Turning Off Emotion: it's what I'm good at

There is no grace, no redemption, no hope in this post.  If you are having a bad time of it right now then this isn't what you should be reading.



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Sadness

Regret

Hollow

emotion and tears well up...I flatten them down and refuse to feel

and then nothingness

 

 

Maybe there is a chance that things will change for the better someday, but I can't see it right now.  Truthfully, I don't want to see it either.  I'm out of hope and my pain meter is maxed out.  I just want a way for it all to stop.  I only know one way to stop it and to stay alive, nothing else has worked long term.

Everything I do is on my list. My secret “how to live life so no one knows you aren't really here” list. I haven't used that list for two years now. For two years, plus another four months if I count my inadvertent thawing, I have been waking up to my own emotions, feelings and pain. Lots of pain. I've dealt with it and had much needed help doing so. I spent several weeks feeling and a few being suicidal. I think I was in that dark place again for about five weeks . I thought it would be a long time, maybe 3-5 years before I would cycle back around to being that bad off again. I was wrong.

I got to the point I could be in church and the triggers and dissociation didn't necessarily happen every service and when they did it was manageable. It took the better part of two years to get to that place. Even then there were plenty of days where I didn't function well and was checked out and not able to do the mom thing.

NO. MORE.

I'm done.

I'm done working so hard to be okay and honestly thinking that this time it will work. This time, because the message is so different and I'm believed and and and... There is just no fixing me. Not a real fix, not real healing, no truly getting past the PTSD and dissociation and the failure of being a good mom, who is truly and always here for my kids. I can't give them these two years back or all the other years where I was trying to find help, but I can give them a well programmed mom who does the right things at the right times(with just a little bit of lag). This I can do. This is what I'm good at. I've done this my whole life except for those times when I longed for something more, something real and for the experience of having real emotions besides anger.

I've done the emotion thing now for the last year or so and it's just not worth it. I've experienced the good emotions in what I think are genuine feelings. It was amazing to feel, really feel happiness and to laugh spontaneously without thinking about it and cuing myself to laugh. As great as all that was I can't keep those good emotions without also keeping myself open to their opposites. The price is too high and I can't keep paying it.

Tears are turned off

feelings are being dampened

I'm starting to look ok again.

 

The true test will be when we tell the boys and we send them away.  Until then, I practice for the big day.  The day when I rip my heart to shreds and pretend it doesn't hurt.