*possible triggers*
who knows, not sure.
　
　



　
Just getting it out.

I figured I could put my thoughts in a few different threads: adult children of alcoholics, depression, PTSD, coping with emotions...but this is where I feel most comfortable I suppose.

I've been doing a lot of DBT lately. I want to believe that if I work hard enough, I can 'rise above' this, if it is truly possible. I know I am bound to run into challenges and am not wholly invested because of resistance to expectations. I don't want to set myself up for failure as I have repeatedly in the past.

***
I've been dealing with my emotions much better lately, however not perfectly by any means. I have been spewing out a lot less spontaneous tirades and my volatility has subsided into mere plumes of smoke, quickly evaporating. My sorrow brings only a sense of resignation now -- and no longer the reckless impulsion to view reality as being balanced at the edge of the world ready to fall into a dismal abyss. I am learning to take my feelings with their full force, bracing myself before their relentless impact. Their waves turning me into a piece of driftwood. The premise of DBT as I have learned is accepting and yet changing simultaneously. It hurts. I don't believe I'm becoming apathetic...just...resigned. I am trying to keep still. As if trying to remain perfectly still with restless legs, itching from the inside out.

I wake up in a clawing sweat. Dreams and memories hanging on to me, refusing to let go. They attempt to gain access to my very core. Fears pressing down onto my eyelids, their shadows filling my head with dark. But my skin has thickened to handle any thorns my past may dredge up and stick me with. They don't stop hurting, though...They may filter into my softest most tender self and harden that as well...then what shall be left but another hardened being, void of the one piece I love in myself.

My pain is no worse than another's , I am just inside of it. My partner wept this morning in hatred of my illness. I wept silently, keeping my face blank. The guilt is overwhelming, but I am resigned to that as well...I am affecting real humans, with real hearts and pain and loves and fears and sorrows of their own...My karmic creases in the fabric of reality are apparent to me. My fate is to be malleable as clay and I am to take my own two hands and shape it...yet...once it was inherited by my hands it was already fired and hard as stone...However, I refuse to take a victim stance --my resignation to accountability is painful, but I am responsible...it is the lovely existential principle that traps me like a frantic animal...
My living amends, my living redemption is change.

It is my birthday soon --the approach of my Saturn return. My feelings of alienation will increase. My awareness of mortality. My lessons will become harder...

My partner decided we could celebrate this long weekend as we are alone (a rare occurance), but my withdrawal from human contact has become adamant. Isolation is an alcoholic's best friend. I do not want to throw my several years of sobriety into the gutter via comfort in self-pity. So I am remaining uncomfortable in not grasping to any feeling at all. Just watching , listening, praying, being...waiting. I crave reassuring and loving arms around me, yet want to hide far, far away. My own arms are useless.

The broken record audible in the back of my head.
My nerves right at the surface.
My ghosts right behind...
My sorrow settling into my very bones.

The past is there, I push it away as I am used to. A person with trauma knows how to do this quite well. The future is unknown and appears as a looming gargantuan in the distance. My present is me, in my body, in my brain, in my pain...Feeling toxic, as if the blood I've called my own is poison. My words are poison.

A part of me wants to go back to sleep. Not physically, but mentally...reaching a somnambulist state. Although I resist it...some driving force keeps pulling me back to the very real present.

Perhaps I am being indulgent here. I am indulging in mental, emotional expulsion, casting things out-- with no expectations...

Growing is uncomfortable as ****. What makes this path such a struggle, not just for me, but for all of us? My questions will never be answered. So I curl into a question mark and sigh. What can be done but to get back up and keep pushing forward? What else is to be done? ? ? ?
??????

There is enough strength in me to be conjured up (and you as well), as I have found in meditations and deep work on my third chakra. But this journey is excrutiating and painful.