scared

A Night Full of Nightmares

| marandarussell

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Last night I had a bunch of nightmares. In fact, I woke up feeling like that was all I did all night – face some of my darkest fears. These nightmares didn’t feature vampires, ghosts, ax murderers, clowns, or spiders…they featured the person I love the most in the world, my husband.

In these dreams my husband turned cruel and cold. He stopped caring about me. He wanted to leave me or even kill me. The betrayals started small in the dreams, with him choosing friends over me and simply being uncaring and dismissive of my feelings, but they accelerated as the dreams went on and turned to him expressing extreme hatred towards me and even trying to stage an “accident” to get rid of me.

Let me say that these dreams ARE NOT representative of my husband’s treatment of me. We have been together 15 years and he has been wonderful. Caring, patient, understanding, loving, forgiving….all of these are adjectives that fit him perfectly. He always puts me first before anyone else, often, even before himself.

So why the bad dreams? My guess is PTSD. When you grow up in an unstable environment with mentally ill, abusive, and selfish people who often put their own desires before your needs, it fucks you up for life. You always feel unworthy. You always feel like the rug of security can be pulled out from beneath your feet at any time. You feel like you don’t deserve good things, and if you do happen to get love and affection, you are suspicious and paranoid about it. How I wish I could just forget the past.

My Mother Helped a Guy to Stalk Me

| marandarussell

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Lately I’ve been dealing with a lot of resentment and anger towards my mother. To explain why, let me share a specific incident that kind of illustrates why I am upset.

When I was 14/15, my mother worked with a guy named Danny who met me and developed a huge crush on me. He was in his late teens or early twenties, but was definitely an adult already. I DID NOT share his romantic interest and made that plain. I had absolutely no interest in dating him or getting to know him better. He bought me an expensive bracelet as a gift, which I immediately returned to him to make it clear I wasn’t interested.

Even with my mother knowing how I felt and that I was stressed out by the attention, she actually egged him on in spite of how I felt or what I wanted. She even gave him our home address and told him when I would be home. So, he ended up coming to my house while I was there alone and banged on the door and called my name for what felt like forever. He yelled about how he knew I was home because my mom had told him so. I never answered the door or responded to his calls. In fact, I hid in the closet because I was scared at the aggressiveness he was displaying.

I felt like I was being stalked, and worst of all, my own mother was encouraging it. This is just one small incident that portrays an issue with boundaries and respecting my privacy that was even more disturbing in other ways which perhaps I will share someday if and when I am ready to do so. I know it might sound odd, but I almost have a feeling like my mother WANTED to whore me out for some reason. I can’t even describe what that did to me psychologically.

Wisdom Teeth Surgery Anxiety

| marandarussell

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Not long ago I had an infected wisdom tooth, so unfortunately, the surgery I have been putting off to get my wisdom teeth out is now more of a necessity. I am scared shitless, and I’m not even sure why.

I keep telling myself it is a minor surgery. Outpatient even. I’ll go, get them out, come home, and likely crash for a few days. Then hopefully it will all be behind me. The teeth are impacted, which makes the surgery more complex, but I will be put out for the operation, so I’m not sure why I am so panic-stricken at the idea of having to do this.

To make matters worse, the first appointment I could make to get it done isn’t until the end of August, so I have an entire month to keep freaking myself out. I keep trying to distract myself or think positive thoughts, but I feel such a sense of dread that I just can’t shake, and it is making me spiral into a depression as well.

I did the typical Aspie thing, and tried to make myself feel better by finding as much information as I could about the procedure to lessen the anxiety, but it hasn’t helped much. I could quote you stats of all the risk factors (and ways to prevent them), draw you a diagram of the procedure, or explain step by step what will be done, but it isn’t helping me to let it go.

Maybe this is my OCD coming out in full force (an inability to NOT fixate on something I wish I wasn’t thinking about at all), or maybe it is just the anxiety of the unknown, since I have never had surgery of any kind before or been put out for any kind of operation…but I wish my brain would just shut the hell up about it! I’m sure my poor husband would find that a relief too since he has to deal with his basket case wife for the next month 😦

Nighttime Dread and “Quiet Borderlines” Thoughts

| marandarussell

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I slept in until after 2pm this afternoon. I hate when that happens. I feel like most of the day is already gone by the time I get out of bed. I must have slept at least around 12 hours last night, even though I had a bit of an emotional fest when I actually went to bed. For some reason, all the loneliness of the world seems to settle down on me when I try to go to sleep and all the horrible things that have and could happen come around to haunt me. It is often at these times that I feel absolutely alone and helpless in this world, even though logically I know I’m not…at least not right now. But I could be. I could be all alone very easily and that thought sends me into a kind of despair I can’t explain.

Recently I have been reading a book entitled “Beyond Borderline: True Stories of Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder”. Reading the book has been insightful and interesting, and made me realize I am definitely NOT a traditional borderline. I simply don’t have the acting out behaviors. I guess I could be what some people call “quiet borderlines”, although sometimes I wonder if they are really borderlines or not?

Perhaps some “quiet borderlines” are actually more along the lines of Avoidant Personality Disorder or another anxiety-related personality disorder? Who knows. I’m not a doctor so I can’t say, but I do find so many commonalities running through various personality disorders, that even if you have one, pinpointing which one might be difficult and many people have traits of more than one. For me personally, I think I definitely fit more into the cluster C “anxious and fearful clusters” than the cluster B “dramatic and overly emotional clusters”. In fact, the only time I am visibly overly emotional is when I am so anxious I pretty much panic. Unfortunately this almost always seems to happen in public, because social interaction in itself can easily set off the panic in me.

