stuckness

I hate when I don’t understand what I feel. A part of me is wounded deeply and very much depressed, at the same time angry and resentful. Another part blames me, feels guilt and self-loathing. I’m stuck in my life in so many ways. In therapy they say “stuckness” is good, it’s a platform, a field where exploration of feelings can happen, where one can get in touch deep within herself. This is where change happens. So I guess something needs to change in my life. What is it? This confuses me the most.

The wounded part feels she wants to leave, separate from the man closest to me with whom I’ve shared twenty three and a half years of my life. Our physical and emotional intimacy is gone. Was it ever there? Yes it was for many years at the beginning, despite certain toxicity of our relationship. We had some amazing times together, amazing experiences and we were so close… I used to think of him as my soul mate. Did I? 

Somewhere along the way this intimacy became spoilt and even more toxic. It feels like a bubble filled with some fumes or a fish ball full of bad water, leaving only polluted air to breathe, making us more and more ill with each other. We don’t make each other happy anymore; we don’t have fun together, each feeling anxious and uncomfortable. We still talk and try to sort it out but nothing changes, instead we get upset and angry in the process. He apologises all the time but I’m just tired of hearing the appologies because nothing ever changes. Also because it’s not a question of blame or a need for saying "sorry". He is a free human being who can do what he wants and live his life the way he wants. So am I, and that means I can choose not to live in a relationship where I don’t feel happy.

The guilty me says I should be more understanding, accepting, supportive and less judgemental, that I am unfair. I’ve been told that I’m cold and don’t show appreciation, that nothing is good enough for me. I begin to believe it and it sends me down the depths of self-loathing, feelings of failure and hopelessness. I’m open to look at myself and explore whether all that is true but I also have reasons to believe that I’m being manipulated. This is when I want to separate and be alone. I find this state incredibly hard emotionally, it strangles me, I feel claustrophobic… and very very sad. When I was a teenager struggling with my home life, not knowing how to cope with what I was feeling and going through, there had been moments when I wished my parents to die. Those were impulsive thoughts and not meant literally. I didn’t plan to kill my parents. It was a metaphor for wishing the situation I was in to be dead, the emotional pain to stop. It would have been so much easier if my parents didn’t exist than to endure the emotional distress I was fexperiencing. It feels a bit like that now; it would be so much easier if he didn’t exist or maybe if I didn’t exist.

One could ask why don’t we just separate? I immediately think I’m scared of what might happen and what he might do, I’m afraid of his emotional instability. I’m also scared to lose my home and everything I’ve built in my life, regardless how little that is. I have nowhere to go, a lot of debt and  only my two children for family. I’m terrified.

When I was a child my father told me that after many years of marriage no love remains, people stay together out of convenience and because they are used to each other. What a thing to say to your child?! I loathed him for such words! I couldn’t believe he was so bitter and cynical and I pledged that I would never be like that. Now I find myself questioning whether I have ever been in love and whether I know what being in love feels like. What is it like to feel selfless unconditional love?