Pile Keeping
One of my most recurrant PTSD flashback sequences is piles. They range from pedophiliac rape on piles of materials ranging from machine shop piles to hay piles to clothing piles to the most used community service I have dubbed, "Throwaway Nazi." My throwaway nazi services have been appreciated in a wide variety of projects. Sorting donations. Moving offices and/or residences. General cleanup. The trauma flashbacks? ? ? For now, I will let those ride as a general gee. That round of sorting is probably in the middle box of my handwritten therapy journals. For now, just let the general gee explain any rounds of sudden paralysis and/or inappropriate responses. It be a snotty, knotty thread.
This morning's trigger was an attempt to find balance in the yet to be established clothing flow of Hubby's increased time here at the investment property. The options are pretty limited here in the small, dilapidated old farm house.
. . .Four days later. . .
I donae care to do the research just now, but I does believe Hubby's style of pile keeping is our first and most intense domestic eggshell pile. My wife sense of this morning puts our first tit-for-tat skirmish over his piles at around 1982. I rank it as our bloodiest eggshell pile. I pulled a little more of my strictly personals out of our bedroom with each skirmish. First just the daily essentials, like wallet, car keys, glasses, etc., so that I would be able to find them without sifting through his piles in the dark. Eventually, our bedroom became his bedroom and I still have nasty flashbacks to childhood piles when I enter his bedroom. Nope. . . I donae even approach the subject with him unless I have serious therapy backup. Whatever the yaddahs of the blahs, it tisnay safe territory to travel alone.
I be rather proud of the way we handled closure of the tit-for-tat skirmish. We both backed down to calm down before any damage was done. I retreated to the tinker's den and wrote the opening paragraphs of this entry. By the time he followed me, I had enough handle on the psychotic mindslides to let him know, "You aren't the one I am arguing with. Flashbacks in progress." I am wifely convinced I amnae the one he is arguing with in the pile skirmishes, either, but he still isnae ready to go there.
He launched instead into his anxieties over the piles awaiting him at the Urban Homestead. The very piles I am convinced arenae mine to sort for the other grown-ups in the homestead, not even the middle-aged children I gave birth to. Those piles have grown increasingly intense since I have been refusing to sort them. He is still attempting to just them all in the spirit of a man with a wife who "doesn't work." I am working to resist the I-told-you-so's as he, pile by pile, begins to realize my not working was more work than it looks like from the employee water cooler. Maybe he really can accomplish things I wasnae able to. My prayer is to offer him the class of support I wish I had had while I was trying.
He left for the Urban Homestead as soon as we had "Bracketed" the morning's tit-for-tat skirmish and plans to work down there this week. Maybe next week, as well. That is his to sort.
I've been shoulding like a traffic gridlock but believe I am holding steady and even staying productive. I hope. I pray. Plying therapy tools. Stepping small. Regrettably, my should productivity often disguises monumental messes as progress. Psycho nag flags are waving. Easy does it. Stay mindful.
Replies
Hugs & out pouring of support, Arfie.
My husband piles too. Sometimes I do but I’ve finally started to learn how to keep my piles from piling up. But his piles are a source of much irritation & frustration. I don’t have the same problems you face with them but my own set of tweaks about dealing with the piles.
Still this post resonates with me on so many different levels, touching on a few tender spots I have yet to address.
My husband’s piling just happens to be one of them. I’m a pit of an organization freak at times, especially when it deals with professional work related things. My husband’s disorganization & resulting piles has grown to epic portions that drive my business professional brain nuts. I’ve come to often dread the “man cave”, especially when having to find a piece of paper. As he handles expenses & mail as well as doing his own expense reports for his business trips, his desk is a shrine to chaos. Anytime he’s called with a need for info from a document I have to sort through his piles and my OCD starts flinching.
It also makes me feel like I’m personally invading his privacy. Because of the way my photographic memory works, often I know exactly where something is by just seeing it in passing. I always feel like being able to answer makes me sound like I’ve been snooping in his stuff. I have these weird boundaries about snooping because of my trauma as a child.
The “working” relationship between you & your husband so echos my own. He works & I don’t but establishing the balance of both of our perceptions of what we do as “work” is still a “work in progress”. But there have been “words” about in. He did start to get better at understanding my version of “work” as an unemployed spouse when he was going back to school & I was working every day to support the family. The reversal of rolls made a big difference in our arguments about things and his misunderstandings about the “domestic” job of the home bound spouse.
I think the “argument” resonates the most though. Recently the majority of our little tiffs has been not between us but between him & my PTSD and flashbacks. In reflection, actually I think most of our history of severe arguments have been of that vein. We rarely argued but when we did I was often “triggered” and it was a ugly battle we both had to walk away from before the casualties got too high.
Hugs & even more support, Arfie. “Easy does it” as you said.
I consider pile sorting to be the heart and soul of organization and. even at his snipiest, not even hubs will argue with my international reputation for being able to organize a landfill. Literally, with references available upon request.
Add in the psychotic flashbacks of the piles in kiddie whorehouses and throwaway kid camps and. . .
Psychotic break in progress. . . Level four biocontamination alert issued. . . I find it helpful to wait until that danger is contained before I tackle the marital yaddahs which triggered my strictly personal psychosis. Hence the back down to calm down. I practiced that one on my own --with ALLOT of therapy support-- for allot of years during our tit-for-tat skirmishes before Hubs caught on to what I was doing.
Once he caught on, he decided to start plying the technique himself. Thank you, my love. It works if you work it.
Since then, we have taken to calling the process, "Learning new steps to the Dance." Yes, we could skip the pain, but then we'd have to miss the dance. How 'bout some more practice?
Good loving takes time to learn. ~Pete Seeger
I think my own legendary organizational talents has been the number one greatest enemy against my attempts to overcome being domestically challenged in the past. My obsession for organization & everything having the proper place and home has often derailed my attempts to bring general order to my house. I’m finally finding my domestic side & it’s balance but oh was that a lifetime in the making.
Continued hugs & support, Arfie!
Diplomacy isnae my most natural organization skill. In the engineering rooms and job sites where I have most often profitably applied and developed those skills, I am pretty safe and even encouraged to address the negligent pile up slobs with, "Listen up shithead, your mama don't work here."
That approach don't work so good at home. . . Studying. . . Translating?
No it doesn’t, does it? Asking my children to do chores taught me that lesson the hard way. My youngest is a born defense attorney and I can’t recall the first time she used that excuse against me but she started very early. Then again shouldn’t have been surprised when she did as this is the child who as soon as she could talk could rationally argue her way out of any punishment like an adult pro, and the times she couldn’t, her efforts just to try made us laugh so hard it brought us to tears and at that point she won every time because punishment loses it meaning when your parents are wheezing with laughter. She a smart cookie, that one. Too smart..., she gets it from me (wink wink)..., just kidding..., I’m all honesty I’m pretty sure she gets most of it from her father. He’s nearly as talented but mostly it’s all her own natural diabolical genius manifesting. Next future evil overlord in the making? Quite possible....