Dear Diary

Yesterday, I did something I haven't done in a while.

I went down into our basement, and into the boxes of my childhood stuff I've kept over the years.  I went down there looking for a journal. It was a specific purple spiral notebook, one I'd filled with quotes from poems and songs, and a few fiction stories I wrote in high school. I was looking for some inspiration for writing. As soon as I opened the first box, I felt a slight twinge that said this might be a mistake. There were so many pictures from high school in that box. Pictures of a young, smiling, goofy teenager. One who was so good at hiding the pain. Too good. There were stuffed animals, candles, dance awards, and trophies. I lovingly, delicately ran my fingers over the spine of a white teddy bear. I picked up the bear, and there it was. My childhood diary. Thoughts and events from my life from the time I was in 6th grade till I was a sophomore in high school.  Maybe I thought the purple journal would be in that big, black binder that was my diary, but nevertheless, I grabbed it and brought it upstairs.

I set the somewhat-crumbling binder down on the kitchen counter, and opened it. There was a clump of small pieces of paper tucked in the front cover. I smiled when I found $5 in McDonald's gift certificates, circa 1997, and a $10 Applebees gift certificate from my high school best friend. 'No expiration date' it claimed on the front. I imagined taking that certificate to the Applebees in my hometown during my next visit, just to see if they would take it. Nestled behind those certificates was a letter with my name on it. My dad's handwriting. It was an apology he had wrote me after "The Toilet Paper Incident". I was crying by the time I got to the end of letter and the words that moved me the most. At the end he had wrote,

"I'm going through a confusing time right now; something I don't understand, but am determined to resolve no matter what. I know it's tearing our family apart right now, but my hope is that it's temporary, and will lead to me becoming a better, more centered person. I have to do this because I don't see any other way right now. If I discover what's going on with me, I'll be home that day, that hour, that minute, but until then I have to keep searching."

That paragraph hit me hard. I didn't understand the letter when I received it, how could I? After all, I was only 17. It sure means a lot now, though. I completely understand what he went through, because that's what I'm going through. Complete and total personal upheaval.  The only difference is I don't have a family that I'm responsible for. I honestly believe that that makes my journey 100% easier than whatever my dad went through. Another thing was made clear by this letter- "the toilet paper incident" occurred when my parents were separated, not when I was in middle school being chased home from the bus. Memory is a tricky thing, isn't it? I'm trying not to beat myself up over not remembering something perfectly, I spend way too much time doing that as it it. And that in itself can cause more pain. More on that another time, though.

I wiped away tears with the back of my hand, and settled in to read the actual diary. The first thing that struck me, that always strikes me on reading that diary, is how much pain is inferred through the passages. The main reoccurring theme throughout the first handful of pages is how unhappy I am. I hate school, my friends don't like me and talk about me behind my back, and I am angry. Lots of scrawling, hateful epithets written in all capital letters. Lots of anger with my mom, and with my brother. The second thing that knocked the wind out of me was a passage written on 12-16-95. It was regarding an incident that was one of the first traumatic memories to boil over in EMDR. My mom was taking me to my first concert that day, a Reba McEntire concert in Portland, OR. On our way, my mom and I saw a German Shepherd get hit by a car. In the entry, I described the scene exactly how it's been burned into my brain since that day. That memory used to cause so much distress, pain, and depression, and it struck me how much that has changed since EMDR. Recalling that memory yesterday was a good way to evaluate that that memory still feels less disturbing since the onset of EMDR. Even though it's been almost a year since we reprocessed that memory. Which is the purpose of EMDR, so that's very positive. Another important issue regarding this memory was that I never remembered the date. I never remembered it was around the holidays. December is, by far, my worst month. I spend the entire month in a funk, every year. I always thought it was just because of the holidays, the pressure, my birthday... Now I'm wondering if this traumatic memory is also involved a bit in my holiday madness?

Another thing became transparent to me upon reading the diary. I've quite clearly had dysfunctional relationships with the opposite sex since the beginning. It was interesting to read about the onset of my first relationship and all the flawed thinking I've always displayed. I saw how elated I was when the relationship became physical, when I was 13. I saw how unstable in the relationship I was- always complaining about how he was obsessed with me and way too nice, so I ended the relationship. At which time, I became panicked and all I could write about was getting him back. And I did get him back. And the relationship became more physical. I noted that I didn't include in my diary that I lost my viriginity to him. I remember my mindset at that age. It was always in the back of my mind that my mom could find my diary, so I never included that. Reading through the entries though, I knew where it had happened.

