What are we left with?

We work so hard, we fight to understand, we strive so hard to know. I wonder where it all gets us. Where it really gets us in the long run. Because what truly do we know to be true. Even when we think we know something, it sifts through our hands like sand, only to leave our hands empty once more. My hands are empty. I am so tired. I am so tired of trying so hard, and pushing myself to understand, and coming up with nothing in the end. Whatever knowledge I may have gained over my life has been blown away like leaves in the wind. I am left with nothing. No physical manifestations of what I’ve worked for, and no clearer an understanding. If anything my understanding is more cloudy now than it ever has been.

My chest, it hurts. There’s this pressure there. This ache. This pain. I don’t know what it is, but I need it to go away, once and for all. I don’t understand it. I’m tired of trying to understand it. I’m tired of trying to understand what goes on in my head. There is no clear explanation for anything. It’s all just speculation. Fabrication. Lies. Falsehoods. Layer after layer of suppression, repression, judgment, condemnation, yet at what point do I just give up and say, I will never know. What is the point to even trying? Truth and knowledge and understand eludes me. It is beyond my reach. Even when I think I have it, it just slips away. Silently. Painfully. And what am I left with? Nothing. Just more confusion than before. Understanding is elusive. It never stays forever. It tricks you into thinking it is here to stay, but it leaves when you least expect it. My head hurts. I am so tired of trying. I am so tired of trying to understand. If someone could take a microscope and bore their way into my head and have a look, I think they would be just as confused as I am. It just doesn’t make any SENSE. I want to understand. But I’m starting to think that life is pulling one over on me. That I’m not meant to understand. I’m not meant to make sense of it. Any of it. And yet I cannot go on not knowing. It will drive me crazy.

I wish I could take a vacation from my mind. That would be nice. When I go on vacation I almost do get a vacation from my mind. In a way. And then when I come back, my vacation from my mind is over as well. I get inundated by craziness. Thoughts. Feelings. Body sensations. Overwhelming. Not making any sense. None. Just when I thought I had it figured out I realize I had nothing figured out.

The question is, if this knowledge, if this understanding will ever elude me, will ever lie just beyond my grasp, what then? What is the point in even trying to understand if you never actually will?

Is this burning sensation in my chest – is it physical? Heartburn? Is it emotional? Hurting? Is this pressure in my head- is it because I am tired? Too little sleep? Or is it a result of the turmoil that is inside my mind? Why can’t all these pains just go away? Why can’t I be left to peace for just one minute. One hour. One day.

Is life meant to torment? Because if I didn’t know better, I would sure say that’s what life’s intention is. Maybe I’ll grow to feel differently. And yet how long will those feelings last. They are just feelings after all, aren’t they. And feelings aren’t reality. If feelings aren’t reality, and thoughts aren’t reality, then what is reality? Can anything be thought of as real?

I, for one, do not feel real at the moment. Maybe it’s the pain and pressure in my head. Maybe it’s the burning and aching in my chest. Maybe it’s the hard day I’ve had. Maybe it’s the coming back from vacation and wishing I didn’t have to. I don’t feel real and yet this torment feels quite real. This physical pain I’m experiencing feels quite real. Is it imaginary? What is more real – the torment or the pain? One is psychological the other is physical. Are they interrelated? Is one more real than the other? Sadly, I don’t think there is an answer to any of my questions. Only hypotheses. Only speculation. Only guesses and good guesses but not assurances. What if I want assurances. What if I want definitives.

What truly can you count on in this world? Friends? Lovers? All are human and therefore are unpredictable. What then? Even our own earth is on the brink of manmade obliteration. If we can’t trust that our planet will continue on without us, what then can we trust? Ourselves? Can we trust ourselves? Some might say yes, some might say no. I would say – of all things in this world, I trust myself least of all. What am I left with then? I suppose nothing.

Before It Breaks

Around here it’s the hardest time of year
Waking up the days are even gone
Will the collar of my coat
Lord help me killing off the cold
Will the raindrops sting my eyes or keep them closed
But I’m feeling no pain
Only the lonely my quietest friend
Have I the moonlight
Have I let you in?
Say it ain’t so, say I’m happy again

Say it’s over, say I’m dreaming
Say I’m better than you left me
Say you’re sorry I can take it
Say you’ll wait, say you won’t
Say you love me, say you don’t
I can make my own mistakes
Let it bend before it breaks

I’m all right, don’t I always seem to be?
Aren’t I swinging on the stars
Don’t I wear ’em on my sleeves
But when you’re looking for a crossroads
It happens everyday
And whichever way you turn
I‘m gonna turn the other way

Say it’s over, say I’m dreaming
Say I’m better than you left me
Say you’re sorry I can take it
Say you’ll wait, say you won’t
Say you love me, say you don’t
I can make my own mistakes
Let it bend before it breaks

The Cycle of Denial – Part II

In order to adequately address the issue of denial, one must address the issue of the family. I believe this is where we are taught to be expert deniers.

