From my journal: Friday
Don’t even know how to start. When I got to Karen’s I thought I’d cry a lot. Also thought of getting on the bed and kicking and pounding. I probably should have done that. I’m not angry, but I did feel a lot of confused energy. Now I see that I have to move the energy. It would have been a good idea to move my body. Maybe I can walk today, or go to Neskaya to dance. At least it’s warmer.
Talking to Karen it became clear that I’d lost myself. I’d rushed out to help Damien, to take care of Marko, to help Lynelle —— and left myself behind. I woke up confused and lost, I had trouble writing here because of a friend who stayed the night, and then Lynelle called to say her apartment wasn’t getting warm. I freaked out as I used to do in the old days. There was too much I was juggling and this was a last straw. I called Irving, actually the guys came fairly quickly, and fixed it.
Karen wanted to know how I could find Jenny, how I could reconnect with her. When I tried, I got old voices telling me Jenny wasn’t important. I can feel them now — “Jenny’s not worth taking care of.” That’s why it’s so easy to spend my energy on something outside me, and so hard to come back and do the daily chores that support my life. O gosh, I think about it, struggling against the cold wind of my lack of value, and I just want to lie down and die. the grey one, who is protecting me from mother, is making it impossible to have my real life.
I am right in the middle of the conflict/double-bind that’s at the roots of my life. It looks much too hard. I can’t possibly do it. I want to die.
Mother wanted me to die — well, she didn’t put it that clearly — she just wanted me to not be there, not to need her. She wasn’t at all prepared for the demands of a baby, and my father was away at World War II. It’s like when she said of Daddy as he was dying “if he just stopped being fed…”
I simply can’t do what’s good for me at Lynelle’s expense. I just can’t. I don’t know if it’s conditioning or free choice. Am I a good person or just a traumatized one. All the injunctions so deeply driven in: “Don’t think you’re so great,” “Don’t show off,” “you don’t deserve…” “You’re not worth spending time & energy on,” etc. — that last one was not so much said as enacted. Actually a lot of them were enacted, didn’t become verbal until I started paying attention. The verbal is just an expression of the felt sense which is non-verbal.
Saturday
So now I’m up with a cup of tea and wishing someone would take care of me. When my friend was here, she took up too much space and there was no room for Jenny. Now there’s room for Jenny, Jenny who isn’t worth taking care of. I have to cook rice this morning and it feels like a huge chore. I have to/want to fill the big bird feeder, but I’m too tired.
I think I’m trapped in the frozen baby.