Overcoming Emotional Memory

Your emotions have a memory. A long memory. They remember the times you were hurt and they remembered how to cope. They remember being unhappy in your life and that they coped by heading underground.

I have never been in a war, or near a war (unless hiking on Kennesaw Mountain counts), so I don't want to overplay this. I don't want it to sound like I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or anything clinical like that. But my emotions have recently reminded me of their capacity to remember things. And I was surprised.

Before I left my marriage I was incredibly unhappy in my own home. I couldn't relax, I felt controlled, I felt taken advantage of, I felt.... Well, actually I felt nothing. That was how I dealt with it. Because feeling something was very hard and very dangerous - if I allowed myself to feel something it was really mostly hurt and depression. Neither of which is terribly fun to feel.

I have once again, entirely by my own actions this time, placed myself in a position where I feel I can't relax in my own home, where I feel taken advantage of, where I fell.... Well, where I feel nothing. I have shifted into survival mode because I have invited a friend to stay with me for six weeks (and work with me...). This friend has done nothing wrong. It is just that the situation is so reminiscent of the end of my marriage that I am beside myself miserable.

I didn't put two and two together until today with Dr. O. I should have. Looking back over the last five weeks I have withdrawn into myself. I haven't written, I've kept myself uber busy to avoid feeling anything. The tendrils of depression crept back in. I am exhausted. I can't sleep enough. I don't do my hair any more - I just put it up in a bun. I take no time with makeup, clothes, jewelry - I just don't care the way I used to.

The first step, I believe, in defeating or retraining this emotional memory is to recognize it for what it is. This feeling that I have right now is not about my current situation but my emotions are likening it back to the end of my marriage. This situation will end in just over a week - there is light at the other side of the tunnel. I am strong enough - I can get there.

And in the meantime something remarkable is happening. I am closing on my first home tomorrow. The home I lived in with my ex-husband was not my home and that fact was made clear to me fairly often. This home is all mine.

I just got back from sitting on the back porch at my house (I don't have keys yet...). I sat there and looked around the backyard and imagined my friends, family, pets and other random loved ones visiting me. Grilling on the back deck. Christmas tree in the front room. Baths in the bathtub. Mornings pulling weeds and doing other gardening. This is the home that will be all mine. My haven from all the craziness of the world. Mine. And I know this sounds crazy, but I am so proud of myself. This is something I never believed I could pull off (something I was told I could not). And yet here I am.

I will not let my emotional memory steal this glory from me.

Take care, dear readers....