Saturday 12 December 2009

Whose story?

I haven't written here for awhile. It's not been for want of material but because most of what I have to say involves other people and it's hard to disentangle ownership of "stuff". We're all so meshed with each other's lives, how much of my life story is actually mine to share?

I have kept company with this question over many years and it's a big reason why I barely used to talk to anyone about anything. If I talked it implicated other people, or maybe showed them in the wrong light, or maybe they'd find out I'd said something. If I talked it made my version of events more important than I thought it should be, it made it real if I said it, or it showed up the "fact" that I was making it all up. Either way wasn't worth the risk. My most important dialogues as I grew up were with my cat and the inside of my body, the blood that flowed or the food I could "express" instead of digesting it.

These days things are usually somewhat different. I am more self-confident, more self-possessed and less afraid. I was even quite astonished to hear someone describe me as outgoing not so long ago! I would still mostly rather write than speak and I still tend to reflect on things before talking about them. But usually these days people's questions get straightforward answers without angst or evasion and usually if I need to talk I talk.

But not with this. I am vulnerable again from a source I never suspected and for reasons I can't easily share. This source, this person, is pretty much oblivious to the problem, which, in itself, is part of the problem. I can list the issues at stake: distorted perceptions of reality, overstepping boundaries, not listening or believing, not emotionally literate. Where do I keep finding these people? Because each new one brings the others crawling back out of the woodwork to cluster round and haunt me again. All the old doubts and fears resurface, all those well-intentioned betrayers who refused to see. Most of all I betray myself because I let myself dissolve at the core, see that I'm overreacting, making it up, not worth being taken seriously. I have to hurt myself to punish myself for these made-up worthless feelings and also to have some kind of tangible pain to attach them to. It has been some years since I've seen self injury as any kind of punishment, I thought I'd left that behind long ago.

I wonder what to do about it, with which ghost of the past to join forces. For now, while I do nothing, they all parade around me with their accusations and incitements to self-destruction. Surely hitching myself up to any one of them would be better than trying to deal with them en masse? So this is option 1 - avoidance, turning inwards, depression and self harm. Option 2 is to just stop seeing this person. It would be tricky socially but possible, and I could set this episode behind me. But that option hitches me up with the ghost of the one who did that to me, and to taking on responsibility for inflicting that kind of bewilderment and pain. Option 3 - act as normal, pretend all is well. I keep my friend and eat myself from the inside, hitching myself to the ghosts of my childhood, the adults who turned out to have so many more blind eyes than me. Option 4 - I try again to explain, to reason, to sort things out, knowing that in all likelihood I won't be heard, believed or understood. That links me up with the ghost of my marriage and all that that entailed, entails still in my mind. I had an option 5 which eludes me for now, but for what it's worth it didn't get me any further on.

I can only really reach one conclusion from that paragraph - that I am indeed overreacting, making it up; and yet the soothing sight of bandages wrist to elbow on both arms gives me some hope that I can at least have some belief in myself.

And, you know, if this was the only thing I had to sort out in my life right now, things wouldn't be so bad!