Yesterday after a strength-training session I had a very innocuous mini argument with my partner about misplacing some things at home. Which after I simply slumped and curled up into a ball on the floor. I laid there for a long while, unable to move.
I go into these frozen-like states once in a while. Sometimes I am not physically frozen, but internally I am. When these happen I am not sure how long it takes to unfreeze myself. I just have to wait for myself to thaw.
There are a lot of things I intellectually wish to do, but somehow I am unable to do them. As a result I feel knotted – like how a muscle has knots – it makes me tense and anxious. I could “easily” untie some of those knots by doing the things I wanted to do, but somehow I just cannot bring myself to. I tell these to my partner, and she says I am unable to do those things because I have too many difficult feelings surrounding them.
I probably know what she’s telling me at some level, but it feels very clarifying to have another person analyse the situation and deliver their observations. I guess that is why therapy is therapeutic. I am lucky that my partner can be quite astute when it comes to my internal struggles. After all, she’s the only person who has witnessed everything I’ve been through the past few years.
Yesterday she described my brain as a wet mouldy sponge. Because I seem to absorb everything and mould grows on everything I absorb. Instead of feeling upset or insulted I felt a sense of relief. I felt seen, because she understands how I feel.
This gets worse as I age and I chalk up more experiences in life. Most people cope by denying, forgetting and moving on. I absorb and grow heavier. On the surface nothing seems wrong with my life, internally I feel like I am about to break anytime. So something small that wouldn’t bother most people would threaten to unhinge me.
I don’t really know how I can overcome this. I guess in another alternate universe or timeline I would pack up and live at a monastery or something. Maybe in the wrong timeline I would be committed to an asylum.
I wonder if there is a light at the end of the tunnel somewhere. Or if I have to accept that this will always be my internal reality. I am never in harmony with my mind, and I am constantly struggling against it. I am growing sadder and sadder as the years go by – it is not just me, the world is getting more insane too (or some people may argue we have always been like this). I am at that age when people’s mortality is starting to impact me. Do we ever get better at coping with grief, loss and trauma, or do we simply get better at acceptance, but acceptance doesn’t alter the degree of pain?
I try really hard to get better. To feel better. Most of the time I try to ignore how I feel, because if I let myself feel all my feelings I would never get any living done. But once in a while a dam breaks somewhere and I find myself curled up like a ball, unable to move.
I strength-train so I can bear more physical weight. Is it possible to strengthen the psyche such that I can be a wet sponge with growing mould and yet feel unimpeded by it? Maybe one day carrying an increasing load will feel more effortless. Or on a more meta level, if it is not possible to feel unimpeded by my mind, is it possible to be in acceptance and integration with a mind that constantly weighs me down? I won’t even attempt to imagine that I could one day be less of a sponge.
But at this point, everything feels impossible. I write these entries in hope that one day I can look back at them and notice the psychological distance I have travelled. There have been so many things I have struggled with but they don’t bother me much anymore. I feel like I have grown so much, but in many ways I still feel I am stuck at the same point. Or worse, that I have regressed.
I guess my psychological states are a lot more dynamic than I would like to believe. Sometimes I feel like I’ve finally transcended my past selves, other times I think there is a core in me that will always be sad and full of grief. I have to keep on reminding myself it is not the states themselves that problematic – I think it is perfectly reasonable to be sad and grieving in this world – but rather my response to them.
I don’t like myself for being a certain way, and that is the second arrow the Buddha was talking about. It is through writing these entries that I am able to zoom out and look at myself with a more objective lens. Will these insights accumulate and be my salvation the next time I am in pain?
Perhaps one day even a wet mouldy sponge can find a place in this world. Or maybe it will finally be okay that it will never belong.