{"id":4919,"date":"2015-11-18T09:27:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T14:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=4919"},"modified":"2015-11-18T09:27:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T14:27:59","slug":"lost-in-an-indifferent-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=4919","title":{"rendered":"Lost in an Indifferent Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Woke up this morning feeling lost in\u00a0 an indifferent universe.\u00a0 There is no God or spirit or meaning here.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been reading The Shack<\/a> over the last few days.\u00a0 I\u2019ve read it several times.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like the Christian correctness (in one way) but I do like the portrayal of God (she\u2019s black) and Jesus.\u00a0 The man telling the story clearly comes to trust both of them.\u00a0 This morning I realized I don\u2019t trust \u201cgod\u201d at all.\u00a0 I don\u2019t trust that there\u2019s any \u201cHigher Power\u201d who can help me.<\/p>\n

I see that being lost in an indifferent universe is how I felt as a baby alone with my mother\u2019s lack of empathy, inability to pay attention to my feelings, totally uninterested in seeing what I needed, much less giving it to me.\u00a0 Knowing that these feelings belonged to the baby inside me, I just stayed with them as best I could throughout the day.\u00a0 Sometimes I would say \u201cI\u2019m here with you.\u00a0 I know what you are feeling.\u201d\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t say \u201cI will make sure you are cared for,\u201d because I can\u2019t even take care of myself.<\/p>\n

I saw my therapist today.\u00a0 She said that my inability to imagine a caring universe was reflective of my belief that it wasn\u2019t OK to have needs.\u00a0 I said O yes.\u00a0 She said it wasn\u2019t OK to expect to have my needs met.\u00a0 At this I cried and cried and collapsed into what felt like a puddle.\u00a0 No, it was absolutely wrong and very bad to have any expectation that my needs would be met.\u00a0 I had to do it all myself.<\/p>\n

I never mentioned what happened about three weeks ago.\u00a0 I had thought I would do a blog post, but was simply too confused and upset to be able to write.\u00a0 It was a Thursday, and because of confusion with my car, which was in the shop, and having the phone stop working, I was really falling apart by the time my friend Cory came to drive me to my car.\u00a0 She could see that I was very upset and said \u201cCan you have a phone appointment with your therapist instead of driving to Montpelier?\u201d\u00a0 O my, relief!\u00a0 Yes, I could do that.\u00a0 Then she said \u201cYou don\u2019t need to come to choir rehearsal either.\u00a0 Victoria told us that Sunday would be easy.\u201d\u00a0 At the idea of not going to choir there was a moment of hesitation and then I felt how tired and shaky I really was.\u00a0 Cory said \u201cYou need to rest and recover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because I had Cory\u2019s permission, I took care of myself.\u00a0 I talked to my therapist on the phone and didn\u2019t go to choir practice.\u00a0 It felt HUGE to be doing this and the words that came were \u201cTaking care of myself at someone else\u2019s expense.\u201d\u00a0 I thought about this and realized that it wasn\u2019t at Karen\u2019s expense, I still talked to her for an hour for which she will get paid, and it wasn\u2019t at choir\u2019s expense, people don\u2019t show up all the time.\u00a0 Where did I learn that?\u00a0 From Mom, for whom any taking care of me was at her expense.<\/p>\n

In the days afterward, I experienced a lot of fear.\u00a0 I realized that was because I had broken one of the deepest oldest injunctions. \u00a0“Thou shalt not expect Mom to take care of you. \u00a0Thou shalt take care of thyself so as not to be a nuisance.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Woke up this morning feeling lost in\u00a0 an indifferent universe.\u00a0 There is no God or spirit or meaning here.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been reading The Shack over the last few days.\u00a0 I\u2019ve read it several times.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like the Christian correctness … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breakdown","category-present-day","category-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}