I Don't Get It

I don't really have time to blog tonight, but when has that ever stopped me. I need to go dry my hair and put my rear in bed, but I felt like writing about what I am trying to grapple with at the moment.

In keeping my 'mood journal' I have come across a new discovery. I don't feel much, and when I do, it is very hard for me to recognize what it is that I am feeling. Each time I think that I need to be writing in it, I think, what am I supposed to write, there is nothing here. This worried me, or at least made me wonder. First, why don't I feel more, second how is it possible that I don't know what I am feeling when I do feel something. So, I have developed a theory.

When facing a crisis, whether self or other created, I experience a tsunami of emotion. They overwhelm me, so once I gain some measure of control, I do my best to make the feelings subside. In other words, I stuff them down on top of all the others. Since I can't recognize each emotion, I haven't the faintest idea of how to deal with them so my only options are self destruct or stuff. Eventually I stuff.

Outside of crisis, I am very near numb on a consistent basis. As I have looked back over the past several years, I notice an emerging pattern. A restlessness begins to eat away at the pit of my stomach. My first conclusion was that when this gnawing began to threaten me, that is when I would go to find a solution, something, anything to make me feel, to remind me that I am, in fact, alive. That solution could be one of several things, meet a stranger and invite him home, go spend all my money at the mall, find someone to go to the bar with....even something so minute as watching a movie that I know will send me into the depths of despair, where at least some sadness becomes real to me. That was my first thought. However, I am now wondering if it isn't the opposite. Perhaps the restlessness I feel is me, subconsciously trying to make me feel all of those things I have hidden below. Thus, the solutions I find, rather than bringing me into feeling, actually serve to renew the numbing that I feel so safe in. Empty, but safe.

My issue now is this, how do I fix that. How do I unlock me. How do I learn not just how to feel, but more importantly to recognize what I am feeling and what it is causing those emotions. I know what happens when the feelings come with no understanding. I panic, then I run and hide, then, if there is no way to make it go away, I cut. Whatever works. Problem is, I don't want that solution anymore, I don't want temporal anymore. I want to be better, to be healthy, to be whole. I just don't know how.

For instance, the comments on my last post were about how upbeat, or happy that post was. Each time I got a new comment I thought, WHAT?? I have no idea what they saw in that to make it seem happy. Not that it was sad, it wasn't. I just didn't see anything upbeat about it either. To me, it was neutral, which is the crux of the problem. Numb is neutral. There is no happy, there is no sad, there is just empty, and empty sucks. Ok, going to dry my hair, night.