There are days when I feel like I’m making progress, moving forward with my life and getting more healthy emotionally. Â Then there are days like the ones recently where I feel like I must be on an elaborate treadmill, walking the same route over and over again without getting anywhere.
I’m working on finding a therapist to help me sort out and find balance with the emotional storms that continue to wage war on my sanity. Â I’m lying awake at night with negative tapes playing at full volume and when they reach the end, they either start back up or I make up new ones. Â This is the territory where I start to see attacks that don’t exist, where I create monsters out of the people who love me.
And though I know it will help to have a trained and impartial set of ears to listen to me and echo back, I’m not going to wait when good ideas come to me.
For example, during a pretty intense and sometimes vulnerable conversation with my wife today, it occurred to me that I owed her an apology. Â Maybe a multifaceted one. Â You see, back a few years ago, when I was discovering who I was as a kinky, D/s loving, non binary gendered person, I didn’t let her in on the process. Â I shut her out pretty much entirely, and the reasons for that go back many years and I’m not going to get into that now. Â From across the distance I created between us, I delivered information to her as I came across it, and as I made decisions for myself and about myself, but I didn’t invite her to give me feedback or be a part of that journey. Â I didn’t invite her to communicate how it impacted her and our family. Â That was a mistake, a huge mistake. Â Though I don’t regret the discoveries I’ve made, and I’m not second guessing them, I know now that my decision to cut her out of the process hurt her and hurt us. Â And I need to apologize to her for that, for not giving her a chance, for not trusting her. Â I don’t imagine it will be an easy conversation but it is clear as day to me that this is something I have to do. Â I’ve been digging around in my innerds, looking for the blockages that keep me walking on that treadmill, keep me sick and tired and feeling lost, and I think this is one of them. Â And I’m hoping that once I push this aside, with her help, because I really need her support going forward, that once we do this, some of that unhealthy stress and dis-ease will flow away. Â I don’t expect it to happen all at once, and I fully expect to find something else once I push this baggage aside, but it’s a start on what I hope is a healthier path.
It’s been too easy to blame others for the hurt and avoid the part I’ve played. Â It feels like this is an important year, a year to move forward, evolve, develop new emotional muscles, get healthier. Â Considering the quantity and diversity of ways I’ve been physically ill in the past 6 months, something has to change and change a lot. Â Wish me luck.
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