the red hours
A highly personal ramble that I know a few people will understand.
I do not make friends-locked entries because this is my journal, and if I am going to lay myself bare and open, I will. If people choose to read and comment, they are welcome to it. I'm just like that.
Yes, everything is okay. Sometimes I just need to vent.
It was not something I was ready to confess, but life is like that.
I refused to go upstairs until he and I got to the heart of the matter, which of course had nothing to do with the coins he'd tried to show me while I'd tried to fall asleep, and plenty to do with the symbolism of what had happened. It was simple, it was still complex, but easy to work through, and sometimes I just need that blow across the subconscious to make me realize. And it was incredible how vastly different we were in those moments. I was sobbing and emotional and heated, he was calm and passive and cold. It was what I needed. I needed him to be that stone rational, that rock among the waves, because then I could let my walls down without turbulence.
In the end it was all right. But still.
I have been reverting back to a childhood behavior, of course not realizing. I have been isolating myself, cutting myself away from human contact, losing myself in places other than the spaces of other people. Touch is painful now, even though I crave it always, and this conflicts me, but showing it is not what I want. And yet I am doing the passive-agressive thing anyway, and he feels neglected, without touch. And now I know this, because he actually said so instead of not opening up, not talking, because men tend to not speak so much and women tend to speak too much. Speaking is vital. Communication is vital.
The child I was, she knew things and learned things we were not ready and not willing to know or learn. I have carried it in me for over twenty years, and it still amazes me that I won't let go, so deeply subconscious that dragging it out feels like pain. And it ties in with things in the now, like the novel that's become too much of me, extra veins and arteries. I know how to get There, to The End, because it is all laid out in my writermind. But I'm still Here, stuck in this chapter, and if I have to wipe it out I will. But I don't do any of that. I sit there, and I do other things while my writermind scrambles to think, and I distract myself and get distracted, and I write other things but not the thing I need to write. He knows this. He sees this. Of course he is frustrated. He sees massive potential and power and talent going not where it should be going. But this has been what I've done since I was little. Avoidance. Fear is a funny beast, grabbing hold of you and running, and sometimes you just can't break free because everything around you is blurred and shiny. They all say "You will be a great writer, you will make millions, you will be beloved." And that piece of me that my childhood clings to shakes its head and backs away because what if it's all true? This is what such an anxiety disorder can do, how it can cripple the mind invisibly. I fight, but they just keep coming, over the hills, and I get tired. And I sabotage myself over and over, and I let them win small battles because the bigger battles scare me.
I'm not going to give in to that anymore, not as long as I remain aware. He needs my assurance, I need my strength, and if I can't give those then I hurt myself. Years and years ago in college, I talked about this long and hard with a friend who was majoring in psychology. She was doing her thesis on social anxiety, why people, especially artists, withdraw and sabotage their creativities in certain ways. I won't repeat what she advised me and told me, but I still remember it, even when I forget, I still remember. I just have to remind.
I do not make friends-locked entries because this is my journal, and if I am going to lay myself bare and open, I will. If people choose to read and comment, they are welcome to it. I'm just like that.
Yes, everything is okay. Sometimes I just need to vent.
It was not something I was ready to confess, but life is like that.
I refused to go upstairs until he and I got to the heart of the matter, which of course had nothing to do with the coins he'd tried to show me while I'd tried to fall asleep, and plenty to do with the symbolism of what had happened. It was simple, it was still complex, but easy to work through, and sometimes I just need that blow across the subconscious to make me realize. And it was incredible how vastly different we were in those moments. I was sobbing and emotional and heated, he was calm and passive and cold. It was what I needed. I needed him to be that stone rational, that rock among the waves, because then I could let my walls down without turbulence.
In the end it was all right. But still.
I have been reverting back to a childhood behavior, of course not realizing. I have been isolating myself, cutting myself away from human contact, losing myself in places other than the spaces of other people. Touch is painful now, even though I crave it always, and this conflicts me, but showing it is not what I want. And yet I am doing the passive-agressive thing anyway, and he feels neglected, without touch. And now I know this, because he actually said so instead of not opening up, not talking, because men tend to not speak so much and women tend to speak too much. Speaking is vital. Communication is vital.
The child I was, she knew things and learned things we were not ready and not willing to know or learn. I have carried it in me for over twenty years, and it still amazes me that I won't let go, so deeply subconscious that dragging it out feels like pain. And it ties in with things in the now, like the novel that's become too much of me, extra veins and arteries. I know how to get There, to The End, because it is all laid out in my writermind. But I'm still Here, stuck in this chapter, and if I have to wipe it out I will. But I don't do any of that. I sit there, and I do other things while my writermind scrambles to think, and I distract myself and get distracted, and I write other things but not the thing I need to write. He knows this. He sees this. Of course he is frustrated. He sees massive potential and power and talent going not where it should be going. But this has been what I've done since I was little. Avoidance. Fear is a funny beast, grabbing hold of you and running, and sometimes you just can't break free because everything around you is blurred and shiny. They all say "You will be a great writer, you will make millions, you will be beloved." And that piece of me that my childhood clings to shakes its head and backs away because what if it's all true? This is what such an anxiety disorder can do, how it can cripple the mind invisibly. I fight, but they just keep coming, over the hills, and I get tired. And I sabotage myself over and over, and I let them win small battles because the bigger battles scare me.
I'm not going to give in to that anymore, not as long as I remain aware. He needs my assurance, I need my strength, and if I can't give those then I hurt myself. Years and years ago in college, I talked about this long and hard with a friend who was majoring in psychology. She was doing her thesis on social anxiety, why people, especially artists, withdraw and sabotage their creativities in certain ways. I won't repeat what she advised me and told me, but I still remember it, even when I forget, I still remember. I just have to remind.