I am in trouble again trying to figure out what is truth and what is lies, sorting fact from fiction while terrified to trust, the way forward is unclear, when I trust my heart then my head breaks in with all of its reasons why this is just a terrible thing happening in my life that is all going to end in tears.
I then run to other people because the terror of being stuck in what I fear is an ancestral pool of isolation steps in big time.. I think all of the time about my sister in the psyche ward and how she is now and of the difficulties we had in our family communicating our emotions and receiving any support and nurturing. And then the angels step in and guide me to pick up a book that echoes with things of complexity I am going through.
This morning I actually just came back from reading in the park and walking among the trees barefoot close to a dancing butterfly (these seem to be appearing near to me – along with singing birds – all the time over the past week of Mum’s anniversary) The novel I am reading Out Of Love is so witty and hilarious I was actually laughing from deep down in my belly about it as it deals with grief and relationships and the problems we humans have communicating about and dealing with the most important things like expression and receiving of love. Part of what drew me to pick it up at the library last Friday after that lunch with old friends was the endorsement by Matt Haig who has written so powerfully about his own struggles with suicidal depression in his wonderful book Reasons To Stay Alive. The following paragraph really cracked me up, I saw a lot of myself and my Mum in it.. :
Of course, he could just tell me how he’s feeling, but that would require self awareness and communication skills, neither of which Theo possesses. So I settle for speculation. Today he’s an enigma; he’s gone from ignoring me, to crying on me, to insulting me to ignoring me again and I don’t know what any of it means. My head hurts. I check the map another hour to go.
It makes sense as they are both on the way to Theo’s Nana’s funeral an Irish lady who could dish out a lot of abuse and at the wake a lot of drinking is going on and Theo is an adult child who struggles with intimacy.
Thinking about alexithymia * it all makes a lot of sense to me.. I was never emotionally literate, though I do believe from a young age I was introspective which also makes sense but is sad to leave a young child struggling to understand impulses and sensation and reactions both in her self and others she is not of an age equipped to do. AND NONE OF THE ADULTS AROUND ME WERE HELPING AT ALL. As I have shared before Mum would over-react and Dad would walk away laughing.. And this made me fearful and incapable of dealing with conflict.. Like Mum being left alone a lot I had to turn to imagination and movies and books, and I often could avoid as relationships and others just seemed to be a mystery to me and so so out of tune.. In fact I went on a Tinder date on Saturday and the guy I met had a similar family past being the youngest, he actually said to me he wondered if his older brothers extraversion naturally turned him into more of an introvert.. It made sense to me.
There are obviously gifts in this inward turning but let us not totally romanticise it.. Yes we get to attune to nature as highly sensitive kids but we can also develop an undervalued self something HSP therapist Elain Aron had written about in one of her books on the undervalued self..
I have also been watching Season Two of On The Spectrum this week and two of the women on there seem to be highly sensitive and deeply intelligent but one was a war baby in Eastern Europe and was never picked up, just left to cry.. At the start when interviewed she says she is terrified of being left.. Makes complete sense when you come to understand her history.
Anyway I reached out to my friend I used to live with back in 1983 the other day who works at the Pentagon to see if she can check up on Scott but she asked for information and he got so angry at me today for ‘jeopardizing his mission’ he had, when we first connected, asked me to check out something called opsec and persec which are guidelines for what family friends and associates can and cannot share about loved ones in the military… This could be red flag or genuine but I just got angry with him.
Apart from this when I detached from all of the emotion before a calmer inner center in me recognized all is well.. Its just fear of not knowing and that I may be hurt yet again and yet another part of me can never really be hurt even if this goes pear shaped yet again.. I am strong!
God knows over three years of trying to be together with it failing each time is hard.. I try to break away and find another connection but something pulls me back.. possibly I am still sorting out so much about my relational life yet as I continue to find ways to be more inwardly attuned and capable of expressing more differentiated and mature emotions.
( * Alexithymia is the inability to recognize or describe one’s own emotions. )
Emerging From The Dark Night 