FROM: 23038076
TO: [REDACTED]
SUBJECT: MP 21
DATE: 11/18/2011 07:47:27 PM

A Heavy Heart

11-18-11

MP 21

Today, ok the past three days, I have been heavy heart days. You know, the days when the overwhelming feeling of weight on your inner being. Pressing down. Immobility: The heaviness covers your who physical body. All you want to do is curl up in bed and sleep the day away.

Days like today reminds me of why I am here. I could not skillfully negotiate a way from a heavy to light heart. I kept choosing unskillful diversions, distractions and relationships.

R was my first adult relationship. Adult should be in quotes. I was old enough 19, but as you will see internally is was not old enough to make truly adult decisions. I tried to run away from my relationship with R. Blot it out. Erase it as if it was a bad dream. When I did think about it, R was the villain and I was the victim. R had the power and I was powerless. Both strategies were unskillful. The first forced my thoughts and emotions underground. The latter clumsily framed the memory as a melodrama with me as the heroine?

Neither helped me to heal the wounds and connect my past to the present. The me of then, to the me of now. I created a compartment for me to place the me (with R). I locked the door. This practice of compartmentalization became a more defined feature of my consciousness.

So what is a better frame for my image of me with R? What did I find appealing or comforting?

I was coming to the end of my freshman year. I still had not really found a home at college. I was isolated. I had decided on a church, but was not really doing much more this a service a week. R befriended me or should I say “Friended” me. Invited me to his circle of friends and activities. All the thing I loved: choirs, theater, and opera. I had an instant family. No work on my part.

Another need I had was physical - sexual. Being a social autistic when it came to dance of seduction, my first year at college was a series of too easily aborted attempts at connection. Each failure only tuned up the volume of my internal negative dialogue. By summer I was safely back in my silent student shell.

R offered an easy out. He made all the effort to create a social connection. All the way from hello to "cigarette." All I had to do was accept his forward moves. Which I did. It was a relief to me. I was grateful for someone doing all the work for me. So I got what I wanted in a family and sexual relationship.

Obviously sex and social activities are not all too relationships. The more I got to know R. merging of us seemed to be the goal. At first this immersion was very homey. Felt warm and inviting. Womblike. Over time I starting coming up for air, free of R. That was, at first, easy. I could just stay on campus and not go to R's place. But the more free air I experience, the more tightly R gripped. The newness of the sex was wearing off. Sex was more and more about R's needs and not mine.

This was about the end of my sophomore year. R asked me to move in with him. He needed me. He could not live on his own without me. If I had God’s Love in me I would do this for him.

hmmm...

He did hit my soft spots: my desire to be seen as a good God loving guy. I knew he needed to be on his own and not to live with his folks at his age (30). A good friend would do what he could right? What am I if not a good person?

R turned up the pressure, I resisted. But eventually my desire to be "good" was more important than the voice saying: this relationship is not equal; it is more about R than me; if I stay I will be hurt.

I moved in with R. We would repeat this dance roughly yearly for the next seven years. Those seven years of placing R above my own took its toll. I am still try to wrap my head around the effects of my choices during those years with R.

Mindful Prisoner

(Sticky note to self)

When feeling a heavy heart – write! Skillful means.

I feel less heavy already.

MP