RealMental

I said, “I don’t want to hurt this person, I’ve spend a lot of time trying to deflect their pain”.

“But aren’t you hurting yourself in the process”, he asked.

I said, “In way, yes.  But…”

His response, “But what?  Isn’t that how it was as a child?  You put others before you, you weren’t important.  You were made to be responsible for other peoples emotional well being and that’s never the job of a child.”

“Oh” I thought aloud.  Back to that.  It always goes back to the origin doesn’t it.

If I take care of them, they will at some point take care of me.  Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?  No.  That’s how we think it’s supposed to work but it never comes out that way. Not for me anyway.  Maybe someone, somewhere (besides Hollywood movies) it’s worked like that.  Never for me, yet I keep trying to complete that cycle and I lose myself in the process over and over again.

The source of that thinking, if I can protect the others, take their beatings for them, take the blame, take the spotlight and make it all my fault, I can control it and, somehow make it better.

No one comes out and asks me to do this, it’s one of those wordless agreements that we all make.  It’s an entire script, in my head, set on auto pilot.

My therapist suggested (about a year ago) that I needed to have a conversation about that wordless agreement, to tell the other person that I could no longer hold that position.  I was losing myself in the process and it wasn’t their fault, but I needed to resign from that job.

Sometimes, I think other people don’t mind that we lose ourselves as long as we serve as a prop for them.  (Again, auto pilot behavior.)

Once you’ve established that type of “agreement” it’s hard to move away from it.  It takes time, more conversations, discipline.  I have discipline to change my behavior, or I’m pretty sure I do.  It can be done even if it is like trying to turn a commercial ocean liner.

Funny how it is that I forget this small detail, that I push myself to the side in order to make things better for another person.  Not because I’m a martyr, I have ulterior motives (see above “If I take care of them…”).

All this collected crap manifests itself in many ways.  Much like plant roots, seeking the water and nutrients it needs to survive all the while hidden underneath the ground never seen by the casual observer.

Until something starts to wilt or die, then the journey begins again to find the source.  In order to make it right.

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When do you know it’s time to go?  Does the end have a sign posted to let you know it’s the end?  Tell me what the end looks like, tell me in your words what the end feels like.

You replay it in your mind, what you think will happen.  You warn the others, hoping they’ll prepare.  If they don’t prepare, you can’t be held responsible for them not preparing can you?

False starts of the end impede progress, you are too busy thinking “this is it” so you walk around looking at the sky.  The birds can see it faster than you, so maybe if you climb up in that tree you can see it too.

You look to the clouds for a sign, hoping you’ll see a formation or at least a diagram telling you to get out while you still can.

Hope whispers in your ear, it tells you that maybe just maybe it’ll work.  This time.  This time, things will really change.

This time, the person will see the impending doom of a black cloud that’s been over your head for longer than you can remember.

Hope tells you to wait.  Wait, wait, and wait some fucking more for the thing that’s going to really get through to the one it needs to get through too.

But it doesn’t.  It’s time to make good on all your threats, you didn’t sign up for this, you didn’t sign up for this class, this session, this fucking workshop.

Bastards, all of them.

Just pick up your toys and go, start fresh, begin again.  Do it better this time, make it clearer this time.

Go on down to Slab City, join the others looking for freedom.

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How many people stop in their tracks some days and wonder just how in the hell they got to the particular point in their lives that they got to.

I’ve been doing this for a long time now.  I retrace my steps, I inventory the steps I took that led me to where I am right now and wonder what will come of it all.

One of my closest friends recently told me, that while speaking to another person close to me, she told this person at that point, “she’s the most unhappy that I’ve ever known her to be”.   I’m the she in that sentence.  That was over five years ago.  I asked her why didn’t she tell me then but she was uncertain.

I started crying when she told me this, knowing deep down that I was unhappy, and that I’ve been unhappy for a long time.  I’ve been doing the “make the best of it and maybe it’ll get better”!  I had some obstacles to overcome, some stuff that needed to be worked out and really hard life stuff that came in constant waves for a few years.

