Dread and Fear

I was dreading tonight. I was afraid to tell A the reason why I cut. I was afraid of what she would say/do/think. I was afraid of how I would react. I was afraid of moving more and more towards the things that scare me, but the things that will help me grow.


After our normal pleasantries, we moved onto other things, like my relapse of cutting this week, my homework from the previous week and my continued minimization of my abuse. The trifecta. I let her read a journal entry I wrote (basically a mirror image of my last post) of what lead up to and why I cut. I really felt it important to be honest with how I use cutting as a coping mechanism in order to quit doing it.

That lead us to a conversation of why I think I need a physical reason/proof to prove to myself and others that I am hurting emotionally. It all boiled down to the fact that I never got the proof when I was younger that it was OK to be emotionally hurt, but that physical pain was understood and acknowledged. We also talked about who I am trying to prove this to. I know I'm in pain, she knows I'm in pain. Have I been trying to convince other people and had my pain minimized? No, of course not. But the problem with that is no one knows I'm even in this much pain. I can't trust most of the people in my life right now (mom, dad, sister, best friend, etc) because they have proved to be minimizers in the past (abuse and otherwise). It is a vicious circle. I want/need someone who always minimzed it in the past to tell me now that it's OK that I'm feeling what I'm feeling. And I'm not getting that.. so that means I must be wrong. Ugh.

We went over my homework which was to help me try and visualize my recovery as not something black and white, but as a gray journey, bookended with accomplishments/changes and desires/goals. I have trouble thinking in the gray. Going through my list of changes was quite humbling. Sometimes I forget how much I really have changed in the year that I have been with A. She even said, "If I had told you a year ago that you were going to be able to list these things as something you have already accomplished/changed and are living it now, you would have one, been so overwhelmed by the idea, and two, laughed at the prospect that you could change this much. In all honesty, this is pretty rapid growth." That felt good... and I actually believed it. I worked hard for those changes.

After the list of changes, was the list of things I still want to change/work on. I have trouble identifying these things when I am not in a state of pain. It's like the happiness clouds my judgement, but I had plenty of pain to go around last week so I got a good list. I tried to prioritize it by putting little stars to the ones I thought needed the most immediate attention, aka the ones that scare me the most. One of the biggest ones for me is my fear of touch/physical intimacy. Just like a year ago I am looking at a list of things that I think are going to be impossible to conquer. My list is a lot shorter now, but the remaining things are the ones that hurt the most. I know that I am going to get better because I am going to keep doing the same thing I have done this past year. I am going to TRY. It is going to hurt... a lot, but I am going to do it.