March 29th 2006

Counselling. 4 out of 6 of the Dahlen house inhabitants have gone for counselling today.
I feel lighter.

Fear bunches up in my chest and then stops everything from getting any further out than my throat…and that tightens to hold it all in until I feel like something is going to break…and I’m choking on my emotions, pain in my throat until I could cry from that, only holding in my tears is the whole reason I feel the pain in the first place.
I let them out today. I don’t remember being able to let go once I start holding before, but today I did. Great wracking sobs. Pain pouring out like from a pitcher, overflowing onto the world. And then suddenly it didn’t need to pour out any more and it stopped. My breath slowed, I stopped gasping for air. I realized that I hate looking like a mess and I smiled. So quickly I went from pain and sobs to smiles and sparkling humour. Humanity is such a quick adaptive creature.
Murray tells me that letting myself be a mess, letting myself fall apart, letting my pain and fear become visible instead of hiding them away like a disease, will allow me to become one with my body – to be in my body, as Paul keeps telling me. It will allow me to accept myself and grow, and become mentally and emotionally healthy, to become a person who is able to have a healthy relationship and to be able to act.
It’s scary to be a mess in front of people. I hate appearing weak. I hate computers inability to understand syntax. There, at least that last one is taken care of. I hate crying, because to me it seems weak. The lack of tears is connected with strength to me, but to Maki and Tyler it would make me a cold-hearted bitch.
I never saw my parents deal with pain in a healthy way. Dad ran away, Mom grew angry and yelled and swore. I rarely saw them cry with pain. One memory of Mom crying in pain, when she spanked me in my taffeta dress and then saw me, crushed and hurt…and then she cried because she had done that to me. One memory of Dad crying in pain, when I told him how much I had wanted to be with him as a little girl and that I didn’t want to have to tell him…when he realized that I was right, that he should have known that I wanted to be where he was, that he needed to spend time with me to show his love.
I got the idea that strength is good from them. From what they didn’t tell me as much as what they did, from their inaction as much as from their action.
When I love and accept myself, flaws and all, mess and weakness, I will find it impossible to not be present in my body.
This is going to be a long fricken process. But that is okay. I feel peace at last.
I feel like it will happen, and God is in charge of the timetable. And I can accept that, right now, at least.

For a change, crying hasn’t made me headachy. I actually feel better for having let go of my tensions. Maybe because I actually let go of them instead of shifting them around to another part of my body.

I wish my knee wasn’t injured. I’m glad I know that I hate feeling like a ball of weakness. I am glad I know that I hate weakness. It gives me a starting point to jump off of, the discernable edge of a cliff from which to launch myself.

Maybe today I will be able to simply be, and not hold myself in judgment.