time and space enough to retreat and regroup

So yesterday, after my whining here, Hawthorn asked if I was mad at him.  I told him, quite clearly that I hated being asked multiple time for anything, that his refusal of initial ‘no’ in any circumstance was invalidating of my choices and that he’d already taken enough of my choices away by breaking up with me.  I told him that I reserved the right to be mad at him whenever I wanted over anything I wanted because I was still hurt and within the bounds of responding however I felt I wanted too.  I told him that he needed to take me less for granted, remember that I wasn’t his girlfriend and acknowledge how good and generous I’d been through the months following our break up.

He apologized, but I’m not sure how much of it was him understanding why I was mad and how much of it was the “I’m sorry you’re mad at me” apology which I loathe, as it leaves me feeling less understood and in a position where the offender is sure to re-commit the crime.  Still After spending too much of the day trying not to cry at my desk, I’d softened up ad let go of most of it by the evening.  Which I spent assembling furniture, cooking, cleaning, watching TV and writing letters.  A nice calm evening, which would only have been better if I’d figured out to turn on the A/C before it got swelteringly hot in my house.

I’m very tired of the rollercoaster of emotions in regards to Hawthorn.  I get it, it’s actually reasonable, it will surely be tempered and toned down with time.  But I am just so over it.  I would actually like to just move on, though I recognize that I can’t quite yet.  I think I’ve forgiven myself for the choices I made, I think I’ve accepted the consequences of both our choices, but I haven’t forgiven him yet and I’m pretty sure this isn’t over until I do.  I don’t think that’s a release I’m going to get any time soon.  I think I need to really feel he’s accepted responsibility for his actions in regards to me, that he’s genuinely sorry, that really understands the effect it had on me and why his timing was so selfish.  But I don’t feel ready to sit down and specifically have that conversation with him, I don’t know when I will, even if I know I won’t be satisfied until I do.

Probably part of the answer here is to start filling the spaces in my free time and in my head with other people, with other activities.  Still I’m a little stuck in sort of negative cycle in that I want more time to myself, I feel like I still need the relaxing down time/alone time, before I set out to be crazy social again.  And yet taking that time leaves me with little to think about but past events and all the things I’m trying to move on from.  As with every part of this, it comes back to balance, an even amount of down time and new experiences.  Honestly, everything would be easier if I could back to being my usual, patient self.  I feel like I’m too anxious and eager for change that only comes with time and I can’t let go enough to let it come when it will like the first flowers of spring.

 

Wearing the octopus hat of my dreams into the day

Blerg.  Dreaming you’re pregnant is dreaming about change, right? (I’m too lazy to actually look it up.)  Last night I dreamt I was with Hawthorn and I was sick and getting sicker.  I finally told him and he took me to the hospital.  When I got in with the doctor and looked down, my hand was incredibly swollen and misshapen.  She gave me some pills and told me it would fix and it wouldn’t harm the baby.  I stood up and I was six months pregnant.  The doctor sent me off with a nurse to make sure everything was fine with that.  Then I had two of the cutest little babies ever.  They had huge eyes and were very flirty and charming and kept laughing and pulling on my ears while I was trying to nurse them.  I was really sad that I had to give them up for adoption, but there was no other way to deal with it, because I was already pregnant again.  Then I was in Chicago with an old friend and Hawthorn.  We ran into a bunch of people that She and I knew from the west coast who were now in a famous band.  For some reason Hawthorn left  and my friend and I decided to go see the show but the jerky lead singer was trying to make us pay for the tickets which were really expensive.  So we went somewhere else instead but they wouldn’t serve us drinks because I was 6 mos. pregnant. Then we found this 4 year old black kid dressed in gang colors and made some epic trek to return him to a neighborhood we really shouldn’t have been in, all the while discussing the merits of long term jail sentences for weight loss, exercise and quiet space to recover from our lives, vs. actually continuing to live our lives the way they currently are/were.

I woke up really missing my friend and feeling incredibly bloated (as I’d been huge in both dream pregnancies).  I’m not sure I want to even take a stab at interpreting this.  Some of it seems really obvious but much of the dream was dark and creepy in the details and I actually don’t want to think about it too much.

I’ve been thinking a lot about therapy earlier this week. I really do think I am much better.  I was trying to express to my therapist that I’m managing to seal up my pain and move past my anxiety to function well enough, but that I really felt I needed to continue therapy because surely sealing it up was only temporary measure and that in a few months or years or whatever I’d be in the breakdown place again and that’s intolerable.  However I just don’t have the emotional resources yet to be able to deal with directly confronting and trying to pull out what ever the blackness inside me is.  Perhaps once I am settled in the new place, and have a place to safely be.  I’m not sure how clearly I expressed this and it’s been tugging at me.  Because I really do think I need to be in therapy, but I’m definitely having trouble digging down to the rough parts.  And I think it will be hard to push myself to that point.  I’ve been really seriously thinking about my past Buddhist practice and how I can return to that in a less intellectual and more emotional way.  Thinking about mindful living and letting go.  I think that focus of my energy on that will go a long way to keeping the anxiety at bay.  But somehow it seems at odds with digging in pulling out what ever is rooted in my chest that periodically grows and makes me so miserable.  Indeed the entire thing, my entire future life is about balance.  I’ve been meditating on balance and finding in aspects of my life (work vs. personal, planning the future vs. living in the moment, &c.) but I think I need to put a lot more thought toward finding the balance in making myself seem safe and secure and relaxed and working at extinguishing the root cause(s) of what undermines that sense of stability for me periodically.

Also, I think it wasn’t until I started talking about it in therapy that I realized just how traumatized I still am by last year’s flood.  I watched this trailer for a film someone made about it and ended up in tears.  I wonder how many people there are in this city who feel a devastated about the whole thing as I do, who didn’t lose homes or have major property damage and thus think that their post flood trauma isn’t as real or as valid.  I think we all really suffered mentally, even without losing a home it was weeks of living on what the edge of war or apocalypse must feel like: will we still have water, what happens if all the utilities fail, if the infrastructure is gone, how will we manage?  Plus, I can’t be the only one who had a back to back series of other dramas, emotional and physical, happen rapidly after the flood.  Even now as we move toward tornado season, I find I have a smattering of fear about the weather, wondering if those rains will come back.  It seems impossible the encroaching spring could feel so threatening.

Sleep is still uneven.  I think the 5-HTP is helping although I find I’ve been waking up a little before my alarm and feeling restless and not quite awake but unable to go back to sleep.