From my journal for August 14
Writing assignment by Mark Matousek: A role you’re playing in your life today that no longer suits you and why.
My role as a trauma victim. That the wound of being left alone gets triggered and I feel very lonely and lost, the only person in the world and disconnected from everybody else. Unable to ask for help, to go where people are and try to relate to them. I wish they weren’t playing music it distracts me badly. The story that I’m frozen and trapped, that I can’t get out by my own efforts — but no, I see that I’m a victim, but I refuse to blame the person who left me alone, I always saw it as my responsibility to work on it, to try to heal it myself. So I’ve spent my life in therapy trying to heal the wounds. Isn’t this authentic? How is this story false? And despite my wounding I built Neskaya. I did not let the wounding stop me. What part of the story do I still buy? That I do things badly, that I don’t try hard enough, that I “think I’m so great” — NO, I don’t do that. I working at taking appropriate care of myself. Erica said I’m not making myself wrong which is a pattern, an old old story — “why do I always do everything wrong.” Timer goes! I stopped the music for the second 4 minutes.
There was music playing during the 8 minutes we were to write, but I found it very distracting. This exercise started something that appeared a month later.