My body keeps getting worked on.
Today I am really struggling to manage my sense of self. It is a day where I feel fractured. I don’t feel whole or I feel like I am Swiss cheese.
I want to be strong and resilient. I’m not exactly sure what that looks like.
I dug out the film slides from my photo class back in 1984. We’re going to use them in our photo shoot tomorrow. I spent some time looking at some of the ones of my grandma. It was stunning. She looks alternately happy but mostly really unhappy, sad, crushed, despairing, resigned.
I took these in ‘84 and she died in ‘89, five years later. She most likely already had cancer when I took these.
She was a rape victim, a #survivor. I looked at her face and thought about the impact of the generations before her that kept coming through into our family and my life. I don’t know anymore how to process all this. She raised kids that grew up to cause significant problems and great harm to others, to me. She raised a daughter that somehow broke free from much of this and crafted her own life of art and people and birds. My aunt was truly amazing in how she persevered and changed and moved on.
So as I keep trying to craft my own identity going forward, I somehow need some touchstones. I need people or goals or something to motivate and encourage me when I feel low like this. Right now, when I have days and feelings like this, I feel completely tossed around and unmoored. I literally feel like a boat adrift. What can pull me back?
This has come up a lot in therapy, what to do when you are below the window. I’m below the window. The feeling that I can’t control my life continues to linger and dominate my thoughts often.
I don’t have a clear sense of where I’m going and what’s coming, even as I take this photography class. Am I wasting my time? Will this be ultimately satisfying and rewarding?
I feel taunted and haunted by the past when I see and encounter writing and art and accomplishments of others that I wish I could match. I feel like I missed out on a lot of excellent opportunities due to my family and where I lived.
That’s a pretty negative picture. That’s the narrative I’ve been telling myself for a very long time. When I think of my parents, those feelings really come forward.
Maybe at the end of the day, I should start doing a summary of all that I do. I often feel like shit at the end of my days. I wonder about my purpose and whether my life makes a difference. I know it does; that sounds super dramatic. I guess sometimes I worry about just frittering my life away and being lazy and distracted and not focused.
So I should probably put somethings in place that help me see the progress and accomplishments. I’ve been helping put our new office together, and it doesn’t feel particularly like an accomplishment. I don’t know why? Another thing I didn’t fully choose I guess and am just winging it. I’m trying to enjoy it and not have this negative attitude. Who wouldn’t want to help get an office put together?
I have a sense of dread at times that something will go sideways and not really come together. I’m still not over how devastating it was and has been to have this be such an awful journey at so many different times.
So just a lot to counter:
Historical abuse and patterns
Abuse as a child
Modeling in a patriarchal family and institutions
Marriage to individual with attachment disorder
Child(ren) on the spectrum
Shared business start-up experiences
Limited finances
How do you fully change all of that? It’s an ongoing question I wrestle with almost everyday. I wish I felt better about how things are at this stage. I do have good days and not so good days. I don’t have a ton of days that are truly horrible.
*****
Jay said the biggest thing that’s changing for him right now is he is experiencing a lot of emotions. He thinks that’s going to be an outcome of all of this.
I told him at lunch about my anxiety around it, specifically he’ll go off the rails and that’ll be the last straw for me and the other, that I will have to show up for this new family member in some way. I told him I feel I’ve done too much, been too overextended and can’t do anymore. We talked over lunch and it was calm. It was unusual for me to be this calm. I’m proud of myself. I’m growing and changing.
Saw this today…
Sometimes things like that are nonsensical and super shallow and sometimes, when you’re having mindfuck issues, it helps.
Tonight, I went and hung out w/ the Girlz. It was really fun and just relaxing. They’re fun and interesting women. I’m glad I made it work to go even though we travel tomorrow. I’m glad five years ago we got together and started hanging out. Can’t believe it’s been five years. We haven’t seen each other much this year, but maybe that’ll change soon.
I think one of the things I realized coming home is my urges and desires and reality collide a lot. I really feel strongly about supporting families and believing in families and communities of people. But my own family experience with my parents has been really hard and conflicting. It’s been painful in the midst of the good. I guess that’s life and sort of common? So I tried to think about that tonight, that this is the experience many people have with their families. That’s why its so easy to joke about it and Liz Gilbert can say things like, “Of course your family can push your buttons; they’re the ones that installed them,” and we all get that as well.
I don’t know what all the answers are but today, I know some small answers. I know I have to stop being tormented by wondering about my parents. I know I need to keep taking steps to find my next career and life’s work. I know that I’ve learned a lot in the past several years of therapy and that I’m proud that I’m handling this thing w/ Jay’s bio mom pretty well.
Tonight, he came and snuggled w/ me on the couch. He is in fact showing more emotion and that’s what he said is what’s happening as he reconnects with her. I told him I’m struggling to find a new identity still and feel pretty shattered. I feel like I endure but it’s hard to think about being resilient or strong. I just get through. That leaves you feeling used up, not strong. You feel powerless, like the last rung on that list of emotions Kay gave me, but you’re having to do stuff. You can’t stop. In fact, you’re being called on to be superhuman. And you’re actually sort of powerless and not having any emotional needs met at all.
When I’m around people and groups like tonight, I realize how much I don’t get that for the most part in our marriage still. It’s comfortable and stable, but it’s not emotional or nurturing per se. There isn’t any vibing still going on. It will be interesting to see if that changes with these revelations. I’m realizing how much this is playing a role in me feeling like I still feel crazy. I think this could be part of the reason. I just still have sort of low-grade depression, and it’s hard to get excited about things and try and make something in my life happen. I just go from one project to the next at work and home that keeps me moderately busy but nothing particular fulfilling. It’s better than doing nothing, but not much.
I don’t know. This is a weird place to be.
One cool thing this eve was I took a lot of baby and toddler clothes of the girls over the the Girlz with their little kids. I wanted them to have some of the things. I also gave them three pair of grandma-made mittens. So it was a full-circle kind of day. It meant a lot to them which surprised me. It seems everyone is just awash in everything they need. I guess handmade stuff still makes a difference and just that it was coming from the kids and our family. So Grandma, you showed up on our radar a lot today.
That’s it right there. Just now. I felt it. I desire to reach out to an ancestor and connect and feel warm and connected, and then the block. The catch. The tragedy of it all. It never ends and it seems it’s broken the circle. The circle even w/ people alive feels broken. I’ve been trying to make a whole circle from a family that tried but didn’t quite know how to do that. At least the way it would be better for me which could be selfish.
Today:
-Chiro, all the exercises, walk, lunch w/ Jay and processed some mom stuff, ordered marriage certificate to keep moving paperwork forward for parents, work in afternoon to order new stools, took photos at park, met w/ landlord, dinner w/ Jay’s mom, packed stuff for photo shoot tomorrow, packed for trip, over Bee’s house and hung with the Girlz for two hours, got basement bedroom ready a bit more, writing.
I’m going to try and start recording what I’m doing during the day, all of it, as a way to be more organized but also to acknowledge how much I’m doing across many areas.
The hugs from Jay and the time w/ the Girlz was insightful. It reminded me of what I need and am missing. I have been asking for Guidance from God, trying to be open to energy and suggestions and nudges. I probably should keep a list started of what’s impacting me and moving me and see how it starts to shake out. I loved just being with people as they were talking and laughing and being themselves, uninhibited. I loved Jay being more connected and less clinical. It’s surprising.
Hopeful.