Life sure can take you full speed ahead down twisting roads and you have no time to catch your breath, much less your mind.  With each new battle, I would pray for the serenity I needed in order to climb the next hill.

I did what was in front of me to do, I put one foot in front of the other, and I persevered.  I stayed the course, I kept it together.  Silently questioning what it was that I had to learn from these calamities.  Why me God?  WHY ME?

Much as I despise that question (because it’s screams of a character flaw I do not wish to emulate) I would ask anyway.  Ultimately trusting that I was where I was supposed to be and sometimes the life you want and think you should have is not the life you get.  Acceptance is what they call that I believe.

At what point should you stop convincing yourself that this is how it is supposed to be?  At what point do you realize that being unhappy isn’t what you want out of life?

An answer to this riddle has eluded me for a few years now and I’m not even sure what course to take in order to change it.  In fact, I’ve only just begun to speak of it’s truth, I’ve only just begun to realize that I have to change my course.

This scares me, despite my experience and knowledge that changing courses brings about blessings and clears away the things that no longer serve me, opening me up for a new adventure.

Painful, uncomfortable, sad, and hopeless are a few of the friends that will join me in the change, even though I know their counterparts of love, joy, serenity, hope and freedom are waiting on the other side for me with cookies and tea.

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Swimming in and out of clear thinking, feeling as if i am sinking.

I do not want to fully go to the place where the surroundings are dark, cold, and wet with sadness.

I must find the way out of this tricky terrain of blinding emotions, I must get in MOTION.

Hark!

I will move out of this place, I won’t stay.

Perhaps it is necessary for me in order to move on to the next chapter.

YES!

It’s time.

To move onward, to push forward.

To get the fuck back up.

I can and I will, my will is strong.

Falling, slipping, skinning my knees is to be expected but not enough of a reason to keep me down.

Look for me I’m still there, wave as I walk past.

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I woke up one morning a few weeks ago, and felt pain on each of my fingers.  I realized that I’d managed to mutilate every fucking one of them the night before.

This is a consequence of emotional pain, I am not present despite the fact that I am physically there.  If you told me that someone else did it while I was sleeping I would be more inclined to believe that.

The trouble with self harm is that sometimes it’s over before you realize what you’ve done.  Looking down at my fingers, all fucking ten of them, I was ashamed of myself for letting it happen.  No reason to be alarmed, mine coping mechanism just happens to be visible.  Many are not.

I wondered how I could go out in public with band aids on all ten of my fingers.

Portions of the shame I feel stems from the fact that I know better.  And by knowing better, I should be able to DO better.  Right?

I know why I do it, I know that it doesn’t solve anything.  I know that I do it to escape feeling emotional pain.  It is a defense mechanism set in place by my brain when my emotions are overwhelmed.  Like a safety on a gun.

This situation I’ve been processing is like a hurricane; it brings things from other places in my psyche, all triggering my latent mental illness and wounds of yore.

There is no cure (that I am aware of) to rid myself of the feelings that I have to feel, and the time that has to pass.   I have hope that I’ll get there when I get there.

Meanwhile, try not to notice the band aids on my fingers because I’m trying hard to pretend they aren’t there too.

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I’ve made some mistakes during my time here on earth.  Some of them are irreversible, never to removed from my permanent record.  An example of one is that I’ll never be allowed to give blood at the local blood bank.  This bothers me and I suspect will always bother me.

In recovery, there is a promise that states “you will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it”.  I can honestly say that in most cases this has been true for me, once I owned up to my secrets they no longer held any power over me.

It would seem the mistakes I’ve made while sober are a little harder for me to let go of.  The thought process goes something like, “you should have known better”, or “that promise doesn’t count if you do stupid things while sober”.  The gremlins, they tell me this.

This one thing that I do that helps to keep me sane, healthy and relatively peaceful is a thing that became my mistake.  I write in the shadows not to tease, but to protect what I can of the mistake that I made.

