6/17/22
11 am
Kayla and I were going to go camping with some friends today and float a river with them tomorrow. Kayla also took a pet sitting opportunity for this weekend and it might be too much for her to do both. Now we’re unsure of our plans, and I feel a bit closed off and want to run away.
I want to be sad and alone and give up on all my dreams. I feel tired of grinding to get ahead and even just to maintain what I have. It takes so much effort just to hold my lifestyle together, and I wish I was courageous enough to drop it all and let it fall apart.
The cycles that I have to keep myself looping through just to live a life in society with my friends and partners and social events are so heavy.
I want to go to Austin to take time for myself and to integrate back into the events I love and the spring that I love and the people that I love. I’m torn because I’m going to a festival with Kayla in August, and it just feels more convenient to stay here in Oklahoma until then so we can just drive together and I won’t have to go back and forth from Austin and spend the money for that. But at this point, I’m feeling like I should just go anyways.
I’m dissatisfied with my job here doing Amazon deliveries. I think it would be good for me to have a month to be where I prefer and to recenter.
~
3 pm
Working on my press to handstand. It’s more difficult than I think it should be. I want to have it down by The Woodstock Fruit Festival in August. I’m more physically toned this year than I’ve ever been in my life, and I like the idea of surprising my friends with my unusual body and abilities. I think about half of my life revolves around being an impressive figure at this festival.
I feel better than this morning. Kayla and I talked, which helped break me open a bit to where I could start feeling things again (which doesn’t usually happen just from talking for me). When I’m triggered, I usually go into avoidant attachment mechanics, which looks like me closing down my emotions, wanting to give up on pretty much everything, and run away from the situation. Even when I’m shut down, I realize it’s happening and I wish that I knew how to just turn myself on again. Kayla tries to help and understand me, but hearing her words usually makes me push away even more. Even in those moments when it’s happening, I wish that that wasn’t the case, I just don’t know how to access my thoughts and feelings clearly. I probably just need a little space for myself and then to come back clear-headed, but there’s always a belief that that will make me an inconsiderate partner, so I stay even though I want to run, and even though I’m in a head/heart space that really isn’t a great place to resolve anything or make decisions from. Sometimes I stay, thinking, “maybe she’ll be able to ask the right question or push a button that causes a breakthrough for me so I can feel again.” Which somewhat happened to be the case this time.
She knew I was disappointed and a little shut down, and she was trying to be helpful and salvage the situation and make it, at least partly, work where we could camp with others and she could still go check on the dogs.
In my pouty mood, I pretty much threw the whole idea of camping out and just wanted to be miserable instead and think about how much better my life would be if I just left for Austin.
Kayla was asking me what I want to do, and what would be fun for me, and I would respond with my typical answer when I’m triggered, which is, “I don’t know.”
And it’s not like I’m withholding some deeper truer answer. In those moments, I really struggle with accessing what’s fun and good for me. I can pretty much only think emotionlessly analytically, or if I do feel emotions they’re more on the upsetting end of the spectrum that make me feel like I want to puke.
But finally, she asked something like, “do you think it would be more fun to just go hang out with everyone tonight for a while, or more fun to camp overnight?”
And I blurted out, “I CAN’T EVEN FEEL INTO FUN RIGHT NOW!”
Which immediately cracked something open in me and I started feeling some emotional flow coming back online.
I could tell it wasn’t everything that needed to come out. Even though it opened up my body a lot, I still felt a new stuck tension in my head, and I really wanted to move that too. I assumed that there was more deep down that I wanted to say, but it’s so difficult for me to access. I really don’t know what else wants to come out, and, like with the words that I blurted out before, it seems like I have little control as to when it will just burst out of me.
I grew up holding my emotions in and having trouble identifying them until I couldn’t take it anymore, and then I still usually wouldn’t blow up, I’d just go cold and cut you out of my life and emotions completely. Now I’m just trying to discover the best ways for me to stay open and be confident enough to take the alone time that I need, knowing that it’s for the benefit of the relationship overall and that I’m not trying to completely abandon anyone.
Anyways, after I felt more emotionally open, we talked more, I felt more empathy and compassion toward Kayla, we both said apologies, I quickly started feeling some sexual turn-on and we had really nice sex, and now we still plan on going camping, which is the thing that I knew would be best for me logically, but when I’m triggered, I don’t give a shit about what’s best for me. I want to crawl in a hole and self-sabotage, and I don’t often know how to pull myself out of it. I have ideas that I want to try more, like going on a walk or journaling when I’m triggered. It’s just that when I’m triggered, trying to get up and change my state is like trying to tear the skin off my body. The heavier parts of me just want to stay shut down.
Now I’ll go pack for our night out and probably practice more handstands.
Write to you tomorrow if I still feel committed.
– With love & deception, H.
Expression H 