For most of my life, I have thought that my family was perfect. Okay, maybe not my brother – he could be an arrogant prick! – but my parents. They could do no wrong. I spent as much time with them as I could. When I went off to college in a nearby city, I would return nearly every weekend.

My mom was active at church growing up, and I dutifully went to church and became active there myself. In high school and even college, when I would return home, I volunteered many hours at the church – in the kitchen, helping to clean the grounds, teaching Sunday school… I was mom’s little clone, and I was worshiped by my mother and my father. I was their perfect child. I was kind, I was funny, I was outgoing, I got good grades, I brought home good-looking boyfriends who my mom nearly fainted over…

Yet…

There was always this feeling, more of an aching actually, that something was deeply not right. I would get taken over by waves of depression that would last days, sometimes weeks or even months. I began experiencing social anxiety in college, and developed a deep and neurotic fear that someone was out there trying to kill me. I began having health problems, and in my freshman year of college alone had to be rushed to the late-night emergency room seven or eight times. I began having panic attacks. I started thinking that I was “possessed,” since I began hearing these angry voices in my head telling me to do things that, had I listened to, would’ve ended me up in a casket far below ground. I started binge eating to numb it. I started speeding every time I got in the car with the music blasting as loud as I could. I began punching myself in the head to release some of the pressure. It was always just temporary.

I hid all of these things from my parents. They thought I was doing great. I didn’t tell them when I dropped all of my classes because I couldn’t leave my apartment for a month for fear of being murdered.

Fast forward several years. When I ended up in a psych ward, I had been living on my own, had a “great” boyfriend (by my parents standards), had a good job, and to the casual observer, I was the happiest I had ever been. No one knew the demons that haunted me, so when I ended up having to get driven down to the psych hospital by my father, the fact that everything was not okay in my world came to my parents as a complete and utter shock.

During this time in the hospital, I grew to learn that parents were not perfect. In fact, they were far from it. I realized that I was terrified of my father’s rage. I started remembering that my mother had been emotionally neglectful toward me as a young  child.

However, we are taught to shield our own parents from any sort of blame or criticism. If we talk about our parents openly and honestly and talk about the abuses or neglectfulness we endured at the hands of these two individuals, how is it received by the world? People don’t want to hear it. Talking negatively about ones parents is seen as complaining, disrespectful, and overall just distasteful. These are the sorts of things expected to be discussed behind closed doors with a therapist. Don’t let that unnecessary negativity taint everyone else. It doesn’t matter the level of injury. Small, medium, or large, it is expected to be packed away and hidden deep in the closet of denial.

I stopped making my parents perfect. I went through a period of trying to talk with them openly about problems and unhealthy family dynamics. I tried sharing with them the hurt they caused, and the wounds that had yet to heal. And what did they do? How was this information received? Well, you probably guessed it: they got defensive, and they denied everything. They didn’t want to hear.

Suddenly, since I wasn’t playing the perfect daughter anymore, nor was I any longer placing my parents on a pedestal, I began to change in my parents eyes. They didn’t ever have to say anything, but I could tell. Their eyes used to sparkle with pride when I walked into the room. Now, they look at me with muted eyes filled with sadness. I wish I knew the thoughts that went on behind those eyes.

Does perception in fact equal reality? I do wonder sometimes if maybe I’m just making all this up. A fabrication of my overactive imagination. Maybe there is nothing wrong with my parents, nor is there anything wrong with my family. Maybe my family is just a typical, normal family, and it’s my brain that is faulty. I think that’s what my parents believe, after all, when I attempt to bring up any of the pains or hurts that were inflicted on me growing up. I know these inflictions were unintentional, yet they were inflicted nontheless.

Now I’m starting to second guess myself. Maybe I really am just complaining. Maybe my childhood wasn’t that bad at all. Maybe my parents did a pretty damn good job, and I am just being ungrateful. Maybe all my symptoms of dissociation and all my anxiety and all my depression and all my mood swings are happenstance. A faulty neuron firing. A biological glitch. A gene malfunction.

