A Letter to L x

There is always a return of the repressed.

I've made no secret of the fact I am struggling to come to terms with some events in my past, or that I'm trying to find a way of gaining closure on it all in an effort to save relationships. So, I guess, what follows next is an explanation(?) of sorts, for my husband.

Hello Monster,

I think that this is the hardest letter I ever had to write and the hardest thing(s) I ever had to say. I'm daunted by what lies ahead but I feel like it has to be done without being certain of the outcome. That said I'm lost as to where to begin. I'm scared to write, scared to say, all the things that I have to say because I'm afraid that they are going to hurt you and I don't want to do that. Even writing seems like the coward's way of communicating, a way of getting everything off my chest but without having to look you in the eye while doing it.

I don't know how to explain everything that I have going on inside of me. I don't know what the right words are and yet some how I think this letter is going to be the first of what is going to prove be quite a few to you - public but oddly private too.

Do you remember me saying to you that I felt stuck? That I felt unable to let go of the past and yet unable to move forward at the same time? Well, when it comes to my emotions that's precisely it and it scares me. I feel like all the happy memories I have of us together and all my hopes for our future have been eclipsed by what happened with my family around the time of us getting married. I know you think I should be over it all by now but its not that easy for me. Pure and simply it hurt, really hurt and I'm still struggling to work it out in my head and in my heart. I don't know how better to explain it than to say up to that point I'd taken it for granted that my family would always be there for me whenever I needed them. I believed that it didn't matter what direction I went it or decisions I made I'd have their support, which is why their reactions stunned me so much. I know you don't see this as true or where I am getting that opinion from but the truth is I couldn't talk about it to tell you at the time. I was so hurt by their reaction, so stunned that I was struck dumb by it - I couldn't bring myself to voice it and say it out loud - it was just too painful. Hind sight tells me I should have talked to you about it all, I should have opened up and let you see how deep it all went, I should have told you how much it was hurting. I should have let you see.

I can't answer why my family's approval was and still is so important to me. Perhaps it a self esteem issue or just because I've always used them as my compass. I don't know and I'm sorry that I've allowed it all to taint us, you have to believe me when I say that I wish it hadn't. I'm sorry that when I look at you or think about us now all I see is hurt and anxiety and fear. It scares me that I do. I doubt everything now - us, my feelings, my thoughts, my emotions, the future, the past. Nothing and no one feels certain, or like it can be relied upon any more. Nothing and no one feels trustworthy.

Love feels very raw, feels like something to be avoided. It feels destructive and painful and I want to back away from it in an attempt to protect myself. I feel like I need to push everyone away and just be by myself, like I want to seek out less complicated and less painful ties to people so that I can forget about all of it and heal. Yet I'm too stubborn to turn my back on it all, and despite everything there is a part of me that feels I can wait this out. A part of me feels like if I just wait long enough time will heal...me.

I'm going to leave it at that for now because I have to go and do something else, do something cleansing, so bye for now and I love you.

Love Bear x

A patchwork tangled skein

Not too long ago someone infinitely wiser than me told me “Nothing lasts forever Tash, including the bad times and you just have to trust that things will, at some point, get better.” I know she had my best interests at heart and I also know where her advice was coming from but it did little to make me feel better at the time or to reassure me. Quite the reverse actually, I felt more distressed that she couldn’t tell me when exactly I would start to feel better, when I would stop bursting into tears randomly, when the nightmares would stop and when I would feel, well like me again.

Looking back at that moment I can see just how right she was; in the last year I’ve made huge progress and I do feel better than I did. So feeling awful and overwhelmed and scared and vulnerable didn’t last forever...but now I feel kind of...numb (if that is the right word) and I’m still pushing people away. Worse, now my refusal to communicate with people is driven by defensive anger. I have developed what I think - because I'm not sure that I'm right - is the proverbial chip on my shoulder.

I’ve gone from feeling like I wear my heart on my sleeve and my emotions on my face to schooling my features to reveal nothing. I’ve gone from feeling everything too keenly to feeling nothing. I’ve become indifferent and unsympathetic as well as impatient and laconic, bitter and jaded. I avoid whenever possible any situations which I know are going to be emotional or evoke emotion in me, and if I do find myself not being able to get out of it I switch off and refuse to allow anything to register. I now avoid anyone that I have a complicated relationship with as far as I am able. It isn't a matter of not being able to spend time with them because of our history, it's simply become a matter of not wanting to, of not wanting to be with them and not being prepared to put myself through the misery of doing so.

I’m no longer choked by all the things, all the feelings that threatened to suffocate me. I no longer feel overwhelmed by all the emotions I kept locked inside out of fear for what I felt and fear for what would happen if I let them out. I no longer feel like I’m a two sided mirror reflecting calmness on one side and chaotic emotional disorder on the other. Now the two sides of my mirror reflect the same image: composed nothingness, a void. It's strange because I didn't think when all the turbulent emotions stopped overriding everything in my life that they would be replaced with cold composure. I never expected that. I never expected to look at myself and see a cold unfeeling person with nothing behind the eyes staring back at me.

Is this a part of the healing process? Is this just another stage that I have to go through before I emerge metamorphosed into something resembling a patchwork skein of wholeness that encompasses all that’s happened?