under your thumb i can’t breath

Now that its officially November…..
So truth moment here. I have a dirty little guilty pleasure that I’ve been indulging recently. I started watching Gossip Girl on Netflix. And I am in love with Chuck Bass. There’s no denying I had a weak spot for the asshole.  Its something I’ve never really understood but have just kind of gone with it.  Tim was easily the sweetest man I ever dated, but he had a twisted side to him as well.  And Matt was pretty sweet, but we were fifteen years old and in puppy love.  Back then, I was really sweet too.  Danny, Manny, Mike, Rob…  All of them had, well, an asshole streak in them.  The arrogance with which they acted and spoke kind of blows my mind.  Now thats not to say they weren’t humble at times.  They did not believe themselves limitless.  But the confidence with which they spoke about the things the did in fact know….  Seriously, my knees are weak.  The character in Gossip Girl is loaded; he’s leaking money out of every pore, and that definitely helps him to be able to carry off the arrogance.

Hmm.  The thing about those guys I listed and their arrogance is that they could back up their mouths.  The things they bragged about doing, well, it was fact.  It was confidence oozing from them the way money oozes from Chuck Bass.  All this is why I was somewhat attracted to Jared (Neighbor Boy) in the first place.  He’s arrogant and self-assured.  The problem is that he can’t back it up.  He talks a good game, but he’s a loser with a big mouth.  Swagger without the….

You get the picture.  I’ve been looking at him these past few weeks and wondering what it was that I saw in him.  And it was that arrogance.  I’m attracted to it.  But he can’t back it up.  He claims to have been such a hotshot pitcher in high school and that he could do it again.  But I’ve never seen him throw a baseball.  I’m not saying he wasn’t a hotshot in high school, but high school was a decade ago and he drinks his weight in beer a night.

Anyways – I like Chuck Bass.  Every time he delivers the reasoning, "I’m Chuck Bass" my heart melts.  I’m such a sucker.

So I don’t know if I wrote about Trombone Guy a while back.  Towards the end of last orchestra semester, he and I started hanging out after orchestra rehearsals.  I was prepping for my orchestra audition and he ended up helping me figure out the Mozart cadenza and some other things.  He was nice and fit perfectly into that arrogant asshole nice guy category that I find so appealing.  (Even my guy friends are all like this to some extent.)  He is pretty cute, but I was more excited to have a friend in the area.  We starting talking more and more, and the topic of movies came up.  I had just rented The King’s Speech from Netflix, and he mentioned it was one he wanted to see.  So I invited him over for pizza and movie.  Yes, there was a part of me that really liked him, but before I can date a guy I need to be friends with him.  It was right in the middle of finals and concerts and final papers for him and on top of everything, he got sick.  So he turned me down.  Actually, I think he didn’t even turn me down.  He just never responded to my email and basically stopped talking to me.  Super extra awkward.

So fast forward to this month.  Nord asked me to play in orchestra again.  The piece had no trombones so I really didn’t see him until the dress rehearsal where he plays on the other pieces.  He kept looking at me, but wouldn’t smile or wave or anything.  He’d do that annoying quick head turn whenever I caught him.  After the final concert, Nord had a party at his house and I ended up going and having a good time.  Aaron was also there and still acting awkward.  Damon got sick of the whole ordeal and kept telling me to grab him and kiss him.  But I wasn’t ready to go that far.  And I wasn’t sure if he had a girlfriend or not.  I had heard he did, but then someone else said he didn’t and…  I just don’t know!  But I did not want to kiss a guy who might not be single.  If I knew for sure he was single… maybe.  Probably not.  But I’m definitely not running the risk of kissing another girl’s guy.  Not cool.  Eventually I got really sick of all the looks and Damon’s insistence on us kissing.  Aaron walked by and I tapped his arm and asked about student teaching.  Struck up a conversation just like that.

Damon is the best wingman in history, because he went from being there to having disappeared and brought most of the other people with him.  Aaron and I talked about this and that and random things, and then Nord joined the conversation and it moved on to something else.  It seemed like things were back to normal.  Except I still didn’t know what had happened last year.  So when Aaron came up to say goodbye to Nord, I followed him to the front door.  Damon played bouncer and kept everyone away as long as possible so we could have some privacy.  I flat out asked Aaron what happened last semester and why he started avoiding me.  He said he wasn’t sure if I knew he had a girlfriend and didn’t want to put me in an awkward situation.  I covered and said that I already knew that, and I just wanted to be friends.  He heaved this huge sigh of relief and said he’d really like that too.  He gave me a hug and left.  There’s a part of me thats not even sure if I’ll see him again because I don’t think Nord will need me in orchestra again before Aaron graduates.  But at least now I know what happened.

