Making Sense of My Narrative: Ch. 01

Writing about my feelings so they don’t eat me alive.

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

I’ve spent today in a really weird, emotional place. Besides the emotionally abusive car ride home with my mom last night, the lack of sleep I got from brewing her word-venom over and over, the psychologist appointment this morning, and a lengthy, teary phone call with my husband (that I am currently separated from), I must persevere in self reflection so I do not spiral into a bottle of vodka and undo all the progress the last 24 hours has manifested.

This is by far the best meme in this post so please lower your expectations.

At least I got some joy out of making memes on the subject.

Okay this one is kind of funny, too.

Something kind of unrelated that is also on my mind, though. There are so many ways that my husband will always fall short of fulfilling me, and this goes both ways. This is okay and normal and expected in the most functional relationships. What I have that lots of people don’t is that he loves me and sees me unconditionally. I think I offer him the same thing. I reckon that’s heaps rare.

Okay back to the meat of the word vomit.

I must continue to make sense of my narrative. My wellness and future happiness depends on it. I am currently functioning (poorly, at that) on an outdated set of default neural networks that once served me as an emotionally neglected child, but they are now causing more harm than good. Once upon a time, this helped me survive, but now they are killing me. Lets call this the Default Network.

Not my best work but I thought it was funny at the time.

In the words of my wonderful psychologist, I must “re-parent” myself. The love and support and kindness that others develop towards themselves while growing up under the care of at least one apt parent must now be manifested by me. Towards me. From now on, we will refer to this (currently hypothetical) goal as Vital Network. The word that came to mind in naming it was actually vitality, but that was not an adjective. Vital is an adjective, albeit with a slightly different vibe to vitality, but I thought it suited.

I must be really careful to constantly scan myself and reflect on which network is being used. Currently, it is totally the Default Network, but I am keeping my introspective eyes peeled for little red flags in my decision-making or self-talk that demand a makeover so they can be destroyed and replaced with the new and improved Vital Network.

You know, I didn’t want to write this post. Not because particularly wanted to keep it to myself or anything like that, but because I was emotionally wrecked. I didn’t want to give myself the time of day, maybe? At the end of the day, I think I felt that ignoring this kind of self-reflection was right under a little red flag that I usually ignore. I don’t know what the flag is specifically on, and I was hoping that laying it all out on the table would help identify it.

Did I want to drink? No. Hurt myself? No. Distract myself? Yes. Yes I did.

What we resist, persists.

I think the desperate urge for me to sweep this under the rug and consider it future Hannah’s problem is a cover for something far more heinous. I would ignore myself, resolve that I’ll “just take a quick break now and get back to it later,” and then I would begin distracting myself.

It might start with a video game. Maybe I’ll make a meme or consider hitting the “Go Live” button on my OBS. Or perhaps I would start racking my brain for the art project I knew that I had to do at some point but had been putting off for ages but maybe I might kind of start it now (not).

I feel like the natural progression from there would be that I would be like, oh fuck it feels good to be rid of that bullshit right now. I’m now suspicious that it is a sneaky foot-in-the-door to send me spiraling back into the familiar and effortless Default Network.

Hello? Red flag? You’re offensively more crimson than you were a few minutes ago.

I am tempted to stop writing here, but I am more suspicious of the sneaky evil ways of my own mind than I was at the beginning. I’m choosing to listen to myself (YAY! Vital Network ftw!). So… Now what? I think I’ll go make some memes about this experience. You’re welcome, internet.

I think I’ll be ok.