Why do I hurt so much?

The last few weeks have been so emotionally painful.

In moments of silence, when I am in tune with my body, I am only cognizant of the pain that is flowing through my stomach, chest, and heart.

It is emotional, but it is also physical.

I am trying not to let the sadness and the hopelessness take root.

It is hard.

It is hard to focus on the good things when that pain is so readily felt. Growth is painful, I know. But this feels overwhelming.

I know I’ve grown. There are some things I feel better about. But I wish this journey–this life of mine–was clearer and easier.

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This is how it feels.

I lay in bed at night, hoping that you will feel the aching pain drifting off of my body and wrap me in your arms. No words…just you and me, breathing as one. Me, crying in your arms, rather than alone on my pillow.

You don’t come.

Let’s talk about it: SHAME

Shame.

It’s a word I’ve thrown around a couple of times. An overwhelming wave of emotion. Shockingly, however, while I can feel and name this emotion, I have really never thought to examine its underlying cause.

I mean, where does my shame come from? Why do I feel it so heavily and so readily?

When the heart wants what the mind doesn’t know…

For the last 11 years or so, I have sworn off religion. Where I live–in a rural and conservative community–this is kind of a big deal. To some, this makes me a bad person.

And so, it is one subject that I normally do not talk about. I’ve had my ideas, my own way of doing things, and a husband who was in agreement–and that has been enough. 

With insight, comes change

On Thursday, still reeling from my latest EMDR session, I wrote all about the overwhelming and messy feelings that I was struggling with. It was an emotionally charged post and, un-shockingly, one that made me realize just how hard I can be on myself.

You see, I was so ashamed of myself for realizing that I rely on my failures to shape the person that I am. I was ashamed that I rely on other people’s opinion of me when setting my own self-worth. And, I was ashamed when I realized how strongly judgmental I am…no, not of others, but of myself.

How I’ve been defined

Yesterday, I embarked on another EMDR journey–this time, in an attempt to get to the bottom of my perfectionism. The journey itself was not as traumatic and difficult as some of the others have been, and images did come swimming before my closed eyes. One image–of a high cinder block wall that I was trying to scale, jump off of, and leave behind–seems especially relevant in my attempt to escape my little town, where I was known, had history, and, most likely, very few secrets. Breaking into my cliquish peer group as an outsider was never something that I feel like I completely achieved, and my experiences of being bullied, not fitting in, and then trying to prove myself and be better than some of them, certainly contributed to my feelings of inferiority and judgment.

So, while this was telling to me, these are not the moments that stood out to me during this EMDR session.

My perfectionism is trying to kill me…

…okay, from my title, we all know I tend to exaggerate.

But seriously. 

School started again a little less than two weeks ago. I am entering my final year of my teacher prep program, and this semester means that I am required to be in class 4 nights a week until 9 pm. It is a full load of classes with a cohort group, and each class is compressed into a week to two weeks. So, it is a lot of deadlines, full days, and stress.