sometimes

sometimes i am afraid that if i admit to myself or anyone else how hard this is, then i won't be able to keep on coping. that i will just fall apart and everything will come crashing down around me.

things are hard. i am managing to cope, but they are hard. a lot of memories have been coming up recently. parts who have new information.

some of it is good--being able to figure out why i react with panic in some situations.

and some of it is just hard. hard. hard.

it's easy to go with a level of denial--like, how could i POSSIBLY have not remembered that? that was a BIG thing, not just something small.

and it's even harder, when i have a different version of the memory, something that's easier to cope with. how can i remember part of something, and not the whole? how could i re-write something as it was happening, and erase the parts i couldn't cope with?

but logic intervenes--do i benefit from making this up? not so much. there is no real gain from making up these memories. i don't feel better. i don't get more sympathy from other people, since what i do remember is bad enough to get all the sympathy a person could want.

so what do i get from it? sadness, hurt, remembered pain.

what do i get from looking at the memories? a measure of relief from panic and body memories.

so logic says, probably these things are real. probably these things happened. that doesn't make it easier. even though i know that remembering doesn't make me less of a survivor, it's still hard to allow myself to remember, and to examine the intensity of what happened. i am afraid of becoming one of those people who spends their entire life complaining about how forces outside their control ruined everything.

i was successful in high school and college and afterwards in part because of the denial. if i could make myself believe... not so much that it wasn't happening, but that i could keep it from affecting me, then i could go on with my life, and take control.

if i focused on the things that were under my power, i told myself the things that i couldn't control just didn't matter, they were separate from me.

might get it together later to write some memories, but this is hard. it's just HARD.




my therapist asked yesterday whether i would be interested in doing a double session on tuesdays instead of a single one. i think this is in addition to the sessions we have on thursdays. so three hours a week of therapy. doesn't seem like much, until you consider the degree to which therapy can knock me out. it's exhausting, even when i'm talking about superficial things.

but maybe it's not such a bad idea. it scares me, though. i'm afraid of being too dependent. i'm afraid of being too needy. and i'm really afraid of getting into these memories, and stirring things up.

i know that dealing with memories isn't entirely incompatible with living my life. but it's hard. it's overwhelming. i would rather pretend that everything is okay now, that we can do a few little mental exercises and **poof!** everything will be okay.

i'm afraid that instead, i'll fall apart entirely.