Visit with Sharon
12/13/06
It’s taking me a moment to disengage from being task oriented. I spent the morning doing chore things. And I keep having an impulse to get up and do what I haven’t yet. It is anxiety-driven. This feeling that I can’t relax until I’ve accomplished everything, but then anxiety as I yield and get up and do them, because my time alone is running out. So I get hemmed in on each side by anxiety. Two different sorts of anxiety: the first is the belief that I can’t just sit and relax unless I’ve “done all your work”. That it will be hanging over me so I won’t be able to take ‘pure’ pleasure in whatever it is I’m doing if I’ve left anything undone. That reminds me of being 9 and feeling uncomfortable playing the piano with my back to the hallway and the doors open. I could almost ‘sense’ when a door was open by the feeling of mounting discomfort. It was unpleasant for me to stop what I was doing, and have to physically turn around on the piano bench, get up, and cross the room to walk the hallway, testing each door to make sure it was closed. It was even a sort of routine, and the feeling was “I don’t want to do it but this feeling is telling me I have to so I better just get it over with.” So I see that this tendency is something that continues in a slightly different form, or “persists” is probably a more accurate way to put it.
So I need to acknowledge that it’s possible that the wellbutrin may be triggering some of this anxiety…though I think the celexa does blunt the sharper edges of it. I feel afraid that acknowledging it means needing to stop it which needs the acknowledgment that I don’t want it to stop because I lost weight on it and am afraid I’ll gain it back without its appetite suppressing effects. And I feel a sense of relief as I write that because I know I’m telling the truth.
I can see in me though something that pushes me over the edge of telling the truth into taking responsibility that isn’t mine to take. It’s either about taking a good thing too far, or about moving into an unreasonable aspect of it. And it’s a place that’s fraught. Something in me feels I need to be most rigorous in being honest with myself: a part of me that believes I might be lying, and it might be a lie to say ‘I think I’m not.’ And damned if that isn’t the very situation, or a replication of the situation where an object had disappeared, I didn’t quite understand what the adults were asking me and I had played with the toy earlier and thought I’d given it back but couldn’t remember having given it back and thought maybe I had taken it. Plus cognitively I had confusion about what ‘telling the truth’ meant. In general ‘telling the truth’ had seemed to be associated with unpleasant things…also, I didn’t really understand what they meant when they asked me if I had taken the toy, because I HAD taken it earlier when the little girl gave it to me…did they mean did I ‘take’ it or did they mean did I steal it? And something about the way they were “asking” me made it sound like they were telling me I’d done it and I wasn’t supposed to talk back, so I tried to do what would please them and give them what they wanted. So I said I did and they demanded that I give it back but I had no idea where it was. My mom started hitting me around this time and I was crying. I was frightened. I started leading them around some of the pits that were in that field, saying, “Maybe I put it here” “maybe I put it there.” I remember it was getting dark when they finally gave up and we went home but my mother was still punishing me. She threatened to call the police and even picked up the phone.
I know I’ve written this story before, but I’m experiencing it differently now. I’m seeing the parallels in how I treat myself as far as telling the truth with how my mother treated me.
I suppose this has been the work I’ve been doing for years: to get to this point where I can feel intimately my Self, and how very Present that Self was when I was a little girl. I can intimately feel what that inner tone is, and just how cruelly those lashes fell on that Self. That part of me that suspects I’m lying and wants to do a rigorous examination to see (it’s kind of like over-tightening a jar, or a bold)—and the part of me that feels anxious and accused, and is afraid that the “real” truth is the one that I most fear: that I AM a liar and I’m interpreting events and my behavior in the light that’s the most sympathetic to me. That I’m selfish and wrong, and even my efforts to be honest are really just lies. There’s this nagging voice underneath that says that the ‘real’ truth is that I’m wrong.
I suppose that voice is the voice of my parents, and it was meant to protect me from becoming a liar, and being unfair. Sometimes it was purely manipulation, to coerce me into acting as they wished. I think its hallmark is fear, or anxiety.
Perhaps those are the only times, as a child, that that inner Self was palpable to me, when It was hurt. So perhaps it was associated with sadness, like the depressions I’d have as a child and teenager.
Something about what I’m about to write reminded me of a dream I had last night about x. No overt physical sensual touching, but some being very close, our mouths very close and just pausing right on that brink of kissing. Mmmmmm.
So here is what I was going to write: it had to do with again that knowledge that ultimately I’m alone inside my cells, and that at this deep level I decide whether I’m lying or telling the truth in any given moment. Because I’m the one driving this bus, and there are some things that no one else can see except the person in the driver’s seat. And that’s me…so it’s not necessary to look to others to see if my actions are defensible or not. I’ve taken 50 years to experience that I am truthful—god, to say this—to say that I am a truth-teller, that I AM honest with myself, and that my perceptions and my perceptions alone are the only input I need in driving this bus—I feel inside fear that I will abuse that somehow. That if I acknowledge this than it opens me up to being VERY selfish and self-centered, and blind to how my actions affect others. I guess that’s what I’m trying to protect against: becoming this person who, while it’s obvious to everyone else is a bore and boorish, thinks they’re altruistic and charming. I guess that’s what I got from reading books. Often there were heros and villains, and the villains were portrayed in a very unflattering way, and there was always this objective voice describing them. I was always trying to please this objective voice, and not end up, unbeknownst to me, characterized in a negative way.