 

Being Too Clingy and Possessive

| marandarussell

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I can be a bit possessive, especially when in a close relationship. I’ve always been like that. Even as a kid I would get jealous sometimes if my friends had other friends or wanted to do stuff without me. I’m not sure why, but I am easily prone to feeling left out or threatened by outsiders. However, I know this dynamic isn’t exactly healthy and I am trying to learn to let go a bit and not be so demanding by monopolizing anyone, specifically my husband.

It may be my autism, since I have heard it is typical of autistics, but I don’t make close relationships easily. I usually only have one or two truly close relationships at a time, and I can definitely be guilty of being clingy or insecure about those relationships. For the past 16 years, my closest relationship has been my husband (as it should be), but my husband is a bit different from me in what he needs socially.

Socially I only need those one or two people, although it can be terrifying if those relationships are threatened, since it is so hard for me to connect with others and build closeness. My husband on the other hand seems to desire more social interaction and the chance of making more friendships than I do. He wants to feel a part of things more than I do, as I am more of a homebody.

So, I have been working at letting go some and not feeling resentful or frightened by him reaching out for other friendships. It is still hard sometimes and honestly there is still a big part of me that thinks he should need absolutely nothing else in life but being with me…but I know that isn’t realistic or healthy. Does anyone else out there struggle with issues like this?

Relationship PTSD

| marandarussell

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Everywhere I go
I fear I’ll find you.
I skulk around the edge
of each aisle,
scanning faces
to make sure it is safe.
I play out
our fearfully planned reunion
again and again
in my mind.

When the inevitable collision
happens, I consider
speaking Spanish
or pretending I don’t know you.
In every scenario
you see past the lie,
but you don’t always
call me out on it.

Instead, you give me
that knowing smirk
(the one I hate so much),
turn your head
and walk on by –
leaving me convinced
that a knock-down, drag-out
confrontation
might have been better
in the end.

~ Maranda Russell

Author Anxiety

| marandarussell

You would think after you have your first book published and spend lots of time out in the public marketing it, that you wouldn’t be so nervous about future releases. Unfortunately, that just isn’t the case. At least, not for me.

Of course, I think part of the reason I am anxious right now is due to the nature of the current project I am working on. You see, my first published book was a picture book, but the book I am currently editing for publication is a poetry collection geared for young adults. There are several reasons that this particular project makes me nervous, so I figured that maybe if I put a name to these worries and move them out of the dark corner of my mind, perhaps they won’t have such power over me. So here they are, the anxious thoughts that have been haunting my dreams and my waking hours too:

  1. The first worry is just that the book will be a big flop. Now this is a worry authors seem to have with every book they write, but I think the concern is greater with poetry books. Why? Because normally poetry just doesn’t sell. It’s sad but true. I do have a little glimmer of hope though since my book will be geared towards young adults, who actually do read books in verse, as long as they aren’t pretentious and boring.
  2. Since this book is for young adults, that brings insecurities of its own. I’m used to reading my work to little kids who treat me like a superstar because I am an author. I’m not sure how teens will treat me. I guess my biggest fear is that they will roll their eyes, fall asleep or pronounce my work “lame”.
  3. I know this may seem like a silly concern, but punctuation weighs heavily on me at times. Everyone seems to have their own opinion about the correct way to punctuate poetry. There are the grammar police who think you should punctuate poetry exactly like you would prose. Then there are the free spirited folks who don’t want to see much punctuation. Honestly, I don’t think that teens will care much about the punctuation, BUT their teachers might…and they are the ones I have to impress to book school visits.
  4. Lastly, I am plagued by insecurity simply due to the vulnerability of poetry. Yes, as an author I do put a bit of myself into any book I write, but poetry takes that intimacy to an entirely different level. We put so much of ourselves into our poetry…fill it with our hopes, dreams, pains, struggles and our most private thoughts. If my poetry was rejected, I would honestly feel like I was rejected, because there is so much of myself contained within those verses.

You may be wondering by this point why I am even bothering to publish this book if I am so anxious about it. The fact is, regardless of how it turns out, I want to put myself out there. I want to be honest and real, expose the parts of myself that most people don’t see. Why? Because those are the kinds of books that have changed my life, and I want to do the same for the kids I come in contact with. I think the rewards will eventually outweigh the heartache…at least I hope they do.

I’m getting my first picture book published!

| marandarussell

Yesterday I received the news, a publisher officially wants to publish my picture book manuscript.  It’s only a small press, and my book will only start out with a small run, but depending on how hard I am willing to work to promote it, the sky is the limit.  I am so excited and can’t wait to hold my own book in my hands.  I think the first thing I will do when I get it is to sniff it and savor that new book smell.

Along with all the excitement and the pride, comes a lot of nerves though.  I keep hearing the same refrain go through my head: what if no one wants to buy my book?  What if I set up a book reading or signing and absolutely no one comes?  Or even worse, what if a bunch of people come and I get all tongue tied or want to puke while talking to them?  What if none of the local bookstores will even let me come speak?  And one of my biggest fears of all…what if I don’t even like my book?  After all, I’m not illustrating it, so what happens if the book looks nothing like I imagined? 

If only I could shut all of these thoughts down long enough to actually enjoy the process.  Is this normal?  Do all writers go through these panic attacks before they sell their first book?  Someone please reassure me that I am not freaking losing my mind!