The cycle of denial. Well… there you have it.

The Cycle of Denial – Part I

I will do whatever it takes to convince myself, and others, that I am normal. I will deny, ignore, suppress, and hold it all under water til my arms get sore. It’s not coming up. Not here, not today, no how, no way. And for the most part, this strategy works. For the most part, I can pull off passing as a fairly normal person with fairly normal experiences, moods, feelings, and reactions. Albeit, a bit kooky, but still within the realm of “reasonably normal.” However, there are times where the evidence overwhelmingly supports the idea that the way I experience things is not the norm. It is during times like these that I begin to question anything and everything, and I feel like just one tiny little tug and I might come apart at the seams. As you might have guessed, this is one of those times.

My mind seems more compartmentalized than most people. I was discussing the notion of memories with a friend today. During the conversation I realized that I don’t have any feelings connected to any of my memories. He conveyed to me that in his opinion, this isn’t the norm. I don’t know what’s normal, because I only know how I interpret the world. I always figured that everyone else experienced things the same way that I do. I am starting to realize that this might not be accurate.

When I think about past events, I may be able to give you details of what happened (if you’re lucky), but I am completely disconnected from any feeling associated with those memories. What I mean is, the event may have been extremely sad, or painful, or difficult, or traumatic, or even happy. I can think about the event, and I may remember how I was feeling at the time of the event. But it is nearly impossible for me to have access to any sort of feeling in the present pertaining to that past event. What usually happens is, typically I know that I still have feelings attached to a past situation or event because I feel a pressure rise up in my chest when I think about it. I have a sense that the amount of pressure in my chest correlates to the amount of feeling that is related to the memory. And yet the feelings are not accessible to me.

Let me see if I can give you some examples. I think about my beloved dog getting hit by a car when I was little. No feeling. I think about my grandma dying when I was younger, someone who I was very close to. No feeling. I think of losing the first cat I ever owned living on my own. I wandered the streets of the city, into the wee hours of the morning, calling out for him, feeling tortured and devastated, like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. I never saw him again. When I think about that incident? Nothing. No feeling. When I think about any of the romantic relationships that I’ve been in in my life, some good, others not-so-good. Nothing. When I think of losing the therapist (T2) who I grew extremely close and attached to. Well… no feelings come up, however that pressure sensation in my chest grows very strong when I think about her. I think there is still a lot of pain and a lot of hurt there. I just don’t have access to those feelings.

That’s all I’ve got in me for now. I apologize. Stay tuned for Part II.

People Help The People

Birdy is my new favorite musical artist. Her voice is so beautiful, and her sound so soulful. It reaches down into my heart and touches it. And she is only fifteen years old!

This video is so moving. It really shows the loneliness and despair that ordinary people – like you and me – experience that often goes unnoticed. And that we can be there to take the hand of others when they need it.

Tonight I had the honor of having a friend reach out to me for support. The amount of pain that she has had to endure, no one should have to endure alone. I think she’s one of the bravest people I’ve ever met, and we’re just getting to know each other. I know she doesn’t think of herself as brave, but I do. This is for her.

 

“And if you’re homesick, give me your hand and I’ll hold it…”

 

World, Meet Dr. Abby

But first, a preamble…

This year has been a tough one. Last Thanksgiving I made the decision to go off my anti depressant / anti anxiety medication. It had been about a year since I had needed to be in therapy. I was just finishing up my degree. I was moved in my partner of four years, and we had a happy little family of furry creatures. Things felt good, and things felt stable. However, I felt a bit devoid of the passion that I knew I was capable of. The ability to get teary-eyed in sad scenes of a movie. The ability to feel uplifted when I see a hawk flying in the sky, or a beautiful flower while on a hike. Despite feeling like things were calm in my life, I also felt dead inside. I attributed this to the medication, and decided it was time to wean myself off of it.

Within several weeks of being off the medication, I felt as though I were thrown into the emotional haunted mansion of hell. Things couldn’t have felt worse, or crazier. Rather than going back on the medication (I can be very stubborn if you don’t already know this about me), I decided to seek out the help of a therapist.

