Chaos Inside My Head

In therapy on Wednesday, as we discussed my lack of feeling in the real sense of feeling - my shrink said that my mind must be so loud. 

Always running from feelings because I don't know what they are...

It's like a constant red siren in my brain, screaming "Stranger Danger!"

When I start to feel - anything - good or bad - high or low - heavy or light - that blaring siren goes off in my head and I run. Fast. Faster than I ran out of that building the day I heard the gun shot. Faster than I ran after things were forced upon me 9 years ago in the cement parking garage just a mile from my home. 

Fast. 

My instinct is to get the hell out of there.

Wherever there is.

Always in my head.

That's where it is.

And, I feel it.

I feel something.

I feel BAD. I feel HEAVY. I feel something that I know to be uncomfortable but it's a stranger to my 42 year old brain, still stuck at five or seven years old, when I stopped knowing what I was feeling.

Emotionally.

Mentally.

This is why the stroke, she says to me.

My brain could not do the hiding and the living. The truth and the lying. The feeling and not feeling any longer.

It had to turn off to save me.

But even the flick of that light switch wasn't enough to make me stop.

And feel.

"You're a little behind, Heidi," she says.

I know.

"But, we are here now. You are capable of learning now. To feel. To know what you feel. To know what to do with what you feel. To teach your boys all that you now know because you didn't know it then."

I know.

"What do you want, Heidi?"

I want my mind to be free from the sirens.

And so we continue.

We push forward.
What is the alternative?

Addiction.

We have a pretty good track record of that not working.

Running.

We all know that not everyone can get a participation award.

Hiding.

I've run out of spots.

And so we continue.

We push forward.

We let go.

We quiet the sirens.