Lately, I’ve been making a genuine effort to identify my patterns as a first step to changing the harmful ones. I’ve been trying to observe when I shut down, when I get annoyed, irked, or frustrated. I’m trying to understand why I react to things a certain way, and I’ve been trying to be cognizant of all of it.
And I’ve come to find out that I’m just so angry. I hold so much rage inside myself that there is nearly no space for anything else to co-exist. I’m so angry at so many people. I’m so angry at so many people because I never learned how to set boundaries, stand up for myself, say ‘no’, or protect myself from the emotional impact of every time I’m faced with even a minuscule trigger. And there are so many triggers. I’m so angry at so many people because all of my learned responses are now just personality traits, so that it all feels like a deep hole I’ve dug for myself that I can’t claw my way out of. And I’m so angry that I can’t communicate about this. That I shut down the moment I have to talk about me and how I feel.
This is something we’ve been increasingly discussing in therapy. Identifying patterns so I can reshape them. Talking about me, because there is so much bottled up inside that no one knows or remembers, not even me. It’s been hard to face myself in this way, to chip away at my childhood—at my adulthood—and lay painful, horrifying, and scary things out in the open. My therapist is always looking for an ‘in’ to my mind, to my real emotions. But I’ve just been so out of touch for so long that even though I know there’s something there, I either don’t know how to express it or am terrified of touching it.
That’s another thing. The intensity of it all. I’m so scared of touching any of it that I freeze up, shut down, dissociate, and distract myself. I don’t even know if any of this is even objectively that intense. I keep trying to tell myself that if something destabilises me to the extent that these things do, if I’m so afraid that I freeze, or if I’m afraid that thinking about and working on these things will render me completely incapable of leading my daily life, then it is that intense. It doesn’t matter what happened or when; it matters that it has impacted me in this way. I try telling myself this over and over, but it’s hard for me to believe. I’m a privileged person, and I feel so much guilt over my pain while people face war, genocide, and famine. I don’t know how to deal with that guilt.
This intensity also impacts me in my everyday interactions. A skirmish that only (seemingly) impacts others in a so-so manner is utterly explosive for me. The emotional reactions I have are just explosive. I don’t know how else to describe it. I feel it all build up inside me, nasty and bubbling, but never escaping. Sometimes I get catty and say things that I know will prick. And I don’t know why I do it because I don’t actually want to hurt the other person, it’s just that I’m hurt. I don’t know how to regulate myself. I never learned how to regulate myself and to protect myself from these absolutely obliterating rage-filled emotions. And I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve been trying, but working on this is a slow, painful process that bears little fruit until I’ve made significant strides. But I’ve been trying, that’s what counts. This is my priority.
13 August 2025
Memoirs of a Muse 