My initial therapist was someone I had met and connected with at my university. She seemed like a good therapist, however we both soon realized that I needed to be seeing someone who specializes in treating trauma. She referred me to S. S was someone who I connected with almost immediately. She was kind, she was intuitive, she was nurturing. About a month into therapy she begins telling me that she is fairly certain I have DID – dissociative identity disorder. I was already quite familiar with DID, since I have a close friend with DID, and I had also gone through a period years ago when I was convinced that I had it as well. That conviction didn’t hold, since the symptoms didn’t seem to quite fit. So here is S telling me she was certain I had DID. A part of me felt relief, thinking that I finally had an explanation for every crazy symptom I was and ever had experienced. I was also feeling quite conflicted about it, however, and wasn’t convinced. I joined a DID support group. I began reading books on DID. Some of it resonated, but not everything. But S would not consider any other alternative. Thus we embarked down a journey much like Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole. I began to feel crazier and crazier. I began to cling more desperately to S for stability. The more I did this, the less stable I became. I tried ending therapy several times, desperately trying to figure out what had gone wrong, all the while being deathly terrified of losing this one person who had become the center of my world. And then, just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, they did. She terminated our therapeutic relationship. She said she couldn’t help me, and therefore she felt it would be morally unethical to continue working together. In a goodbye email, she went back on the DID diagnosis, claiming after much thought and research she had determined I was not DID after all, and stated that her belief was that I had borderline personality disorder instead. She then attached three referrals for therapists who specialized in treating borderline clients.  Thanks S. How mind-fucking of you. How ever could I thank you – for diagnosing me DID in the first place, for being quite stubborn about it, for encouraging me to attach to you and for reassuring me that you were in it for the long haul, for all the times you assured me that it needs to get worse before it gets better, and then completely severing our connection permanently and abruptly. Let’s just say it took me a little while to recover from that one.

A brief stroll through the lands of a third and then a fourth therapist (the details of which are not worth recounting) led me to the conclusion that a) I needed someone who specializes in dissociative disorders, not just trauma and b) I needed to be willing to be picky, and to trust my gut. I had to let go of the notion that most therapists are good therapists and can probably help me. Many therapists are good therapists, I believe, but I really need someone who is good, and who really knows their way around dissociative disorders.

And now we get to the introduction. World, meet Dr. Abby.

My first appointment with her was this past Friday. I had horrible flip flops and butterflies in my stomach and heart palpitations the whole way there, but I managed to arrive in one piece. She told me where to sit, which I was a bit taken aback by, but sat in the appointed chair and our session began.

I won’t give you a blow by blow account of the session, because this is long enough as it is. But I will give you my general assessment of her. She exudes a calm confidence without being arrogant or self-righteous, as has been the case with a couple previous therapists. She listens without judgment. She is more quiet and curious than chatty or opinionated. She can tolerate uncomfortable silences – which I cannot say for myself! She is very grounding for me, and all my anxiety subsided during our time together. She doesn’t smile just for smiling sake but only when she genuinely means it, which I really like. Overall, I am cautiously optimistic.

Maybe five times a charm? Only time can tell.

Vulnerability = Death

For most of my life, I’ve arranged things (and when I say things, I’m referring to friendships) in such a way where I don’t have to be the slightest bit vulnerable. In most of my relationships, I’m fun, outgoing, friendly, cheerful, and positive. This has served one purpose and one purpose only: to minimize vulnerability. Because to me, vulnerability equates to death. If I don’t let others see my hurting side, they won’t be able to hurt me. If they don’t see me vulnerable, they won’t want to push me away. Because that’s when people push away you know, when you are at your most vulnerable. At least, this is what I was taught at a very early age by my mother. My mother was wonderfully sweet, loving, fun, and goofy. As long as I was happy and cheerful. The second I would begin to get upset, whether it was because I broke a toy, or because I couldn’t find my favorite pair of sneakers (I’m totally making these situations up – I can’t actually remember any specifics), she would shut me out and pretend like I wasn’t there. I would cry and scream til I was blue in the face. I would pull on her pant leg. I would throw myself on the ground in sobs. My efforts for connection were futile. As long as I was upset and vulnerable, she was not available to me.

I vaguely remember, probably at about the age of three or four, realizing that since no one would ever comfort me when I cried, it was pointless crying. I therefore didn’t cry from about the age of four to the age of twenty-two. I’ll save the story of my first cry at the age of twenty-two for another day. But the point is, I learned how to be and how not to be in relationships. To this day, it’s nearly impossible to allow myself to cry in front of another person, or even to allow myself to cry at all.

