November 24, 1995
I’m sitting outside the Dojo in Montpelier while Dana teaches class. I came with him because I wanted to go to the Psychodrama performance “Surviving through the Night.” Someone gave me the flyer when we had the Journey showing in Woodstock and I really wanted to check them out and support them. It was supposed to be at “Spaulding Auditorium” in Barre, but I couldn’t find it. … [I kept trying, going around the same roads and turns without luck, finally I gave up & went back to Montpelier] … I found myself feeling like Eleanor, wanting to hit myself in the head, wanting to smash myself because I couldn’t find it. I found myself explaining in great detail why I couldn’t find it, and saw that I was trying to justify myself to some harsh judge who was saying things like “What do you mean you couldn’t find it? How can you be so stupid!” etc etc. … I quit trying, but like Eleanor I’m unable to support my own decision, I immediately start to second-guess myself, I recognize how hungry I am for finding my own people, other people who are using theater to heal from trauma, and I’m really upset that I wasn’t able to find them.
Eleanor is my friend who was badly traumatized in her family.
This reminds me a lot of that time at Kripalu when I wasn’t able to bully my way into the folk dance. I feel just like I did then, disappointed, upset and vulnerable, and angry at myself for being that way. That time it took me several hours of struggling to find my way to a place of compassion for myself. Let’s see if I can do it again.
OK, dear, in the first place, you were very tired as you came over with Dana. You weren’t feeling any actual motivation for doing this, you were just doing it because you knew theater is important to you. (o damn, I really am disappointed, and I haven’t let myself cry because I’m so angry at myself.) Then, when you tried to find the place, the driving was difficult because of the bright lights: it’s very hard for you to see, the directions were inadequate, you simply didn’t have enough information. The only thing you could have done differently would have been to go back to the Texaco station and ask the young woman for more specific directions, and by that time you were too upset to overcome your embarrassment, and you would have had to walk in late, and the whole thing was just getting too hard. And you were all alone and didn’t have any moral support, and there was a good chance that the event would have been painful and re-stimulating.
Yes, I know you’re disappointed. It’s really painful to come so close to something and then miss it. And the truth is that it was just too hard. You are just too depressed to fight your way through that many obstacles. I bet there were people who wanted to come to Journey Into Courage and missed performances the same way. There, there, dear. Next time, it would be a good idea to get someone to go with you, and to call for directions first. Don’t try to do something so difficult by yourself.
Well, that does feel a little better. What I feel now is enormous sadness and disappointment, but I don’t feel that awful anger. The truth is that things are just too difficult right now.
November 25
Dana was very comforting to me in my disappointment. He didn’t seem to think at all that I could have done differently, he understood that it’s just too hard sometimes. …
He thinks that the major problem that I have is that no matter what I do it’s wrong. In my psyche there’s this judgmental presence, that I’m always trying to explain myself to. I don’t hear its voice, I deduce its presence from my constant whining, justifying, explaining how it is that I’ve done the best I could — I said I’m expecting an inquisition. (Dana of course responded “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. Our chief weapons…”) I don’t hear the voice of the judge until I stop and call it up, but I do feel the presence of the judge. Dana said he senses someone with folded arms, tapping their foot. And there I am, desperately explaining the extenuating circumstances, hoping for a kind word, but there is no “kind word” in my psychic ammunition. I suspect the best I ever got in my childhood was “OK, but don’t do it again.” I probably never heard “There, there, dear, it’s OK. You’re forgiven. We love you anyway.”
I wrote about Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest in a blog post in 2011, don’t know when that happened. That’s when I understood that Mother never forgave me for anything. There was no way I could make amends, there was nothing I could do except make it not have happened at all. Only recently did I find something that helped me understand how damaging that was.