12/21/08

I am such a derelict diarist.

That isn’t entirely true…I am usually on every other day or so to read up on my favorites. I may not note them often, but that doesn’t diminish my concern for their well-being.

Which, oddly enough, makes me fear the type of mother I would be. An odd leap in the thought pattern. Would I be the same type of mother that I am friend? With the exception of my two best friends, I am really only involved in the lives of my other friends in a removed way. I love them and want the best for them, and make sure I keep up to date on their lives through the grape vine. I cheer their successes and mourn their losses in a tertiary manner. Is this the type of mother I would be? I see most of my friends every couple months. Which bothers me and makes me sad. I wish I called them all every couple weeks to catch up. But the thought of so much interaction with so many people makes me fade away a little and retreat into myself like I am suddenly hiding behind a veil and watching myself on auto-pilot. Odd…but the truth.

Regardless, I should let them all know how much they mean to me. Because, though I may not show it, I care about them deeply.

I know, in my last entry, I said I was okay with this control coping mechanism of mine. But the more I begin to think about it, the more I realize what a big impact it is having on my life. I can’t even maintain close relationships with the majority of the people I care about. I don’t think I am okay with it.

But how do I change that?

The answer isn’t, "just pick up the phone and call." It isn’t that simple. I go blank and distant and my heart starts to pound. It makes it slightly difficult to have an easy let’s catch up chat when you can’t focus on what they are saying and make intelligent conversation. Like right now, just thinking about it, there is this blank fuzzy feeling in my brain and nothingness is echoing through my head as I stare blankly around my room.

I need to fix this broken piece inside me. Even when my life was spiraling out of control I was more myself than I am now. I notice it when I am with my two best friends. When I am with either of them I fall into this person I used to be, this person they recognize. But it rings false to my own ears and I watch my actions and listen to myself saying things that are so automatic because they are expected after so many years.

But with this new man it is different. Because he didn’t know me before or during that time in my life. He only knows me now. And ironically, there are times when I almost feel like myself with him rather than some stranger in my own body pretending to be myself. Somehow, I am usually present when I am with him instead of watching myself. (After four months, I should give him a name. From now on, he will be BW.)

I am only that present when I am working or studying, when my mind is engaged. And maybe that is the answer. With my two best friends, though they are in every way, my best and oldest friends, our interactions are so rehearsed and ingrained that I can detach. My brain does not have to be involved to interact with them. But with BW I have to remain engaged in the present because I don’t have an autopilot for my interactions with him yet.

And maybe that is another answer I have been looking for. The reason I fall in and out of relationships. The reason I experience this desperation after several months. Perhaps it is my way of maintaining one relationship in my life that doesn’t exist on autopilot. Perhaps it is my body’s way of fighting the detachment that has become such an integral part of maintaining a collected me. This frightens me because I really want to keep BW in my life. I don’t want to get to a point at which I revert to autopilot with him.

Perhaps I am just grasping at straws. If I am not…well then I may have just come to the realization that I really need to find a way to fix this broken part of me. Not just for the sake of fixing what is broken, but to be whole again.

I need to relearn how to be present in my body, with myself, and those around me. I need to learn how to be present with my emotions and not retreat from them.

But how?