Cricket

I love Alan Watts. He might save my life. I follow his YouTube legacy account and a video released about accepting your feelings. I dunno but when it's cliche, it's cliche, but when Watts says it, it sinks in way deep.

It encouraged me to be honest. Really honest. I thought I was being honest but I don't think I have been. How could I have?

He speaks of honesty as the divine. Not grade school honesty. But the honesty of experiencing and being in alignment with your feelings. That kind of honesty. And no, duh, that doesn't mean we can do whatever we want. I shouldn't have to say that. D

I've been covering up how I really feel for a long time. I've been terrified at a deep level inside of me that I didn't know existed. I think it's why I've wanted to scream since I was at least a teenager. I've felt like there are no good safe places to just scream. The things I am afraid of seem like things people don't acknowledge are scary like they should. I'm so fucking scared. Everywhere. I have no idea what is going on and it unnerves me that thousands of people who have gotten to know me never picked up on the fact that I am low key sure I am unqualified to act like a human. Like I'm some broken version of humans.

But I've been assessed, I've taken inventory, and I've been researching. Seems like feeling you are alien is a common outcome of complex trauma. And I am tempted to be dismissive of it. My parents weren't that bad to cause this kind of suffering. I didn't spend that much time in religion for it to be impacting me this long right? And yet, I keep reading and talking and noticing and it's getting harder and harder to dismiss the signs as I allow myself to more honestly witness and speak on behalf of my experience.

I spend so much time swiping in my head. No, that's not a good thought. No, that's too melodramatic. No, that's too needy. No, that's too soon. No, that's too childish. Like I am curating what I will allow myself to experience about myself. DIY Marie. Custom made to my order. Interative and conscious. Never resting in a viewpoint or plan for too long lest we start to be concerned about our choices. If I keep doubting everything I think and do, I can someone justify to anyone who is judging me that I never settled. I kept asking questions. Like I am trying to prove my sincerity to someone who is watching me live my life. Needing to make sure they are convinced I didn't get lazy with how much I let myself limit my perspective. Gotta keep standing up, moving around, growing, questioning, doubting, giving up, starting over. To prove something.

I am getting the inkling that there is a painfully obvious (now) cycle of me replaying my relationship with Jesus while Christian. Trying to prove myself to him. Beating myself up because I couldn't believe what I thought I needed to believe. Feeling like there is a right way and a wrong way. Feeling absolutely frustrated when I was told the answer were Jesus in me, frantically looking for divine guidance inside me, and coming up short over and over and over again. What I had to tell myself about myself to make up for god ignoring me. And I continue the cycle of being with people who make me feel like I am ignored or who don't seem to need my wholeness or don't notice that I am while. All the while I am screaming with insecurity inside because I know they don't truly know me because I am not being me and so who do they even love!?

I am so exhausted. It was almost easier when I didn't know how profoundly traumatized I was. Because then I didn't question my sanity. I just assumed that I was a victim who was just struggling to heal and that would be my heroes story. But now it feels like I am wounded, know it, and don't have the resources to heal and that that's somehow my fault. And it makes me feel crazy to know how badly I hurt, to experiences my mental wounds all day long, but to be so terrified in my mind that I don't know how to handle the thoughts and the impulses and the dissonance and the self destruction and the reality of the world as we know it. I feel frozen with shock. Not the Marie you know but the deeper Marie, the one you've probably never met. Because I don't know how to let her out. I didn't even now she was locked up.

My therapist is pulling me back from diving into my trauma work, the first who has ever done that. It was surprising at first. But then that opened up the possibility to talk about my resistance and fear to doing trauma work. That has what has got me talking about my religious trauma at a feeling depth like I've never had before. So we are talking to the resisting pieces. And when I am able to access it, I remember what it felt like to be emotionally invested and in a complex trauma cycle with both religion and my family dynamics. I hadn't thought hess things had anything to do with who I'd become but I am becoming aware that they have everything to do with it. Can you go through something like I did and just become who you want to be by sheer will? Maybe some people can but it doesn't appear that I can.

So it seems like I am really forced to consider that I have to follow healing however it makes sense to me. I can't heal perfectly. I can't make a manual and live a whole life, accredited to an excellent manual. That works in the workplace but not with life. Perhaps it's less about retaining knowledge and accessing those assets when in need. But maybe it's more about the felt experience of relating to your body and mind. The attentiveness and affection for the experience. Maybe I am going to have to consider letting go of identifying so strongly with my intellect and my mind. I may be moving my center of gravity in order to survive and not lose my mind which has already lost its body, thus why it's going mad.