Does it ever get better?

I recently found a diary I briefly kept in 2004.

By this point in my life, I hadn't been doing much hand-written journalling like I had when I was younger.

I was more into livejournal.com at that point in time.

But on occasion I did sometimes physically write down my thoughts and feelings.

Here are some things that still apply to me NOW...

After a therapy session:

"...my big takeaway was her point that emotions/feelings aren't rational so that spending time trying to rationalize one's feelings is like running in a hamster wheel. Feelings just are.

"I need to exist now. Not in my past, not in the future."

*this is still a major challenge for me!!

My Mom:

"I've told friends before I learned to not experience emotions at my mother's knee... I wasn't kidding."

"She gave me some grief over my therapy appt, reminding me that when things bother you, you're supposed to throw them over your shoulder and not look back."

Introspection:

"What are the strong emotions I think I experience the most? Fear, anger, anxiety, joy. 3 to 1. That sucks.

"I am a pessimist because it feels safer but I can still sometimes dream."

"I'm thankful for the same things/reasons/people daily & I guess I take that for granted because I still find myself attempting to assign weight to things. Like these are the things I'm thankful for but the way I feel about [terminal cancer diagnosis for someone I still love and miss 9 yrs after her death] is over-shadowing everything else."

Meds:

"I waver between hopefulness and despair. There is no middleground, not even a chemically-induced one. I stopped taking the Celexa because I don't want to have a false sense of security. I need to know that everything that happens and that everything I feel is real."

**I had started cutting myself for probably the first time since high school because nothing felt real to me.

Facts:

"I tend to be naïve, gullible & over-trusting. I also feel the need to fix and to help and put all my energy into trying to make a positive difference for others because it's where I created my sense of self-worth."

"...the biggest thing I am feeling right now is POWERLESS."

"...in my life I use words as a shield and a weapon. If I can fully put something into words then I don't necessarily have to feel it."

**still true

Confession:

"It's difficult not to get mad at myself for not handling this all better. I feel like having human weaknesses is unacceptable."

** I still feel this way about myself. I'd never be this hard on someone I love and care about so why is it my first reponse to myself? Where is my love and compassion for ME from me?

And, a poem I wrote back then...

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network