repression

Something I wrote when I was about 18 and then re-wrote to update, as it's still extremely true and has got worse.
Don't read it if you don't want to. I promise I'm not always this depressed XD Its just some worries I have.

I realised something today.
Well, I realised it a while ago, but only today has it really crystalised itself with clarity in my mind as a truth.

Turning off your feelings - towards someone, or something, or altogether, for whatever reason - isn't the same as getting over it. No. Not the same at all. I thought it was, or at least I told myself it was. Or at least that is was 'as good as...' but I was wrong.

I mean... there are some people who, for whatever reason, I have been severed from... and because the pain was just too much to deal with I shut it off. I am grotesquely gifted at doing that. Turning from hot to cold, just like that. But I don’t think it exactly helps...
Yet it seems a preferable option to the grief. And once I have amputated someone from my great scope of emotion (and sometimes I don’t even mean to), even if I turn the feeling back on it wont be the same. Even if I unwrapped the ball of pain I’d carefully been keeping out and let it soak me, let it get to me, it wouldn’t be a normal release of feeling. It wouldn’t be real grieving. It wouldn’t be ‘getting it out of my system’ or whatever. It'd be something left over and decayed and unwholesome.

Take my ex's, for example. Those I loved or thought I loved, or at least had a great affection for. When we broke up, whether it was their fault or mine (and I usually do the breaking up, so I don't know why I get so upset about it), I always just turned off my feelings. Sometimes it was easy and sometimes it was immensely difficult, but I managed it anyway. I thought it wise.
I thought 'Why go round sobbing over something I cant fix, something I don’t WANT to fix anyway?'
I didn’t wish them back. We'd broken up for a reason, whether we loved each other or not. There was no point being sad over a boyfriend that I had dumped, because I had done the dumping. And a guy who had dumped me? Well if I deserved it then it was my own fault and if I didnt, then I didn't want to be with them anyway. So I never wished them back.
These weren't just things I told myself (though sometimes it made it easier, especially with Mark and other people I was particularly attached to), I believed them whole heartedly.
Why grieve?
No point.


So. I shut it off. I ‘nothing'd’ them. I didn't hate them (I've only ever hated one or two people in my entire life; i can't be bothered to waste such a huge emotion on a lot of people )...I didn't ANYTHING them. I just...ceased.
Seemed a good idea at the time. I just thought 'pull yourself together and get on with life' sort of thing. And I did.
I didn't think I was being hard on myself, I thought it was just what needed to be done. I'd spent time previously being down, about or because of other people etc, and I had enough. 'GET OVER IT' is one of my mottos. Otherwise how will I ever move on and be part of my own life? I try not to wallow in the past (even though things still upset me when I think about them - hence trying NOT to think about them..) because theres no use in it. It is not constructive. In fact, its deconstructive.

I've done this with everything thats ever bothered me. Since I was about 14. Boyfriends, ex boyfriends, liasons-gone-wrong, violence, anger, resentment, sadness, loss of a friend, death, issues with people...
Its the way I personally deal with things.
(Not that I'm not confrontational. If I have a problem with someone I'll tell it to their face. I am notorious for saying what I think. But its not the same as saying how I feel - they see me angry, but they do not see the hurt it costs me to be angry.)

For a while it worked fine. It worked perfectly in fact, so much so that nobody ever guessed that anything was wrong. One of my best friends commited suicide when I was 16, and nobody at school guessed at all, because I had buried it THAT deeply.
I was like a robot, in that respect. I still felt things, of course. I wasn't emotionless...but I had cordoned off that particular lump of pain, bound it in iron and locked it away somewhere even I couldn't begin to search for.


But then.
Then.
Then there was a split. A rupture. Small at first, hardly noticeable...and then it became an enormous fissure inside me. Things leaked through. I started to feel awful, in pain, in agony...and I couldn't even distinguish one hurt from another, it was all just one big ball of crap, a tsunami of surprise anguish.
I guess this was just after said fried had died. Since I was about 14 and to that moment, a bunch of crapacious bollocks had happened to me, that I had stowed away because it was too hurtful. But just after he died, something....seeped through, like toxic waste, polluting me.