Except.  Damon is such a trouble maker.  He of course asked what happened and after I told him, he kinda rolled his eyes.  He thought Aaron was kinda of leading me on.  He said the way Aaron looks at and talks to me is not the way you talk to a friend.  I’m inclined to think he’s right.  Especially because another violinist who had no idea anything was going on said something to me about it too.  So its not just me and its not just Damon.

But I do not want to be any sort of home wrecker.  He’s got a girlfriend.  So all we can be is friends.  Seriously – all the good ones are taken or just not options.  🙁

Having breakdowns at work is never a good thing.  But I completely just had one.  Which was followed by the breakfast girl coming in and a guest checking out just as I was trying to get myself under control.  Aside from everything else with my pastor, I’ve put my finger on what is really hurting me.  His sermons, while varying, have one main theme running through them.  We are not good Christians and need to be better.  If we can’t do better, its a sign that we really don’t love God and we really don’t believe.  Translate that into a bipolar depressed mind and I hear that I’m not good enoughfor God.  There is a line of truth to this, which makes it all the more insidious.  The problem is that his sermons stop there.  "Bad Christian!  Bad person!  You don’t love God."  End of story.  But thats not the end of the story.  We aren’t good enough, which is what makes God’s grace so much more amazing.  Even though we are sinners, even though we’ll keep on sinning, Christ died for us and paid the price so that we can be forgiven.  So that we can be made good enough to enter into God’s kingdom.  Both parts of that are so vitally important, but the pastor seems to forget that last part.  Or assumes that we know it even if he doesn’t say it.  But if you follow that logic then there is no need for sermons or teaching or anything because we already know it.

His sermons are bad for my mental health.  This line of thinking and teaching and believing is bad for my mental health.  If I’m not good enough and will never be good enough, what exactly is the point?  Why should I get up and try again, knowing I’ll fail?  Nothing I can do will prove them wrong.

I’m not an optimist, though I’m not really a pessimist either.  I lean more pessimistic but thats besides the point.  I’m a realist.  The reality is that I am a sinner and will never be good enough.  So what’s the point of trying?  For example, I can’t play brass instruments.  I just can’t.  There’s something in my brain that cannot, no matter how hard I try or the method I use, make my lips buzz and play those instruments.  Its almost a little amusing.  I just cannot!  But I’m okay with that.  I’m never going to be a world-class french horn player no matter how hard I try or how much I want it.  And thats okay.  I can do other things.  I can still have fun making attempts at playing it sometimes.  But the reality is that its not something I’ll be able to do.  Is that being pessimistic or realistic?  Apply that to other things.  I will never fly fighter jets.  I don’t have 20/20 vision and I cannot fully grasp the concepts of physics as to how a hunk of metal heavier than my car can fly.  I will never teach advanced calculus.  I will never be a brain surgeon.  That’s being realistic in my mind.  I just don’t have the mental capacity to be able to think like that.  Thats okay.  I’m good at other things.  I can do other things.

Somewhere in my brain or childhood or education, I accepted that I cannot do everything.  So rather than exert my efforts on something I’m not good at, that I don’t enjoy and that I’ll never be able to master, I find things I can do and go for them.  I exert my efforts into something attainable.  I reach for other goals that I might not actually reach, but I enjoy the journey.  Like photography.  I’ve had friends explain shutter speed and light variables and all those things, but my pictures are still… fair.  Every once in a while, I’ll snap one really awesome shot.  But not something I’d be able to make a career out of.  Not even something I’d WANT to make a career out of.  And thats okay.

But those things that I’ve discovered I cannot do, I don’t do.  Those things that cause me pain or unhappiness, I don’t do.  (And I’m talking about the big things, not little things like laundry which I absolutely hate to do.  There are somethings that we do even if we don’t enjoy it or if it brings us pain.  Having wisdom teeth out, breaking up with a boyfriend, telling a friend she does not look good in that dress.  I’m addressing the big picture things.)

