Unpacking the well
Nov. 8th, 2014 18:56![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquill[formerly filtered to c]
Take a bit of the pressure off the top, and it becomes possible to separate the individual pieces and deal with them one by one.
I'm starting to relax into this relationship; I'm in the happy glow phase, where I'm beginning to accept it exists and the need/loneliness is diminishing a little. Things aren't too sparkly, at least, so I'm taking advantage of my good mood and what relief I have so far. I'm using it as a buffer while I dig into my head, into the built-up pain and unhappiness which I keep tripping over.
I wrote out slips with the names of the people I was close to who left me, and those I wanted who didn't want me (painfully). There are a few others whom I look back on and shrug; I can forgive them, or forgive myself, because there was no lasting wound inflicted. One-sided attraction happens, moving several states away happens, I feel no betrayal involved in either. Seanan isn't on the list, as I was more disgusted with her self-absorption than hurt that she stopped seeing me as anything other than a resource to call on. It's the ones where I opened up, made myself vulnerable, and they didn't understand that or didn't care that the rejection hurt.
I ended up with a little stack of fourteen names. Somehow I had thought there would be more, but I suppose that's more than enough. It does help to quantify them, reduce the pile of pain to a small set of people and memories, each of which I can grasp and identify. And all of them are in my past, or at least the memories I associate with the pain are. They aren't surrounding me like a nimbus that shadows my every move.
I'll burn these, individually, after pulling together the story for each one. It's not something I can do alone; I need support, physical and emotional, to keep from hurting myself further. At least I finally feel like I have some I can call on.
The relief that comes from committing those to paper has let me see some of the other painful scars I'm carrying. One was something that I had already identified, the Honors English pizza party scene; I'll tap Wayne to help me with that. I've got some stories lingering around my time in Girl Scouts, as evidenced by my bitter reflex when the topic came up recently. I may even have some junk left over from the sexual molestation when I was five, though I've been over it enough to make it relatively familiar territory.
It turns out that I've forgiven myself for dropping out of college, and most of the pain for that has faded, so there's that... but there's a big ball of agony around the disintegration of my Masters program. That's going to take talking out, and unraveling what still hurts in there, and why, and how to counter the stories in it. I still tense up thinking about it, though the PTSD is mostly gone. It was too red-hot for me to unpack it much up to now, and I think it'll still be pretty unpleasant to handle.
I'm sure a few more things will come to light once I've dealt with that bunch, but these are the big culprits.
One thing that's occurred to me, as I readjust my view of who I am and how my internal landscape compares to those around me, is that I may be wrong about the reasons why I was at the bottom of the pecking order so consistently. The behavior of my peers still fits the mold that they were afraid or weirded out, but by what, I'm no longer sure. I'll have to see what fits as I work through this stuff and start getting a feel for how it all started.
Take a bit of the pressure off the top, and it becomes possible to separate the individual pieces and deal with them one by one.
I'm starting to relax into this relationship; I'm in the happy glow phase, where I'm beginning to accept it exists and the need/loneliness is diminishing a little. Things aren't too sparkly, at least, so I'm taking advantage of my good mood and what relief I have so far. I'm using it as a buffer while I dig into my head, into the built-up pain and unhappiness which I keep tripping over.
I wrote out slips with the names of the people I was close to who left me, and those I wanted who didn't want me (painfully). There are a few others whom I look back on and shrug; I can forgive them, or forgive myself, because there was no lasting wound inflicted. One-sided attraction happens, moving several states away happens, I feel no betrayal involved in either. Seanan isn't on the list, as I was more disgusted with her self-absorption than hurt that she stopped seeing me as anything other than a resource to call on. It's the ones where I opened up, made myself vulnerable, and they didn't understand that or didn't care that the rejection hurt.
I ended up with a little stack of fourteen names. Somehow I had thought there would be more, but I suppose that's more than enough. It does help to quantify them, reduce the pile of pain to a small set of people and memories, each of which I can grasp and identify. And all of them are in my past, or at least the memories I associate with the pain are. They aren't surrounding me like a nimbus that shadows my every move.
I'll burn these, individually, after pulling together the story for each one. It's not something I can do alone; I need support, physical and emotional, to keep from hurting myself further. At least I finally feel like I have some I can call on.
The relief that comes from committing those to paper has let me see some of the other painful scars I'm carrying. One was something that I had already identified, the Honors English pizza party scene; I'll tap Wayne to help me with that. I've got some stories lingering around my time in Girl Scouts, as evidenced by my bitter reflex when the topic came up recently. I may even have some junk left over from the sexual molestation when I was five, though I've been over it enough to make it relatively familiar territory.
It turns out that I've forgiven myself for dropping out of college, and most of the pain for that has faded, so there's that... but there's a big ball of agony around the disintegration of my Masters program. That's going to take talking out, and unraveling what still hurts in there, and why, and how to counter the stories in it. I still tense up thinking about it, though the PTSD is mostly gone. It was too red-hot for me to unpack it much up to now, and I think it'll still be pretty unpleasant to handle.
I'm sure a few more things will come to light once I've dealt with that bunch, but these are the big culprits.
One thing that's occurred to me, as I readjust my view of who I am and how my internal landscape compares to those around me, is that I may be wrong about the reasons why I was at the bottom of the pecking order so consistently. The behavior of my peers still fits the mold that they were afraid or weirded out, but by what, I'm no longer sure. I'll have to see what fits as I work through this stuff and start getting a feel for how it all started.
no subject
Date: 2014-11-09 03:42 (UTC)