writing my way out of PTSD?

This is supposed to be a thing that will help me heal. Writing the pain and anger and confusion. But writing is so hard right now. I don't want to feel those things, and they all well up in the writing. Someone I trusted for a time told me that continuing to write would be the thing that would help me heal. But the writing feels like being stuck in the sadness and muck and stuckness. It feels pointless. But when I write those other things the sadness pours out there. So perhaps writing it here will clear some space for that other writing.

I feel so broken, but I don't feel like the bad things are what broke me. I feel like somehow I showed up broken and unable to remember how it happened. I want there to be something as clear-cut as a repressed memory that I can recover. Something that helps me to understand when it all went wrong. Something I can point to to explain why this sense I make doesn't make sense in other people's worlds. Something to explain why I'm so afraid. I recognize myself in descriptions of the abused, the victim, the survivor. But I don't think I am abused, or a victim, or a survivor. I think I'm just kind of messed up. And when the suicidal thoughts creep in it's because I can't imagine how my existence might be justified. Heck of a way to commit suicide: by global pandemic. No one would ever know. Their grief would be swallowed up in the collective grief. They'd be part of the community of those who lost, those who loved.

I am so far away from myself right now that I can't feel his hands on me when I can see them on me. I feel so much yawning touch hunger, but the touch available doesn't seem to go there. I want to feel crushed beneath him hard enough that I can't help feel it. Hard enough that my brain goes back into my body instead of meandering off somewhere. Perhaps I do understand why those scary things work sometimes for some people.

Shifting emotions

I'm so ANGRY! I am angry that I've been treated so badly, that I am not given the benefit of the doubt, and that I have to scramble to make something functional out of all of this. I'm angry that you told me you would be there, that if I just asked there would be people there. There aren't. Wishful thinking. You talked me into trusting you, and into opening this pandora's box, and I tried so hard to meet you in your needs, and then when I needed you you ditched me. You didn't even have the decency to tell me that you had changed your mind. You tried to convince me that it was good for me too. It wasn't. I needed support. That's the thing everyone says you need when stuff sucks like this. Reach out for supportive friends and family. Well my family suck, and aren't supportive, and you ditched me and now I'm terrified to reach out to any other friends. I'm angry, and I'm an unpleasant person right now, and no, no one throws you a lifeline when you ask for it. They just tell you what you should have done before. But no one wants to be there when you really need them. I wish I could muster hate for you, but I can't. Just anger and heartbreak and I miss you so much. I want to throw you away the way you threw me away. I want to just say "I'm better off without you." But I just miss you.

I've been mourning my relationship with my best friend pretty intensely for several days. Today I was thinking about what it is exactly that I most miss, and it's two things: us being invested in one another's outcomes, and feeling attuned to one another.

On the first: for many years we've been mutually supportive. When I was preparing to come out to my family she gave me books and music and other supportive talismans to help me remember that I had a queer home. When she was miserable in a failing relationship I sent her care packages, and then helped her move out. We've read and commented on eachother's writing and job application materials, and we've talked about our relationships, life plans, and the things we've been learning about ourselves and our world. I miss knowing what's up with her, and feeling like she cares about what's up with me. But I wonder whether that investment in outcomes is actually codependent? I've felt frustrated by my mother's investment in my outcomes for quite a while, because it felt controlling. She wanted me to be happy because she projected her good self onto me, and she would get really impatient if I didn't take her advice. The thing is that her advice is rarely about what I want or need, but just about ending discomfort. It was frustrating to me because it didn't feel like she cared about me or what matters to me, but only about her own comfort knowing that I'm happy and comfortable. I wonder whether my friend had started to feel like my investment in her was about my own needs and not hers?

As a child I learned that I would get consistent care from my mother only when I demonstrated attunement to her in the ways and at the times that she wanted it. Not attuning in the right way would result in rejection. So yes, my investment and attunement in her was self-interested. I think it's possible that my investment in all the people I care about is self-interested, even though I have worked hard to believe that it was benevolent or loving.

The emotional and intellectual attunement I felt with my friend was extremely nourishing and gratifying, and actually quite addictive in some ways. I think I used it as a way of feeling like I am alright as I am, and like I get to belong in this world, even against what sometimes feels like very strong opposition to my right to exist and do what I do. Sometimes I'm able to feel that right to be internally, and I'm able to trust that the opposition I face, for example, to the new materials and teaching techniques I've brought into our department, is more about the people mounting opposition than about me. But when it comes to my sexuality in particular, I feel a lot of guilt and shame, and have been relying on the affirmation of like-minded friends to feel alright about myself. My friend distanced herself from me in part because she didn't want to be involved in any way with my very messy marriage. She thinks that my wife and I should break up. Sometimes I think the same thing, because the more my wife and I work on our relationship the more clear it becomes that there is some significant misattunement between us. I'm needing to feel emotional connection between us so much, and she's frustrated by my requests, and feeling rejected because of the lack of sex. I'm needing her to take some interest in the things that matter to me, and she's really not particularly interested, and in consequence doesn't really get on at all with my friends. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for some care and attunement, but I'm also aware that the attunement I'm most longing for, from her and my friend, is the attunement that I didn't get from my parents when I was a child. And there's no way to get that now. That time is over.

So I'm grieving today for the attunement I didn't get then and wishing that the need for that hadn't made having healthy relationships so difficult for me.

I'm also recognizing that I might not ever feel good about my marriage, and that I might need to end it to be okay.

Missing you

Before my world exploded
Missing you
Was a hollow place
With sadness and a smile

Now
It's a silent, black abyss
Filled with swirling fog

I can't tell which direction the light might come from.