The on-again/off-again relationship came to its inevitable end. And I wrote about the loss for no less than 1 year, truly fixated and unable to move on. I was in eighth grade. What 13-year old mourns the loss of a boyfriend for a year? I wrote that I felt like I'd lost a best friend, that I missed the closeness, that I felt lost. Empty. Alone.

And then, one year later, I met someone else. And the exact same process started over. Except this time, there were a few more detailed entries to go off of. This time, the boy I was dating went to a different school so I only saw him on the weekends. It was obvious, from reading the entires, that I was ok with the relationship when we were together (fooling around, being touched, etc.) but during our time apart, I got squirrely. I would start to doubt the relationship and how much he cared for me. I would think about breaking up with him, but then if we did break up, he would be all I would think about. And yes, this relationship became on-again/off-again too.

It was obvious. Written in front of me, in black and white. Only, I'd never seen it before. In my young brain, things were only balanced in these "relationships" when they were physical. Sex= Love. That's where I felt right. That's where I felt safe. And let's face it- when you are 13, you don't get a whole lot of time to do these things. So, I spent most of my relationships feeling depressed. Like things were wrong. Like I wasn't good enough.

And how does a young girl come right out of the gate, and behave this way?

The answer is plain and straight-forward- programming. I was taught to think this way, yet I had no inkling of what had happened to me as a child. Not one thought, not one time. Ever. I never thought, "Maybe I'm this way because something happened to me?". I remember how I felt at the time-

Born broken. I would be forever broken. Possibly just bad genetics. Possibly I was just a terrible person.

These revelations have put a lot into perspective. I realize now why my college relationship was so difficult, and why so many other relationships were. I (subconsciously) became paranoid over my relationships if they weren't physical. And during college, I was on Depo-Provera and had zero sex-drive. With the lack of physical closeness, I became even nuttier. More paranoid. Needy. And no successful relationship exists in harmony with that much negative emotion. I was more unlike myself than I've ever been during that relationship.

It's clear to me now why I feel my marriage is in trouble if we haven't had sex in a couple of days.

And while these things are evident to me, now I'm left wondering,

"How do I change this?" How do I break the association of love and sex? As A has mentioned many times, we are only getting older. Both of our sex drives will naturally decrease, and am I going to be thinking he doesn't love me for larger and larger amount of times?

I don't want this to be the case.

God IS Love

Running has been powerful therapy for me. I actually have no clue how it became an effective therapy for me, but I guess the point is that I found it. I was the child who hated to run. My mom made me play sports like soccer, basketball, and running track. I hated them all because they involved an exorbitant amount of running, soccer being the worst of all the sports my mom made me play. I just physically hated the feeling of running. My legs got tired, I could never find a rhythm to breathe, and I was slow. I would start to feel that cold sensation in my chest when I couldn't breathe, and there is nothing I hated more than that sensation. I seemed to have no endurance. How my brother was blessed with the tempo and endurance of a marathon runner, I'll never know. When I got to high school, I was deemed fit to choose my sports. I chose volleyball and dance team. In volleyball, the only running we did was during daily doubles and everyone knew the running only lasted 2 weeks. On dance team, I believe we only ran 1 time and it was because our coach couldn't get us to simmer the fuck down.

I knew what was up. I knew where the running was and where it wasn't. So how I became a runner as an adult is nothing short of a miracle.

When I first began therapy in the fall of 2013, I was given techniques to release stress and self-soothe. I was really good at pushing myself past my limits at that point, and not so good at taking it easy. I would rush into my therapist office, spit out an entire laundry list of things I wanted to accomplish that day, and then proceed to sit there and worry I wouldn't get it all done. I was wound as tight as Giselle Bundchen's ass. One of the first concepts the therapist and I needed to conquer was the concept that I needed time each day to relax. To have me time. My therapist suggested running. I looked at her like she'd grown a third tit. 'Never' I thought in that stubborn head of mine.

Never came sooner than I thought. A and I signed up for a breast cancer 5k, and we decided to do some training so we could run it. On our first practice run, I couldn't even run half a mile. It was summer, 70+ degrees, and I thought I was going. to. die. I think more water came out of my body on that first run than I'd ever put in my body! I ended up walking most of those first 3 miles, but everyone has to start somewhere. I ended up doing a combination of running and walking for that first 5k, but I was kind of hooked. I didn't feel the same way I felt when I was younger. I've thought about this so many times, and the only thing I can come up with is that I hated running because I felt like people were making me do it. And I don't do anything well when someone is making me do it.

