Sweet oblivion

I'm tired, feel like I have no energy to interact even with my friends. Maybe that's because several of my friends have needed my energy lately and I have been an attentive ear, a sympathetic friend who listens and questions and dares to go deeper into the real issues. Apprecieted most of the time, but not very rewarding for me. I get no kicks from gratitude, and I don't feel all warm and fuzzy when I can help someone sort their shit out. I just feel more like a mentor than a friend and am so longing for my peers, my equals, my older sisters with their wisdom and experience. Am sick and tired of being the voice of reason, the wise friend who people come to for some unloading. It's gotten to the point when I almost don't want to talk to them at all, I want everyone to back off instead of asking me for anything at all, even to listen to their positive stuff. Because I just really don't want to care; caring takes too much energy. I'm a natural carer, I have almost limitless energy, love and attention for friends, but there is a limit and I'm close to it.

Right now, I choose to close my close relationships as the friends who were close have been too needy and unable to understand my dynamics, and I just can't be bothered to let them in. I choose to close parts of myself off to anyone who comes asking for anything - even for positive things - as I don't want to give anymore. For some it may come as a relief when a friend asks how they are doing; for me it doesn't work if said friend has just unloaded a lot of stuff. I don't volunteer information. I hardly ever do, and when I do it's only to a very select few. It has something to do with trust, but more with energy. It also has a lot to do with the dynamics of any relationship and the fact that I prefer to unload for a therapist than a friend. I talk to my T rather than to friends even though I don't always let her in on the entire picture either.
I'm way, way more open to friends, have more people who get to be there more for me and whom I can ask for support - when I choose to - and I'm way more open and honest with my T too, but I need for her to push me. I wouldn't lie to her, but I don't volunteer anything and I'm a champion at hiding stuff. If I don't want you to know, you never ever will. Unless you're a bloody great intuitive.

I'm seeing my T today, after three weeks of holiday, and where I felt last week that I had so much to talk to her about, today I feel like I don't know what to say. I feel blah, bland, cut off, blank, numb. My mood is the mental equivalent of a shrug. I'm sort of positive, or at least not depressed (right now), could easily access that happy, smily part of me and still be genuine. But I don't see why I should. I'm not interested in spilling my guts out to friends, but am not sure how well I can put it into words and tell my T. I think it's time to see her less regularly, forthnightly instead of weekly, and I really don't know what I may need to go into with her at the moment. Perhaps that's because I'm too cut off emotionally, perhaps because it's a blind spot that she can see but I can't.
I mean, I don't really have any huge issues anymore, I don't starve or purge or cut, I'm not in a messy relationship (or any relationship), I've managed to say No to friends when I don't want to give anymore... I'm coping. She can't change my life, she can't get the work/money to roll in, she can't get me hooked up with D or anyone else, she can't change me or the people around me. But she can help me get a perspective, she can ask the right questions, she can question and mirror me - and she knows me better than anyone.

I do long for the sweet oblivion of anorexia, the mad focus, the tunnel vision, the situation that nothing else matters as long as I lose weight. I really do long for it, for the drama, for an escape from this drab reality. But I know I can't go back.

Tempting, but no thanks

Will the temptation ever die? Will there ever be a time when I no longer turn to my shadow self when things get rough? Will I ever not look in the mirror at the first signs of trouble? It's still a gut reaction, a reflex, to step into the shadow and let that part of me whisper just a little bit louder when this life gets too stressful, too frustrating, too full of duty and too lacking in sex, fun and creativity.

So I'm a passionate person, and I've found that the two sides of my passion are creation and destruction. If I don't get my kicks one way, I need them the other. If there's too little creativity, I become destructive. It's not the least surprising, although the realisation that this is really the case came as a bit of a surprise. But it explained everything perfectly. In my life, I have for long periods of time had very little room and/or energy for creativity, and lacking that creative outlet, I have found other outlets, mostly destructive ones. And I never understood that my penchant for self-destruction had anything to do with the passion that I sometimes misread as intensity or hypomania, but is just a very natural, fiery, earthy passion. That is, until I understood.

When life becomes too full of stressors, mainly in the form of lack of money, and there are more duties than fun, or I feel stress and pressure and don't know how to express it, how to release the energy, I turn to my shadow self. This is how I have done for many years, and even though I rarely act on it, I turn that way. It is my default reaction. That part of me seems like a twisted comforter, an escape into a reality that deals with problems on a completely different scale.

I can be so very, very tempted to let that side of me take over for a while, to let the stressful thoughts drown in the whispers of my shadow self and just obliterate everything else. Just for a while it would be wonderful to hand the wheel to my dark passenger and let her drive. Just for a while. But I know it doesn't work that way. I don't trust myself to let that other side of me out for just a bit, because I know that if I give her space and listen to her, she will always demand more space, more time, more of me. She is never satisfied with just a little. And if I'm feeling vulnerable and really, really want an escape from the pressuring, stressful reality, I might just as well be tempted to give just a bit more space to my dark, destructive side... and more... and more... Not intending to step back into the mirror fully, into the dark glass, but just as a small way out. And I know too well how hard it is to step out again, to tear myself away from that escape - I've done that too many times in the past before I stepped away from the mirror.

So I am tempted, but I don't go there. Not very far, anyway. I'd love to, just for a while, just to rest in numb oblivion, but no thanks.
Because I know I will want more and more and more. This is my drug of choice.