Part one of two

Today was a really hard and stessful day. All sorts of triggers came up for me. Consistently I feel better after an EMDR session but the last couple days my emotional stress especially before a session spiked and it coincides with processing some of the deepest stuff of all. I feel sad and scared today and that hasn’t changed a huge amount since the session I did a little while ago but I also processed stuff I couldn’t have accessed any other way. I don’t really know what to say. I’m grateful for the kind and thoughtful comment I received last night. I am grateful that despite my worst fears my trauma has been, if ever so difficult, at least manageable. A lot of that is attributed to being in a safe space and getting to unwind and consistently having experiences of fearing judgment that might trigger my trauma but really somehow not being judged in the ways that matter most.

Now I am preparing to leave and figure out what is next and I feel pretty terrified about it all. I do not feel quite okay but I have faith that I can get through it. I am so scared of it all becoming unmanageable before I have had a chance to process it and heal enough to really feel safety and stability. I realised kind of recently that I am pretty powerless when it gets to that unmanageable place and I don’t want to feel that anymore. 

I slept much less than usual and then I was woken up by my host asking, how is your tooth? It felt a bit critical and I am so sensitive about my teeth. He was basically like, God helps those who help themselves, and suggested that I keep calling dentists until I find a place that was open and that if Infound a place he would take me before he goes away to manage some business. I want to tackle this before it gets worse, as he pointed out, and while I have the opportunity to get a ride there. That is true. 

I truly did not want to go to a dentist if it was not my own, the only place where I have experienced safety getting dental work done by a gentle and kind dentist. I went through the motions and called places anyway. My dentist went right to voicemail. When I reached a couple of others I was scared and didn’t know what to say and hung up. I tried my dentist again and someone answered. They had an available appointment in about an hour. I tookk it and he drove me there, agreeing to wait in the car for over an hour while I had a root canal. It has been so stressful today but the actual experience of the dentist did not make me anxious at all. I am not nervous about going back and getting future dental work done with them. But it surely contributed to the overall stress level of the day.

I called my mother and she was in the car with her husband. He did what he always does, though it hasn’t happened in a while since they don’t spend much time together and this time they were in the car together. He intentionally misgendered me as always and said negative superlative things about me at the same time as is typical… after my mother said goodbye but the phone hadn’t hung up tet and I think he knew that, but he will misgender me and say mean things about me when I am not there, too. It hurts realising it must happen all the time when I am not around to hear it. He also developed a habit over the last couple years of, sarcastically or with ill will, interrupting my conversations eith my mother to interject as though I wanted his input, and he knows I don’t; he just realised this is something that hurts me so he took up the habit. At first my mother yelled at me for getting upset and repeated the fallacy that he doesn’t mean it, it’s just ignorance. I told her if he couldn’t follow basic protocols, in this case to ensure a peaceful existence between us all which he clearly does not want, he would not have a job. I explained my pain and the siguation as I see it and asked her if it was possible that he does this on purpose to hurt me and cause trouble. She admitted that it was, and lately when  I do that, after explaining that I am hurt and ai need more gentle and kind treatment, she much more easily does that, and things get better before they have a chance to get terribly painful. She admitted when she responded badly to my trauma the other night that she was feeling defensive and that is a huge step for her. It was painful in a lot of ways but it has been a pattern where, when Intry to say, ouch, this hurts, I need something, she brings up, “well, can I talk about all the ways you have hurt me?” Just one example of the ways she will deflect so none of the conversation I need to have ever gets to happen.

Lately, something has changed though, and I actually do trust she cares now, because somehow she has seen the light and put the effort into trying to be kind and understanding of me in situations where normally she would never be, and it is a huge change I don’t understand but that  I’m grateful for. It makes me sad though because things could have been so much easier for a really long time. So I told her, of course, if you have any issues with me I want to hear about them so we can work it out, and don’t you know it hurts me ever to have hurt you? Somehow she doesn’t quite seem to know that, and that is a big source of grief for me. It is importsnt to me to address issues she has but she never wants to except in defensiveness when Inbring up my own. I try to tell her, yes, we can talk about these things, but it is not helpful to anyone to conflate the issue I come to her with and all her issues with me so none of them ever get resolved, so please just be with what I came to you with and tomorrow if I am feeling less triggered m we can talk about all the issues you have with me. I called her on that dsy and she said she didn’t want to, it was her choice, and besides, I already know. I’m thinking of maybe approaching her with Thich Nhat Hanh’s conflict resolution and clearing the air practices; maybe even listening to his talks with her, though in the past if I tried to resolve anything in any way with a practice ai dound helpful she would immediatelyndismiss the practice and accuse me of trying to manipulate and control her and all sorts of things. Now I think for some reason she will be more open to it and again I have no idea what changed but maybe we can actually work on something now? And though she has been so much better about so much and ai am grateful still today I am so, so sad.