How To Eat An Elephant

10/08/24 

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking (real thinking, not ruminating), about a dream I had tying my physical health to my emotional/mental health. 

I have suspicions about where I should start looking to release, but it makes me throw up when I so much as think about going there. 

I’ve also been doing a lot of thinking about this blog. That’s also making me throw up.  

Bear with me here ‘cos things are going to get a bit meta. 

When I first, unwillingly, started this journey I was just scrawling my thoughts and feelings in my personal journal, making notes about feelings in my phone, on scraps of paper; it was a way of purging the maelstrom of feelings, and of saying ‘aloud’ things I didn’t feel able to say elsewhere.   

Eventually, for one reason and another, I decided to make it all public (with the one-year delay).  This has necessitated going back collating the notes and journal entries from back then, and transcribing it all into blog posts. 

I’ve been avoiding doing the very early ones from January/February, the ones where I was thrashing around, definitely not waving, the ones where I was horrifically willing to debase myself.   

That’s been OK; starting in the middle has been fine; I can always loop back around to the other ones.   

Except it’s not OK.   

The feelings of panic, anxiety and sickness that slap me every time I think about looking at that early stuff are not diminishing; quite the opposite in fact. 

It’s started to feel like a mini version of the ‘purge and detox’ I experienced way back when I first started to recognise how addictive my behaviour was, and the level of abuse that had gone on in my marriage. 

That first time around it hit me harder and heavier than this time, but I felt prepared to cope as I’d already girded my loins, determined to face what was arising head on, and was eager to start healing. 

The initial, and most important step, was that recognition. 

I was extremely proactive in seeking knowledge and understanding, particularly of my role in the dynamic.

I found podcasts, blogs and books, online groups and all that jazz. 

I made myself keep seeing the truth, as far as possible stopped myself from justifying or excusing, and forged a way through.  The purging ceased and I felt a whole lot better. 

This time, it’s crept up on me, sneakily building up its strength. 

This time, although I know healing is on the other side, I have no enthusiasm for the process.  I’m scared to hurt that much again. 

Although I dealt with a metric fuck-tonne of issues back then, my physical reactions to the thought of revisiting that time, even just peeping through the window at it, indicate it’s not properly done with.  I think there’s yet another metric fuck-tonne of processing (reprocessing?) to be done. 

I don’t wanna.

Hence the continued avoidance.

But I’m really going to have to. 

Included in my set intentions before my most recent larger truffle dose was this: 

“Release the anger, pain, harm and trauma; let all the things go, with love.  Be healed of the past.” 

For me, the avoidance of something in this way is generally, in and of itself, a huge sign that I truly need to face it. 

Add in the ever more violent stress-belly, and this growing fear that reading those entries will promote feelings of shame/embarrassment/self-loathing, and it’s ever harder to pretend I don’t know what I need to do.  

I asked for directions and got given a map.  All the signposts are clearly there. 

Dealing with the evidence of my state of mind in the early part of the year is a must.  This is the work, the integration, that has to be done for the truffles to give me all they promised. 

It all adds up to an elephant I’m going to have to eat, the only way one can – one bite at a time.   

I have to write up the entries that have already been posted at the start of this blog. 

Told you it got a bit meta. 

I’m off now to find my big girl pants.

And some elephant eating cutlery. 

MUSIC OF THE DAY: Mirror In The Bathroom – The Beat

JP