Emails and not okay

I emailed Bea on Thursday night. I knew she had training all weekend, and that she might not be able to email me back, but I was so alone and lost and confused and there felt like there was so much I hadn’t said in our session. 

So….things went like I said— go home, clean, get ready for Kat’s party, be okay, be fine because that is what I always am. Except for driving home. I cried the whole way home. It was those tears you just can’t shove down, no matter how hard you try. And about halfway home, I recognized this feeling…this crying, everything wrong, failing at life, messing everything up, can’t do anything right, too many bad feelings, overwhelmed and scared, can’t breathe or think and just want it all to stop feeling. It’s a feeling of being a little kid, alone and scared and vulnerable and really wanting mommy to come and fix it all— like I said this morning. But it’s also a teenage feeling, that desperate, overwhelmed, I need to fix this but can’t because I don’t know how or where to even start, so someone please fix it for me, and make it all stop. And I remember feeling like this, and the person I always went to when I was a teen and felt this way was Bethany– my aunt. And then she left. So I couldn’t go to her anymore. So there was no one. And then later, in college and after, Kay was the person I went to. But she left, too. I wanted to call her so badly today, driving home. But she is not here anymore. She left me. I did text her on her birthday, sent her a message that basically said I hope she was having a happy birthday. Nothing major. She texted back, asking me to please respect her wishes to be left alone. So. That was Wednesday. The day after the doctor appointment. Like I said, it was a bad week. 

Lots of loss and abandonment coming up. I’m sorry I didn’t know about Kay and the birthday text. That is sad and very tough because she’s taken away your voice. I’m very sorry to hear that!

It really isn’t “just” the doctor appointment and needing to write a letter. It’s…I don’t know what, exactly, I can’t put my finger on it. It’s just this feeling of needing everything to stop, to go away, to disappear. I don’t want to feel, I don’t want to think, I just want everything gone. Maybe, on some level, this is all about identity. I’m not angry, or defiant, over this. I’m scared. I DON’T know who I am. I’m afraid to try to even find out…..it just feels like whoever I am, beyond my perfect and nice and happy facade, is going to be ugly. Or maybe there is nothing there. That’s just as scary. I don’t know. 

Basically it’s about the okay part and the not okay part. The okay part has thrived because it avoids the not okay part at all costs. When stuff like the doctor happens the okay part is forced to share space with its foe. This is scary and confusing and not okay. No wonder your identity feels messed up. As we work through these things, however, they become less separate and unintegrated. You move towards health. We are on the right track with what we are doing. We may have more parts to touch base with is all.

There is an angry part…but it’s not what I’m feeling mostly. And when I do start to feel angry over how I’m feeling right now, it’s like that feeling you get when you barely miss being in a car accident or something. That like, heart pounding in your throat, stomach dropping, can’t breathe, anxious and scared feeling. That’s how I feel about this mad. It’s scary. And I don’t know what or who I’m mad at, or why, or where it is coming from. But it’s not okay. And it makes me scared and anxious. 

We’ve talked about there being a “fight” part. It wouldn’t necessarily feel directed at someone–just your defensive reaction to being activated.

We go to my parents on Saturday. What I wish, and what can never happen, is to just sit and cry with my mom, and for her to just let me cry and be upset and wrap her arms around me and let me cry as much as I need to, and tell her nothing is okay, and everything is wrong, and that I just need it all to stop, and then for her to tell me it will be okay and to have her fix it. But it’s stupid to feel that way, to want that. Because she wouldn’t fix it, she can’t— it would just be more secrets and lies to cover up all the bad stuff. And we don’t hug like that in my family. We give quick little, almost one arm hugs to say hello or goodbye, but we don’t just hug someone to hold them and let them cry. Not even when my grandpa died did anyone do that. It’s just not done. They aren’t touchy feely people. Even when I was little. It’s just not how things are. And crying is something to be stopped, to be distracted from, to end it as quickly as possible. Ugh. I don’t know. It is what it is. 

I think it’s good that you want that–to be held and to be comforted. That is the “attachment cry” part that I learned about tonight. Attachment is an important resource. I wish you could have that with your mom too. I’ll bet you will get some sense of it this weekend in your interactions with her, even if not as much as you are craving.

And really, you did offer to write a letter to my doctor, so that would fix that part of the problem. So I shouldn’t really even be crying over wanting someone to fix it. But I’m not 5. I’m not a little kid, I shouldn’t always need someone else to “fix” things for me. So as much as part of me really wants to say, yes, just write a letter, fix it, I don’t want to deal with this, make it better, part of me just can’t, because it feels too much like being an adult acting like a child. And I did enough of that already at that awful appointment. Ugh. 

We can tell the 5 year old that there is a grown up part ready to take action.