When emotion doesn’t want to be accessed

Today I’m exhausted, more exhausted than usual.

I had therapy early this morning. It was only for 1 hour, and it honestly wasn’t very difficult today. But I left there feeling even more exhausted.

Even though if doesn’t feel hard, I think the mental load of what we’ve been doing is actually taking a larger toll on me than I realized. In the 6ish years I’ve been in therapy with her, we’ve really never dove in to the whole adoption and my birth son aspect of it all. Of course we talk about it, quite a bit, but I guess we’ve never like…dug down and worked through it. Mostly because I don’t want to.

Thinking about him, missing him… it sucks. And it’s something I avoid at all costs. It’s one of the biggest things I just don’t allow myself to feel.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing about him, (thanks to therapy homework) and it’s just, well, frankly…it sucks. I know how to write (sort of?) and (sometimes?) it even comes out sounding not horrible. But lately, when I’m writing about him, retelling the story and actively trying to include emotion instead of just writing about the facts and the events…oh boy. It’s horrible. I’m embarrassed to reread it, let alone be the person to have written it!

It just feels so fake and so forced. It read like a car salesman trying to sell a car he didn’t really believe in. Forced. The words are there, but the emotion behind it is nonexistent.

I am not used to speaking or writing about him in a sense where I actually allow emotion to exist. Aside from when I write after having a few drinks, emotion just does not come through. The walls are too thick and I can’t access it.

I’m pretty good at feeling things and knowing what I feel, so the fact that this is SO disconnected with any sort of emotion is difficult. It’s not that I don’t care, or that the emotions just really don’t exist. I think it’s more of a protective response I’ve unintentionally developed.

The emotion in reality actually runs SO deeply and so fiercely that…well I guess I just shut it down and refused to allow myself to feel to the point where that’s become the go to response….the only response. And even when I want to, my brain won’t allow me to go there.

Okay, so I don’t want to. No one wants to feel pain. But I’d like to at least be able to access the emotion when I chose to. When I drink, I don’t have this issue. One of the bigger reasons why I drink (so much) is because it allows me to feel the things I already should be feeling. It helps the walls in my head come down just a bit to the point where I’m not so hardened. It’s like I can finally breathe and feel something and just…I don’t know.

I guess it’s the liquid permission I need to be a little more human. I don’t have the time or the ability to be broken and weak all the time. So I just have to be hard. I have to not care.

Except I do. I care too much. I just don’t know what to do with all of that pain, so I guess I’ve just locked it away. It comes when it wants to, lately more often than not. And it crashes like a wave during a hurricane and drags me back into the ocean with it. Every time. It consumes me, and it feels like nothing will ever be okay again.

Because that pain just doesn’t make sense. There’s no solution.

Ugh. I’m starting to feel. That’s what she wants, that’s the goal. But I can’t. So I need to shove it down.

I’m exhausted. I really just…I don’t know. I need a day off. Good thing tomorrow is Saturday. Maybe I’ll get an hour or 2 to myself. Maybe I’ll allow myself to feel then.

Or maybe not.

I really just need a reset on my brain.