Still attempting to shed obligations, big and small. Big as in one too many college courses and one too many social plans, small as in notify lists and immediate email responses. I feel guilty if I don't write back to people the day they write me, for instance, but that's my archaic sense of etiquette. Every time I release myself from a commitment I feel an almost physical easing, a sense of weight tumbling off. It's not that I don't want to do some of these things, or enjoy them, it's just too much. Like putting extra icing on a cake, or going for a higher weight on the machines at the gym despite warning signs from tendons and ligaments, I have been piling on too many good things. I'm trying very hard to change that habit. Bless my friends for understanding this is something I have to do. A hard pruning now will ensure bountiful blooms later on.
I can tell this is going to be a metaphor-laden entry. Those with easily triggered gag reflexes or degrees in English Literature should leave now, it's going to get purple and very, very personal around here.
Meanwhile, I've been rooting around in the ol' psyche trying to locate the source of my panic attacks. This form of illness is my body is sending a message in conjunction with my mind, and I want to find out what I'm trying to tell myself. I'm quite serious about this. Most anxiety disorders are psychological in origin, not physical. They're the end product, not the source. Remember, I've been through this twice before, and each time the root cause was a behavior (or behaviors) that used to work, stopped being useful or necessary when circumstances changed, and became toxic. It's something I can't work out by myself because it's too frightening to address, too upsetting to deal with, too basic and too old. It's almost like a string that's been wrapped around flesh; as the body grows the string is gradually buried in the flesh where it causes unseen but absolutely genuine pain. That's why I go to a shrink when the panic attacks occur. And yet it's not always necessary to dig too hard for that string. Sometimes information hides in plain sight, as it were. Psychologists are champion at knowing where to look.
I've been fooling around with the life purpose stuff over the last few weeks, but I haven't been able to get to grips with a lot of it. Too vague, too large. I tried several different question and answer type of things, but I kept writing as though someone were going to read it instead of spilling my guts. I don't think I know how to write privately, freely, uninhibitedly. This is a disconcerting and disheartening thing to acknowledge. What could possibly happen if I did? Would the world blow up? Would I be outed as a freak? Would everyone instantly cease to love me, my cats leave home, my forehead blaze with a sign of the devil? I mean, what am I worried about if no one is going to see it?
I have no idea. Well, I know one thing. I know that I always found the idea of God really creepy because he was presented as omniscient and omnipresent. I thought God was always spying on me, and I hated that. I bitterly resented feeling I could never be alone even for an instant. It was so stifling that I decided I could not believe in a God that wouldn't allow me mental privacy, and I gave up religion at an early age. But it established a distrust that I can't quite shake. I don't have any place to let down all the barriers. How sad is that?
For those of you who believe in God, I understand that you feel differently about this issue and I don't want to discuss it. I'm simply explaining my very young self's reasoning. And for those of you who think I say exactly what I think in this diary, you're not paying attention. I rarely say exactly what I think, and I'm usually appalled when I forget to engage the internal editor. I do, however, try to be truthful, which is different.
Anyway, I stopped trying to find my life's purpose at least as far as filling out surveys went. I got very depressed for a while, something I loathe and fear. In fact, I scared myself silly over how bad I felt. My doctor sorted that out -- he reminded me that depression is part of the normal array of emotional states, and it isn't an all or nothing proposition. But I still didn't pursue any systematic attempt to find out what was going on in my head. There was too much going on outside it with the dog, and school, and the airlines and whatnot.
Well, today I think I finally got a whole lot closer, thanks to some judicious questioning on the part of the good doctor. To recap, the first big breakthrough on understanding what's going on with me was during our very first session: recognizing the pattern of smacking up against endings and transitions, and panicking as a result. The second was identifying what I thought was so terrible about them: I'm terrified when forced to confront the terra incognita of radical transition. I sense a void which I'm desperate to fill with habit, activity, goals. The third, which we got at today, was specifying what that void was. Why is it I'm not happy with the seemingly tailor-made externals of my life? I have a nice home, a wonderful relationship, beloved pets, a garden, an interesting job, plenty of money, opportunities to travel, residence in the place I'm happiest, surrounded by friends...what's not to like? Well, nothing. I do like those things, every one of them. I arranged my life this way so that I could enjoy all those things, and as far as it goes I am made happy by them.
As far as it goes. Aha.
What piece is missing, the therapist asked, that makes the rest of it not enough? And I immediately knew what it was. It wasn't a mystery, I've tried to figure it out before but I always approached it obliquely. I've even written about it here. It's just that I couldn't or wouldn't recognise it as the key to everything else. It's not possible to tell you without sounding like a self-help book but that's okay, I know you can deal with it.
What's missing is the most authentic, most personal part of my identification. I am an artist, an immensely creative person, and I've ruthlessly, deliberately suppressed that aspect of myself over the years. It's been channeled into what I perceived as safe avenues. Aside from writing, a bit of web design, and a certain flair for party-giving I keep my creativity on a tight leash. I no longer pursue the very things I love the most: singing, playing instruments, drawing, learning foreign languages. How this happened and why is between me and the shrink, but I tell you true, this is going way back and deep down. I've denied a large and basic component of my being, and without it I don't know who I am or why I am taking up space on this earth. No wonder I've felt lost and purposeless.
I am so excited to figure this out, and so intensely moved by facing up to it. I know good and well it's going to be tough to turn it around. There is some serious work ahead of me, but inside there's a bubble of joy that tells me I'm on the right track, at last, at last.
You can't imagine how much it hurts to know I did this to myself, and how I long for the coming days as I break down the barriers. I'm going to be whole, and I'm going to be free.
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