Personal Journal

Insomnia

I can't sleep. I've really lost something there. I've been feeling centered, but I cannot sleep. I can't even nap.

So I thought I'd write. What else is there to do ?
I've made a new friend. That's really good. The woman from the other night who talked with me about god. Maybe another teacher is crossing my path. I do know that I want very much to listen to what she has to say.

I, uh, had a pretty potent therapy session with Sandra today. I know that what began today is going to change me again, a skin is going to be shed, and that's intimidating. Shedding skins is a very uncomfortable process, and leaves one far too vulnerable.

Makes me a little reluctant to ... do a lot of things - write in this journal where now two of my friends have access. Makes me reluctant to move forward with the therapy. Makes me want to be careful about exploring my relationship with god.

But you see, the fear has to be dealt with, not listened to.

My journal is about to take a huge step. I'm about to start dealing with some very, very, very heavy shit about my personality and my way of navigating the world in secure tracks where few people have opportunities to hurt me, and I have fewer opportunities to connect with people (and enrich my life).

And I let two people into this journal who I have to look in the face again. And that's never been the case before, except when Jean was reading my own journal (a practice I eventually put an end to by moving here and changing my name).

Can I say what I need and want to say to myself when I know that someone like they is listening? Can I be honest about who I am in front of someone who is not being professionally paid to maintain my security.

Why do I see myself naked before an audience who doesn't know whether to laugh or be revolted.

I don't know if I'm ready, but I do feel like I have to proceed, ready or fucking not. Whether I have the courage to do that remains the question.

In the dark places of my soul, I know I am a coward. Will I let fear corrupt who I am (as it always has), or will I do what they trained me to do in the army. Admit you're afraid, and act anyway.

How and why this had to happen after Jean died, and so quickly, I can't begin to understand it. Maybe from where she is, she has the ability to see this in me, and needs me to know that it's time to fix it - deal with it, I should say.

She wanted me to be healthy. That fact is enough to make me move forward despite my fears.

Sandra started explaining to me the psychic reaction to trauma. I interrupted her at some point, and she never finished. I meant to ask her whether she was trying to make me consider whether I had experienced some sort of trauma that makes me live this way. But I got lost on a tangent and we never got back.

I often, what's the word... wish? fantasize? I often wish that I could explain my nature via some trauma - if I could just point to some event and say "Ah-HA!" Wouldn't that let me off the hook? That would be so much easier on me.

But I don't think there's much of a trauma in my background, compared to what real trauma there is in the world. I think I took an uncomfortable situation and had an extreme reaction to it, and the result made me feel alien in almost every setting in life. So to deal with feeling alien, I made my life the way it is, being a chameleon, to grasp at acceptance even if it was falsely achieved.

That's enough for now.

It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn