Well, my experiment with waking up at a set time every morning was a dismal failure. As you know if you read my last few blogs, it lasted a week and then I was so suicidal I didn't trust myself in the bathtub even with a safety razor to shave my legs. So M. made me promise to give that one up--a promise I was all too glad to make and even gladder to keep.
Which leaves me wondering where I am now and what my goals should be, if any.
An internet friend of mine recently mentioned to me that she had come to terms with her agoraphobia and that's not something she wants to challenge right now. I wonder if that's where I should be in my mind. Really, it doesn't seem all too bad to me, staying in the house and not getting out. When it seems bad is when I think of all the judgments that go along with it: how much of a burden I'm being to other people and how I "should" be getting out more and how even my therapist expresses concern at the tiny box I seem to live in. But this box is safe and warm and I don't know if I want to leave it.
Judgments: how I "should" clean my house better and how if I don't I'm a lazy slob and how I "should" get more exercise and how I "should" run my errands for myself. Burdens, burdens on others.
What if I just accepted where I am now?
But that leaves me with the hollowness. The long, joyless hours that stretch before me every day when I have nothing to do and nothing to put in them. That's the problem, as far as I can see. That's what keeps me from accepting. Not the "shoulds" so much as the emptiness. Other people have hobbies and crafts and things to keep them occupied, whether they're agoraphobic or not. I have none of those things any more. All the joy is gone.
What would it be like to get it back? The thought frightens me. Would that mean I had to do something with them? Be out in the world? My therapist urges me to think about these things without letting them mean anything at all, and I try, but I don't do too well at it. Everything I think of has implications. When I begin to want, I want it all, not just a piece. And the wanting it all is what frightens me most. It's not enough to want to play the flute, I must do something with it. It's not enough to want to crochet; it has to go somewhere. Make me a success at something. I can't see the little successes and let them build gradually into something larger. It's the bigger picture, always.
Now I'm getting overwhelmed and Onyx has come to sit in my lap. Both make it difficult to continue this.
I wish my therapist would call me back.
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When I begin to want, I want it all, not just a piece. And the wanting it all is what frightens me most.
That would frighten me too. This is a major part of why I find it difficult to write fiction, because I have very high expectations for my writing and right now my writing skills are not as good as my expectations, and I don't want to face the steps that it would take to get better.
But for whatever reason, I don't have those expectations for other activities and can just do whatever the next step is.
(A question to think about if you want to) Why do you have very high expectations of yourself in many areas? What would happen if you did not?
One reason I can think for my own high expectations is that people made a fuss about my writing talents when I was young. Another is that I decided at an early point that writing was my "calling." So if I now admit that I am not all that good at it, I have to find a new "calling" or face that I don't have one, and that makes me feel sad and overwhelmed. If I don't write at all, I can pretend that I just haven't gotten around to doing it yet...
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