However, I don’t want to live my life in loneliness and isolation. Therefore, I must be willing to face my biggest fears, and let myself trust that the people in my life will not leave me at the first sign of vulnerability. My logical mind tells me that the people who I’ve chosen to allow within my inner circle are trustworthy and consistent enough that they wouldn’t leave if I open up to them and allow myself to be vulnerable. I have the privilege and honor of having several people in my life who I consider my closest friends, and who I trust will not walk out and leave at the drop of a hat. My emotional mind however is a different story. Sometimes it needs a little extra reassurance that I haven’t been abandoned just because I opened up to them. I am lucky that my friends are kind enough to understand this.

The D Word

This is the simple, Merriam-Webster definition. It is truly much more complicated and complex than that. Dissociation, in the psychological context, occurs when a person, and in many cases a child, separates or compartmentalizes various experiences, emotion states, traumas, etc that are too difficult for the child to integrate into their conscious experience. This process of dissociation is not a conscious process. It takes place in order for the child to survive. Although there are exceptions, it is often many years later, when this child is a grown adult, that they begin to recognize that their experience of the world, or of people, or of the way they process and handle emotions and experiences, is different than most people.

I have been diagnosed with a dissociative disorder, specifically DDNOS, or Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. This is a very tricky and complicated diagnosis. It could mean that I have some symptoms of dissociation but they don’t necessarily fit any of the criteria for a specific dissociative disorder. Meaning, they aren’t quite sure what to make of me. It could also mean that I am close to fitting the DID diagnosis – Dissociative Identity Disorder – but don’t match all the criteria. “DID-like DDNOS”, as some refer to it. Either way, it’s not easy to wrap my brain around it.

Enough with the academic stuff!

The reason I brought this up is because my dissociation reared its little head today. I say that not to give one the impression that dissociation is mostly absent from my life but bestows its graces upon me every once in a while; rather dissociation is so integral to my life and my way of being, I don’t actually know how I would operate without it.

What happened was, some part of my mind was extremely upset that I wrote the previous blog about my family. Someone who doesn’t dissociate would probably be able to communicate between these conflicting parts of themselves – the part that wants to write about their dysfunctional family and the part that wants to not discuss these things openly. These different parts of my brain, however, don’t communicate in the way a normal brain might. I was not aware, as I was writing the last blog about my family, that there was any part of me that objected to what I was sharing. That is, until I post it.

Then what started to happen was, I began to feel “not well.” That’s really the only accurate way I can describe it. Something felt off inside, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. This feeling of uneasiness grew and grew. Then, I started feeling this pressure pushing out from inside of me, a very uncomfortable sensation. I started to connect the dots at this point: maybe this has to do with what I just posted on my blog. So I asked myself, is this about what I wrote? And then a part of my mind responded, “You had no right to share those things. It is totally inappropriate and unacceptable.” At that, I begun feeling as though I had been drugged. It was hard for me to stay focused on any one thing. I kept forgetting my train of thought, and I had to keep reminding myself where I was. I was outside walking, and every few steps a voice in my head would say, “What…?” Like, someone just said something to them that they couldn’t quite hear. It was like walking through a thick fog. Every few steps after that I would hear a voice in my head say, “Where am I?” and it would take me a second to catch my bearings. Okay, I’m in such-and-such city, and I’m doing such-and-such. But a few seconds later I would forget and then have to ask myself the questions all over again. I wasn’t really exaggerating when I said I could relate to the fish Dory! Sometimes, when the dissociation is strong, nothing seems to stick. It’s hard to even remember who I am and what I’m doing.

As far as I know, I don’t have alters in the way that people who have DID have alters. But I do have dissociated self states, or “dissociated ego states”, that are separate from each other to some degree or another. Each having different feelings, different thoughts, different opinions. It’s just, the barrier that divides these different parts is not as clear cut as someone who has DID, where their alters have a stronger sense of themselves, and are able to differentiate, to a better extent, where one alter stops and another alter starts. For me, these lines are usually quite blurred.

This is what my mind feels like sometimes 

Ho ho, the mistletoe

“It’s getting near christmas and the geese are getting fat. Time to put a penny in the old mans hat…”
My mom used to sing this around Christmastime every year when we were growing up. I could get into a whole side note about my mom and her singing, but I’m going to restrain myself.

I have been feeling extremely anxious these last few weeks. And it’s only been increasing in intensity as the days pass. Initially I thought maybe it was because I was on a search for a new therapist, and naturally I would be anxious about that. But I’ve since found someone, and someone quite good. If my anxiety was stemming from that, I think it would have subsided by now.

