Learning How to Speak Again, Part 3: I'm Overwhelmed

Thursday, October 24th, sometime around 11pm

Today I sat on the edge of a giant plaid couch.

"You'll have to sit really far over, because the middle sinks," the therapist said on our first day, which was exactly one week ago.

And now, after a week of looking forward to this second session (pining for some clarity), I finally sat there, my purse and my keys slowly sliding away from me into that gaping sinkhole that was the middle of the couch.

"So, what's going on?" She asked. "You seem sad."

"I'm tired," I said. I rubbed my eyes. I pulled my hat down farther over my x-shaped scar. I nestled into the cushions of that plaid couch, wanting to fade into it completely.

This is not fun, I thought.

I began to talk, her questions guiding me hither and thither, across the many different terrains of my life, the good, the bad, the awful, the horrendous, the joyful, the mediocre.

And

Friday, October 25th, 1:52pm

Well, that's as far as I got last night. All night during my shift at work I felt a heavy pressure in my throat. I wanted to release it, but I didn't know how. I tried tears. Before going into work I sat in the parking lot listening to melancholy country music and trying to muster up the emotions I needed to finally manifest that horrible sinking sensation into something I could let out.

At work, people asked me why I was down. Here's the thing, I didn't even know.

That therapy session had opened a box of dark, old pain. And I had pulled out things I hadn't discussed in years (if ever, at all...).

"I like to close my sessions well," the therapist said. "I don't want you to leave here feeling raw."

Well, consider me raw.

I thought writing would help me move through these murky waters of whatever-this-is-I'm-feeling, but I sit here unable to capture it. Maybe it's one of those situations beyond words.

I think I would like to dig my hands into some clay, to feel the ache in my arms as I push and pull against the rhythmic spinning of a lump of earth not yet formed into anything. Or to graze the blade of a tool across the outside of a bowl, watching the excess ribbons of clay shedding over the wheel.

Or maybe I need to play the piano, to lose myself in that way. The keys have always provided some distraction.

I threw myself into paperwork during my shift, training the newer staff, reading over scholarship applications and trying to dull that ache with productivity.

It didn't really work.

On my break, I went to the childcare center. I had started working there when I was 19. I remember the long shifts spent staring at the clock as toddlers tumbled around me. I saw my reflection in the glass as I ambled down the hallway. I am 23 now. Sort of a woman. My wedges clicked loudly on the tile and I considered how many different versions of me have walked that hall.

"I'm here to hold a baby," I said as I waltzed into the youth development center.

"Um... okay..." the staff said as she handed me a baby who still had tears in her eyes. She had no idea who I was, didn't know that this had been my job long before it had ever been hers.

I wrapped my arms around the little one and breathed out a sigh of relief. It was physical connection with another human being, something I hadn't experienced in weeks. I smelled her baby head and felt her chubby fingers explore my face.

Who are you, stranger? She asked with her big brown eyes.

We walked over to the window of the youth center and looked out to the lobby, waving to my coworkers at the front desk. They are also my babies, and I watched them closely through the glass, waiting for the moment they would wave me back to help them with something.

The little one stared at me. She was tired, and occasionally let out a whine, her head bouncing into my shoulder. She was resisting sleep.

Behind us, the cries of another infant rose shrilly. Three staff gathered around him, rocking the carseat and shaking a rattle.

The raw pain of a baby crying is just so relatable to me. I had been trying all day to get tears to come, and they simply wouldn't.

I remembered when I was a nanny to my sweet little blond love of a baby, JB. When he was very small, he would cry sometimes, and if he was inconsolable, I would cry with him. This baby reminded me of him. Of all the crying babies I have held. With my little brown-eyed companion still nuzzled into my shoulder, I knelt down next to this tragic little fellow and started to rub his foot. It's what I always used to do with the upset babies in the youth center.

I used to sit in the rocking chair, the babies laid out across my lap. With one hand I'd cradle their necks, and the other I'd rub their feet. I was amazed how many times it soothed them, even when a bottle or a song wouldn't.

This little one, distracted for a while by my foot rub, stared at me with huge blue eyes, his lips quivering as his tears paused on his cheeks. For a few minutes, he was completely calm. We shared a look, our blue eyes meeting, tears in his, none in mine (frustratingly enough).

Rising up from the side of his carseat, his cries started again. A little pang shot through my heart. For five minutes I had soothed myself while soothing him.