So I guess what I am proposing to myself as a possibility is the idea that I can safely back up a tad on this self-honesty thing…that I know I’m going too far when anxiety comes into play…that basically I’ve been getting to a spot that others have led me to expect was dirty, but it’s not, so I’m trying desperately to find some dirt to clean up. Overturning every stone and then overturning them again. I can acknowledge that I can keep a healthy skepticism but I don’t need to go so far. Sort of the same tendency that makes people become fundamentalists. I’ve come to this place, I don’t find dirt, I’m going to quit looking for it unless it becomes apparent. It’s just like going and looking for that toy that the adults insisted I must know where it was and because they were adults they had to be right. I don’t have to listen to ‘them’ any more.
Quickly; write down remnants of dreams
1) faded, but some sense of being in a lodge, meeting someone who I didn’t find physically appealing, but did find something attractive inside that wasn’t obviously apparent. Some sense of sexual satisfaction coupled with an uneasy feeling that overall the situation was wrong. Wrong in terms of finding something pleasing within the context of an unsuitable bigger picture. (It wasn’t Joe in the dream, but there was something about the situation that reminded me of that time when I had a relationship with him. I’d just heard from him recently and had a sense of why it wouldn’t have worked for us to continue together.
2) Some sort of cafeteria setting; maybe a lodge, maybe a job cafeteria. Bright, fairly basic furnishings. Long tables. There’s a couple there I know, a guy from Gary’s work, tho I don’t know if the woman he was with is his wife in real life. But I felt attracted to him and we had a couple conversations where I felt that kind of sparkle. Coupled with the sparkle was the feeling of awareness of his wife and unease as to whether it was wrong or not to sparkle with her husband.
3) The beach, I think. I’m walking along a place where a stream enters the ocean and it’s carved itself a channel that’s kind of deep. We’re a ways back from where stream meets the ocean—“we” being me and a small child: I guess it’s Scott, but he’s a toddler. I have him in my arms at first, and he’s squirming and I’m a little annoyed with him so I set him down. I’m not hiding the fact that I’m irritated. He impulsively jumps from the ledge down into the water, so he’s about 8 feel below me, being carried toward the ocean. He’s bobbing, not sinking. I feel an impulse to jump in after him, and I’m not sure if I do or not. I feel the sensation that’s present when one jumps, but I also have a memory about retreating from that point-just-before-jumping (where it’s EVERYTHING but the actual act of jumping) and looking downstream to see what he was heading toward: was it a dangerous or hurtful situation, or just on out to the beach? I don’t remember which I really did, or what the outcome was. I may have awakened first. I do remember that I felt acute annoyance at him after he jumped in and there was someone, a man, present on the other side of the stream.
4) Last night: It’s as if we lived across the street from x, or my parents did. And it looked like the Marysville house (the one across the street from x) and it was in the same position on the block as the Marysville house. I went in and out of his house, as part of a group of us, including my family. In real life I’ve kind of gone back and forth in my feeling of attraction to him, but that feeling was sort of in ascendancy in this dream. Yet there was also a doubt as to that feeling’s authenticity: was it newly active, or was it a revival of a memory of that? The dream house looks mainly like his, but more windows to the east and a sort of windowed outbuilding, or shed. Maybe they were joined together. I can’t remember the details, just shades of a little extra warmth when we’d interact. His wife was there for a while. But somehow we do end up alone and we’re being casual with each other and then we’re moving in close, then apart, and there’s that feeling of a field intensifying with closeness and decreasing as we move apart. At some point it seems that there might have been a pretext for a hug, and maybe we used that as our entry point when we were lying down. We were very close, but not quite touching, poised, again, on that brink of a kiss—everything done but the tip of the iceberg: the kiss itself. Sexual tension high. There’s a sensation that my family is expecting me and may come looking for me if I don’t go over there, and so the risk of getting caught. But there’s a non-sequitor in there, of being in some sort of store, or bazaar, and picking out things to try on, and there’s some sort of problem about getting into the changing room. The stuff is brightly colored, and I think hand-made. It’s like a Saturday market.
Later
Hmm. Wonder why that stuff above is indented. I just came from seeing Sharon; I’m at AnnaBannanas now. Then a peculiar thing happened. I saw out the window a guy in a wheelchair and then the chair tip right over. So I left my seat and crossed the street and offered help. He appeared to have wet himself; I saw wet in his crotch and his chair cushion was wet. I was able to help him up in his chair by hoisting him under his arms.
Anyway it was…I don’t know what to say. Seeing Sharon, I mean. She invited me to come and see her some more, in session, weekly. She said my dreams suggested I was at a bifurcation and that it might be helpful to look at it with her. In the dream with Scott in the stream, it seems I was left almost with an impression of having done both—thrown myself into the water after him, and ran along beside him on the bank. I guess that most of all highlights a “bifurcation” a necessity to act, and to choose. That, and being poised on the edge of kissing x.
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