Some time between Halloween and Thanksgiving I start holding my breath.

I don’t realize I’m doing it, but it’s the day before Thanksgiving and I feel like I’m starting to turn blue.

What, what, what?

I didn’t know I have this deep inner recess. For years it was mostly hidden, and I didn’t know I had learned to avoid the area.

It has been like living in a haunted house. I explained away every odd noise, every displacement of objects, every shadow or shiver when I walked into the attic.

I never even realized I had an attic – that’s how well the thing was done.

But now, it’s become more obvious, less able to deflect – but still a mystery.

I walked around yesterday, knowing I had a million things to do, but couldn’t settle into anything I started.

Focus, I kept telling myself. Just stop, I kept admonishing myself. What the hell is wrong with you? Get over yourself!

It never worked when I was little, and it doesn’t work now. I just went deeper inside, feeling more and more wrong.

But I’m resilient. I’m still here. I started saying “It’s okay – you’re okay,” over and over, which allowed me to get some things done for a while.

Does that mean I win? – because it sure doesn’t feel like winning.

There is still so much to get to, and I am doing what I can. I need to fit several days worth of tasks into today, but here I am, writing.

It’s a balm, even if temporary.

I will go about my business regardless of the dank heaviness trailing me. It’s just harder.

There is something in that dark, drippy, echoing recessed inner cavern that needs me to figure out how to get down there, and get us back safely – or something like that.

I know this has to do with the trauma of neglect, and of my trying to resolve it by finding people or circumstances that would helpfully replicate it for me so I could work on it, but that didn’t fix it then, and it’s not fixing it now – dammit.

I can continue what I’ve always done, and power my way on through sheer will, but it never really leaves, it just gets quieter.

It feels like a rescue mission that I have no idea what equipment I need to be successful – because I do try – I am trying at this very moment.

“What do you need,” I ask, or “what do you want me to do?!”

It’s like when my son was barely verbal and he wanted something from the cabinet up above the kitchen counter. I tried the crackers he liked, and several other items. With each thing I grabbed he just wailed harder – his little face all screwed up with his frustration that “I didn’t understand!”

Any idiot should know what he needed – get a clue, woman!

So I picked him up and put him on the counter and told him to show me what he wanted. I think it was canned peaches.

Maybe I just need some peaches.

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© seekingsearchingmeaning (aka Hermionejh), Making A Way Blog, 2010 – current