Working Through Rejection.
I lay in bed a little too long this morning. Work was impending. One thing I had to organize for my daughter felt like a million things. The washing machine is broken, clothing is minimal until tomorrow, so I lay there putting outfits together in my head that would look someway professional. I could hear my son upstairs playing guitar, my husband making coffee in the kitchen. I didn’t want to hear or see any of them. Tears pushed through my eyelids even before I opened them and a familiar deep emptiness in my stomach consumed me. I can’t fucking do this again today.
My past is catching up with me. Usually I can outrun it with keeping myself busy, working, cleaning, parenting, giving, taking care of, offering myself to anyone who will take me. I am desperate to be accepted. The depth of that desperation is so great that my existence is defined by it. Not that you can see that from the outside, but take a peek inside my injured heart and it becomes very apparent.
Feeling Like A Problem
I studied the reactions of my therapist on Friday as I sat there offering her my truth. “There’s so much to digest Martha,” she replied with a look of disbelief. ” “You have achieved so much and to others you are successful and very capable, but I understand your struggle.” Does she though? I’m not convinced yet. I’m not sure she can understand how this eternal pain I have always known surrounds my lungs so they cannot breathe, my heart so it cannot pump and my brain so it cannot think. I sit in front of her full of shame, feeling pathetic, unworthy, selfish but that glimmer of care I have for myself has led me to her office for help.
I need help, softness and strong arms to hold me up. The yearning to feel safe and valuable and that even one little thing I desire matters, is relentless. I need to not have to ask for permission to be vulnerable. Yet I have learned that nobody is going to do any of that for me. It always has to be me to provide every single thing for myself, from the physical to the mental and emotional. I have isolated my soul and the loneliness of that breaks me everyday, yet I keep reaching out expecting to be provided with something I cannot name.
What is it that’s missing? How can I have survived so much and still find myself here in my bed wishing the world to end? Where is this elusive place that other people find to lay their heads down in peace? God, my poor therapist!
6 Comments
God is what’s missing. Your “higher power”. Get through the 12 steps and you’ll feel so much better.
I feel like I could have written this myself. Thank you for your transparency.
I can totally relate to this, and so appreciate how you articulated it so well. So incredibly helpful for me. Grateful for your post.
I appreciate your insight. This is exactly what I am feeling and thinking to myself, “Is this all there is to my life?” I keep gratitude up front and remind myself of all I have been blessed with throughout my recovery yet I cannot help feeling that something is missing.
I can not feel this any more vibrantly. This. This is exactly how I feel. Every. Single. Day. I felt every word of this. I am sorry you feel it too.
The great joy of life in recovery is being around and influenced by those who have figured out how to love themselves authentically, without any expectations from others getting in the way. I was always the square peg pounded into the round hole. I still am with my family of origin. My family of choice in recovery over the past 16 years has me believing I might actually be OK, might even have value. I pray you will find others who can simply come along side you and offer you affirming quiet companionship, someone reminding you that you don’t have to do anything but be your best self, which at times means being quiet and doing nothing whatever. Wishing you an abundant journey into this glorious way of life. Namaste.