Puzzling
Have I ever tracked my jigsaw puzzle binges? Not deliberately, but I'll bet I've noted it as a sidebar within this massive collection of verbal vomit I call my therapy journal. I am a great lover of puzzles, so no one is ever surprised to find me working a jigsaw puzzle but this round of it has me wondering if jigsaw puzzles are somehow different from all my other puzzles. The first difference is I wonder about is intensity. In my puzzling-as-usual, the puzzles are a pass-time to get through waiting rooms or a break to give tired muscles a rest. A puzzle with morning libation feels like a gentle stretch for my sleepy neurons. The jigsaw puzzles are obsessive. I either obsess over them or I don't touch them. There are no shades in between for jigsaw puzzles. Once I start a jigsaw puzzle, I transport to another realm which is dissociated from the yaddahs of the blahs whirling around my physical body. When they penetrate my puzzling, at all, those yaddahs and blahs become fractured pieces which I can sort and shuffle across the smooth surface of my puzzle board while sub-pictures form amid the broken pieces. As I continue to shuffle and sort, the sub-pictures form into a bigger picture. If only I could get the pieces of my broken life to fit together so smoothly.
My current jig saw puzzle binge started soon after my return to the River Region stalled out here at the ? ? ? I'm not sure, but I think I might have been calling it. "The Job Site" in April when I stopped pick up my work projects for integration into the River Region base. This morning I believe the psychic jig saw puzzle embodied in the pieces on the TV tray in front of me is the struggle for definition on what to call this place and where to let it grow in my heart. Those pieces are far more complex than the numbers attached to the various financial spreadsheets it is most loved by. Those pieces keep moving of their own volition without regard to anything I have been working on. Those pieces call me names like, "Toxic Mom." "Monster-in-law," "The old-ball-and-chain," to name only a few of that creatively clever list. Those pieces call my domestic contributions and outside projects, "Not Working." They have the IRS statements to *prove* I have not been working. My partner expects me to act surprised when he *discovers* details I had implemented for years before I gave up and just quit implementing them myself. I am ready to agree, Dear. They are "not working." It be a treacherous balance between maintaining my own dignity and replacing the, I-told-you-so's with the flavors of support I wish I had gotten while he was too busy to notice my "not working" contributions.
This morning finds me wanting to keep the name, "The Job Site" for this place. Calling it, "Home" feels like an invitation to move all the family dysfunctions from the Urban Homestead to here. A three hour drive between me and my Toxic Mom/Monster-in-law duties is still not enough. I amnae sure the 14 hour commute between the River Region and the Urban Homestead is long enough for that role shift.
Dunno. . . Think I'll shuffle some more jigsaw puzzle pieces. I still haven't done the research, but I do believe this jigsaw puzzle binge is my longest ever at 6 months and running. Sorting. . .
Replies
I like puzzles too. My current job could be considered a visual puzzle.
Indeed, it could be considered a visual puzzle, by any measure and most certainly does by Arf Measure. As your piece of the puzzle grows larger than 24 x 36, it goes through many additional puzzle phases. Not all of the puzzlers in that puzzle chain love puzzles as much as I do. Poor bubbies. . . They don't know what they are missing.
There was a time when I loved jigsaw puzzles... somehow it was replaced by other activities. I can relate to being transported to another realm and I know I need that. Maybe you do too? Am I too hypersensitive if I say that "binge" to me somehow sounds like you're seeing it as something pathological? Maybe it's just a language problem, english is a foreign language to me, after all.
Support, Arfie, and in whatever way, I hope you find the right distance between "home" and "duties"... and I hope for anything that makes it easier for you to bear. "Toxic Mom/Monster-in-law-duties" sounds just horrible. Gentle hugs...
I'm a language student, also, Beatha. I was an adolescent by the time I overcame my speech defect far enough to hold normal conversations. Music therapy proved to be the breakthrough therapy for that hurdle. By the time I could hold a normal conversation, I was thoroughly addicted to the study of language and music.
Now ya got me wishing I had my old dictionary collection. Part of my etymology passion is tracking how definitions change over the course of time. I have a dictionary collection which dates back to the 1800's to further that study. The on-line definition supports your "pathological" implication. Now I'm itching to know if my dictionaries from decades/centuries past would carry the implication.. I find it doubtful. I have been using it to mean, "a short period devoted to indulging in an activity to excess,"
Leaving that digression to the side for now. . .
There is not a fiber of my being which believes the Toxic Mom/Monster-in-law duties are good for anybody, giver or receiver, but I can't bring myself to give up on the family. Puzzling. . . Yeah, I guess I do see it as pathological. My pathology, too, is what it is, whether I understand it or knot. "Normal" is not in my birthright.
Hummm...puzzles, John is very good at them, he sees three dimentional..me I tend to find the edges, the center is his playground. Toxic Mom, me I'm the 'Sargent' from hell, 'do you understand, clear, crystal clear'...got to love Jack Nicklinson! No matter the names, I did 'the best I could at the time' pulling my hair out...as I tried to keep my sanity? Bipolar Sanity? Not even going to that place...anyway, my toxic mother sent dear John to a homeless shelter at 18, due to the toxic 'egg shells which filled our home'...had to do that cause the state won't give low income apts/rooms, to kids unless they are homeless...Nightmares about that move on my part...trying to part the sea doesn't happen, all a mother can do is to keep the kid afloat up to 18, at least that's my thought....no more 'doing' advising if asked for, or 'not my problem' to avoid the trap of hamster wheels syndrome...forever while I'm alive...being Mom is hard