Open or Closed?

***Navel-gazing ahead!! Consider yourself warned.***

I have plenty of happy things to write about, but then I had a thought-provoking session with my therapist today, and the things we talked about pushed right to the forefront of my mind. I’ve been purposefully not writing much about therapy, partly because it’s so personal and partly because recently, I have felt like she’s been exploring areas that don’t exactly feel relevant to me. But today, she really made me take a step back and evaluate myself.

She’s made comments in the past that while she sees me as being at a high level intellectually, that my ability to express my emotions isn’t very developed. Today she said that she can see in my face sometimes that I am upset and that my chin quivers a little bit, but that I never actually let myself cry.

“This is a safe space,” she said. “You always seem like you almost get there and then you pull yourself together.”

I know. I’ve just always hated crying in front of other people. Even my best friends.

Why do you think that is?

I don’t know, I’ve just always hated it. It just makes me feel embarrassed and uncomfortable.

Have you ever seen your parents cry?

Yes, yes, of course.

And did you think there was something wrong with that?

Well…no.

So it’s OK for other people but not for you?

…and so on. Then she asked me, “what about anger?”

When I’m angry I usually just bottle it up.

So where does that anger go?

Well…time goes by and it just goes away, I guess.

I explained to her that even though most of my friends are really good and upfront about telling people when they are upset, and I really admire that trait, I just have a block about doing it myself. I swear I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve ever yelled at someone.

And then it was as though my whole relationship life flashed before my eyes, and I thought how different some of my relationships might have been if I had stepped up and not been afraid to express what I was feeling, for better or for worse. I think of myself as being too emotionally available, but I feel like really what I’ve been doing is putting my feelings up at stake (in the sense that I feel things strongly) but not really being candid or emotionally open, because I so often keep inside what I’m really thinking or feeling.

I said this to her and she said, “well if you think back like that, then it makes you wrong, or it makes everything seem like your fault.” So, onward and upward I suppose. But if I am really as emotionally closed off as she suggests, how do I ever begin to change that?

(My ex-boyfriend A. called me tonight just to chat. When we hung up, I thought about my therapy session and almost called him back to say, “do you think I’m emotionally retarded?” before I realized that he was the last person who I would trust to answer a question like that. He is so non confrontational, he makes me look like a screamer. Anyway.)

I keep thinking that this right guy is just around the corner and that when he appears into my life, we will fit together like puzzle pieces and things will be — not easy all the time, of course, but basically simple and compatible. But what if …fuck, what if there is some fundamental thing that is keeping me from being able to be in a real relationship?

I guess this shouldn’t be such a shock to me. I’m in therapy, obviously there are things about myself that can stand to undergo a major change. But with this, I don’t know, it feels like a huge hurdle. It feels like a way bigger hurdle even than the unnamed sadness I was fighting for so many months, because that almost felt like something outside of myself that I needed to purge.

But this…this is just me. And frankly, I don’t even know where to start.