the more there is to do, the less i can do it. if i survive the summer i will be amazed and relieved. today i should be: studying for or taking placement tests, cleaning, packing, doing paperwork, getting in touch with people who are visiting, and probably something else i’m forgetting. i’m deep deep lost inside, deep in guilt, unrooted, scared, scared of trusting my intuitions, circling and circling and circling. i want to find the deep place inside me that feels ok, and i do believe that will return, i believe that i’m actively heading for it even, but for the time being it’s so lost that it’s hard to trust i’ll ever have it back.
maybe setting off on my own means i’ll never. maybe i’m screwing up lives and lives for a big stupid mistake.
the guilt doesn’t ever get more than elbow length away. and fear, and doubt. it feels best when i’m with my friends other than aeron, least guilty, but his warmth is missing and it goes so far in my life. there is security and he is the only person i have ever known who always wants me, always wants to be around me, the only person … just so many different onlies. i never stop feeling heavy without him to support me. and it’s not just the lack of support, it’s the active disapproval, it hurts so bad and so strange and it takes everything i have not to go back on myself, not to beg. sometimes i see it from his view so clearly and scream to myself why, why would i cause myself this much pain, let alone him? why would i introduce all this stress when i’ve already got so much to be stressed about? this kernel of reason may be nothing more than a shadow i mistook for a depth.
i keep twisting, trying to get emotionally comfortable even for a moment. i know it’s a bit much to ask right now, but it’s impossible not to try to find a comfortable position. i just need a rest. i need balm. i need my support, my center, but i can’t find it. and i’m absconding everything else for it, and i can’t find it.
oh god all i want is him back. he is, was, has been everything to me. the one thing i can trust. no wonder he’s pissed at me. nobody else knows from the inside how far back this goes. god i can see why he is so bitter, so hurt. there’s so many promises that we broke with breaking up, like most couples, but we managed to avoid seeing most of them until now, because nothing really changed that much.
i have so much support from my friends and it is the only thing keeping me even halfway ok. aeron has no friends that are not my friends too/more. so even the support is guilt-inducing. also, i really hate having to be selfish like this, like i’m racking up emotional debt.
my self-hate is at a crescendo pitch and its full-volume refrain will ambush me without warning a dozen or two dozen times every day. these past few days feel like they’ve been years. i’m self-absorbed and i feel guilt there too.
i’m not good at resolve. when it hurts like this, like a physical part of me is missing and i know it’s not coming back, it is all i can do not to run back to him begging, changing back. and i sort of do a little and he doesn’t deserve that pain on top of everything else. i am not used to trusting my opinion.
i can count on one hand the times i’ve truly gone against him, but they come more and more thickly lately. as big as transitioning, moving, breaking up, as small as a new color of jeans. i’m serious, it took us years to finally get jeans of a color that we always kind of liked (the darker blue with a sepia tint), because he was so openly disapproving of that color whenever we were clothes shopping. i still cling tight to the symbolism of these jeans, these my favorite jeans and the ones that everybody likes on me. every time i go against him like this, it is unquestionably good. the transition keeps me going from day to day, helps me believe in future. the breakup makes me feel like i am mine. discarding the things that i leaned hard towards in order to make him happy has been my salvation.
i still sweat and worry about his predictions – in the night, trying to fall asleep. will i realize that the claire i tried to be is as much the “real” me as the mes now? is the me the abusers wanted and shaped me to be inescapable and i should just give in to it? it’s weird, without him encouraging us to stop the sex work we couldn’t have come to here. that was the first step on this road that has taken me here.
i believe i am in a good place and i am heading to a good place. but fuck, it’s lonely and hard to be an adult. fuck, his approval feels good, like a drug, like my mother’s approval. in many ways i transferred a lot of my fucked up dependencies onto him – if i tried to make him approve and be proud of me, it was a lot healthier than trying to do that with mom. but the whole paradigm is wrong, is untenable.
i’m scared to do a lot of things, like pick up my guitar, because i am so afraid to feel the bottom of me plummeting without ground, without deceleration. like the comparison of that to emptiness will be too problematic. like i’ll find i don’t have creativity or soul in me anymore.
i’ve been – what word to i want to use? praying seems wrong. maybe… seeking. i’ve been seeking the goddess more lately, different from my usual comfort with the frame of the tao. it reminds me of being younger. it is hard for me to believe things, even though i don’t have a problem with anyone else believing things. and the Way is obvious in everything, is really sort of a scientific principle the universe follows because it is the same as the universe, it does not stretch my credulity too badly. so it is hard to be little inside myself again, needing a mother, needing a face, compassion, warmth. the tao is like spring water, but the goddess (i find that wording problematic because it’s not a specific goddess but it’s also not like i believe in a single one…i guess when i say “the goddess” i generally am thinking about Gaia, the earth, whatever. i wish i didn’t feel so stupid and kooky to talk about this. this is in a way what i was raised with, and people raised christian often don’t have to feel awkward talking about jesus or something. it’s also somehow a respectful wording though, it’s… i don’t know it’s a wording i grew up with a little bit) the goddess is like sun on my face. both cliched images, but probably cliched for a reason.
i need her warmth but it’s been a long damn time. and so much has changed that it is hard to use the goddess metaphor/frame as a comfort the way i could once. the way i started to when i was thirteen. i still remember talking with my mom about what the goddess meant to her. my mom spoke of sort of putting out your senses, putting out roots, and feeling sort of the solid slightly rounded earth underneath you, and feeling a deep respect for what she supports, what she creates. i am inarticulate and embarrassed and critical of myself. but i need to write through this maybe because i need this.
when i paced yesterday morning on the road i wanted to jump from (to die), i found myself almost unconsciously groping for her. i needed a reason to live that came from somewhere far underneath the rational plane. like asking for a mother back. but i also mock and hate myself, even if i believe in the harmlessness and usefulness of this metaphor if metaphor it is. it is such tricky ground.
i need something to clutch while my head ducks under the waves a while. i need her. but i also don’t believe she is there. it’s hard. i guess this is not original, just a slightly different starting spiritual viewpoint than is standard.
i feel scared, and sentimental. i feel cold deep inside. i do not feel up to the tasks facing me.
