Taming My Stella and Rising From Her Mudd

 500 Stellas Can Put Anyone In the Mud

In a discussion with my sister-friend Jamie several months ago, I was ragging on myself and refusing to see what Jamie saw as positives instead of just further proof of my failures and deficiencies. I kept insisting that what was done did not outweigh what was undone and even so it wasn't done right or wasn't done quickly enough or wasn't done often enough or wasn't done on time or wasn't done with a good attitude etc etc etc.

Jamie asked me whose voice was I hearing in my head when I took these thoughts to heart.  I said primarily my Mom's from childhood but also my Dad's, my brother's and my sister's and of course my husband's and my mother-in-law's.  Then she told me that another close friend of hers had a similar problem and she had found it helpful to name her haranguer so she could talk back to her.  I promised I would think about that and see if I could come up with a name meaningful to me.

After several days of contemplation I had zeroed in on the finger shaken at my face as was my Mom's practice.  And although her tone was much different it put me in mind of the Stella Mudd character from the classic Star Trek series.  My mom never yelled let alone screeched like Stella nor did she name-call.  She barely raised her voice.  But her words dripped with shame and disappointment.  Here are some of her favorite phrases that still haunt me today:

• Shame on you
• Mama's so disappointed
• How could you be so _______?
• Why can't Mama depend on you?
• Why can't you be more _____?
• When are you going to _____?
• How do you expect to ______ when you can't even ______?
• Are you ever going to finish that?
• Do I always have to remind you?
• No, no not that way, here let me show you (as she takes the tool out of my hands)
• That was nice but next time don't you think you could try______?
• How many times do I have to say _______?
• But don't you think a better way would be ______?
• But don't you think _______? (constantly on every topic under the sun and for which the only acceptable answer was 'yes' even if that was a lie)

Recently Jamie and I were talking about how it was working out for me talking back to Stella or telling her to shut up.  I was having minimal success and would often find myself experiencing waves of guilt and shame afterwards.  Jamie was insistent that i needed to get cross with her, defiant, even violent.  "Punch her out" she suggested.  Treat her like the bully she is.  But I am, by nature and training, very averse to violence and have never found that the response to a bully needs to be becoming a bully.  So I let it percolate for a bit and it wasn't long before I came up with a tactic that fit my personality and values.

I can't remember the source but not long ago I heard someone refer to the Southern Lady's FU and demonstrated with a honey-toned "Bless your heart"  Now that could work If I could get that refined tone of faux sincerity down.  And since one of my superpowers is story I was soon developing related lines along with gestures.  I see them as mini-movies in my head.

"Bless your heart." I say when Stella starts harping.  And if she doesn't hush immediately I reach out and smooth her hair back and say. "Don't fash yourself dear."  Or, "Hush now dear, you are overwrought."  Then if she is especially persistent I hold out a cup of hot chamomile tea saying, "There, there dear, I do believe someone needs a nap."  Or I will reach out and lay the back of my hand on her forehead and say, "Are you fevered dear?  How about a nice little chill pill?"

I've only been trying this for a bit under two weeks now but it does seem to be helping.

I wish I'd found it in time to help me thru the dark month of September that contained the death anniversaries of my dad, my husband and my MIL along with Ed's birthday and the second anniversary of the fire in Southern Oregon that burned out the trailer park we had lived in for over a decade near Phoenix.

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Should I Go Hide Under the Bed?

I was tagged by Adelle. This was the first time for me so I'm not sure which is the worse in blog etiquette: to not accept the challenge or to impose it on the next ones. I'm not even sure I 'know' enough bloggers well enough to fill the quota on this tag. Having fretted for two days, I have decided that just doing it is the only thing that will shut up that indecisive 'should I? or shouldn't ?' litany and give the whole thing closure for me.

At least this isn't any more imposing of a challenge than a Thursday Thirteen so I am selecting my victims from TT and Monday Poetry Train participants who have commented more than once on my my TT and Poetry Train posts. At least I know they enjoy memes and don't hate visiting Joystory. It goes without saying that I love to visit every one of their blogs and do so frequently. Which isn't reflected in my sidebar only because I have not been updating my sidebar since I started participating in TT last October. (see #4 below) To sweeten the pot for them I am also going to link their names to their blogs when I tag them even though it is is not one of the rules of this meme. (Personally I think it should be as that would be a better motivator for participants, and appears to be one of the points of viral memes. But I didn't write the rules for this one.)

So here goes:

A. Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves.
B. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed.
C. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

1. I am legally blind due to RP aka retinitis pigmentosa a genetic degenerative disease that progressively destroys peripheral vision. I have almost zero night vision and even in the best lighted conditions am limited to less than twelve degrees vision in each eye out of the 180 degrees of normal peripheral vision.

2. We can only trace it back five generations from me because my mother's mother's father's mother did not know her own family history. She was raised by the Indians from age three, when the leader of the raid on her parent's farmstead found her in the pickle barrel where her parents had hidden her after the rest of her family had been slaughtered. He was in awe of her blond curls. She was raised as his daughter until she was at least eighteen and returned to the White man's civilization as the bride of a missionary/trader with the tribe. (Umm. Does that count as a fact about me?)

3. I fret a lot about big and small stuff. Lot of wasted energy and time. It is part of the Anxiety/Depression mood disorder I've had since at least age four but wasn't diagnosed officially until I was nearly forty.

4. I am such a procrastinator! I should spell it in 20pt font but then I would hate they way it looks on the page. Which leads to:

5. I am such a perfectionist! I should spell it in 28pt font but....well you get the picture. And it isn't the kind of perfectionism that actually produces order and well-made finished projects. Rather....

6. I am easily discouraged by mistakes or the inability to make a project turn out the way I envision it or stay on schedule and then I stop working on it and let it set, taking up space in my environment and mind for weeks, months or years, unwilling to give up on it entire but only returning to it maybe five percent of the time. The major successes that have resulted from a small percentage of those makes it that much harder to say a final bub-bye to those that really are dead in the water.

7. This includes staying organized in my environment, including my workspace and schedule. I crave organization, I visualize it in great detail but can never seem to achieve it. And of course my being a hoarder of all kinds of ridiculous stuff does not help at all. You can find the post that lists said stuff via labels if you dare. Hoarding was bad enough when I had my own home but...

8. Since August 2001 we have been living with my husband's parents in the small second bedroom of a single-wide trailer house. With two cats on leashes: Gremlyn and Merlin. Until we lost Gremlyn in March. With the litter box, cat's food and water dishes, bed, entertainment center and my jerryrigged office made of stacked cardboard boxes and a board, there isn't enough standing room for two people. This room has not been thoroughly cleaned since I started spending race day Saturdays watching my husband's elderly grandmother two years ago instead of using that time with the family out of the house to do a major cleaning. I'm fretting about this now because we are about to inherit a new bed from his grandma, who passed on earlier this month, and I am nervous about having to take down my 'office' and put it back together, as interrupting my projects has repercussions (see #6 above) and freaking about what we might find under the bed.

So I'm tagging:


Rhian / Crowwoman
Susan Helene Gottfried
Wylie Kinson
Robin L. Rotham
Tink
L^2
Gattina
Candyminx

Sorry gals. Should I go hide under the bed?

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