Treatment Day 7

I feel myself automatically not wanting to feel again. I feel like I have made progress in opening up and starting to share, but a sense of danger is associated with this and without even trying to close up I'm doing it.

Yesterday, I stopped my journal entry after starting to express something bad I was feeling. Uncomfortable. I never did return to the thought or try to work it through. Maybe I'm not ready, but that shouldn't throw me back to square one. Square one is safe, predictable. There are set boundaries...equal on all sides. But, true to a square, it's a false sense of security because feelings--like a wise enemy--learn that there are ways over and around boundaries. It's not cube one, it's square one, so the walls that are so strong to repel the armies of one's self are no match for the cunning of emotions that are simply piled higher and higher and eventually spilling over the wall that cannot be built as fast as the emotions come.

I woke up to my phone ringing. It was Chuck. After our conversation ended, I saw that I had two voice mail messages that I slept through. When I don't hear my phone ring I know that I'm in a deep sleep that I really need or else the sound would wake me. One of the messages was from Mark (sure, I could say Mark W, but why?) and the other was from my Mother. What do I want and/or need to say to her?

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A first pass at the answer:
I keep you at a distance until I feel it's safe enough to approach you without being hurt. When I'm around you and I feel that hurt coming back I withdraw, retreat back to some place that I feel safe again. Sometimes I'm able to look at you as a person and not a mother and in that light I can say that no one person is perfect. No one person is without flaws, and that being the case, you're human like me; you make mistakes and that's okay. Unfortunately, that is not how I'm able to see you most of the time.

Most of the time.........and just typing right now my fingers halted with such pain. And I'm breaking down.

And I can't stop crying. (long pause)

I take a deep breath, through my mouth as my nose is stuffed from crying. I wipe away the streams of tears from my cheeks, chin & the small resevoirs where one's bags are stored. My breathing becomes more regulated again and I wonder what just happened to me. What hit me so hard that everything folded in and took away my spirit? Even right now as I try to slow my head down and analyze, that powerful feeling comes over me again and I get glossy eyes. It's a child in me that is weeping all the time. It's a part of Jeremy that was never allowed to grow up or be himself so now in adulthood he's lost because how do you develop a part of you that was stunted before the skills to develop were nurtured? All these years later I am still so angry and hurt that I was left to endure the pain of abuse---YES ABUSE---without acknowledgement or acceptance or responsibility from you as a parent. Too many times I have heard, "He was a good provider. He was there when your father wasn't. He made sure you were fed and clothed. It only happened a couple of times." These excuses mean nothing to a child. If Ruben were to have run me over with a car would it have been okay to say, "Well...he only did it one time." Were the abuse to have been sexual in nature and I were to have been raped just ONE TIME, would it be acceptable to say, "He was a good provider?" What I don't think you have ever understood in all of my pain is that I have been so hurt & lost that I have never been able to explain these feelings------I'm afraid to. Sharing feelings was never allowed in our family. I was made to cry when I tried to share my feelings a child. I didn't always have the words to express exactly what I was feeling so I was made silent because saying nothing was better than being spanked or hit for saying something honest.

These days, when I try to share I see how you change the subject or don't want to talk about it or EVEN WORSE... how you push back on me as if I just need to "grow up" and get over it. HOW DO YOU GET OVER SOMETHING THAT CRIPPLED YOU BEFORE YOU WERE OLD ENOUGH TO LEARN HOW TO DEAL WITH THE REAL ISSUES OF LIFE? To this day I can't have normal relationships with other males/men. I don't date people that are older than me, bigger than me, stronger than me. Of course, I never realized that right away... but the pattern became evident over time.

I love you. I realize that you're the only mother I'm ever going to have. I've tried very hard to keep our relationship moving forward because that's important to me, but it's exceptionally difficult when I carry this around with me. And often--and I know you feel it or sense it--I am unable to reconcile the two feelings in me and so I don't call, or withdraw, or will visit and then leave. I'm sure there is much more that is going on in side of me, but I need to go back to cleaning because I don't want to wallow in this feeling any more right now. I feel weak and I need to feel strong again.

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Gee... who knew that was in me? As much as it hurt to type it, it felt good to get out. But what now? Back to cleaning the room. Maybe when it looks nice again I'll be surrounded by a comfort to feel secure and explore more later.

Two people "graduated" from group today. When I'm honest with myself I see the sensitive side of me surface with words of love and encouragement and I love that part of me. I can see how when I share myself--that part of me--how their eyes change. I've always had that miraculous relationship with my close friends. It's so warm and I glimpse the kind of person I want to be without fear, without walls up, without a primitive self-preservation instinct that was over-stimulated as a child and never told that it could be turned off. This group experience overall is great. I can take what I need from the time and leave behind what works well for the rest.