Mitosis
Noise level in my head has gone up recently. Finding myself "splitting" again - back to the way I was before Rob, and maybe a little bit more like before Kerry, too (or maybe with Kerry but at that point when I was seriously considering divorce). Back to two disagreeing "selves" again, the cold (dare I say, cruel), calculating, cynical, weakness-despising logical self, and this soft, social, kind, trusting emotional self that has so recently come to dominate my being (and the reason you started going to a therapist, logical self reminds me). When I look back at how long I was actually "with" Rob, wow, holy crap, it's been over a year since I had heard from my logical side in earnest, since the balance had shifted to something more 50/50. It's all very confusing. I remember how I used to be, before I'd ever actually fallen in love, before I'd ever actually decided to genuinely put my trust in someone, instead of calculating how to make it look that way. I mean, I didn't even ever really trust Kerry before. Or, I'm sorry to say, any of you. It's just how I was. Am? May become? I don't know.
Admittedly, I rather like how cute and innocent (not to be confused with 'naive') my emotional side is. I think it's sweet that she can trust so easily, that she believes in forgiveness and that belief in things like "love" can almost work a kind of magic. It's also cute how she can thoughtfully nod her head, with very little irony, even be moved to tears at the allegorical stuff written in children's books like The Velveteen Rabbit, The Little Prince, Peter Pan, The Last Unicorn, and The Missing Piece (granted, the last two aren't technically children's books, and none of them have entirely happy endings, either). It's nice, I guess, that she can be so optimistic and quick to forgive - or is she just justifying everything in order to delude herself into happiness? And it just pisses me off that she'll just go and blurt out all this stuff about how she feels and thinks and everything to just anyone without making sure they're trustworthy first. I mean, trust is nice, but she'll just get us exploited at this rate. And that small recurring delusion that she's not really human? Cute, but it worries me too. Sometimes I think she's "bloomed" too late - thoughts like hers have no place in a 26-year-old body.
But I'm kind of scared of my logical side. I don't know if I want her to be the "dominant" one again, like it used to be. Her mistrust and cynicism make it easy for her to dehumanize almost anyone, and she's always analyzing people's motives and trying to figure out ways to make them think or feel what she wants them to. She's not all logic, but the emotions she has are mostly kind of scary - she's bitter, and angry, and she laughs when she hurts people. She hates. She says horrible things to me when I cry, or when I try to think positive. She points out that all hope by nature is false, so I should stop wasting my time with that sort of thing. She absolutely despises crying, and always tries to shut me down in front of people so that I don't. Makes her look bad, she says. And I feel guilty when I'm not able to let go and cry, and she says things that make it worse. She knows I'll stop crying altogether again if she keeps it up, like before. She was the one that came up with the idea of "slow suicide" - to make every day worse than death for yourself, by your own actions, because if you really hated yourself you wouldn't escape the pain, you'd torture yourself. We ended up telling Rob about it, and he ended up adopting it. I feel bad, but she says I ought to take comfort in the fact that whether or not he credits me with it, I did in a way bring about his suffering. So, she says, everything's evened out, right? But she doesn't entirely believe that, and that's what scares me. She wants to make things like they used to be, get rid of my ability to love and trust, because she thinks it makes me too vulnerable. She thinks it would be best for me to go back to the kind of black and white thinking I used to have, and to do that she wants me to be able to dehumanize Rob, to do something so cruel to him that there would be no affection left on either side. She urges me to do more things alone, to enjoy being bitter and angry. I don't know. So much of what she argues ends up making sense, at least more sense than just a jumble of emotions. But she scares me, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to be like her again.
Confused, confused. You can see that, I'm sure. Trying so hard to find a happy medium. Emphasis on "happy." Moving on would be easier, I suppose, if I could go back to the way I was and simply not care about people anymore, but I've found that I do like being happy (of course when it comes you'll become just as sad as you were happy, so why not take preventative measures?, says logic). And emotion-wise, well... I don't know, it's complex. I want to get over Rob and I suppose I'll have to get over Max, but I also feel... saddened, I guess, at the thought of remembering them without fondness (Rob) or without tears (Max); it's like I've stopped caring about them, somehow. It seems... rude. Mean. Something like that. And if that goes, then what? What if I find myself never really trusting or caring for someone like that again, and don't even have any solid memories of how that kind of thing felt? The thought of me like that is scary. The fact that I've been that way before makes the fear kind of worse.
