Limbo

One week from my blog's one-year anniversary I find myself in a kind of limbo.    I feel a bit discombobulated, unfocused,  and feeling sorry for myself.

My wife pointed out today she thought I had been depressed the past few days.   She's probably right.    So why is that happening?

My first thought is that it might be a variety of things that simmer under the surface of my awake consciousness;  they draw me down and sap my energy.   Here are some possible suspects:

1)  It's been rainy and cold for several weeks now.

2)  My back is sore,  so I 

3)  Haven't been exercising

4)  The anniversary of my dad's death (1983)  is coming up in the next few weeks.   

5)  I am anxiously waiting to hear back from a graduate program about whether I will be joining in the fall

6)  I have been steadily opening doors in my therapy group and letting some of my deeper pain be present to others.

I stayed in bed watching episodes of "Dr Who" on my day off yesterday but I don't feel any better today.     I am in a bit of a funk and am looking for the way out.     I have my therapy group tonight.    That may help.   My family is always a help.   I picked up our guitar today and decided to start learning how to play it.   I've been wanting to do that for some years now.   

I think that a big part might be that I have come into the "stunned" place I spoke about last week.  It is a place I have known a number of times in my life.    It is a place in my soul that seems barren.   Lifeless.   What I think it is underneath that,  however,  is the little guy inside of me who needed to cry and cry and cry and who never was given the chance to.   There is so much pain that lives in rooms of my soul.   I have closed the doors to those rooms and tried to "get on with my life".   But ignoring all that pain does not make it go away.

My coping mechanism has had a variety of strategies:    I can  "go stoic".   This is where I lose affect,  clench my body,  and just try to survive.   Another is where I focus on something else than what is causing the pain:  AKA denial.   

The hopeful side of this period of blahs may be that I am on the crux of a transformation.     There is nothing on the outside that is pressing in on me and stimulating this "stunned" response.   From what I can tell it is about the safe space I have allowing the stuff to come up in order to be healed.

I feel safe enough in my life that my feelings,  the ones that were buried ever deeper in my soul when I was a kid,  are ready to come out and connect to real life.    Maybe I am ready to process more of the pain.   Maybe there is a new me on the other side of the pain.   This is an idea that I work with as a possibility,  but don't really know if it is true.   I am trusting my therapist and my wife on this one.  They tell me, in so many words,  that beyond my buried pain there is a new me.

I just stepped away from writing and took a shower.  While doing so I had a realization of where my stunned soul space comes from.  I think it comes primarily from the time in my life when my dad abandoned me.

Episode 1:  I am six years old and am in the course of being molested by my female babysitter,  age 15.   I see my dad on weekends.   On one Saturday he is coming to pick me up and I am playing outside of our apartment building.   I see his car coming and walk quickly towards the door where he is ringing the doorbell.   He rings it twice and then fairly quickly goes back to his car and drives away,  right as I round the corner.   I start running after him but he does not see me.  I am sobbing and screaming.  For some reason my mom is gone and I am by myself.    I get on my bike and ride across town to his house but he's not home.

What stands out to me about it is my reaction.   I am sobbing and screaming;  I take action and ride my bike.   I am active,  dynamic--I am expressing my feelings.   What changes at this point of my life is the context into which my feelings come.   My dad is not home.  I get the neighbor kid to help me get into my dad's house and I wait for him.   After a while I call my mom and she is back at home.   She comes and picks me up.   She tells me in the car,  "He is probably at a bar--he has a disease called alcoholism."   I don't remember her validating my feelings.   And I know she was not visibly upset about the situation I was in--being alone at home and having dad act as if he didn't really want to see me.   If he had wanted to see me he would have waited a few more minutes at the door before getting back in his car.    And my mom was not going to get to empathetic with me about the situation because,  after all,  where was SHE?   She was gone and just assumed that all was going to go fine.     I was six years old!  

I was under a lot of stress and neither of my parents were able to acknowledge my feelings.  Apparently they expected ME to be the adult in the room.    My healthy processing of trauma,  sobbing and taking action,  fell into a context of apathy and denial.  My feelings were not received.   I expressed them into a vacuum.   

Episode 2:  A few months later my dad moved away.   I remember what it was like watching him drive away.   My mom and I had recently moved to a new, much nicer neighborhood,  into our own house.   I was away from the babysitter who had molested me.   I didn't have to see her every day and be reminded of how she had dominated and abused me.  But now dad was leaving and came to say goodbye.   He drove a red VW bug.   He and I stood outside of the new house.  His car was packed up and he was getting on the road.   He told me how he would write me and tell me about his trip south.   He was going to move to California,  and on the way he was going to drive though Texas and visit Houston,  and NASA Mission Control.   Space exploration was a source of inspiration to him.   That was the last time I ever saw him.

We hugged,  and he got into his car.  I don't remember if he told me he loved me or not.   Then he drove off.   I just stood there.   I didn't sob.   I didn't take action.   I just stood there,  numb.

I was stunned.

Other events in my formative years would leave me stunned as well.   But a big transition from my being able to express myself,  of owning my feelings,  drastically shifted with what both my dad and mom did and didn't do and what my soul did to survive.   

I stood there,  overwhelmed with pain, and had to do something to survive.    Major elements of my personality,  behavior patterns I carry with my every day,  were formed at that time.   These behavior patterns do not have my highest good within their M.O.   I must overcome them,  transform them,  in order to see what is behind the thick armor that formed around my heart.     

This seems to me like a big insight; something that relates to how I move through the world.  It points to the source of why am sometimes emotionally handicapped.   And now that I've named the wound,  I can spend my energy trying to heal it.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,   Ben