Feeling unreal : finding my way back to the real

I am noticing lately that when I go into the places that are not meant for me lately I feel so drained or tired. At the same time today there was a very very strong sense of derealation around me… Yes WordPress does not recognise that as a word but I think derealisation is (yes, it recognised that!). Apparently derealisation is one of the major symptoms of suffering trauma. I also wonder if it is part of feeling the reality gap between the life we longed for and the one we got or lived as we struggling to find our way back to ourselves from soul loss, trauma and other pain and suffering.

Today felt quite unanchored and lost after just under 4 days all alone over Easter with no contact from anyone including Scott. This lack of contact from him is not usual and is all the more worrying as he did warn me that Easter was a very busy and dangerous time where he is, and as a Christian festival celebrations are targeted by the terrorists he is armed to fight against and protect civilians from. I spent a day with my heart torn out listening to Bryan Adams songs the other morning and dancing around wildly, because on Wednesday I said something pretty mean to him and even though I apologised immediately I really wish I had not said what I did at such a dangerous time. I really really miss him when he is gone for over four days and I am worried.

War and soldiers seem to be figuring or playing a large part around me presently. I am reading a book at the moment written by the author of the novel Silver Linings Playbook which was made into a movie a few years ago. This particular novel, is called The Reason You Are Alive, it is the story of a returned Vietnam vet who meets a marries a woman who is raped and he gives a life to her and her son but the woman Jessica does not make it through the devastation of what occurred to her at the hands of another returned Vietnam vet. The story is a very intense exploration of what it is to survive trauma and try make some kind of peace from incredible devastation both as a sufferer of trauma as well as a witness. It is funny, irreverent and the lead character is complex and unlike any character in any novel you may have ever read.

I guess often books actually ‘chose’ us. This one I found on the display table at my local library and as my therapist pointed out it was likely I would be attracted to a book with that kind of title, having gone through so much trauma myself and having suffered suicidal depression as well as witnessing two siblings try to take their lives at some stage.

Anyway today as I was suffering all of these feelings of the world being so foreign and unfamiliar to me (my therapy appointment his morning was changed and so I think its natural I am feeling this way today, I really really needed that appointment today but at the same time I am liking on one level kicking back and being able to write this!) I was thinking of how so often I feel like a war survivor. I was also thinking of how, as a result of all of these experiences it can be hard for me to connect. The one person I connected to and wanted to be with me and help me and support me I decided I could not be with back in February because prior to meeting him I had connected with Scott on line and had formed a commitment of a kind and yet despite over 10 months of trying we have not managed to meet. I never took it further with Karl and I also told Scott about it but last night I dreamt of Karl, I had finally decided to reconnect with him because the loneliness was too much.

The other thing disturbing me this weekend is that my sister and I have been playing telephone tag since Thursday.. each time we have tried to connect she doesn’t ring me back for a day and then I miss her and try several times and then she doesn’t ring me back for another day… at the same time as its really hurting me I think that maybe its due to the fact I am must move away from my family and finally try to make my own life but I am just feeling so very very lost at present within all the memories of what has gone down in past years saying she wanted me out of her families holiday house which is where she and her son and his family are now having a lovely time all together at Easter but was the place Dad built for all of us before he died!!! (Have I really been holding onto that pain for so many years? Was that the reason I decided I must have Easter alone?)

Writing I must say is helping… since I logged onto WordPress a short while ago I have felt my drained energy return. Back in my own space here all alone I can breathe again but there is still a very strange feeling around me that all is very unreal in my life and for this morning I am feeling very lost because I could not anchor any of the pain or sadness or other things I am feeling into a connection of presence as I can in therapy….. instead I found myself at the dog park with my cousins’ son crying because other dogs were rejecting Jasper’s advances to play with them. Something about this cuts me up when I see him with his super friendly engaged presence jumping around trying to get a running buddy to chase him and the other dogs just look at him as if he is a weirdo. (Exactly how I felt in my own life and family.)

This morning I yet again found myself beating myself up about the past. A litany of self blame was running through my head and its also funny the way things work because at the time I was spinning my wheels or stretching my body and my phone was playing YouTube songs on Auto play and the song I am only human began to play. As I listened to the lyrics they seemed like a message from the Universe meant just for me. I struggled within a traumatised reality.. I struggled for a sense of self. So much around me was breaking down. I learned somehow it was my responsibility to fix it but maybe it was only ever my responsibility to witness it. I also see how I project this ideal self or life that Deborah ‘should’ have been living had she been truer to her self, but when I think that way I forget how I struggled to even really trust and know myself well and always in some way surrendered my power or looked up to others hoping they may show me the way when really it was up to me all along. Maybe along the way I took the easier softer way. Maybe there were times I tended to collapse or fawn or fall over when I should have stayed stronger. At least that is what I feel I saw today and yet even as I write this I think, well doesn’t it just take the time it takes to real ise all of this …..to see the truth and take action to solidify it or make it REAL and while writing that word out it capitals I just thought of a wonderful acronym for R.E.A.L, Right Energy Aligned (with) Love. Love for myself means I know the right way to take action, but without a feeling of respect and love for myself first how can I find the way to the right action.

Like it or not for some of us knowing and learned to love ourselves is a work in progress. We are going to stumble and fall many times on that path. Truth is some times I get lost. I worry over my choices, I second guess everything, I run over and over the things that went wrong and that I cant change and beat myself up. I start to feel there is no way out and I would be better off dead. I start to imagine I am being deliberately rejected or left out when maybe I just don’t even figure and maybe if I just took action to make my presence felt things may be very different. The truth is when I get lost in rumination it is harder to find myself and my ‘real’ in the present moment.

I just reblogged a post from The Written Addiction on the quandry of trying to move forward from a painful traumatic or damaging past or losses or mistakes. It spoke to a lot I was grappling with today. Writing this too has made me feel more real than I felt today after a morning at the dog park where I really (truthfully) did not feel at home with anyone… truth is its here on WordPress, or in therapy or walking in nature with Jasper I feel most at home and seen and myself. And when I feel at home I feel real.

Still it was probably a good thing too to get out of my head today and jump in the car with Simon and Jasper and feel exhausted and weepy and tired for a while. Each moment fully entered teaches us something. Instead of second guessing at everything and seeking to allay disaster or messiness or my own mixed up humanity it is probably better to accept life as not always comfortable or put together. Maybe the best I can do is to front up and keep putting one foot in front of the other while remembering what John Lennon used to say “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans?”.