2 secrets only you and i know…
1) my eating disorder is my dirty secret. the shoplifted token. the guilty pleasure. the concealed weapon in my back pocket. it whispers to me, taunts me. it is power.
2) even though “my parents are coming to visit this weekend” has rolled off my tongue 30 times this week it makes me wince inside. it’s not my parents. it’s my fucking mom and step-dad. my father is not a part of my life. i don’t have “parents” anymore.
must.seek.therapy.
not.doing.well.without.
apologies for the bitterness
i really wish i could be warm and fuzzy and hopeful and all about love and peace and joy and family and strength and courage at times like this. but i’m just angry and bitter.
my little cousin. my fourteen year old cousin. the one whose family i lived with for three months during an internship a few years back. the one who had a nagging sprained ankle and wore an aircast while he got into mischief with friends in the backyard. the one who delivered his sister’s girlscout cookings to my bedroom door and lingered there awhile to “hang out”. the one i showed the greatest movie ever (“The Neverending Story”, which as I recall he did not love as much as I do). the one with the sprained ankle that turned out to be bone cancer. the one who has been in an unending cycle of remission and relapse. of three years of non-stop chemo. he’s dying.
he’s been dying. i’ve known it. i’ve been the pessimist, a few weeks back wondering aloud to my mother when they would formally call it terminal. the one who faced the medical facts instead of all the ooey gooey gushy lovey crap about keep you chin up and battle and win and fight. i know how these things go. i’ve seen it with my aunt. even when hope claims to be alive and well, those in the room with any medical wherewithall or experience with cancer start to see the writing on the wall. and then the conversation switches from treatment and prognosis to morphine and comfort and pain management. all euphamisms for “he’s dying. and it hurts like hell. and he’s miserable.”
and i don’t care what all the fucking messages on his website say about staying strong and fighting. i say, go into the light. close your eyes and rest. all of us here will be okay. you can go if you’re ready, Cam.
and fuck you, universe. you can take him if you want but why do you have to make him hurt so bad on the way out?!
quick-ish update
First off, thanks so much for the support and positive response to my “return to blogging”. You guys are awesome.
It hit me. It finally hit me. Finally???!! Hey, in the grand scheme of repressing emotions 3 weeks is NOTHING! But it bubbled up. In yoga tonight, the sweat and the “push harder” and the faster faster faster pace of vinyasas and the 94 degree room and the grunts of self-punishment from nearby yogis (who were WAY too CLOSe for comfort – seriously 1 inch is not sufficient space between mats, people!). And I got so far behind with all my wacky accommodations to protect my wrist and I wasn’t staying in any posture more than three tenths of a second because the guy was barking out orders and suddenly I took child’s pose and there it was. Sad. Sad. Tears and sad. And snot and sob and bury my face in my mat. And I let it be there. And then I slowed my practice way down. And then I took early shavasana when the lights dimmed and lay there in the dark, hot tears streaming down my cheeks joining with the tributaries of sweat. I miss B. I miss group. I miss my old yoga practice. I miss the things that helped me get better. I feel so far away from that energy. That centeredness.
And so I’m late in writing and late to bed because I spent some time tonight compiling a list of local therapists to contact tomorrow. I need therapy. And I’d like to set up a phone visit with B. because I need to process with her some of the things that are coming up surrounding our ending therapy. Things like the fact that my “system” is starting to feel echoes of dad hurt – of amputating people of value from my life. I don’t want to slam the door on it. On therapy. It was meaningful. It was momentous. I want to continue to honor that and explore it. And the only safe person right now to explore it with is B herself.
So there it is. A puddle of tears on the yoga mat. That’s good stuff, people. That’s the work.
Powers of dissociation
I dissociate. It’s what I do. My view of the world suddenly telescopes out to a vantage point 300 yards away, where all the pain is small and blurry. Where I can be uninvolved, an intellectual and analytical observer. Or sometimes something else attracts my attention and the scene is overlooked.
I’ve likened it to a lightswitch – flipped on and off. My brain is full of lightswitches. The one that controls my food intake. The one that erases my feelings of missing my father. The one that remembers friends I left in Vermont. But after my work in IFS therapy, perhaps it’s parts and not lightswitches. Perhaps there’s more complexity than a polarized on and off. If I looked closer, that is. I have somehow blocked or banished the parts of me that hold memories and feelings about Vermont and the past year and a half of my life. And swept up in those is my blog. Overnight its valence erased to naught. My interest, attention and connection with it wiped off the slate.
Dissociation, while superficially easy apparently requires a team of parts to maintain. The wine-drinking part, the always busy part, the pot-smoking part, the food grazing part. My brain has been bustling with so many parts whose job it is to keep the past at a distance. To distract. To avoid.
I haven’t initiated therapy here. I haven’t requested phone sessions with B. I haven’t journaled or blogged. I haven’t communicated or attended to any of my parts. And now I’m starting to fear that all the progress will be lost if I don’t get back in gear soon.