It took me a couple of months before I could run a straight mile. It took me even longer before I could run a straight 3 miles. But along the way, I found something else. Something indescribable about myself. I could take the pain. I could handle the dead legs and the feeling that my heart was going to explode inside my chest. With each foot pounding the payment, I told myself that I was strong. That if I could handle this physical pain, I could handle anything. Any kind of mental pain, I could withstand. Every run I finished gave me such a high. A and I signed up for oodles of races.

We did one run during a very cold winter called the "Jingle Bell Jog". It was a night race, something A and I'd never done, and something we've never done again. The night was clear, but so very cold, around 30º I think. I stood in one spot, and jumped up and down until the race began. Once it began though, I calmed. Quite a bit. I found my pace, and tuned into my music. The race took us through downtown of our extremely small town, along the river, and under the bridge that separates Ohio from Kentucky.   I was running under the bridge, listening to Rihanna's "We Found Love", and staring up at the clear, frigid night sky. The stars seemed so bright, like I could reach out and touch them. Just then, for whatever reason, I tuned into a lyric in the song as Rihanna sang, "We found love in a hopeless place".

That resonated with me. A and I live in a despondently depressed area. The town at one time prospered, however large employers have since moved out of the area. The population is shrinking, and the population that has stuck around is largely on drugs. Pills are huge around here, although heroin and meth are becoming much cheaper and easier to come by since the local police began to crack down on pills. There are no unique restaurants, only chains. No unique stores, only Walmart and Kroger are left. The town is crumbling and dilapidated. Yet, as I ran along the river, I could not help but notice the beauty around me. The battered flood wall, covered with murals depicting the town's storied past. The way the large blue-green bridge gleamed in the moonlight. The water lapping gently at the rocky shore. Hoards of pounding feet behind, and in front of me. And I only felt love. I felt so much love I felt my heart would beat out of chest.

And that's when I saw it.

Spray-painted on the underside of the big bridge were these exact words- "God IS Love".

I don't know why these words threw me, but they did. Yes, I am an atheist. As much of an atheist as one can be at least, as I am not arrogant enough to proclaim I 100% know there is no god. But what if? What if everything that theists's claim they know about "God" is false? Part of the reason I can't jump on the religion train is because I can't get on board with so much pain and so much suffering. I just can't. There is no reason in the world a gentle and loving creator would allow the things that happen on Earth to happen (please read this article if you need an example). The only explanation can be chaos, and a universe that doesn't care what happens to us. I have no idea why the human brain must insist that we are the pinnacle of evolution, that we are huge, that we are everything. It's mind-boggling. But what if "God" is that part of us that is "Love"?

I was really feeling it in that moment. I saw beauty all around me, in front of me, and behind. And I loved them all. I saw a pack of people not caring about anything but their feet hitting the payment, and the feeling of drawing one more clear burst of air into their lungs. I saw people that were running for a cause, because the Jingle Bell Jog was supporting the local food pantry. I saw a crowd that was doing the best that they possibly could in that very moment.

And I felt love.

I felt compassion.

'Could this be God?' I dreamily pondered. Could it be that "God" was not some figure-head in the sky, but an overwhelmingly warm feeling manifested out of our own bodies? If so, I never wanted to leave the moment.

But, as all moments do, it passed. I think I stumbled a few minutes later, and began to think about my ankle being a bit sore. A few minutes after that, I realized I was nearing the end and picked up the pace. And just a few minutes after that, I was sweaty and out of breath at the finish line, no doubt with a brain completely full of different thoughts.

I never forget that moment though. Seeing those words on the bridge is burned in my brain, a split-second I will never forget. I can close my eyes, and still see those words. Hauntingly beautiful in cheap, red, Walmart spray paint.

A lot of the time, it's hard to feel that way again. Every now and then, a run will make me that introspective. Yoga and mediation do the trick, too. I spend a lot of time mediating on love and its so-closely-related emotion, hate. Compassion. Empathy. Forgiveness. I mediate on these feelings, and try to let them encompass me. Let them open my heart, fill my body, and push out the doubt. The shame and heaviness that I'm convinced all humans feel. And you know what?

It makes me feel better.

I feel like this post flows freely into a post on forgiveness, so I'm going to stop there for today. The only thing I'm hoping people get out of this post today is to show you these technique that therapists try to get everyone to do- like exercise- they do work. They can work way more effectively than medicine sometimes, in my opinion. I'm also hoping you yourself might take some time to ponder on what I think is the most powerful emotion in the universe- love.

Till next time!