Take that argument line into my messed up brain, and add in an unhealthy dose of depression.  Living is painful.  Getting out of my apartment and talking to people can throw my whole body into a mess.  And when I screw up week after week, and make the same mistake I was trying not to make, and cause pain for myself and those around me….  Why should I go on living?  Why should I go on putting myself through these paces?

See where this leads?

I could end it all.

If I’m a bad Christian, who has no hope of being better, who continually messes up and cannot make progress forward, why should I keep on living?  I could die, and then be in heaven.  No more inescapable pain.  No more sadness.  No more tears.  And the problem with being bipolar is that even though I can remind myself the cycle will eventually return to happiness, it will also eventually return to pain.  Being in a church where the sermons only serve as a reminder of how I’m failing, loading on the guilt like a Jewish mother, is not a good thing for me.  It makes the problem worse.

The pastor wants me to apologize for my mistakes and screw-ups and then never do it again.  I will absolutely own up to my mistakes and screw ups.  I’ll willing take responsibility and the consequences.  But I cannot promise to never do it again.  I know that I cannot keep those promises.  Its maybe deeper than the pastor.  Because I have these blurry memories of my father telling me not to promise to behave if I can’t keep the promise.  So my language changed to "I’ll try my best."  I will not promise sweeping changes when I don’t know if I can carry through on them.

He has told me that saying sorry means it won’t happen again.  He’s said it to my face and to the congregation.  So I’ve stopped apologizing to him.  Because I can’t promise to not be depressed again.  I can’t promise to not mess up again.  So I don’t say sorry anymore.

….

I was writing at work and the internet is evil.  I had written a bunch more, but it did not get saved.  I don’t feel like going back and re-reading what is there to figure out what else didn’t get saved.

My end point is that my pastor is bad for my mental health.  I’m not sure that staying at the church is really a good idea for me, at least not as long as he’s there.  What concerns me more is that this guilt-heavy tendency is not just an isolated problem.  It is the tendency of the whole denomination.  If this is true, I don’t know that I can really stay in the CRC.  I cannot stay connected to something that makes my bipolarism worse.  its like telling an alcoholic to hang out in a bar.  Well, not really, but its putting me directly in line with something that sets off my issues.  Like walking through a firing range.

The pastor is retiring, and maybe the new pastor will make things better.  Or maybe I need to leave this church.  And thats what made me cry.  Because I do love the people at the church.  And I’m just starting to feel like I’m settled in.  I don’t really want to have to uproot again.  The concept of possibly leaving becomes bigger because I don’t know that I can really even stay in this area.  This is the denominational root.  The Pentagon is here, the seminary, the birthplace of the denomination.  If this is not an individual problem, if thisis truly a denominational problem, then I need to leave this town.  And strangely enough, that possibility makes me even more upset than anything else.  I just got a job that I actually enjoy.  I mean, a part of it just makes me money, but thats okay for right now.  I don’t want to leave this area.

But if the decision comes down to staying here or my mental health?   Its not really a question anymore.

And I’m still mad my first attempt at this didn’t save.  Grrr…..

Close enough to start a war
All that I have is on the floor
God only knows what we’re fighting for
All that I say, you always say more

I can’t keep up with your turning tables
Under your thumb I can’t breathe
So, I won’t let you close enough to hurt me
No, I won’t rescue you to just desert me
I can’t give you the heart you think you gave me
It’s time to say goodbye to turning tables
To turning tables

Under haunted skies I see you
Where love is lost your ghost is found
I braved a hundred storms to leave you
As hard as you try, no, I will never be knocked down

I can’t keep up with your turning tables
Under your thumb I can’t breathe

So, I won’t let you close enough to hurt me,
No, I won’t rescue you to just desert me
I can’t give you the heart you think you gave me
It’s time to say goodbye to turning tables
To turning tables

Next time I’ll be braver
I’ll be my own savior
When the thunder calls for me
Next time I’ll be braver
I’ll be my own savior
Standing on my own two feet

I won’t let you close enough to hurt me,
No, I won’t rescue you to just desert me
I can’t give you the heart you think you gave me
It’s time to say goodbye to turning tables
To turning tables
Turning tables, yeah
Turning, oh

Turning Tables ~ Adele