Smacked in the head
Yesterday and today I woke up feeling very calm. I felt I had turned a corner in understanding my anxiety. The things that were plagues earlier in the week seemed so manageable.
Then I went to therapy and spoke at length about my mother. Analyze, as I love to do, her casual email to me from last week. It was extremely helpful because I got a new perspective on many things.
But, and I am no longer surprised, the aftermath of this is exhaustion and that physical pain. My jaw and chest ache. I can’t get a full breath. Not at all.
I made food and ate. During this process my anxiety spiraled upwards. I tried to stop myself and ask why. Was it because I always had to race to eat food because my stepfather resented how much it cost to feed me. Was it because I had to hurry up and eat and clean everything up because eating was just a wasteful mess making activity. Was it because I felt guilty for wasting food on myself because it is expensive to eat and I need to save all my money because eventually that is all anyone has.
All these things. More I couldn’t even track. The aftermath of eating in the glow of thinking about my mother is like the aftermath of a fight where someone 50% bigger than you smacks you in the head. You can get up and walk away but you hurt all over inside and out for hours following it.
The difference is this time I know I don’t deserve it and I am going to try to make the way I feel about it more important than the way I think I should feel.
3 comments:
I talked about my mother in therapy today too. (Not a coincidence I guess.. I assume millions of people probably do this every day)... I like your post's conclusion and your resolve. I need to think like this too. It's not easy to change thinking habits though, is it?
My mother died ages ago, so I don't get the complications of emails etc. The thing about the fight and the smack in the head is neat - and so right. Not with food for me, but with other stuff. But the effect is probably similar.
My poor mother - I wouldn't diss her, because I understand now more what a bloody awful life she had and how compeletely fucked-up she was. I'm virtually certain she was undiagnosed bipolar - she was definitely alcoholic - and was frequently violent and wild and terribly angry, or would be quickly oscillating between inconsolable grief and rage. As a child you just feel very very scared, and desperate - because no-one fucking tells you what's wrong. And you keep getting caught up in the midst of it, and thinking it's your fault.
Sorry for the length of this reply!
I have wished/pretended my mother was dead and my father alive for about the past ten years. A lot of energy and denial. I think I finally figured out, as shameful as it feels, that I have to keep thinking about her until focussed thought of her and my father are not enough to make me cry and cry.
Wouldn't you just give anything to make it not matter. I'd definitely give an arm or a leg.
I too felt like it was all my fault. Felt? Feel. In some hardwired reactions and chemical changes in my brain I still feel responsible. That is the fucking problem.
Yeah, I know - still feel it - still driven by shame and fear. And only now beginning (just) to see those feelings for what they are. So often in my life they have driven me to re-enact the past in the present.
For it not to matter? Yes, anything - even my life when the feelings are very bad - that's what drives me towards killing myself - so there was only blankness.
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