Becoming, Lucy

Should I be about to open the floodgates to my emotions whilst sat in a coffee shop after ignoring them for over a week? No. Probably not. But here I am, about to do it anyway.

I have no hope. No happiness. I am just a shell of a human. In fact, I’m just a being. Not even human.

I’ve shut myself off from the human side of me to survive. The weight of everything is crushing, even when I only open the doorway to my emotions just a small amount. I wish I could say I know how to process everything at the moment but I don’t. And my body is punishing me for it. Literally – the universe is hellbent on making sure I feel something – I’ve sliced my finger open, fell into some drawers and punched them with my whole fist after stubbing my toe, walked into an open cupboard with my knee, banged my head – this was all in the space of less than twenty-four hours by the way. I am being punished for not processing, that’s what I’m telling myself anyway so I don’t have to admit to being clumsy as fuck.

So here I am, trying to process in public of all places whilst the world feels like it’s sitting heavy on my shoulders. That little voice has come into my head to tell me to stop being dramatic, stop thinking my problems are big and unsolvable. I am good at talking myself out of my shit and cross examining myself. Not today me, not today (it’s defo going to happen lol).

I don’t want to be ‘fixed’ because then I’ll never feel anything wholly, completely, deeply again. You know I wrote a line the other day that now that I’m thinking about it, I realise I’m wrong. I wrote: “I distrust hope because it has made me stay too long in places that stopped serving me, it humiliated me when I ended up disappointed.” The reason I don’t want hope is because I have become comfortable in my sadness and ‘knowing’ I’ll never be good enough. I’ve become okay with it all. Or maybe both can be true. I mistrust hope because it kept me in places too long, but maybe sadness became easier… Familiar. When did I stop wanting more?

Somewhere along the line, survival became enough. And I think it happened so slowly I didn’t notice it becoming my norm. I can’t pinpoint when it happened… Maybe each time I made myself smaller for someone else, or maybe when I was asking for help and I was brushed off. Or maybe I learned that I should just survive and not rely on anyone else, because they’ll either let me down or belittle me for needing help in the first place.

But I want more. Or I wouldn’t feel sad. I wouldn’t dream about a different life where things are different. I don’t mean drastic changes, things more like: I’m a better mum to the boys, I do something I love everyday, I know who I am, I’m confident in myself… Which I say aren’t drastic changes but would probably, most definitely, flip my life around. They aren’t big dreams, I don’t remember how to dream big anymore but I think I want my ordinary to be boring. I want happiness in the 5am wake ups (this would solve a lot of issues lol), I want happiness when I look at myself in the mirror, I want happiness when I think about who I am as a person, I want happiness in the small moments and I desperately want to remember them and not just the heaviness I was feeling.

Every time life softens though, every time those things start to happen, I brace myself for the crash, but in doing so I just end up putting myself into the spiral. I’ve built myself around the struggle, around survival and if I removed the struggle, who would I be? I don’t know if I would be able to write like this, or care and give compassion easily to others, or throw myself into tasks because I’d rather not feel. If I removed the sadness from who I am, I fear I’d be left with nothing.

Annoyed at myself. Sick of repeating myself. Sick of saying the same shit. I’m sick of myself. Tired of myself. Separate me from myself. I want to borrow someone else’s brain for a day. One that doesn’t cross examine every feeling until it disappears. A brain that doesn’t question happiness when it appears.

Deep breath.

I can accept and live in the hurt I know so well. I know sadness like muscle memory, it’s comfortable, predictable… I can control predictability. And that’s the issue. If I let the control slip, I might never actually reach happiness, I might plummet into the sadness and never be able to find a way out.

I just want to feel alive. Not numb. Not surviving. Alive.

I want to feel my emotions in the moment. I want to process in real time. I want to be able to say ‘yeah, I lived that’ because I remember how I felt during it. I want to be goddamn alive.

I don’t fucking know what I am saying or what I am writing – I am confused. Or maybe I’m not confused at all and I know exactly what’s wrong with me but I don’t know how to be the person who stops surviving her life and becomes alive again.