These ordinary days

I guess ordinary is in the eye of the beholder.



I've not been writing, and that's usually because I've retreated inside, taking each day by day, and dealing with the emotions when I can. The longer I go without writing, the harder it is to return. Something in me likes cutting strings and letting go.

I'm scared sometimes. Scared today. You can't help that. No one in my life right now can. That's my role (the Inner Therapist). My role to be scared. My role to soothe myself.

Breaking up with Carrie et al. and separating from Drew is like my own personal Autumn. Leaves are scattered around me, and I am preparing for winter. The main distractions on which I'll hang my Self are work and school. Ordinarily I'd say that was two steps back, but does studying psychoanalysis really count as a step back?

I wish I were less alone.

There, I said it. I shared it. A piece of me, the me that feels, not the me that thinks. Or was that not a feeling?

I feel alone.

I am doing the best I can to make sense of my feelings but I have no mirror. I have no context, no perspective, and it is hard in these circumstances to sit with half-baked theories of Who I Am.

For the second time since I finished psychotherapy: I miss my therapist. I want her to show me it's real. What I feel is real. I'm real. And it's okay to be This Me, even if it makes Drew insecure and anxious. Even if it means I don't want to be married. Or rather, I can't be married. Because This Me doesn't want to be.

This Me misses home. That fucking mystical place that doesn't ever seem to exist all the time. Because That Me's home is here. And my home is there. I can't be in both places at once, like I can't be both of Me at once. It's impossible. I'm impossible.

And when I said to Carrie for the zillionth time: It's not that simple, I meant it. It's not that simple.

It's not that simple.

I know that to integrate these parts, part of me will lose. Part of me will grieve. Part of me will have to let go. All of me will have to face this Enormous, Ever-Increasing Grief.

But it's like trying to decide which child to sacrifice. How can you possibly choose? In theory perhaps, but in practice what enables you to lift the knife and make that first (and only) cut?

Really, unless you are a masochist of the highest order, say good-bye to any dreams of integration now. Dissociation exists to protect you from pain and taking responsibility for a myriad of strong conflicting emotions and/or identities is a trauma in its own right. There will be hard choices. There will be conflicts. There will be losses. There will be grief. There will be pain. And the only real container for it is Time.

Thank god I'm a masochist.