I can’t believe what I am doing. I am reaching heights of fear and being scared so far past scared shitless that scared shitless looks like a comfortable place to be in comparison.
I must have tremendous faith and trust just to continue to open my eyes moment to moment. To continue breathing. To move in any direction instead of quiting and closing everything down or quiting just everything. I don’t know how I am doing it. I am amazed that I am as functional as I have been and seem to continue to be. I don’t know what is driving this, why I am willing to keep doing it. I am told I will be much stronger and a much better person when I get through all this. That what I am going through is a good thing and that I am growing. It doesn’t feel good. It feels damaging and painful and wrong. And still I do it, still I go forward, still I watch and observe things I don’t want to see, still I peel back another layer of my psyche and the crud that lies beneath. I want to run and still I stay and work some more.
I know what I am doing is good, I believe it very deeply. But it feels like hell. And feeling is what I have avoided for most of my life. I have always been able to feel, probably too much so and it usually hurts. And I haven’t been able to stand the pain of it. I haven’t been able to even admit the pain of it. I am beginning to find out what I do and have done to avoid it at all costs. And that hurts too.
Part of the reason I can deal is because I put it away and not deal with it. But I wanted to write this out so that when I am playing the Queen of D’Nile (and I am learning how good I am at playing that particular Queen) I will realize that this does go on. To log it so I am not so surprised by it. Even now, I am losing sight of how scared I was, things are beginning to take on a more normal scale. I know I will be there again, and I am beginning to learn that I might be able to handle it. I am not sure I am comfortable with that information. It is suppose to be a good thing but it is scary in itself.
This living the examined life is the shits. I have powerful tools to view into the reality of myself and it is hard to deal with what I am finding. And I know I must face it to grow. I feel like I am fighting a many front war in most of the aspects of my life. And the tools I have are no longer as effective. It is a little hard to believe in the Wizard when you have looked behind the curtain. My little tricks and practices for dealing with things have gotten a bit transparent and therefore don’t function as well. A quote from Joan of Arcadia – illusion must be broken so that it can be replaced by something deeper. I am shattering a number of illusions and trying to find things and tools and practices to replace them.
It is not easy. It is hard and painful and a long and involved process. For some reason I seem to be committed to it. I don’t understand where that commitment comes from. It isn’t something I have seen in me before. But it appears to be there none the less.
If you feel you should comment on this post, be very very careful. This is not a light post for me.
And now to think about something completely different. Good think I have something like 20 hours of TiVo to distract me. Tra la la laa.
That bit about living the examined life sounds a lot like what I’ve been going through lately. I like that quote, though. It’s something I’m trying to convince myself of, but it’s scary not yet knowing what that “something deeper” will turn out to be.
“If I knew myself, I’d run away.” – Goethe
To truly run away, though, you need to know what you’re running from. Otherwise you’re likely to just run in circles. I see this pattern in my own life. “History repeats itself” doesn’t just apply to nations.
Good for you for not settling for a quick glance at yourself and saying “Done”, but for going for the long haul.
I’m going to let my thoughts rumble around in here over-night before I reply – but sending you *hugs* anyways.
An interesting thing a therapist said to me way-many-moons-ago – “We never perceive our own innocence, only the loss of it.”
*hugs* more if/when my brain makes sense.
Remember: Breathe.
I’m here if you need help.
3000 miles and 3 days too far away to help, still I comment to let you know that your cry is heard. It echos within me, as it resonates so very closely to my own recent panic. Each of us walks alone, and in so doing creates an ironic bond. None of us can reach beyond our pain, because it would mean trusting someone else who’s trapped behind their own pain.
Maybe together we can stagger out of this minefield. I’m going this way. If you hear a loud kaboom, it’s me. Fortunately, I’ve walked into a lot of ‘em lately, and I’m still walking. The alternative is to stay here as the bombs keep falling. I guess I could get used to the noise, but I’d rather find myself somewhere where I can stop screaming inside.
Trying to be helpful.
It wasn’t really a cry for help as a marker for where I was so I could see it again when I wasn’t there anymore. There is no way to survive living there, we can only dip in, work on something and go running and screaming away hoping the work we did will have some positive effect.
Knowing that I do go there, that I can go there, that I can survive going there, that I don’t have to stay there, and how horrible there really is are all important pieces of information to improving the effect of the work done there.
The concept behind going through this land mine field is that there is a place out there where the land mines are fewer. We just have to clear a lot of them by setting them off and hauling away the debris. If we don’t haul it away, they manages to fix itself and explode again.
I know I am in this alone. Nobody is as prepared to take care of this as I am. I have spent my life training for living my life.
Thanks for your comment. It is nice to know people out there see me and get what I am dealing with.
Despite knowing to the core of my broken heart that everyone dies alone, I still wish I could help you get better.
There’s a line in Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, which I don’t have in front of me so I’m about to butcher, along the lines of “Some people think that adults shouldn’t cry. He knew that they cry all the time: they just do it quietly, because they know that no one will come and fix it.”