journal every day

Nowhere NEAR doing this. No better than 4 months ago. Damn. Must make progress.

and battered and bruised emotionally at the end of the day to be able to think or write. I crawl into bed, body and heart aching and I try to soothe myself to sleep. I’m going to do better, be stronger… tomorrow. And so the days pass.

I’ve discovered that by having to write something everyday I have to firstly be HONEST about the day, how I behaved etc; and secondly I have to deal with it in order to write it down coherently. Difficult to do at the end of the day coz I tend to swat the day away like a troublesome fly and say “I’ll deal with it tomorrow” which means ‘I’m not gonna deal with today, I’m gonna bury it’.

Ha!! I’m not gonna let myself hide anymore. Will deal with each day and its issues as they come up. NO MORE BURDENS.

It helps so much just to write it all down, close the book & walk away. All the puzzles in my mind I’m trying to solve like why that witch is taking out loans in M’s name again (5 years after they’ve broken up) and the creditors are after him again, just when we thought we were getting free of her. This is a criminal act, yet no-one will do anything about it. But, once I’ve vented my frustrations in my book I feel better, lighter in a way.

every day to some extent. I have a small journal now which means there is space NO MORE for long self-pitying, agonizing analysing – instead I get to the point and move on. Now I just need to practice doing that in my everyday life. I still tend to dwell on things too much. It’s exhausting.

Good advice received today… “don’t add suffering to whatever is unfolding, don’t add your idea that things should be different. Leading me to my task: know it as it is and let it be that way. Slow down enough to let it be that way. Cherish it as it is. It is all.” (i’m not sure who exactly the source(s?) is, but THANKS)

5 June 2006 – 1 week ago

I think all the time, about everything. I analyse and question myself (& others, esp. when it comes to motives). Whilst a certain amount of introspection is healthy, this constant scrutinisation of my every thought and emotion is driving me insane. I ‘file away’ millions of little ‘video & audio clips’ from my day to replay later when I’m alone so that I can go over & over them from every angle and question what I said/did/heard and whether I could have done it better and so on. I then compare various clips to check for discrepancies/lies and if I’m lucky, everything checks out OK & I can ‘discard’ the item in question or if I have doubts I store it again to be replayed later when I have more information. And so on until I’m satisfied or until the person who is being cross-questioned goes nuts. Even then I can’t let go. (Hence my ‘let go’ goal).

Anyway, the only thing that brings me a certain amount of relief (wouldn’t it be bliss if you could switch off the white noise of your thoughts?) is to journal every night before I go to bed. So I store all my info ‘off site’ as it were & then I don’t need to carry it around with me day in and day out. Its burdensome. A severe test of bodily or spiritual strength. I’m tired. I lie awake at night, and wake during the early hours and my brain just whirs & clicks away like a computer’s hard drive. Over drive.

I saw a therapist because I was unable to take a deep breath. The breath seemed to get caught in my throat and I felt like I was suffocating. All the pain and doubt and guilt and anxiety was lodged in my chest and solar plexus and we had a job to shift it. She told me that she noticed that everytime I started to think about something, I stopped breathing. Literally. (I can hold my breath for a very long time). So, when I start to feel stressed now I concentrate on breathing. Gee, how nuts do I sound?! She also told me to place my hands on my solar plexus & simply ‘love myself’. This is an alien concept to me (I’d rather flog myself within an inch of my life). So in 6 months I have yet to do this exercise. But I’m going to try, after journaling every night, to sit quietly for a few minutes and just breathe deeply & love myself. I think it will help me greatly to unburden and lift my spirits. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to write a list of things I like about myself, but to date I have not thought of one thing! Unless you think ‘expert introspectionist’ is a good quality!!!