Noticing
For the past week, my mouth has been filled to the brim with complaints. Fatigue and lingering insecurities aggressively dictated how and when my tongue and lips moved. I complained a lot. About work. About what goes unnoticed. Complaining sends me to less than great places. It's a catalyst for unhealthy conversations between me and me in my head.
Am I a narcissist? That's where I went at week's end. I asked my girlfriend if I was that. She said she doesn't believe that's who I am, but walked me through moments where my behavior was congruent with a very basic idea of it.
Do I have an unhealthy need to be acknowledged? Do I think I am more unique and special than others? Do I show up in the world like this? What's a proper way to react when there's no reply to your email initiating another session with your therapist? (activating event/something happens). I think I have been ghosted by my therapist. (belief/I tell myself something). How can one not feel like something is incredibly wrong with them if your own therapist grows weary with what she sees in you. (consequence/I feel something).
The ABC worksheet I was given to process the truth of a thing. I am not sure if the thing I am telling myself is truth. Cognitive Processing Therapy. I still feel something.
That's a lonely place. That "I still feel something." That place where you hang out as a misunderstood version of yourself, whispering, "nobody gets me or it."
It's wild to hold expectations of being noticed and intimately seen when you close off most entryways to a deeper understanding of you. You want a thing you refuse to allow. I want a thing I refuse to allow. So this idea of noticing is maybe sometimes more poetic and disappointing than anything else.
The connection crisis. The crisis of knowing what you need but not knowing how to really have what you need. Or if I'm transparent, lacking bravery around the opening of your chest and allowing folks to really see and hear you so you can get what you need. Being noticed and seen requires this. Braveness that is. It also requires a commitment to emotional labor and emotional health. Staying open and this steady acknowledgment and observation of the existence of others is work. But the work is a necessary thing that allows for a deeper experience with grace, love, joy, goodness, and healing. And a mouth full of less complaints and a brain that trusts and leans into this mutual exchange of being seen.
I be tired. I be complaining. I be lightweight narcissistic. I am both too much and also not enough. I talk about the beauty of love and need for it while being a mess in it. Full of contradictions and half understandings of complex truths. But I also know 2022/God/Universe is stripping away pretense and these very isolated and self-contained experiences I'm having with self. I know for sure that everything going forward necessitates a radical posture of openness and willingness to really be known and to really know others. To give them permission to witness who I am/you are. To see. To notice -- thoroughly, honestly, and sincerely. To activate the bliss of life and the wells of more through the power of human connections. I'm aware of the absolute need for more of this.