Sometimes it strikes me how much things feel. I'll be sitting somewhere and a sound, a smell, a sight will hit me at a speed of 1,000 freight trains with 1,000 cars. I don't always know what to do with these emotions either-part of the work with my Couch Man is that I have to stop disassociating, I have to stop standing outside and watching the other me-who I am still unable to connect that the person I see struggling in situations is the Real Me-tackle the good, the bad, and the feeling.

Previously, I have been the master of emotion avoidance, as most of the time everything feels like a second degree burn.

It's not just feelings either, it's memories. I'm beginning to remember things that left my attic a long time ago. My therapist told me I don't have a say in what comes up, the memories that pop in are what my subconscious needs me to deal with. It's not always fun and more often that not my memories leave me very confused, but at least they're in color and not in 8mm spinning film, and thank God for that.

Strangely I have started clutching on to things that make me feel, that make me think. Sometimes the feelings are good and sometimes they stick like the thick burnt soup on the bottom of the pan. But feeling something is a start, it's the way to living in the now, and it's one way I'm going to break free of myself.

The other day I saw a man sitting in the doorway of a home in London. He was in a suit and it was clear he wasn't of the vagrant variety, he just had nowhere else to be. He sat in the doorway with a look of such utter quiet and sadness that I knew whatever had led him to sitting in the doorway wasn't a good thing.

And I thought of Kim.

Just like that, I remembered our last breakup, the worst breakup. I had moved into my own appartment in Arlington, Texas. It was late at night the first night and I was hideously sad. A soft sound came and I looked up to see an envelope slipped under the front door. I rushed to the door and opened it, but there was no one there on the doorstep. I sat down and leaned against the door, opening the envelope-it was a letter of goodbye from Kim.

I sat against the door for most of the night, feeling like it was the closest I could ever get to him again.

Seeing the man there in the doorstep, the memory hit me and all I could feel was my stomach swelling and trying to meet my ribcage, as I felt the door behind my back and a complete and utter sense of loneliness the likes of which I had never felt before. And me? I'm a Loner Chick, loneliness is something I do well.

My new soundtrack from The Last Kiss arrived on Saturday. There's a new Joshua Radin song on there called "Paperweight", and I heard it for the first time on my iPod yesterday, having simply downloaded it onto my iPod without being able to listen to it. When it came into my ears my heart lightened and I felt this sudden rush of ease. I walked through sycamore-lined streets reflecting on everything that was happening in my life and I felt so fucking buoyant I needed to be tied down in order to function. The darkness is far from gone, the stress still weighs heavily on my heart and fear shows up in every tiny mark on my face but for a moment I felt like I was floating, searching, free.

I saw an original 1940's Chagall print online in an auction, a print I had never seen before. I love Chagall, I love that his pictures are so complicated that everytime you look at one you see something you missed the time before. I love that things both do and don't make sense in his pictures, and as I know absolutely nothing about art (in fact I find art to be exhausting and overwhelming), I go for what affects me.

I saw this picture and knew I had to have it-there was something in it that made me feel like I was breathing again, like the very act of taking air in and expelling it all over again was something that was a part of me, was something I could do.

It wasn't cheap, but I won it in the end.

It arrived today, and since it has, I am conscious of the fact that I do, indeed, breathe.

Here is a scan of it:

Unwrapping the print this morning, I remembered another painting from a long time ago. Back in university I had a large print of Klimt's The Kiss (a requisite college print if there ever was one). It was framed and sat on the fireplace in the bedroom Kim and I had, and although he never liked it, I used to stare at it and think it was us-him with his dark hair, me with my red hair. One night after a particularly bad fight, something inside of me kind of broke. I stood up, walked to the painting, and standing in front of it and staring, I reached out with my fingertips and pulled the frame off the fireplace. I didn't move when the picture started coming down. The frame went to the side of me and shattered, vicious glass like raindrops on the bedroom floor. I turned and looked at Kim, who wordlessly stared back at me from the bed.

I walked out of the bedroom, trodding on broken glass but never getting cut.

It came to me that perhaps that's why some types of art still make me feel like I am walking on broken glass, and as I realize it, I feel happy for being able to make the connection.

Feelings are sinking in, creeping up. A portion of these feel horrible-the guilt of my mother wondering aloud Why does no one want to love you girls? I don't know, Mom, but the truth is maybe it isn't about us. The disgust I have at never being enough, never being right, never being ok-that disgust is nothing new but the foundations of it are, my blinders are coming off now.

But then some of the emotions have such light and joy I can't believe I didn't let myself feel them-my feet on the dashboard and sunglasses on my face as Angus is driving us somewhere, somewhere not here, and when he looks at me his eyes have that sparkle in them that you can see from a mile away and which means My God I am so in love with you. The indescribable feeling I have when I stand in my kitchen, my man singing as he cooks, the dog charging around the kitchen with his toys.

It doesn't always have to feel like broken glass-sometimes, it can feel like cashmere.

Everything is slowly but surely hitting home, and the more I find things that make me feel, the more I make myself continuously confront them, and I surround myself with things that prove to me I am human, and that I am real.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:20 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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