Feeling, Detaching, Continuing

I haven't written in wow — 10 days! I know I usually write about my therapy, but last week, I just couldn't.

Last week's therapy ended up being very emotional and very raw. We started talking about what I wrote about in my last post and pursued it far into my mind and my feelings to see what is behind this desire to reconnect with my past. At the very base of the vortex, we found abandonment and being completely alone. Intellectually, I know that my family did not abandon me and I am not completely alone (besides that fact that we are all basically one on one level). I have people who love me, both locally and scattered across the country. But, at the heart of the matter, those are what I feel.

I cried some. Not as bad as most of the times I cried in Karen's office, but the first time I've cried in Michele's, and the first time I've cried in a while. I really don't like to cry, for numerous reasons. Even more, I don't like to cry in front of someone else. It exhausts me. And when I experience a strong emotion, afterward I detach from emotion for some amount of time.

We ended the hour with a long imaging session. Imaging, visualization, creative imaging: whatever you want to call it. Michele led me and helped me find my way through it and discover things. I'm not going to describe it because it's intensely personal and there are very few people I would be comfortable sharing it with. Hell, I'm barely comfortable sharing it with myself!

Thus, whenever I thought about writing for the blog, I kept thinking about writing about the session, then about how I didn't want to write about the session. So I didn't write, and I didn't write.

I had therapy again today, and after I finished chattering, I told Michele about how I didn't write about last week's session and why. Which in turn led to my emotion/detachment pattern.

I don't want to have this pattern. Last week, on the way home, I left the radio off so I could stay with the feelings from the session and the imaging work. I wanted to ride that emotional wave to the end, the way Michele encouraged me to do. And I did ride it, all the way home. Then, exhausted, I took a long nap. Afterward, I didn't return to thinking about the therapy session or my feelings or the work we'd done and ended with. I didn't do so again until today's therapy.


As I told my therapist, I don't want to detach. I know it's not healthy and it only lengthens the amount of time it's taking me to get to where I want to be. And it seems to be taking so damned long. It's taken more than half my life so far. Anything that holds me back is something I want to toss aside.

I've spent a lot of time pushing my feelings to the side. Fear, discomfort, and shame from being molested. Grief when my father died. Grief, guilt, and resentment when my brother died, the resentment being that no one comforted me. I was almost 22 (we held the funeral the day before my birthday), the youngest person in the grieving party, and no one offered me comfort. People came to me for comfort, people who loved my brother but who were nowhere near as close to him as I was. But no one offered it to me. I would have comforted my mother, and I wanted her to comfort me, but instead she turned to her soon-to-be-husband and I felt rejected. So I had to be strong. And when I returned to school, my friends were uncomfortable with me, not knowing what to say. They were uncomfortable with my sadness. So I put it away.

I have always been an intensely emotion person, wearing my heart on my sleeve. Unfortunately, it seems few people are comfortable around intense emotions, so I learned to stuff them away in the corners of my mind, more and more, even to the extent of building a huge fortress to both protect me and hide within.

I don't want to hide. I want to be the Real Me. When I was a child, even though I had been and was being molested by my cousin, and being bullied by some older kids, I was happy and cheerful, confident, outgoing, and nearly fearless. According to my mom, I was 10 when I started to change, losing confidence, becoming shy and fearful. That was undoubtedly the beginning of my anxiety, and perhaps some of my depression, both of which grew as I grew. I had times when I became more confident and outgoing and less fearful, but then something would happen — we uprooted, Dad died, Jim died, etc. — and I'd fall further into the Abyss than before. I was coming back out of the Abyss again when Mom was diagnosed with cancer and I came home to take care of her. I've been fighting my way back out since then, just over three years ago.

I'm struggling. Sometimes I just want to be with my mom and dad and little brother, even though I am not sure I believe in an afterlife, or one in which we would be still connected, and I have certainly not felt any kind of ghostly or spiritual presence from any of them since their deaths. That doesn't stop me from wanting. I want to lie back and rest and not have to struggle and hurt and keep trying to become happy and confident and serene, emotionally and mentally healthy. I am beyond tired of working toward this.

But I am here. I don't know that I would actually be with my family if I died. Because I live and because I hate being hostage to my pains and fears and issues, I will continue to struggle and fight and work, because really, what else can I do? Simple survival and existence is horrible: I've done that already. Giving into the Abyss? Same thing. So, for me, the only acceptable option is to keep pursuing mental and emotional health, as difficult and painful as that is.

I think Michele is the perfect therapist to help me in this phase of my pursuit. She reminds me of Karen in some ways, yet she has a very different way of listening to me and guiding me, and a different set of tools. She's going to help me get further along in my pursuit. Will she help me get to where I want to be? I emphatically hope so, because I'm tired and a 42-year struggle is really much too long.

I'm ready to be healthy and happy and serene. I'm ready to be myself.