this emotion stuff is harder than you think...

"It's the perfect time of year
Somewhere far away from here
I feel fine enough, I guess
Considering everything's a mess
There's a restaurant down the street
Where hungry people like to eat
I could walk but I'll just drive
It's colder than it looks outside

It's like a dream you try to remember
But it's gone
Then you try to scream
But it only comes out as a yawn
When you try to see the world
Beyond your front door"

- Barenaked Ladies - Pinch Me

----

I was listening to the radio this morning on the way to work. This song was playing as I parked. I like the song and was singing along with the beginning of it (the excerpted section above) when I was suddenly emotionally overwhelmed and began to cry.

Not just a little. Deep and wracking.

i was surpised, but still utterly overwhelmed. i turned my face away from the parking lot (my spot is at the edge by some trees) lest anyone should see me. luckily i come in at 8:30 (flex hours) and most others are there at 8:00 or just before.

i used to suppress my tears. not cry. at all. only a few times since adolescence. and until making the break last summer, certainly only couple or three times with a witness.

i let it flow out of me. i was worried about what would happen if i ran into someone in the hallway on the way to my office - how they would react to my eyes - crying eyes - but i chose not to hold it in.

it is my desire to live. to fully live. if i shut down part of my emotional make-up. the sadness i feel. the tears within. then i will be shutting down my capacity for joy, because the atrophy in one area will spread. i know. i've lived it already. i want everything life has to give me. i want to feel it's beating presence in every moment.

and that means dealing with my tears as well.

i'm not sure why they came. but they did.

----

i picked up some books i ordered the other day. they are clustered around the subject of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

the three books are:

1) Heartwounds: The Impact of Unresolved Trauma and Grief on Relationships
2) The PTSD Workbook: Simple, Effective Techniques for Overcoming Traumatic Stress Symptoms
3) Growing Beyond Survival: A Self-Help Toolkit for Managing Traumatic Stress

the last 2 books are workbooks. i spent some time looking through reviews of various books on PTSD to see which of them had a broader focus than childhood sexual abuse or traumatic event PTSD. i wanted books that discussed complex post traumatic stress disorder.

from the wikipedia "Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD), also known as "complex trauma" and "disorders of extreme stress not otherwise specified (DESNOS)", is a clinically-recognized condition that results from exposure to prolonged interpersonal trauma such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, torture, and war. According to van der Kolk and Courtois (2005), C-PTSD better describes the pervasive negative impact of chronic trauma than does the diagnosis posttraumatic stress disorder. PTSD fails to capture C-PTSD sufferers' loss of a sense of safety, trust, and self-worth, their tendency to be revictimized, and their loss of a coherent sense of self. C-PTSD is under consideration for inclusion in the next revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V) as a formal, coded diagnosis. C-PTSD is characterized by chronic difficulties in many areas of emotional and interpersonal functioning."

i suspect that you will end up reading most of my efforts to go through these workbooks.

i was inspired to look for workbooks like this by some of the childhood sexual abuse workbooks i bought for stbx-Mrs_C all those years ago. i especially had respect for the workbook "The Courage To Heal", and thought that something like that might be a useful set of exercises for me.

i have no desire to return to my old ways of living and of relating to the world around me. as i am flying pretty blind on this i figured that i'd best deal with the anger and the rage - and the hurt and the emotion.

i so very much want to live.

the desire is just bursting out of me, but i don't want the emotional release to come out in an undirected manner - like this morning. that would be a good ticket to things like alcoholism (not that i'm much of a drinker), and serial rocky relationships.

i don't want that.

(not that i would particularly mind sleeping with half the known universe, but i've done that scene before and it just left me feeling empty)

i want to love and be loved. i want to feel joy.

this would seem to be a step.