Honest

I should be working right now, but I decided that my mental health is more important. And processing this by writing it here helps me maintain that.

The last couple of weeks I have felt a scream caught in the back of my throat. I have been choking on it, always trying to swallow down a rising sense of panic, of dread. In every part of the day I have felt it, unable to shake it with exercise or alcohol or sleep. I have been lying down in bed at night with fists clenched, and awoken too early, staring at my silent alarm. I've felt set apart from friends, forcing myself to join in with their laughter and not feeling it. I've thrown myself into work ferociously, and channelled this unnamed fear into the kind of anger you need to be successful at my job. And yet through all of this I have had a heightened feeling of being child-like, vulnerable, for an unnameable reason.

I've been arguing with Mr L too. Stupid little things have blown up into big things, and I've lost my temper more than once. It's very unlike me. Today, one of those little things that blew up into a big thing pushed me over the edge. I pushed my work to one side and started to write. I wrote to Mr L. And a sudden burst of honesty came forth. As I was writing I realised how much fear I was holding on to, and how many hopes and how many hurts, all unspoken, all carried around inside me. And so I committed an act of trust, one that has been too seldom in our relationship. So seldom that perhaps it is better termed faith. I told him my fears and hopes, the ones I usually keep hidden even from myself. The parts that my frightened self always whispers would cause people to leave me if I was honest and told them. I poured it all out in an email, took a deep breath and hit send. This might mean the end of our relationship, but for once I was unflinchingly honest.

And then I cried. I cried in big, wet cathartic sobs. Including that detail isn't a bid for sympathy, but rather to explain this: when I stopped crying, that scream caught in my throat, the panic in my chest - not lifted by yoga or swimming or wine - was gone. I feel light again, and calm, and unhaunted. There were some significant relationship issues I raised that we'll have to deal with, and I'm sure that will be painful. It may not be pretty, and we may not survive it. I don't know. But I'm so glad I did - I'm shocked to feel the difference now I have released all of those things I was keeping bottled up. I think it's my only shot at happiness.

It interests me that once my honesty started to flow, it became obvious why I had been acting in the way I had. Suddenly seeing the child in me is a clear illustration of the issues I am dealing with: I've been tapping into my fears of abandonment. As a child I was adopted and I was always terrified that I would be rejected, given back, abandoned by my second set of parents as I was by my first. My fearfulness drove me to try harder, to toughen up and to believe that the only person I could depend upon was myself.  I never trusted a single soul enough to tell them what I was afraid of. I've repeated that pattern into adulthood, it seems. The issues in my relationship have been triggering my fears of abandonment, and instead of the grown up he is used to, Mr L has been getting a dose of the scared little girl I used to be. Not just him, actually - I think everyone around me has met aspects of her lately.

This represents a massive epiphany for me. I'll probably write more on this when I have managed to sort through it in my head some more.

In case you're wondering how the picture is relevant, those are honesty seeds. I have always thought they are beautiful but have never really thought about their meaning - through their beautiful transparency, you can see the seeds, which will grow and create new honesty. I hope to do the same, in my own small way.