Since then I often get these periodical spillages. I don't mean to. I spend most of my energy every day trying to keep everything blocked. Because where once I could force things down and not think about them, I now find it increasingly hard. So many more things have happened since then that its become more difficult each time. Like theres no room for anymore and it just overflows. Seven years or so of useless, stupid, horrible pain will do that to you.

Mostly, as usual, nobody sees. I weep in private. I suffer in my head and smile for the world. I don't consider it being particularly brave...I just dont want to start screaming in public. I don't want other people to feel like they have to help me. I don't want to be a victim.
Anyway, I don't see the point of foisting my anguish into someone else's lap. What have they got to do with my worries? Not that people wouldn't try to help me, but you see they can't. Not really. Because they're NOT me, you see? So how can they ever understand? They'd offer kind words and snippets of advice but the only person who can ever see me through this pain is myself. I have to do it by myself! That is why I do not share.


But what I can I do?
I am so afraid to just unleash everything...
Even when it does bubble and overflow now I can still feel myself mentally controlling it. Even when I cry and get angry, it's still only about half of what I really feel, but I am frightened that if I let the rest out it'll never stop. It'll consume me entirely. I might have some kind of crazy breakdown and be good for nothing for a while. I can't afford that.

And perhaps this purging of my bruised soul will cure me, or at least start me on a road to long-term recovery. But if it doesn't? If it only damages me further?
I don't think I'm prepared to take that kind of a risk.

I suppose I should never have started blocking it in the first place.
When my hamster died when I was 10, should I have cried harder? When my boyfriend of three years told me he didn't love me anymore when I was 18, should I have cried for more than a day? Was it abnormal of me to sob for a while, crush it down, and no longer care no less than a week later?
When I was...you know. With Julien...Should I have screamed and screamed and screamed until i'd dispersed it all? Was it wrong of me to try and pretend that it never happened?
My gran's death, my two friend's suicides, my lack of trust, my cheating ex, my alcoholic ex, my problems in general with guys, my drinking, the emptiness, the issues with my parents, my dad's operation, my dead cat, my annorexic best friend katie....

Should I have let myself be more upset? Was it awful of me to discipline my brain into turning itself onto autopilot and stowing it all away instead of getting distressed?
Was it wrong to say 'nevermind', to squash it up into small pieces and place them in the cryogenic facillity inside me?
Of course I didn't really mean 'nevermind' - I was not that selfish. I understood how hard it was for other people too, and especially in the case of my annorexic friend and so forth, that their pain was tenfold over mine. I wasn't trying to be selfish by pretending I wasn't upset. They knew I was. They knew I cared. But if I really stopped to think about it then I would worry and grieve myself to death. And I didn't want to be destroyed by sorrow. I wanted to keep a clear head.
All of these things that have happened...I can't change them. I couldn't change them even when they were happening. They were just sad events or other people's issues that had a secondary effect on me. I could not stop them. So I didn't think it logical to let myself become overly depressed (though in the case of Katie, I was extremely anxious for several years).
But in doing so...in following my head and trying to stomp on my own heart, I think I cut out some vital human ability - the ability to mourn.

And now, if I were to let myself feel the sadness of these things that have bothered me, which haunt my nightmares, then it would not be the same sadness as I felt initially, because the very passage of time, and me keeping it hostage inside myself, has changed it into something worse. Something rotted with sharp edges and a rank smell. Some diseased that will infect me. I am afraid of it.
How can I sucummb?


So even though its a manifestation of my years of emotional disability, I am glad of my 'off-switch', because it means I won't suddenly explode from everything thats built up.

Its strange. People say I'm strong. That they admire how I handle myself. That I can brush things out of the way.
It is not strength. It is just me being emotionally crippled. Its just me being, from an early age, someone who flicks off the internal pain switch and, whilst curing the hurt in the short term, inflicts more damage than they can tell until they find out the long term effects.


And I know that even after I’ve realised all this, even after I’ve written page upon page about repression and the bad things it can do to you...
I know I’ll keep doing it.