I am so glad I didn’t have to wake up and go to work this morning. In fact, I woke up, did a long wee (even as a doctor I still feel awe at the bladder’s ability to stretch) and went straight back to bed for more restless, jumbled dreams about R-, people from my past with whom I hardly speak and other matters that my subconscious deems necessary for processing life’s changes.
Today is a very important day. I’ve temporarily disabled whatsapp, instagram, rightmove and zoopla so I don’t try to distract myself in fixing my current situation or get caught up in other people’s needs. I’ve told people I’m not available today and I’m vegging out in my room drinking tea out of an Epilim Chrono mug and feeling my feelings.
There’s so much resistance. In fact, I’m even aware that I could try to use blogging today as a way not to have to dig beneath the safe and professional front I’ve been putting on each day for my patients and colleagues. It’s easy to pretend you’ve felt your feelings even when you haven’t.
This past week… every morning I’ve woken up and I’ve felt heavy and hopeless. I’ve felt dense lead-like lumps of energy in my chest that I wish would dissipate, though my wisdom knows I need to make room for them to exist right now.
Every time I think of my home in Birmingham, I want to sink. I feel like my sense of purpose and belonging has vanished and my heart aches for the love I poured into those walls. Owning a home is like no other feeling I’ve ever known. Even though it’s just another realm of Maya, in the moment, it feels like absolute comfort and security. For me, it was a message to the world that said “this is where my life is”. And I was ready for it. I loved everything about my home and all the beautiful things that came with it. To say that I miss it is an understatement, especially in the lead up to Christmas where I would otherwise be making it feel like a winter wonderland that’s a pleasure to come back to amidst long days and even longer nights. That was my entire life ahead of me and mourning the loss of that is a pain that feels so huge that I wonder if it will ever go away. I keep trying to fix this by looking at rentals on rightmove, planning ways by which I can forge my life ahead and by purchasing things I don’t need off amazon. I know it’s futile. I do it anyway. I forgive myself for it. Because sitting with discomfort is a process that sometimes involves trying to wriggle out of it for weeks on end. I know this will end eventually because I’ll hit some semblance of rock bottom and feel a degree of peace that comes with acceptance and surrender. I can’t really rush it even though I wish it would come sooner.
I’m a little numb to R- and the loss of him as a person. It isn’t something I feel so starkly in my life and I can’t tell if that’s because I’m in denial or if I’ve just moved on. I suppose the two can actually co-exist. I’ve been consuming a lot of content about the psychology of relationship and I’m coming to realise some truths about us that I didn’t see before. Like the security he promised wasn’t necessarily ever there. That he never actually valued me as a person but sought comfort in the fact that I could be counted on to be loving, giving, supportive and reliable as a partner. That I made compromise on compromise on compromise for him but there didn’t seem to be a lot of that from his end. That I’m anxiously attached and whilst my psyche was soothed by the sense of ‘he will stay with me forever’ (lol), he would flux between secure and avoidant and it didn’t really help things. Our problems at the beginning of our relationship, whilst not the problems that ended us (because I made every effort to accept him exactly as he was, warts and all) still existed at the end of our relationship and I was always the person coming up with creative solutions to bring me a sense of relief and him a sense of freedom. Maybe the degree of functionality I felt wasn’t actually there at all because deep down, he was questioning himself the entire time and he never really wanted to be that involved in us. This is not to invalidate R-. He was a good partner to me whilst we were together. Even when he’s acting out of his wounds and his entitlement, I still endeavour to respect him as a fellow human being and the person with whom I spent a portion of my life. Just like wriggling out of discomfort… understanding and integrating this is also a process.
I am often surrounded by people who love and want the best for me yet I feel hopelessly lonely. I wish people were taught the art of holding space because it would fast-track everyone’s healing. People tend to dislike uncomfortable emotions so much that even when another person is facing them, they react in ways that make themselves feel better, not in a way that makes you feel better. I don’t want you to tell me what to do or say that work is a good distraction or give me your opinion on all the positives of being single because if I wanted that… I would ask for it. Mostly all I want when I reach out is for a person just to give me the permission to be sad in their presence. It’s easy to lose hope once you’ve reached out to a few people and no one knows how to hold that space for you and the greatest act of self love is continuing to reach out despite it. What a royal pain in the arse.
I can’t wait to just feel better. I wish I just felt better. I do not feel better. I cannot will ‘better’ to come. Subsequently, I am choosing to meet myself in this hopeless, aimless, sad and lost place and allowing myself to exist here for a while.
G x
She paints with words 