Right now, in this moment, my life is going well. I am happy, I am loved. I am safe. On a pragmatic level, my children are happy and healthy, my bills are paid, and I have a roof over my head, food on my plate (too much at times), and we have everything we need and lots of things we want. I have a secure job working for someone I respect, amazing friends who support and encourage me and make me laugh, and a wonderful husband who reminds me daily that I am loved and valued.
Life is good.
Despite this, today I feel anxious and sad. My chest is tight and my thoughts are chaotic. Tears aren’t far away.
When I respond to significant triggers (like something that creates a sense of connection to my ex-husband or parents), I feel weak and pathetic. It’s humiliating to feel so powerless and vulnerable when something connects me to my past, but it’s also possible to explain and rationalise those feelings. These people hurt me, and it’s not surprising that things that connect me to them are distressing.
Today’s unfocused, generalised distress is a different thing. There’s nothing to blame except my own dysfunction. I still feel weak and pathetic, but I also feel stupid and neurotic. And ungrateful – I have so many wonderful things happening in my life and so many people offering me love and support, it seems inconsiderate and selfish to still be feeling so sad and overwhelmed.
The sadness is complex. It’s a background hum of thoughts on a continuous loop in my mind telling me that I’m always responsible, but always inadequate, always a disappointment. It’s a pulsing throb sending waves of emotion that bring tears to my eyes and an ache to my chest. It’s a cloud hovering on the horizon as a reminder that if I become complacent an unexpected trigger could result in panic and tears.
That sounds like I wander around in a state of constant misery, but that’s not true. I love my life – my husband, my kids, my friends – and the future seems so much brighter now than it did during the bleak, hopeless years of my first marriage. But the sadness is always there if I stop to look for it (and often when I don’t). I’m not miserable, but I am fragile. I’m often happy, but the awareness of potential sadness keeps me on guard emotionally in a way that is exhausting, which makes me more fragile and more likely to react intensely to triggers when they occur.
Framing how I feel in that way – varying shades of sadness – somehow seems both accurate and misleading. I’ve distracted myself today trying to work out why and it came to me in one of those moments of clarity where you feel both brilliant for working out a complex puzzle and devastated by the truth.
I’m not sad, I’m afraid.
There is genuine sadness, of course, about my past and about things that are happening now, and I have ways of dealing with that, but I don’t know what to do with this fear that looks like sadness. When people try to comfort me, it often makes it feel worse and intensifies the fear that I am too damaged, too vulnerable, too inadequate to function without people propping me up.
I am afraid that I’m too much work, too ‘high maintenance’ and people will give up (reinforced by the fact that my parents and so many church friends have done just that).
I am afraid this happiness won’t last. I’m afraid that I’ll do something that will push others away, or that they’ll simply realise that I’m not worth the effort.
I am afraid that I’ll never find a way through the maze of memories and thoughts that link me to people who taught me that my value was conditional on me fulfilling their expectations.
I am afraid that I’ll never shed the beliefs about myself I’ve learned from them – that my feelings don’t matter, that my opinions don’t matter, that I don’t matter.
I am afraid that if I’m not vigilant, I’ll slip back into old habits where I prioritise everyone above myself. And I’m afraid that at the end of the day, that’s all I’m really good for anyway – facilitating the lives of others.
I am afraid that if I stop long enough to accept support and acknowledge how overwhelmed and hurt I am, that I won’t be able to get myself moving again.
I am afraid to allow myself to believe those who tell me that they love me and value who I am, because I find it so hard to see anything in myself that justifies that love and I’ve spent a lifetime with the word ‘love’ being used as a way to control and subdue who I am. I am afraid that accepting love means losing myself, again.