From: enigma@netcom.com (Enigma)
Subject: Fatigue, painful emotions... (semi-spoiler)
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 00:45:14 GMT


I'm probably not going to charge the people I'm working for for today.
I didn't get *any* work done.  I'm tackling some really old pain, and
it's coming out in physical symptoms: I'm extremely fatigued, I feel
slightly feverish, and I can't concentrate on work.

My therapist thinks I'm ready to quit therapy, that I'm handling 
things just fine on my own.  She mentioned that I have one more issue -
well, two really.  My issues about my father, and having compassion
for my younger self, the one who screwed up so badly.  These issues
are pretty closely related, though.

Anyway, I want to finish this healing process.  If I'm that close, one
more big push ought to do it.  But this pain has been buried for decades
(at least the bottom layers).  Sometimes I picture my subconscious as an
ocean.  If so, the stuff I'm tackling now is the layers of sediment at
the bottom.

See, all my life I idolized my father.  When I wasn't busy hating and
resenting him, that is.  All my life he was on center stage, and I was
the audience.  If I was talking, he would interrupt me without even
noticing that he was doing so.  Or if my brothers or my mother were
talking.  We all deferred to him.  He finally told me about a year ago
that he had a drinking problem all while I was growing up.  You know,
if he had only told me sooner... I spent thousands of dollars on 
therapists, and missing time from work because I was too upset to work,
and I kept telling these therapists that it was all my mother's fault
and had nothing to do with my dad.  I've got a lot of anger about that.

Anyway, last week I finally stood up to him.  I hadn't talked to him in
a long time, and I decided to get it over with and call him, and *not*
play this game anymore.  Right away he brought up the election (he's
for Bush), and when I said something in favor of Clinton, he tried to
shut me up, said "I'm not even going to reply to that" in a very huffy
tone of voice.  And for the first time ever, I said "Why?!?".  I told
him he was totally invalidating my point of view, that he acted like 
I wasn't allowed to disagree with him, but that I did disagree, very 
strongly.  He then tried to smooth things over, said he respected my
opinion and always had.

The thing is, when I said these things I felt very dizzy and disoriented,
as though I were going to faint.  And I've been feeling physically 
unwell ever since (this was two weeks ago).  I'm pretty sure it's 
psychosomatic - when I try to write about it I feel much worse.
Waves of fatigue...

It's as though I've been carrying around this idealized version of my
father, but it was an illusion, and I knew there was something wrong,
I just didn't know what.  The picture I'm seeing of my father now is
totally different.  You know, he doesn't know anything about me, since
everytime I've tried to say something about my life he shuts me up.
I quit trying, after awhile.  He doesn't know how I feel about anything,
or what my life has been like over the past 15 years or so.  And my
therapist thinks I should resolve this somehow, that I should try to
talk to him.  

I think what I'm feeling is grief.  My idealized picture of him is dead,
and I'm left with a human being.  I always believed he loved me, but
the feeling I'm getting now is that he wanted to *be* loved *by* me.
Which is a different thing altogether.  I feel suffocated.  My therapist
always told me to feel my feelings, and she's always been right.  So 
I'm going to just let myself feel this feeling, but it hurts a lot.
I feel numb, and sick, and I can't breathe.  I can't cry, though.
I think I'd feel better if I did, but the tears do not come.

-- 
Holly McGrath   <enigma@netcom.com> 
1803 Mission Street, #339          
Santa Cruz, CA 95060              
(408) 479-4072  (voice mail)