This mistake, this most recent one is connected to a part of me that goes to my core.  My core, therefore is cracked.  Perhaps even permanently broken.  It’s so bad that I cannot even write about it.  At least, not now.  Maybe in a few thousand years.

Typically when something such as this occurs, I would retreat into the safety of my own self hatred and depression but that isn’t working quite as well as it used to and I want it to.  I suspect therapy, medication and recovery have done their job in blocking access there.

I want to be able to say things like, “You are the biggest piece of shit that walked the earth, everyone hates you, and you will never accomplish anything worthwhile in my life” but it isn’t working.

I have to stand my ground and take it like the woman that I have become.  I have to walk through the minefield of regret without my my old bag of sick, twisted, and mangled rotting emotions, things that I liked to call “my precious”.

Mistakes serve a purpose, they come about as a result of living life.  I take risks, I fall down, I get back up and try and learn from it.

The irony with this mistake is that in some ways I have to trade my safe for the un-safe in order to not let it happen again.  It’s a mistake that not only affects me, but other people.  Someone that I never wanted to see hurt, someone that I’ve been trying to protect.

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I’ve been in a not so good place for a few weeks now.  I keep running through the list of possible reasons, and I’ve settled with the prognosis of “it is what it is”.

I have friends with Jerry Springer lives that I want to solve, or at the very least ease their discomfort.  Helping is not an option, I have to just walk with them and love them as we go along.

Sometimes it is as if I am walking through a world of grenades, and I have to be constantly aware of my position.  Everywhere I turn, there is unbearable crazy and if I am not careful I will fall into one of the pits.

Maybe others just shrug off their crazy family and friends.  I try to do that, really I do.  Some days it’s an obtainable option.  Pretending that I am somehow trapped in a book about the lives of others and it’s all some type of fiction.

One person has quit their job in order to pursue the life of BDSM, not worrying about the future or about their children and the effect it will have on them.  Another can’t stop shooting dope, has no interest in sobering up for her child.  A man that told me his sisters had sex with each other after drinking entirely too much alcohol.

The soccer mom that drinks and smokes pot before she picks up her kids from school.  A friend that  in order to bear the pain of losing their nine year marriage is looking for solace in the online sex world.  A person told me recently that if Obama had run for president a few years ago, he’d be dead by now (because of his skin color) and the person speaking wouldn’t be upset about it.

A person that blames their ex spouse for everything that’s ever been wrong in their life for the past forty years, debilitated and held prisoner by the hate and resentment.

Parents with over sexual children that usually indicates some type of sexual abuse, but unable to investigate further.  People who lie all of the time, so much that they’ve lost the truth in it somewhere along the way.

A man who must hide his sexual interests and live a double life, a man who’s been depressed and unhappy for years.

(Some of the details are changed to protect their identities.)

I am personally connected to living post secret postcards.

More often than I’d like, I wonder if I will eventually drown in this sea of crazy.  I wonder if the whole world is bonkers and I am the only one that sees how insane all of this is.

My friends trust that when they are speaking with me that I will listen to their deepest secrets, knowing they will not receive any judgment from me.  This is very important to me, to provide a safe place for my friends to unload their burdens.

I am not judging them as I write this, I love each and every one of them, and I accept them for who they are.

Sometimes, it just gets really heavy and I start seeing too much, hearing too much, and feeling too much.   I’m not complaining, I’m not unhappy with them, I’m just writing it out because things are not always as clear when they are stuck in my head.

I don’t leave things alone as much as I should.

I love too much.

I care too much.

I feel too much.

I worry too much.

I project too much.

My brain is a computer that cannot stop processing, processing, and processing over and over until I fall away with exhaustion and have to leave the world for a few days.

When I don’t answer the phone or return emails or go outside, it is because I am regrouping, I am resetting my controls, I am finding peace.  I’ll come back.

Eventually.

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