I dont really feel like a person anymore

I’ve been working and moving so hard to work on myself, improve myself, and heal myself. Realizing that chronic pain actually might mean forever, sensory issues arent leaving, I wont one day start to enjoy the things that have plagued me for my entire life, and that I find…surprisingingly heavy.

Initially it was a weight lifted, I painted my nails in different colors, donned my over the ear headphones, smiled as I took in all of the “eccentric” clothing I’d foregone wearing for one propriety reason or another and embraced my selective yet hard to ignore silences. It was refreshing to have an answer to why it often took me days if not months to parse through my emotion and feeling in a situation, seperated as two entities because I always feel something I experience something there just isnt always a clear path to what the emotions I experience mean.

Sometimes its the logic of the situation, I know based on the way that I believe the world to be, that certain things just aren’t kind or necessary, so often I get lost trying to find my way to the why of someone doing something (because surely for them to behave outside of the normal parameters of what is easy and natural, there must be some outlying yet pertinent factor that I haven’t yet considered) instead of recognizing and acknowledging the fact that it was done at all.

For instance, I was dating a guy once, I am polyamorous and therefore don’t have an overt objection to someone that I care for romantically caring for someone else in that same manner. This partner was aware of this, and one night while I was sleeping invited over a young lady to have sex with. It was the sounds of them copulating that woke me up. I was..confused, on the one hand, I hadn’t wanted to have sex that night, and often was a bit less interested in sex than he was. I had encouraged him throughout the relationship to find and date someone if he so chose, and assured him that this was something that I was not only okay, but happy for him to do. So when I woke up and felt, strange, I first went to my logic points, we had rules

if you were engaging in sex with someone else, we’d tell the other person. If the person wanted to have their partner in our shared space, there would be some communication. Knowing these things, and that this person had been exposed to polyamory prior to our relationship, I immediately started to wonder what I’d missed. Perhaps he’d notified me and I’d forgotten? no. Perhaps I was hearing things? possible. So I left the room, to see boots, and for a second the sick feeling I felt I attributed to the possibility that the boots were mine and I really was imagining things. I quickly realized what was happening and went back in the room, when he realized I was awake he jumped to my aid. I remember talking to him about the rules, still assessing what really happened because a part of me considered that perhaps he was unintentional in evading them, I considered that perhaps I felt weird because I still had a monogamous mindset that I hadnt fully unpacked. I rubbed my stomach and felt sick.

With each new possible assertion I thought of, I was attempting to assign meaning to the feelings that I felt. It may seem simple to just, feel it, but that wasnt the reality that I got to enjoy. Instead when I felt my feelings, they were a wave beyond recognition of colors, emotions, and physical feelings so deep and simultaneously delicate, that touching and explaining one would be eternally limited. Only strings caught, and so often those strings were used to tie me back into situations where the other would help me assign meanings where so often, the meaning given simply let them off of the hook. It took me several months after to realize, I felt betrayed, and hurt, and angry. It takes months to leave jobs, relationships, and friendships. I often say “well I should feel…” but if I didn’t recognize that I did feel meant leaving would be…over reacting.

I look back so often on situations like this because within it you can see, past trauma, regression of personal boundaries, anxiety, and manipulation, yet the why of it all unexplained leaves a controversy within understanding of causation. For me, the cause is alexithymia, to this day I often feel what I think is excitement only to discover I was afraid. I will think that something is giving me good feelings, and that lets say my aching back is unrelated, only to find out later when they leave my presence that in fact, there was a relation. I have people “hangovers” where in the midst of the conversation I’m engaged and participating, but later I look back at a myriad of moments where I was lost in the conversation or confused to how I felt enough to fully engage. Other times I’m drained, without having noticed the straw prior.I’ve felt upset only to find out I had a crush.

I love to engage with my thought process and figure out where I am coming from, and today many times I think that I am rather good at assessing my feeling process, yet this did not come innately and instead took a series of step backs to recognize my emotional disconnect in so many situations, and to compassionately ask, why, and to assign new and personal meaning for myself.

-🌹