I handed my little brown-eyed girl over to her mother, who had come to collect her, and I walked back to the front desk, running into my coworker on the way.

"I was hoping you'd get out of your funk at some point tonight. Glad you finally did."

I watched the lights of the youth development center flick out one by one as the staff closed up for the night. The lobby became quieter, my coworkers started to dwindle out of the building as it got closer to ten.

On the drive home, my tears welled up in my eyes. Whenever I feel pain like this, it is so bittersweet, because it is so mixed with other things.

I sat down last night at my laptop and attempted to explain. But sometimes, I can't with words. I was considering a hundred different things at once as I sat there.

Being kissed on the parkway under a dark night sky. Dialing 911 from a locked bathroom in Atlanta. Petting the curly head of my dog as she heaved her last breaths on the floor of a vet's office. Waiting on hold with a rehab center while I tried to find out where my boyfriend was. Waking up in an ambulance and not knowing my own name. Being seven years old and seeing my new backyard for the first time. Falling on my knees in the snow at age 14, utterly convinced there was a God up there who loved me. Ten years later, seeing a shooting star and thinking the same thing.

There is just so much. It is overwhelming.

As I pulled into my driveway last night, I could still smell the sweet baby scent on my jacket. It was comforting to think of those little ones, by now at home, sleeping soundly. Or perhaps not. Either way, they were loved.

And I am too. I went inside and gave my mother a hug, thinking how precious it is that once upon a time, I was her baby.

Tears finally came this morning. Alone in my house, I sat down to write, and I ended up crying.

Do I feel better?

I don't know that I feel better. But I feel something. And that's all I needed.

Aloneness

[written september 7th, 2019]

Starting is always the hardest part.

It took me twenty minutes alone just to type that sentence. After staring at the blinking cursor and trying to determine exactly what comprises that feeling in the pit of my stomach, that raw, slightly sweet, sickening feeling that sinks from my ribcage down and slowly rolls back and forth, threatening to burst out of my body in some form of tears or rage or a deep, sad sigh.

It is hard to express that feeling, though I know everyone has it at some point or another.

And it is my instinct to mend these uncomfortable moments with some other emotion or sensation.

Today I felt that horrible feeling sink into me in the middle of my work shift, following events I still don’t care to discuss, and quite frankly, it made me want to puke.

A year ago, perhaps I would have instantly flown into action to relieve that feeling. (What is it, even? It’s hard to treat if you can’t diagnose. I’d guess it’s a combination of disappointment, hurt, and fear.) I’d find a way to quickly self soothe, whether that’s to delude myself with some fantasy concocted to buffer the pain of reality, or to create a new situation in order to distract and distance from that feeling of dismay.

I still want to self soothe. It’s a terrible feeling, so mighty for me today that it drove me to the keyboard. The feeling makes me ache to write. To draw that feeling into something specific I can hold.

I despise feeling like I’m suddenly floating in a stretch of aloneness. That feeling immediately pulls me out of reality into an overwhelming sensation of doubt and discontentment. It stirs up an illness I didn’t know was there.

Lots of things can turn on this gross, nauseating pulse inside me. Finding out something you don’t want to know, for example. Bad news. Betrayal. Even just that feeling of dread that sometimes happens for no reason. And it’s a difficult feeling to feel. I try to put it into words, into something tangible, so I can turn the light on in the dark room of how I feel.

Feeling it is like holding a soapy dish, hot and uncomfortable, it threatens to slip from my hands. It hovers in my belly like a sick butterfly. I want to hold it like a ball of yarn and let it slowly unravel, releasing with it all the fuzzy thoughts I can’t quite materialize. How can you let go of something that you can’t hold? The feeling holds me, I am a prisoner to the whims of my mind, and it is this I am trying to change.

I want to flip the light on, banish the darkness in one fell swoop and take that first waking breath that assures you “It was just a dream.” Except it was not. It was real. What happened was real, and what I felt was real. But I can leave that feeling, or at least, I can try.

I just want to be loved. To be known. To live in a world without comparison. But that simply isn’t possible, because to live without comparison would be to live alone. I despise the fact that I am not just me, that I do not exist without the existence of others. How could I? To exist in a vacuum would not be life, if the main purpose of life is to create and perpetuate that life force.

I don’t want to be compared to her. To them. To all the other beings that I feel I compete with for love and companionship. To all the beings I want to love and do, or the ones I want to love but can’t - or even worse, the ones I don’t want to love but can’t help loving.