Riding this wave

I know that I could get angry about this. I could fight it. It's unfair as hell to force me out like this, and it lets him yet again get away with being a bully. That's not alright. But I'm also feeling relieved. I love teaching this material, but I've been in such a state of contained rage that I've not been functioning optimally. This has been stress from the word go. I feel really bad for these students. But future ones are going to get a better deal. I think that the anger I need to process is my anger at having had to work under these conditions for so long already. I'm really angry that he got away with so much, and I'm annoyed that we have so much long-standing distress to wade through. But I think it may finally be over.

What I want to do now is learn to feel safe here again. I want to really take back my space and my joy and energy and excitement over my job, and do something exciting with it. And I want to learn how to more clearly articulate these boundaries next time. Instead of closing up, building a wall, and defending the fort, I want to be able to say "if you cross this line I'll take defensive action". I'd rather not live behind a wall if I can help it. It's good to know that I can do that when I need to, and that my instincts do such a good job of protecting me. Now let's get used to defending my self a different way.

why don't we value artists?

My darling friend M is an artist. Her art is life-enriching and beautiful and important. She works with very young people and very old people and a good number of people in between, and she does work that makes the world a better place by creating connections between people.
M works harder than so many people in more conventional jobs, and she earns almost enough money to live on. But it's not quite enough. She is dependent a lot on family and friends for places to live. M is alone a lot. She tours for many months of the year, and she tours alone. She makes friends and visits friends all over. But when she visited me, S was mean and disparaging and rude to her. S says it's because she's "a flake" but she won't really explain what she means by that. M thinks that S is jealous. Perhaps S has reason to be jealous. M is interesting and exciting and skillful. She's beautiful and sexy and so much fun to spend time with. And I'm polyamorous by nature, so loving S doesn't stop me from loving M. Except that S doesn't want me to, and M is herself monogamous and not interested in being involved with someone who isn't. So I'm not going to be in a romantic relationship with M. But under different circumstances I would jump at the opportunity. And I enjoy the heck out of the time I get to spend with M. I want more of it.
There's an anomaly to the timing of my work that means that I could go on tour with M. Not always, just occasionally. I could assist her with some of the things that she scrambles to get help with, and I could go to interesting places, and get to experience that creativity that is in the places M tours. Except because M is single and I would date her if the circumstances were different, I can't tour with her without S being very, very upset. And I can't invite M to visit as often as I want to. M doesn't get to stay with me when she's scrambling for a place to be. And I'm starting to resent that. I'm angry that someone like M, who does work that means so much to me, doesn't get to accept my support, and doesn't get taken seriously because her work doesn't fit the conventions of productivity in this system.

I want to live a life that would accommodate M and others like her. I want to have the sort of relaxed home that she can drop into and stay in, perhaps for several months at a time, when she's between tours or between places. I want to share what I have with her and with others. And I'm angry that she gets considered a flake for needing that sort of sharing, and I'm angry that I get considered impractical and idealistic for wanting to offer it.

I'm angry that it's hard for people like me to share what we have with the people we value, and I'm angry that it's hard for people like her to do what she does so well.

Brene Brown says that a midlife crisis is the point at which we realize that all of the shutting down that we did in order to survive when we were children is no longer helpful now that we are adults and have more control over how we want to be in the world. We get to dismantle those barricades, and we have to in order to be grown-ups.

control

My mom wants so badly to save me from the pain of struggling and failing. I experience that as controlling. I can't learn without failing. But I'm trying to save S from pain too, and that is controlling. I'm not trusting her to survive. She deserves better than that from me. I can survive this. I can survive recognizing that I've done a really bad thing, I can see it and recognize it, and know that I will fall down a bunch more, but I'm capable of confronting this. I can survive this. I will survive more falls and they will be horrifying crappy too, and I'll learn from them.

In South Africa we believe that the spirits of our ancestors stay in the world after their bodies have died. They communicate with us if we know how to hear them, and they also communicate with God and interact with the world in ways that are just a little more powerful than people. Frequently we think of them as guiding or assisting us or throwing things into disorder to let us know that we need to fix something.

I've always been comforted by the idea of the ancestral spirits sticking around, even though I carry some skepticism. I like the idea of being able to collaborate with those who came before to bring the world into some sort of order.

But as I come to terms with the ways that my mother's boarderline personality disorder continues to impact my life, and the ways that her parents and their parents impacted her life, I'm starting to think a little differently about how the ancestors interact with us. I'm feeling a very strong impact of some very damaged people on my life, and I'm feeling an enormous amount of pressure to continue their legacy. I don't really know how to change it, even though I'm starting to see just how damaging it's been in so many ways. It feels as though saying how negative my mother's impact on me has been invalidates all the good and loving and kind things that she did. It feels as though I'm rejecting the human reality of us all struggling by saying that I want to do something different.

When I was about 13, I said to my mother that I appreciated what she had done by being a stay at home mother to my brother and I, but I didn't want to do the same thing. I was trying to say that I wanted a career too, and that I was grateful that she had raised me to believe that was something I could do. She was so angry. She said that she felt rejected and disrespected. And I can understand why she said that. But I wasn't wrong for wanting something different, or for telling her that. And it wasn't my responsibility to do the work around making that an okay thing. Her response to me was invalidating and frightening, and its legacy is one of my ancestral spirits. There's also another ancestor that tells me that it is my responsibility to protect others' feelings at all costs, and certainly over telling the truth about my needs and desires and preferences. And there's another ancestor that tells me that the pain of the people I love is my fault, and that I'm capable of and responsible for saving them from pain.

Why has it been easier for me to see the dangers of ancestral racism and sexism than ancestral codependence and erasure of the self?