Blathering

I really don't want to, but I'm going to have to pull back into my shell for a while.  I just don't think I can handle people or my fear of crowds right now.  Too much is going on in my head. 

I don't want to isolate, not really.  I'm so afraid that if I do that, when I return, it will all be gone.  At least, what there is now.  I really can't judge if there is anything or not.  Problematic. 

I hate being emotionally vulnerable.  This whole summer I've opened myself to the possibility of being hurt, and granted there have been a few paper cuts, but nothing serious, I think.  Right now, though, I feel like I'm made of spun glass.  Everything is blurry, uncertain.  I really don't know where to go from here.  I don't know where "here" is.  I don't know what I can trust.  I know that my own perceptions are untrustworthy. 

I really just don't know what to do right now.  I need guidance from somewhere.  I'm admitting it.  I really don't know what I'm doing, or what the right thing to do is.  I'm so lost. 

This weekend is going to be hell. 

A Stab in the Dark

Tomorrow I start with a new therapist.  I know it's necessary if I want to move forward.  It's just...I've been through so many therapists over the years and never gotten a significant return on investment.  Maybe I wasn't trying enough.  Maybe they were not the right ones for me.  Maybe I'm looking for someone with the Book of Answers who will tell me what the heck is really wrong with me and exactly how to fix it.  Maybe I'm afraid to open up to any of them because more than anything I'm afraid of being hospitalized. 

I finally got a copy of Feeling Good by David D. Burns, M.D.  Several of my prior therapists have suggested it to me, and I've even borrowed it from the library, but never read more than a few pages before giving up.  The voices that say it's impossible for me to get better took over and I forgot about the book for several years.

I've worked my way through the first two chapters.  So far, it seems to be reasonable.  It gives some background into the premises of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), nothing that I haven't heard before, but I'm understanding it a bit better reading it than hearing it from someone I don't fully trust.  Not that I have any reason to believe this doctor, but the book has been around for ages and is still in use, so there may be something to it.

A list of Cognative distortions  reads like a checklist of my life.  I do all of these things.  I know that I do.  And I know that they are distortions.  What I don't know is how to stop.  It irritates me so much when a therapist says something like, "keep track of your negative thoughts as they happen and think if they fall into one of those categories."  It's honestly not like these thoughts are at the front of my mind.  It's part of the stream of consciousness that runs in the background all the time.  I'm not aware that my thoughts are negative until someone else points them out.

We'll see what happens tomorrow.  Maybe.   I want to get better.

Come A Long Way

I haven't posted much recently, mostly because I desided to try my hand at living for a change.  Results have been mixed.

I think I get in my own way.  I want so much to be peaceful and happy, but there is a dark place inside me which makes it difficult for me to accept happiness when it finds me and stops me from seeking it out. 

I'm human.  I make mistakes.  The dark part of me tells me that I don't deserve to be forgiven for them.  I am told this is not a logical assumption.  I want to believe this.  I want to not walk on eggshells all the time, because the stress caused by doing so causes me to break down.

I think maybe I am looking for the wrong things in the wrong places.  In my mind, the most desirable thing to be is a puzzle piece that fits snugly into a slot and becomes part of a whole.  I've looked so hard and long for my hole, the place where I belong, but I think I'm beginning to understand that there is no such place, a hole waiting to be filled.  I have to carve out my own place in this world. 

Before I can do that, I have to identify who I am.  I've tried so hard to make myself into what I think other people want me to be, but that doesn't work, has never worked, because people want other people to be themselves, i think. 

But who am I?  Seven years ago, when I became Myrrh, I had a clear idea in my head of who Myrrh was.  She was a writer and amateur photographer, a free spirited bohemian with nothing to tie her down and a limitless world before her.  Somehow, somewhere I lost her, and I know that I cannot get her back fully.  But, perhaps I can build upon who she was, and create a new Myrrh. 

Somehow, I think this time around it's going to be harder.  This time, I have to build myself on a base of reality, rather than a dream.  I'm going to have to tear apart my negative assumptions, because they are destroying me and my chances for a happy life. 

I know that I cannot do this without help.  I will have to slowly build trust in other people, and hope that they can accept me for who I am.  I think...I know that there are people that will be there for me.  If I haven't already destroyed those options.  I have to hope that I haven't. 

Regardless, I am going forward.  I'm not ready to die yet.  I don't want to give up without making at least one more earnest attempt at life.