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Sending love and good thoughts

Yesterday in therapy I had a pretty intense session talking about some things regarding my mother and my brother.  After the session I felt good, like I'd freed myself from something.  But today I am very low and I don't have that feeling anymore.  I really want to write what I talked about but now the words won't come out. 

I'm like a child or a prey animal, scared of everything, all the time. It's getting worse, not better. For a long time it was getting better but I feel like those days are gone.

My therapist says that the reason I have so much trouble doing things for myself is that I feel that I don't deserve to be comfortable and taken care of. I don't doubt her but I also don't really understand what that means or what to do about it. I can list reasons to support the idea that I do deserve care and comfort and love, and I can't list any that support the idea that I don't so why don't I believe it? How can I convince myself?

Yesterday someone told me I need to have more compassion for myself. There's another pithy bit of incomprehensible self-help. And here I am still wondering why I can't get the hang of simply being a person, and why I have to be here at all.

 

I "should" myself constantly about these self-care things.  Obviously, that doesn't help.  I have a fantasy about being a clean, tidy person in an orderly house.  It feels impossible, though it feels like it "should" be possible.  Like, what's really so hard about it bathing, doing laundry, preparing food, throwing away the junk mail?  I "should", I "should", I "should".  Here I am, buried under a pile of "should".

With that said, I washed my bedding yesterday.  It felt like a major triumph!

Cascade, I relate to this.

Let's all break things.  And hug!  Thank you, friends 

Meanwhile, I'm over here trying to find a self.  I don't know if I ever had one.  I may have sort of had one when I was younger, but there's really almost nothing now that I can put my finger on as being ME.  The other day someone asked me what my hobbies were and I couldn't answer.  I am empty.  There is NOTHING in here. 

Thank you, friends, for being here, for reading and replying and offering your love and support. I'm trying not to wallow in my pain and angst but also trying not to negate it with apologies or false positivity. I'm a mess. I am frustrated and suppressed and afraid and angry, and the only thing I know how to do with those feelings is turn them inward, into shame and despair and  depression. Make excuses. Fawn. Grovel. Hate myself. Take blame for I don't even know what. For having feelings, maybe? For taking up space and breathing air? GOD I HATE THIS. I feel like breaking things.

...the late, great Ian Dury.

"Hit me with your rhythm stick! S'nice to be a lunatic..." 

From the other side of this, I crave affectionate physical touch. Sex confuses the issue, but I yearn for uncomplicated hugging and cuddling. When I was in my late teens I had a couple of friendships that consisted mostly of talking and cuddling or watching TV and cuddling. I still think longingly of those friendships.

I feel slightly less weird now for my habit of cutting up my hairballs to add to the compost.

This journal, proof that I was falling to pieces even before the two big floods.  Really, I suppose I've spent my whole life falling to pieces, simultaneously scrambling to pick those pieces up and put them back together in an eternally frustrating and fruitless attempt to make myself whole.  I've gone through some better times when more pieces were in place, when either there were fewer pieces falling, or the pieces weren't falling so fast, or they weren't careening around as much, or I was able to pick them up and put them back more quickly and easily or...Okay, I've stretched this metaphor until it's screaming, you get the idea.  Now there are so many pieces and so little me that I don't know if I can ever come back. 

NarcKiddo, I have no advice but I wanted to let you know that I also struggle with this. I have often felt that I am selfish or bad or unloving because I HATE it when my husband uses anything of mine or even so much as opens the door to my bedroom without permission, while he is so open and generous and has a "what's mine is yours" kind of attitude. It's a real thing! And so confusing. I have no answer, but I offer my sympathy and understanding