...I'm missing something here, aren't I? ...Am I?
And then there's this obsession with the color black, with my wardrobe. Trying to make my outside look more like my inside. Finding it harder to identify with the cute girl wearing pink and bunnies in the mirror. It's sort of like a creative activity, sort of. Or am I escaping again? I keep second-guessing everything I do. Can't even trust myself entirely, I think?
In the end, all we agree on is that I am confused.
Admittedly, I rather like how cute and innocent (not to be confused with 'naive') my emotional side is. I think it's sweet that she can trust so easily, that she believes in forgiveness and that belief in things like "love" can almost work a kind of magic. It's also cute how she can thoughtfully nod her head, with very little irony, even be moved to tears at the allegorical stuff written in children's books like The Velveteen Rabbit, The Little Prince, Peter Pan, The Last Unicorn, and The Missing Piece (granted, the last two aren't technically children's books, and none of them have entirely happy endings, either). It's nice, I guess, that she can be so optimistic and quick to forgive - or is she just justifying everything in order to delude herself into happiness? And it just pisses me off that she'll just go and blurt out all this stuff about how she feels and thinks and everything to just anyone without making sure they're trustworthy first. I mean, trust is nice, but she'll just get us exploited at this rate. And that small recurring delusion that she's not really human? Cute, but it worries me too. Sometimes I think she's "bloomed" too late - thoughts like hers have no place in a 26-year-old body.
But I'm kind of scared of my logical side. I don't know if I want her to be the "dominant" one again, like it used to be. Her mistrust and cynicism make it easy for her to dehumanize almost anyone, and she's always analyzing people's motives and trying to figure out ways to make them think or feel what she wants them to. She's not all logic, but the emotions she has are mostly kind of scary - she's bitter, and angry, and she laughs when she hurts people. She hates. She says horrible things to me when I cry, or when I try to think positive. She points out that all hope by nature is false, so I should stop wasting my time with that sort of thing. She absolutely despises crying, and always tries to shut me down in front of people so that I don't. Makes her look bad, she says. And I feel guilty when I'm not able to let go and cry, and she says things that make it worse. She knows I'll stop crying altogether again if she keeps it up, like before. She was the one that came up with the idea of "slow suicide" - to make every day worse than death for yourself, by your own actions, because if you really hated yourself you wouldn't escape the pain, you'd torture yourself. We ended up telling Rob about it, and he ended up adopting it. I feel bad, but she says I ought to take comfort in the fact that whether or not he credits me with it, I did in a way bring about his suffering. So, she says, everything's evened out, right? But she doesn't entirely believe that, and that's what scares me. She wants to make things like they used to be, get rid of my ability to love and trust, because she thinks it makes me too vulnerable. She thinks it would be best for me to go back to the kind of black and white thinking I used to have, and to do that she wants me to be able to dehumanize Rob, to do something so cruel to him that there would be no affection left on either side. She urges me to do more things alone, to enjoy being bitter and angry. I don't know. So much of what she argues ends up making sense, at least more sense than just a jumble of emotions. But she scares me, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to be like her again.
Confused, confused. You can see that, I'm sure. Trying so hard to find a happy medium. Emphasis on "happy." Moving on would be easier, I suppose, if I could go back to the way I was and simply not care about people anymore, but I've found that I do like being happy (of course when it comes you'll become just as sad as you were happy, so why not take preventative measures?, says logic). And emotion-wise, well... I don't know, it's complex. I want to get over Rob and I suppose I'll have to get over Max, but I also feel... saddened, I guess, at the thought of remembering them without fondness (Rob) or without tears (Max); it's like I've stopped caring about them, somehow. It seems... rude. Mean. Something like that. And if that goes, then what? What if I find myself never really trusting or caring for someone like that again, and don't even have any solid memories of how that kind of thing felt? The thought of me like that is scary. The fact that I've been that way before makes the fear kind of worse.
...I'm missing something here, aren't I? ...Am I?
And then there's this obsession with the color black, with my wardrobe. Trying to make my outside look more like my inside. Finding it harder to identify with the cute girl wearing pink and bunnies in the mirror. It's sort of like a creative activity, sort of. Or am I escaping again? I keep second-guessing everything I do. Can't even trust myself entirely, I think?
In the end, all we agree on is that I am confused.
posted by Chris at 11:35 PM
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