In The Arena II

[Vanilla]

Please excuse this stream of consciousness. There are myriad of feeling and thoughts traveling around my brain that need some sorting. And the attempts I am making to order them is providing limited relief or clarity.

This is about posting! This is why we post, if we aren't honest and put our thoughts and feelings down. Just because we think feel or believe something doesn't make it true. It just makes it a thought feeling or belief that appears valid at that time.

So I am befuddled and confused about so many things at present.

You say that as if it's a bad thing. It isn't growth comes from facing the pain based in reality.


What if everything I thought I knew about myself and about my relationships with Mr M and Mr Ex was not in fact right. What does that mean?

It means that some things you knew weren't right. I question the word "everything", that is black and white thinking. It could be that you can research errors in thinking and dissect a couple of your posts. What in these posts are true.

This body image stuff has really started to f**k with my head and I'm not sure why.

I think you do. In my view it's because you are starting to dump the excuses. It has become your reality that if you have extreme self care, this includes your physiology, it includes aspects such as your weight. It's complex as PP says. His advice is rock solid and he has insight into the affects of FOO.

You have accepted your childhood abuse as part of you, you have come to terms with the fact this is your reality. There is no denial as to its effects. You have begun to heal, you have reachEd a point of recognising when these feelings and obstacles arise, when your sweet sadness emerges that extra care is needed. That is part of the true Jellyb.

When you and I first chatted you believed you were irreversibly mentally ill, and wanted that label to make sense of you. Instead you accepted the part which was FOO damaged. Tough choice and a much harder path than meds.

I feel I have sorted all of this into tidy boxes and classified and catalogued and ordered. I feel like someone has walked in a grabbed every single box and turned them upside down in the middle of the room.

Thank goodness for that! That is how it is and you might want to make this your new comfort zone.

I am confused about what I have been doing for the last 14 months. If I don't understand anything of what has happened in last 33 years, who would?

Can you accept the confusion as part of life.

I read Zues letter to newcomers. And Im reading it and I am thinking , I don't have that level of clarity about my role in my relationships ending or my partners role in it. I just assumed it was all my fault and I think I stopped there. Rationalizing, imagining, creating wonderful reasons why it's always, my fault.


And is it always your fault? What is 'it' that is always your fault?

I look at all those that came to the board at the same time I did. I see the immeasurable growth, wisdom, clarity and calm they possesses. And wonder what pill did I miss out on that I am still here wondering how to do this thing, we call growing and changing.

Really 'all' of them? When you find the pill save one for me. Why do you have go at others pace? What happened to those that left?

Why am I so committed to ways of being and thinking that make me so very unhappy.

Are you committed? Or are you trying to release?

Why am I clinging to a story of pain and heartbreak.

Are you? Or is the weight the thing you are hanging on to as a protective?


When there a much happier, lighter story to be told and lived. What am I so scared of?

So what are you scared of? Being thinner? What is it about being thinner that is so scarey? Are you afraid of being successful.

I feel indulgent asking these questions while others are still in the midst of so much pain, with greater losses to be had than what I have been through. But even that makes me think. There are so many people who have grown through far deeper tragedies and heartbreak than mine. And yet they experience their lives with such authenticity and joy.

And there are those who don't!

Something is not right in the state of Denmark.

I have dreams and wants and wishes and I am so scared of saying them aloud. Of even having them. I deny my own voice. I ignore. What is the price of ignoring yourself?

Ahhhhh, light bulb Jellyb. You deny your own voice, I don't believe you deny it, it's just you don't heed it. You ignore sweet sadness, until she is so pervasive you have to listen to her. If you addressed her earlier in the cycle, as I do with my parts then the voice gets so that you must pay attention. You could choose to do that, to take care of yourself. Extreme care and this is part of it.

Have I evolved, grown, changed over this 14 months. I don't know. I can't say with any confidence that my internal or external life is any different. Or is it? Am I so accustomed to ignoring anything good in myself that I wouldn't recognise if it bit me on the bum.

There is one very easy way, go back and read your early posts. With two pencils or the highlight feature extract the key sentences. Then compare them to now. In two column before and after.

I know there are qualities I have the make for a good partner. But I am so scared of more rejection I can't accept, won't accept that someone could actually see them. I am a theory only kind of woman. In theory I have all the qualities that any good solid man would want, and desire and be happy to have. In practice, maybe not so much.


This is mind reading. Judging that which others might think about you. What is more important is what you think of them


I am perplexed, annoyed, scared, frustrated, confused, overwhelmed...where to from here?

OK you have the full range of emotions.

I need a plan because I am probably the most lost I have been in 14 months, and I'm not sure why. I'm not sure where to start. I should probably know.

Really? Shouting on yourself? Jellyb you wouldn't let the rest of us do that.

Help

I will if I can.

PS: Please forgive my indulgent navel gazing, but all this kinda hurts.

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More to come.

V