myself for standing up for myself … 

Then the guy on the left of me, who had been trying to hit on me earlier, tried to hit on me again… I was just trying to eat my damn food!! Leave me alone people … I’m fucking hungry!! 

I had noticed him when I had entered the little shaded area and internally rolled my eyes… thinking ’Oh boy here he is again…’ But I was hungry, I knew I could handle him … 

He asks me where I’m from … I hate that question because it implies that we’re going to have a conversation… I don’t want to talk about myself with strangers … my life & work requires a lot of energy and I don’t wanna spend it on mundane conversations with people I don’t know … people that want something from me… I could see it in his eyes, he was after it … besides if I started talking with him, my food was going to get cold … just let me eat in peace people … will you?! 

Just to clarify… I love having conversations with intelligent people… I did so the next day with the curator of the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun… I just asked him one question and we had an hour and a half conversation which was lovely… I had not expected to have that conversation, and was actually going to go somewhere else before he started talking, but decided to cancel that plan, because it was such an interesting conversation … 

Someone asking me ‘where I’m from’ reminds me of that Progressive insurance commercial … The one where Dr. Rick is trying to help young homeowners from becoming their parents … where is Dr. Rick when you need him?! 

I look at the Casanova and tell him that I just wanna eat my food … I am honest with both of these sets of people … 

Finally, I eat my fry bread in peace, as everyone left …

I would rather be alone than with the wrong kinds of people … 

I felt very proud of myself for keeping my boundaries and speaking my truth 

After I had finished eating my share, The flies were trying to land on the remainder of my food …  I thought it was funny that there was more than one type of fly trying to land on me with these people to the left and the right of me … clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right …

I recounted the story to a friend of mine… She was confused because she thought the lady was talking about the shade … Sharing the shade not the food … 

O… M… G… 

It hit me that she was probably right … that woman was probably talking about sharing the shade… My head was triggered and went somewhere else … I made something up in my head and lashed out … oops! 

That is my Mom coming out in me … 

I have felt bad about it for the last couple of days … I have learned not to beat myself up about things when I messed up, but to learn from it … but I do wish I could apologize and clear up the misunderstanding with this unknown couple who was just trying to be friendly … it probably put a mar on their day … even though I felt proud that I had stood up for myself, it did send me into a bit of a spiral for the rest of the day … I ended up going to a support group meeting that night and I felt much better …

I’m glad that I’m aware of this behavior… My therapist and I have been working on this… “Is it live or is it Memorex” … is something really happening… Or am I just being triggered from something that happened in the past ...

I have been diagnosed with PTSD+ from a brain scan… I am on high alert all the time… That is from growing up with my mother along with other traumas that have happened along the way …

I twisted this woman’s words into believing some thing that had happened to me in the past, was happening again… I acted on something I thought was happening… Not what was actually happening …

I am positive that the same thing happened to my mother … only she did no work on it … I’m trying to figure out how to change it… I work on my self on a daily basis on how to change this condition …

Believe it or not I am grateful for this experience, because I actually was able to see it fairly soon after it happened, so that I can hopefully catch myself a little sooner next time… Maybe clarify with somebody what they are actually saying … seeing how my head can twist things from my twisted past…

No wonder my mom was so tormented… She dealt with this every single day with no relief … I still deal with it every single day but I have worked so hard on how to overcome it, that I do get relief from it more than I think she ever did …

The irony about it all, is that I took this trip to Tucson to honor my mother …she lived there for 20 years … it is her birthday month and I try to go to Tucson during this time every year because The desert in bloom and it is so beautiful… And she loved the desert in bloom …

I have a feeling God orchestrated the whole thing for His purposes for each and every one of us that were there that day… He is able to do that… I know I’m learning my lessons… It makes me pray for the others that I encountered that day… That they will forgive me and hopefully learn something from it as well… I don’t know what that might be… But I pray to bless them and for them to have good days and to forgive me even if I can’t ask for it from them directly …

Just to be clear … I would ask forgiveness from the couple that wanted to share the shade… Not the guy who was trying to hit on me! Fucker …

One of my favorite movie quotes … I’m not even sure what movie it is from… One woman says to another “You are so pretty, why are you still single, men must be buzzing around you like flies …” The pretty woman replies “Yes they are buzzing around me like flies… But who wants a fly ?!” Ha! YES!!! I get you girl … I identify …

More irony in the situation, is that I couldn’t finish the whole fry bread… So I did take it and give it to some homeless people … I do that often with food that is left over and there is too much of… I go give it to someone who needs it and/or wants it…

More life lessons… I try to learn them daily… Try to keep an open mind so I can process them and integrate them into my life… I’m sharing them with you to hopefully benefit you in someway as well… To share my journey with someone who might understand and identify and get some relief that someone else out there is struggling with and trying to do better with these very things …

Love you all!