February 03

Mondays can be challenging for me.  I see my therapist usually every second Monday.  Letting myself feel too much right now, terrifies me.  I know though, that allowing myself to work through my feelings, is really what I have to do.  Rather than sit and intellectualize things, like I'm doing this very moment.  What I'm trying to do as I'm sitting here now, is work my way into the winding maze of defenses I have, using words and symbols and try to connect with those feelings I've walled in.

Mother issues, who doesn't have them.  

I love her of course, dearly, deeply.  I also know, that her intentions have always been good, and that she is a person who loves her children deeply.  She also is a woman who has been very wounded in her own life, and the pains and fears she carries somehow became shared burdens.

We talked a bit about how in some ways, both my mother, and my grandmother, who lived with me when I was growing up, Infantilized me as a young child.  In very different ways.  Breast fed till two and a half by my mother.  My grandmother, trying to dress me, fasten my buttons, tie my shoes well into my pre-teen years.  Yet at the same time, I had many pressures to be adult like, rather than child like, from a Father who felt children should only play in their rooms or outdoors.  Strict manners were always enforced, particularly at meal time.  Watching Miss America, Miss Canada, Miss Universe Pageants, yearly rituals, in a household that limited TV consumption.  I went to charm school, when I was 12.  We were poor, and I went to charm school, 5 kids and 3 adults living on my mother's wages, my father stopped working when I was 10.  I also took Ballet, tap, Jazz dance, and swimming at the YWCA.  

My parents used to take me most places they went, art gallery openings, and friends parties, adult social crowds.  I struggled with my own peers, always, ostracized. I was in limbo.  Never fitting anywhere really.

I developed to be a very intelligent, creative, and intuitive person, but somehow, challenged, emotionally.  Confused, about the boundaries between myself and other people.

With pseudo-borderline characteristics, I now find myself, struggling with a depression grown out of a relationship which triggered my primary issues from my childhood with both parents, struggling with concepts of self, of limits, of determining, as I intend to grow and develop away from the Leila I was, into the Leila I want to be, re-inventing, discovering, self.  Of who that really is.  Wanting to do it with respect, and love, for who I've always been.

In a way that honors and includes the me's that have come before, and the family of origin I came from.

The question arises, how 'normal' do I want to be?  There are costs and benefits to personality 'dis-order'  Can I change some traits, yet still keep others associated?  Where does the transformation of self and health end?

I think about my ex-girlfriend, and the same reasons I loved her, the same 'her' that I adored, that same passion and intensity, was part and parcel of the same things that were unhealthy for me in the relationship.  If she didn't have those elements, would she be the same person?  Would I have the same love for her?  If I change, will my ability to love, or be loved change?

I think about the other 'dis-ordered' ways people live out their histories, their family of origin issues.  The dynamics of adults with Adult Baby fetishes.  Of other alternative ways we create the ability to find balance in our self.  How do I want to be in my own ways of finding my own inner balance.  Can I 'heal' and come to a place in my own personality where I can cope with issues that allow me to stay out of depression, yet still allow the quirks and kinks, the, dare I say, perversions, which make me who I am.  Those things that I celebrate, and have no desire what so ever, to -cure-.

I wanted to sit and write poetry here today, because, usually, that's one of the safer ways for me to experience, express and channel, painful emotions.  But it's not coming.  I can feel those emotions, feel the pain, like a slow nauseating thrum in the back of my head, in my neck and chest, but it won't come to the surface, not today.

Today, it's all intellectualization, all containment.

I'm too afraid, some times, to be afraid.
Too sad, to cry.

It's not all glum, I know this entry sounds gloom and doom, but really, I'm feeling pretty good.  I'm here, I'm clear, I'm writing.  Working, thinking, processing.  Living.

Leila

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