Trying and failing

Everything my therapist says (which is not a lot really) (oh yeah, btw, I totally started therapy. It's equal parts awesome and horrific) is like a series of bullet points from Duh Aficionado magazine and yet all of it, all of it, is like the most golden glowing genius shit anyone has ever proclaimed. And all of it, all of it, spins me off into thinking about the things I didn't want to look at, and examining the cupboards I didn't want opened, much more deeply than I've ever had to do before. Hence the awesome/horrific dichotomy.

See, here's the thing; for the last three months I've been existing, barely, and certainly not living. Which pisses me off a touch because I spent forever learning the secret to living (which is engaging; as much and as often as possible. Thinking is required but only gets you so far - what pushes you forward and makes you grow is engaging. It's as close to scientific fact that every ancient religious text will get; it's all there, written down: how to live, how to be human. We just need to decode it in the way that gets us to that place - the 'being human' place - and not to the place where transubstantiation is real and you're allowed to hate others for some arcane reason just because some book told you to) and now I have a different lesson to learn and another, vital, secret to unravel but I don't know what it is or where to even start looking for the answers. It's like a computer game where I've completed level one, which was tough (really tough), and now I'm on level two and all the rules have been changed and I could take none of the weapons I gained in level one with me so I essentially have to start from scratch. And now I'm stuck in this weird half-life where I know I don't want to go backwards (I've been there already) but I don't know how to negotiate going forwards.

I've had my heart broken before; a thousand times, of course I have. So have you, so has everyone, but this was different and decidedly darker because it was literally life or death and that is difficult to reconcile because this doesn't happen to me or people I know does it? Death is what other people experience, it's what happens to old people, people who have lived their lives and are wrinkled and crinkled and are done. Not to me or mine. And that's the thing, and part of why I've been scared to make any sudden movements; I don't want the Gods to notice me moving about and moving on because I fear they'll punish me by killing him off once and for all. They've been toying with me for three months and I have had to creep quietly around that whole time hoping they don't awaken from their slumber, praying they'll snooze long enough for him to pull through and start hitchhiking on the road to recovery right under their noses. But that means I can't take my eyes off them for a second, because the minute I do I know they'll wake up and everything will be ruined.

[Before I continue: I know this isn't about me, that it affects other people (not least the gentleman in question) but, on the other hand, fuck that, it is about me. This is how I feel about something; I'm allowed that much.]

So here am I. Creeping around quietly. Praying no-one notices. But that's not really fair on two levels; one - that's not who I want to be and two: no-one does notice. Literally no-one. See, he, assuming he is ok and things do work out the way they're supposed to (I feel scared and dirty even writing that, like I've already jinxed it by saying it out loud to myself that him being ok is a possibility means that he won't be. I'm genuinely terrified of those Gods. It's not just a metaphor) will just look at me and what I've done; working, writing, meeting new people, going to the cinema, sitting in a bar, whatever, and think 'she moved on quick'. I know he'll think that. I would think that if I were him. He won't see the baggage that's been slowly but assuredly accumulating as I stand here stock still. He'll only look at the mirage, the cyborg I created to distract everyone from asking too many questions about a topic I didn't want to talk about. Which has had the intended effect; everyone else assumes I'm fine now because I don't say I'm not ok and also because they wanted to believe in the illusion even more than I did. It suited them all to think I was fine than to deal with the fact I wasn't. I mean, I sort of am fine now, but only because the pretending is becoming second nature. And here's the thing; I've done this before (the pretending I mean), I've made nice with the people who've hurt me, I've smiled sweetly in the faces of people I've wanted to lobotomise - it works for what it is, it eases social lubrication if nothing else, but it's not who I wanted to be. I thought I'd found my way out of it. I thought I'd stopped hiding. I thought I'd learned how to express the truth and be the most 'me' I could be. And I had! That's the thing. I had. But 'me' has been drained. In it's place is a shell that looks, talks, walks, acts like me but she isn't the person I'd just started to know and love.

I said earlier I don't want to go back and that is true. It's not about wanting to wish everything away, it's about wanting to know where to go from here. It seems like everything that happened should have this big important life lesson attached to it. I don't just mean: 'don't fall in love with alcoholics going through a divorce'. That's too obvious and too much about him. I want to learn something about me from it all, see an aspect of myself from an angle I hadn't viewed before. At the moment, mostly, I feel empty, like everything that happened has just completely drained me. I just want to know how to fill myself back up again. I want a manual, a guide that explains what I have to do to get to where I want to go - but there isn't one and it pisses me off. It pisses me off a lot. I'm back asking a question that continuously haunts me and I never really seem to escape from: what now? (Really though, what now?)