abide

another day. Christmas Eve. feels weird this year, with COVID and all. today is kind of busy with last minute gift wrapping and drop offs and grocery shopping for the next few days. everyone i live with wants to make the holiday special and sparkly and i just want to hide under a rock for 4 days and come out when it’s over. i don’t know what’s up with my relationship to the holidays but i am beginning to think i don’t like them. pure and simple. and i never have and i am afraid i don’t know how to repair that for the future. i think i always wished Christmas would feel like the movies, magical and connected and wondrous, and it never did.

anyway, i had a very interesting day yesterday with a lot of insight into my recent depression. not that it has gone away but i do seem to have a better idea of why it’s here. i feel like i often say to myself that i have no good reason to be depressed and everything is going well and what’s wrong with me? but my therapist pointed out that i have lots of valid reasons, that i have wounded parts inside me from my childhood when i had perfectly reasonable needs that weren’t met which made me feel sad, and angry, and scared, and hopeless. and actually the problem is i didn’t feel those things then, i just stuffed it down and tried to soldier on because that’s what good girls are supposed to do. and now it’s all coming out to be felt and acknowledged and heard and damnit it’s exhausting. it feels like it’s out of left field and untied to my present-day experience but really, how do i know? the human mind is so complex and convoluted maybe i will never understand how it all works.

a big part of me is impatient to get on with things and just feel it all already and move on. i’m sure it doesn’t work that way but i am definitely curious how this whole thing is going to unfold. how do i know when i have a feeling nowadays what it’s from or what caused it and what to do about it? do i just drop everything and sit and cry and when it passes i’ll be healed? on a practical level, i have no idea what it would look like to feel these things now and identify the need and meet the need, and ‘close the loop’ so to speak. i can’t even identify my present-day desires and preferences and wants and needs. how am i going to unpack what six-year-old me needed and didn’t get? and more importantly how am i going to give it to her now? just say some kind thing that i don’t believe and my subconscious mind will be like “oh jeez, i’ve been waiting years for that, thanks.” i’m skeptical or even downright dismissive. that’s bullshit! how could that help?

and yet i come back to the truth that everything i’ve tried thus far hasn’t worked, so what’s the harm in trying something new? it could work. it could be as rob bell says just upside down enough to be divine. i don’t have faith that i can heal and get past this and have a better life. but my therapist does and my husband does and everyone i’ve met in recovery does. i’m going to lean on their faith for a little while and take a load off.