Becoming, Lucy

Healing is a load of bullshit.

Apparently you have to unpack something that hurt you deeply. Something you stored in a box and refused to look at. Then replay each detail with forensic precision.

You open the box and carry it around for weeks, all while not feeling like yourself. You overreact, withdraw, make decisions you wouldn’t normally and question every part of your personality. Then some annoying fucker comes around and calls it ‘healing’ because you’re finally feeling.

Bullshit.

What about all the friendships that suffer because I don’t feel like myself? What about the days I’m impossible to live with? Or the guilt of becoming someone I don’t even recognise?

No one says it gets so much worse before it gets better. No one warns you that paying someone to listen to your boring life cracks you open – they just say ‘therapy healed me.’

Fuck off.

Does it even get better?

I’m not even angry… I’m sad. And I’m hiding behind anger because I’m tired. I’m so tired of finding things out about myself.

Those ‘things’ by the way? Good things. But they don’t fit this image I have of myself, so my nervous system is just in a constant state of fight or flight.

I don’t even know what I’m trying to write about.

I hate that I can’t just accept the things I’ve learned about myself… Especially when I KNOW the things about myself already, but they don’t fit the core identity I have of myself. Does that make any sense? Probably not.

Maybe I am angry because I just want to scream. Oh my days, an intellect actually having a somatic response? Should probably message my therapist and let him know so I can get his praise. Pathetic.

If I accept the things I’m learning about myself – if my nervous system allows them to click into place, lets them slot into my identity blocks – then I have to grieve everything else… I have to grieve who I thought I was. I have to feel the shame of accepting things I would’ve never allowed, had I believed these things about myself from the beginning.

I am already living with so much shame. It’s a shadow that won’t give me a moments peace, poking and prodding at me, over and over. I don’t have a single thought that isn’t followed by my brain going ‘remember when?’

Why is everything related? Well… No. That’s a silly question. What I mean is why does my whole life have to reflect the identity I have of myself?

Maybe this is why everything in my life feels wrong. Maybe this is why I believe I am the thing that is wrong with everything in my life. Maybe this is why I believe I’m following a script that was never mine to begin with… Because the identity I have of myself never sat right.

Still want to scream.

I don’t hate healing… I just hate what it’s costing me.

It’s costing me friendships. I don’t have the energy to reply to anyone. To be a good friend and check in. Then I hate myself for it. I hate myself for disappearing. Even though if it was any of my friends in my position, I’d tell them to give themselves grace, to give themselves time. But I can’t seem to give that same grace to myself.

It’s costing me these early years with my kids. I’m not being the parent I wish I could be. I’m here. I’m reading the stories. I’m cuddling on the sofa. I’m playing games. I’m hearing their laughter. But I’m not really there. I’m somewhere else trying to rearrange my entire nervous system. And I hate myself for it.

All this hate…

It’s costing me, me.