So it's been awhile. A long while. There are a few reasons for that. I got my wisdom teeth out (all four impacted) which really knocked me out for about three weeks. I couldn't eat or drink or really do anything so blogging was really low on my list of things to do. But I kind of used that as an excuse too, you see I was feeling a lot emotionally and I didn't really know what to do with it all. I have about five started posts that I never finished. Over the past month (ish) I have been doing really well and really bad at different times. I don't know how this post will turn out but bear (bare? which one is it??) with me through it.
Ok so this past semester I really put myself through a lot. No one else put me through it. It was all on me. I got my heart broken pretty badly but instead of dealing with the pain I instantly made myself numb (I know I explained this before but I'm getting somewhere new I promise). Anyway I meant to make myself numb and then move on, without ever dealing with the pain. But instead of slowly feeling things I just got deeper and deeper into a numbness that literally scares me now looking back. I tried everything and anything to make myself feel anything, whether that was joy, sorrow, pain, anything... But nothing worked, I just got deeper and deeper lost in a black hole that was my heart and my mind. I felt lousy, but that doesn't even properly describe how I felt because I didn't even feel that. I literally was numb inside. I didn't care about my classes, I didn't care about my friends, I didn't care abut my body, I didn't care about myself. I really harmed myself and some of my closest friends. I wasn't communicating with my family or anyone. I was weaving a web of lies that was so thick I literally couldn't see anything. This isn't the first time I have shut off my feelings to get over a painful experience, but it is the first time that I have let the numbness take over me instead of being in control of it all.
When I came home from this semester my family could obviously see something was wrong with me, the light was out of my eyes. I had lost that light in mid October and it wasn't really coming back. Anyway I talked to my parents and decided to take the semester off and I've been working on myself since. But because I turned my feelings off for so long, I have started feeling more and more. At first it was good, I was able to control what I felt and what I didn't. I was slowly peeling back layers of myself and experiencing things how I wanted to. Then it kind of got overwhelming. I felt like I was so exposed and honestly I felt like a burn victim. I've heard that if you get burned bad enough all your nerves which your skin protects are exposed and it is the worst pain in the world. Hopefully I don't literally ever feel that, but I was feeling that emotionally for sure. I felt like the "skin" that was protecting me (in other words the numbness and stubbornness) had been burned off in a huge fire. It was scary for me. I started to feel all the things I had been looking to feel all semester - guilt, sorrow, joy, pain, wanted, unwanted, loved, scared - but it was all at once instead of piece by piece. It really knocked the wind out of me, literally.
So what did I do? Was I fearless or brave and face all these emotions head on? Nope. I shut down. I still am a little shut down. That's really why I haven't posted. Because I've been scared to face these emotions. I stopped talking about the things that I was feeling. I haven't been to the gym in awhile. I've just been floating. Going through the motions. Not as bad as I was this semester by any means but I haven't been letting myself feel things as much either. Mostly because it is scared me to feel all those things so suddenly and it was too much. I also knew that once I dealt with all the things I did to myself this semester I would be able to forgive myself and move on but part of me doesn't feel like I deserve to feel good about myself yet. A bigger part of me knows I deserve to feel better about myself though - which is the major difference from last semester. So that is why I am posting. I am trying to break through my stubborn heart and trying to build skin again (not tough skin that won't let anything in, but a few layers that will let me be).
It really was the girl I babysit who made me want to post again. Yesterday she fell off the monkey bars at the playground and hurt herself. It was nothing serious but to her it was. She looked at me with tears streaming down her face and told me it was the worst pain ever. I gave her a big hug and held her for awhile, kissing her knee and hands where they hurt. I gave her a few Hello Kitty Band-Aids and she was okay. She looked at me and looked at the monkey bars and got back on them! She crossed them with ease and moved on to the swings. It hit me that I need to be more like her. It showed me that even though to me all it she got was a little scrape on her knee, to her it hurt a lot. You can never judge someone for the pain they are going through because pain is relative. It's not universal. She also couldn't get back on the monkey bars without someone to pick her up and mend her. Something I am not good at (letting people help me). But finally what I found was that she got back on the thing that hurt her most, got over that thing, and moved on to a new obstacle. She didn't totally forget about that fateful fall though (she had the Band-Aids as a reminder, and if it were bad enough she may have had a scar) but she didn't let it stop her from getting up and "fighting" so to speak. So that's why I posted this, because I needed to get back on the monkey bars and cross them so I can go fly on the swings.
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