It sickens me that when I am alone, I am not fully me, because I am thinking of him. While he is away living his own life, I am also living his life. I live it inside my own life, so that my life doesn’t feel like it’s my own anymore.

I can never be fully alone, and that is what has struck me as I recently have tried. I, in my mind, exist alongside every person I’ve ever cared for. I hold onto them for far longer than I’d like to. Their words ring in my head, their touch lingers on my skin, the daydreams of what they are doing scatter through my mind as I try and focus on my life.

What is my life?

I have created a life in which I love other beings very deeply. A deep desire to connect with others has been a constant, permeating theme resounding through all my decisions. But what do you do when that all goes sideways? When you reach through the stretch of aloneness to grab onto someone else, and they aren’t there? Or, they can’t reach back. Maybe they don’t want to.

Learning How to Speak Again: Part 2... Hate, Love, & Wholeness

Last week as I was hyping myself up to start writing again (earnestly, honestly, and regularly) I had an idea for how I wanted to structure the journey.

"I think I'm going to write about my resentments," I announced to an uninterested coworker. "One post for each resentment."

"Do you have a lot of those?" He asked.

Men, church, middle school, doctors, law enforcement, capitalism, past employers, old friends, summer camp, perfect people, abuse, societal expectations... 

As I considered how many places, people, or situations I resented I felt a pang of insecurity. And then a flood of debilitating "monkey mind" thoughts.

No one wants to hear you whine, Sarah, gosh. 

Why are you so negative? 

Are you really so self-absorbed that you have to share every ounce of suffering you've been poured in life?

No. One. Cares.

I laid in bed later that night contemplating why I felt such a strong urge to dive into my resentments. Does this make me a negative, tormented person? Shouldn't I just move on and write about happier things?

I resolved to try.

This morning, I opened my journal. "Things I Like," I scrawled across the top of the page.

"Flowers. French Braids. Coffee. Reading. Music. Children. Languages. Holding hands. Laughing."

Fine, a list is all well and good, but we are here to WRITE, to speak, and for me, that means to discover the truth about things (the truth about what things are to me, that is). And that requires going deeper. Pulling out the 'if's, 'and's, 'but's, and 'why's.

I started to write, determined to stay chipper and positive. But as the words flowed, I found myself struggling to be authentic. I was attempting to edit out the resentment. And with that, I lost the depth of my voice. I was acting, not speaking.

I could dive into any of the "Things I Like" things listed above and somehow, ultimately, I would end up back at one of my dreaded resentments.

And then it occurred to me.

The things that bring me joy are not wholly positive things. My resentments are not wholly negative things. I am attempting to dichotomize my life into good and bad.

That, my dear readers, is not how life works.

Perhaps my resentments are not merely negative vibes I want to spew out into an already dark world. Maybe they are the entry point to dive deeper into the things I love.

I hate some things. But I will say, most of the things I hate are closely connected to things I love. Isn't that how it works? We hate things because they threaten the things we love. We love things because they help steady us against the things we hate. It is all connected.

It is all connected.

My resentments are not things to absolve, to erase. They are the painful, unpleasant, uncomfortable aspects of all the good things in life. They are the trigger point for change. They are the road to better understanding myself, others, and everything else. As I give them a voice, they teach me. And like grief, jealousy, despair, and fear, resentment does not have to be permanent.

It can be a teacher. It can change me, and I can change it.

I can allow the things I resent to exist, and I can allow grace and forgiveness to stand there beside me as I face them.

I resent some things that have happened to me. Only because they threaten the beautiful things in life that make it worth living for me. Betrayal, violence, heartbreak, grief, disappointment- these are all the dark sides to the joyful aspects of being human.

And for me, since I feel these "dark sides" so very, very deeply - I think that they provide an incredible entry point into writing, into processing, into changing, and into loving, even.

So I will be writing about my resentments.

And it won't be all bad.

It will ultimately be just another way that I honor the things I love. It is an undeniable, important aspect of "wholeness" which is ultimately what I strive for when I write.

I am not scared of the things I resent. (Well... maybe a little.)

I am only scared of the things I love being destroyed. Of losing the good to the bad. And once I accept the fact that no matter how great my resentments, they can't destroy me or the things I love, and that the good things will continue to exist despite the bad things, well... then I guess we can just chat about it and it's really not the end of the world, huh?

"You are equal parts bitter and sweet," a lover once said to me in a letter. After he broke my heart that phrase echoed in my mind.

So are you, I thought. So are most things.