"An Elegant Soul"

by Deborah

I talked to our T this week.  I had to.  I can't hide anymore. I can't run away to hide from the pain.  It follows me inside.  It follows me outside.  I can't get away from it.

I want it to stop.

I told her that some of the others said that the best way to become less triggered by being in the here-and-now is to be out more.  To see what it's like and live what it's like.  To notice the little things, the little good things, and not wait in terror for the other shoe to drop.  To realize that then is not like now, even though it feels like then and now are one and the same.

I don't think I can hide anymore.  I'm just like the others who are out.  I still want to hide, but I don't want to be trapped by the pain.  I don't want to be the way I was in utero or in the crib, trapped in pain with nowhere to go and no way to get there.
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My avatar shows me as someone elegant.  The perfect hair and the Burberry scarf.  This concept was based on a woman we once sat next to on the commuter train many years ago.  The woman was talking to another passenger about ridding her lawn of "undesirable grass."  This vaguely imperious behavior fit in with our earliest system concept of me as a resident of my own personal Versailles, with no one around me except the minimum number of servants needed to attend to my needs and keep the palace running.  Burberry me was Deborah 2.0, as Allegra calls it.  Elegant.  But still empty inside, as Deborah 1.0 was.

I don't feel elegant.  I never have.  Allegra says that I have elegance of character.  shawn says that I have "an elegant soul."

I don't know what to make of this.  I don't know what to make of me.