Growing Pains

I avoided change for so long. Change hurts, it requires us to reflect on who we once were and who we want to become.

I made some big changes in my life, and I'm so thankful that I gathered the courage and resources to do so. I'm trying so hard to move on. This is something that cannot be forced, and I've been forcing it and faking it. I find myself overwhelmed with unexpected strong feelings and thoughts that are disturbing to me. I feel my moral compass resetting once again, so I'm judging myself. I am actively fighting the urge to beat myself up for living the lie so long, that my reflexes for hiding my true self, my thoughts and feelings, are overwhelming. I know I am able to speak my mind, and it is a freedom that has cost me a lot. But I am still not able to. I have a lot of work to do, meditation to complete (despite not sparing the concentration to do so), and time to pass to be able to fully toss away the shackles.

It is so upsetting to me that I allowed myself to be abused and silenced for many years. I still don't have the self-love required to accept it, though I pat myself on the back for the strength to declare, no more. I have the intellectual skills to explain it away in practicalities and necessities of living. They aren't enough. What a fucking waste of my youth and childbearing years. I could have chosen a partner who would have loved me how I am, would have grown with me, would have loved and cherished our children. I refused to pull my head out of the sand for so many years that I'm now looking around, and in some ways, wanting to pretend again. I want to be able to take him back, and believe that his intentions can be substituted for his actions, attention, and love. They can't. Once your head is out of the sand, it hurts. It hurts so much to not be able to return to blissful ignorance. (Though for me, the dissonance and ignorance was uncomfortable, not blissful.) It is time for me to move along and stop staring at the damned hole in the ground where my head used to lie. I don't know how to move along from the shame and the grief.

The nightmares. Someone mentioned this and I was relieved. Nightmares appear when there is a disturbance in the sleep schedule mixed with repressed feelings and traumatic events and stressors. This can be a plague. I used to manage this by waking up fully and writing about the dreams. I don't bother with that anymore, but maybe I should. Facing it all head-on and trying to accept it that way isn't working.

Food: I love food. I love eating. I'm having trouble with it, I'm just chronically not hungry. It is weird. This hasn't happened to me since attending to a close family member in the ICU many years ago. I lost about 8 lbs then. I lost about 5lbs so far now.  In some ways I wish it were more weight lost, more aversion to food, but I know the weight will all pile back on (and I will gain double, as I usually do) when I start recovering.

I haven't been practicing yoga, I don't know why. I haven't been able to make it to class, but I have also been avoiding the mat at home. Investment in one's self, and self love, is a huge job. At the moment, I'm glued to my phone in bed, yearning for human connection more so than self-investment. I need more self-investment and self-love though. Maybe I need the human connection too, though. Maybe loneliness is the root of all evil.