November 20, 2007

I have spent the past couple of months feeling angry and hopeless. It's difficult for me not to think of all the time I've spent in therapy the past couple of years as failure. I find myself feeling more fragile today than I did before I began. My studio was cut by 75% to make time for the emotional crap I worked through. I quit a job I enjoyed because I couldn't concentrate as necessary to complete the projects. I stopped all guest lecturing this year. I am no longer teaching seminary.

I look at what I've learned and I'm certain that it was probably necessary, but I still hate it:
1. I was raped by a person I trusted--more than once. I always knew that. Now I talk about it.
2. I have PTSD. This makes me very angry. I don't want it.
3. My mother confirmed to me that, though she loved me, she didn't want me. She still feels no connection to me as my mother, nor does she want that. Instead I have her respect for me as a person, and admiration for all that I've accomplished. Funny, I'm still left feeling that there is something wrong with me, when in truth, she was the one who could not fill the role she should have. She is the one who could not nurture me. I was a child. But part of me wants this to be my fault because then I could try to fix it. It can't be fixed. I've tried for much of my life to build a mother/daughter relationship. She has let me know this will never happen. I'm a little surprised at how deeply that hurts. And as I watch her interact with my siblings, still caring for them as
adults, still nurturing and loving them, the ache seems to swallow me up, and I despise myself because I am weak--because it matters to me.
4. My relationship maturity equals that of a 12-year-old. I want rules. I have difficulty trusting. I don't believe in forever. Therapist helped me understand my emotional age--he hasn't told me how to grow beyond that. Perhaps that's not an option. How hellishly horrible to be stuck in emotional adolescence for the rest of my life. No wonder I hide from people, or conceal the person I really am behind the mask of a charming adult caricature.
5. Facing reality sucks. Accepting it is worse. And now that I've done all the dirty work I get to live the rest of my life knowing that no matter how magic I thought I was, I couldn't change any of it.

I guess all this means is that I'm still angry. And I hate it.