My life feels foreign

 

Who am I kidding my life feels foreign a lot of the time.  There are days I wonder how I am still breathing, how I am even standing. So easily I can put things in a box and function.  Then there are moments I am overwhelmed and wonder if the pain and tears will ever stop. There are days that I accomplish so much and feel like I was productive. I got an oil change the other day and was so proud of myself.  A stupid little thing that was big for me.   I am in a place where I go back and forth between the two. I sit in my grad classes and think Callahan look where you and all that you have accomplished. You have a house and a job and you are doing all the things in this world.   Then my professor  says something about a girl being raped from an early age and the implications of that and the tears come.  Other times he talks about clients and I think ok, that is something I want to do.  Some days I can totally put my stuff in a box and function. Other times a single word and I can't stop the tears. I don't know I am just in a strange place, and I don't like it.  I don't like it all.

So many examples of life that my professor uses are things that don't fit me. Things that feel like a foreign language, because normal feelings, what is that; normal I don't have a clue ? Sometimes his examples feel like I belong on another planet.  Not because I know that they don't exist but just because the life that I have lived is so very different.  There was not one normal thing about my life growing up, not my parents, not church, not a single relationship.  There weren't really many friendships. Highschool was spent in a terrified place spending lunch alone in the library. Romance or dating, no not that really either.  I had no normal things in my life .  The normal things in my life were the trees and the flowers, the world around me that were my comfort.  That is where I found my normal. 

Today in class he wanted us to draw our living room growing up and name the hurt, right away without a second thought I said '"can't I draw my living room now?!?" All of the sudden I felt like I was in a cage.  I can't draw my living room and I can't name that pain.  Those are the things that bother me, because I can't draw that living room and tell you the hurt.  I think about it and the pictures start to play the one that I have always felt bad about, the one where I am gleeful and pretending to hit my father.  I am wearing that stupid penguin sweater. The guilt that I feel today about that picture is huge.  I see 5 men that should not be there. I see the fan as I repeated their names.  I see a fireplace that I used to love decorated at Christmas.  I see the couch from Mary York and having to lay on my father's hip as he stroked my hair.  When I picture my living room growing up those are the first things that come to mind. So I draw my living today and think, my happy place.  All the things that are mine.  That I have worked so hard for. And where is the pain? My first thought is the mom that I don't have. The last time I saw my mom was sitting in her chair in the corner of the room, and she wasn't listening to me.  I was talking but she wasn't listening and surely didn't hear me. I picture my living room and they are all my happy things but I am sad and so alone.  The tears fall and there is no care.  Just stop and keep moving forward.

My professor talks about relationships and romantic feelings.  I don't have a clue.  He talks about that butterfly feeling and I think oh no I know what happens with that.   He talks about wanting someone to tell you that you are pretty and that they like you, but no I don't want to hear those things.  I don't understand those things, I don't understand having them and I cannot imagine feeling comfortable with them.  Maybe there is a realization that I am going to be a lonely old lady.  That just hurts.  I cannot imagine the experiences that he speaks of being things that I can ever understand.  I have never been in love, never been loved like that.  I do believe in life that there are just certain experiences that I will never have.  So many life experiences have been stolen.  I will not dwell on the things I have have never had.  It's just that there are times that its blatantly clear just how much I have missed in this world and that stings.  Sometimes I think how can I be helpful to others, because there are so many things that I still just don't have a clue about.  It's saddening, and heart breaking. I am just so behind. 

I heart your heart