I think the source for my anxiety is Christmas. I’m not sure why, however I’m determined to try and find out.

In order to determine why Christmas might be a source of anxiety for me, I must delve into the complex web that is my family. I get anxious around my family. And yet I continue to see them and spend time with them. Why is that?

It’s because I’m still playing the good daughter. I’m still playing along that our family is a regular old family who laughs together and who cries together. And yet… we never cry together. Crying was never accepted or acceptable in my family. Never have I cried in front of my family, and never has a family member cried in front of me. Ever. We don’t cry. We don’t argue. We don’t even disagree. Slight disagreement while still being able to maintain a jovial and light-hearted spirit is acceptable. As soon as you begin to express real disapproval or discomfort at anything that is being said, suddenly the family system beast wakes up from its deep slumber and very quickly and effortlessly buries you under its hideous and grotesque laughter. If you fail to laugh along, but rather continue to challenge the family system beast, you are then turned away from, left to speak only to the wall, since everyone will have moved on without you, leaving you in the dust of your own desperation.

There is no authenticity. There is no honesty. There are fake smiles plastered on fake faces. There is fake happiness gripping tightly to disconnected words. It’s ironic that our family calls themselves a family – it’s more a congregation of individuals existing in individual bubbles, gliding around each other, careful not to touch, but speaking to one another across the vast space that connects the individual lonelinesses.

I put on my individual bubble and show up and do the dance and pretend like any of the trivial conversations we have is actually meaningful. It’s the only way to make it through – by pretending. By pretending we are connected. By pretending we love and care about one another. I love and care about my family only as much as I am glad they aren’t suffering or dying. That may sound harsh but it’s true. I spend so much effort in playing along to the little game of pretend that it is just getting harder and harder to do so. Just the fact that I’m aware of this game of pretend makes it exceedingly painful to be around my family.

I will share with you a little Christmas anecdote that aptly conveys this game of pretend we all play. Several years ago, I asked my parents for some flannel sheets for Christmas. Come Christmas day, presents are being tossed our way and wrapping paper is flying through the air, and I am handed a gift from my parents. I pulled out of a bag a pair of flannel sheets. Used flannel sheets. Flannel sheets that I had slept on for many years as a child and were old and faded with years of wear. And yet I knew that this was not a joke. My mother wrapped those sheets hoping that she might fool me into thinking they were new sheets. She probably didn’t have the time or the energy to go out and purchase a new set for me from the store. So she figured, what the heck, Brandic will never tell the difference. Of course I could tell the difference. I had slept on those sheets for years. They weren’t even in a proper package that new sheets come in. How did she possibly think I wouldn’t be able to tell?

So what did I do? Did I laugh and tease her for giving me old, used sheets? Did I get angry and tell her how insulted I was that she couldn’t bother actually buying me something that year, or that even just a blank card would’ve been less insulting than an old pair of sheets? Of course not. I plastered the fake smile on my face to hide the disgust that was inside, and thanked her profusely for such “nice sheets.” She smiled warmly in return and said you are welcome. And that was that. I probably still have those old sheets tucked away somewhere.

I have to say that trying to pass off used items as new is not something my mom does on a regular basis. In fact, that was the only time I know of that she did that. But this example embodies the types of interactions that take place amongst our family members – specifically, what we are thinking and feeling and what we are saying and doing are almost always different and contradictory.

I just wonder how much longer I can continue to wear these masks and play this game. Will I continue doing it even if it eats away at my insides? That’s the ultimate sacrifice, isn’t it? To offer up one’s own happiness for that of another. And yet, none of us are really happy. We are all losing. We are all suffering silently, each one of us refusing to break the cage of denial in which we have locked ourselves.

Sometimes words just aren’t enough

I want to desperately to convey what is going on inside of me, the sadness, the loneliness, the longing, the frustration, the confusion, the sense of separateness, the sense of isolation, the hurt, the pain, the weight, the pull, the exhaustion, the struggle… and yet words sometimes just seem to fall short. How can I accurately convey with words what I’m experiencing in this moment. I cannot. Maybe I shouldn’t have started a blog, since that’s the point, isn’t it? To use words to convey? Convey what? Anything, I suppose. I long to convey what I know to be true to me, what I know to be true inside. And yet I cannot. Something holds me back. Is it the words that are the true limitations, or is it myself? I wonder.

At this time, when words seem to be betraying me, I give you instead an image.