There are these kind of memories that I have that I try to avoid thinking about by all means, because they give me this extreme anxiety that just comes out of nowhere, that makes me want to scream, to run away as fast as I can. Things that I said or did that seem so utterly stupid and cringe-worthy. It’s certainly not normal that it pushes me into this panic mode, in fact it’s far from it. I literally start whistling or humming as soon as a memory like that comes to mind so that I can somehow distract myself from it as quickly as possible, I start pacing through my apartment, I desperately look for something else that I can keep my mind focused on until I forget that I had the flashback and can continue more or less with business as usual.
It’s not just memories that I keep suppressing, but also emotions of those kinds that I think or am told I cannot or should not have. Desperation for one, which presumably would be the natural reaction to my situation and which every fiber of my body is pushing me towards, but which I simply am not allowed to internalize because it throws me back and keeps me from looking ahead. The feeling of missing persons that I have known in the past, because hanging on to what’s lost keeps me from focusing on what I can still achieve; it is almost scary to what extent I have learnt to cut people out of my life that I feel are bad for me, even though I have known them and they have become important for me for quite some time. The urge to allow myself to be weak at times, to show emotions, to cry, to open up to someone and get all my worries and fears and sorrow off my chest, at least for a while; I can’t, because the more I show others my weaknesses, the more I embrace them myself and start pitying myself for them.
There are so many things in my head that I constantly try to work against, try to suppress and simply push out and forget about. But it doesn’t always work; or to be more precise, it never really fully works. Because what I suppress doesn’t simply disappear, it’s still there, just in an unconscious part of my mind, in the deepest corner that I am able to hide it in. I can feel it trying to rise to the surface, to show and manifest itself, sometimes more and sometimes less.
During moments where I am more emotional anyway, because I had a bad argument for example or am watching an emotional movie, I can’t fully muster the effort to suppress what I always suppress, and some or all of it resurfaces – in the movie theater I usually keep it to watery eyes, but when I am at home and there’s nothing else holding me back I just start full-on crying and weeping until I feel better. I barely ever used to up until a year or two ago, and back then I barely had the need to suppress things as much as I do now.
I don’t know how I should feel about this. Yes, crying releases a lot of the tension and makes me feel better at least momentarily, but it also brings back all the things that I try to suppress, for good reasons that is. Crying makes me weak, and I just can’t be weak right now if I am to survive this and get better some day. It feels like a strange paradox, that on the one hand I have the urge to cry with someone and be comforted, and on the other hand do not want to because I’d be admitting to myself and that person that I am not strong enough to keep going.
I wish and hope that one day I’ll be able to be emotional again, and to cry without feeling ashamed, to watch emotional movies and listen to emotional music without it overwhelming me. But I am not there yet, and I need to keep staying strong and suppressing what holds me back, no matter the effort.