Dark Night of the Soul

The pain I am in right now is nearly unbearable. I loathe myself for feeling this way - I feel this entire blog is nothing but a book of complaints and whining - a testament to my immaturity and inability to suck it up. Yeah yeah - I know, its just feelings, and they are transitory - and I shouldnt be hard on myself, and its the human condition - but my sense of personal responsibility and my culture tells me that if I am in pain, in misery, if I get hurt - I have done something to deserve it. I am feeling sorry for myself, and if I were a better human being, my life wouldnt be like it is now.

Yesterday therapy was particularly brutal. Since the beginning, thgis Doctor has tried to get me to see myself in the future.... each time I have resisited. Yesterday, something just broke. I suppose in theraputic terms, it was a breakthough. In real life terms it feels like a break down.

Even writing about this now is bringing up these primal feelings of terror. I am having a hard time moving from word to word. I am being distracted, and it feels like it is almost from an outside source. Something inside is screaming "don't look here".... I am trying to recall the events that happened, and I am getting confused.
I cant quite remember what happened, and every time I try and recall it, my chest hurts, and I can't think.

Ok, anyway - he asked me to close my eyes, and start seeing a future - where I want to go, what I want to do - and I shut down, and began to cry. I felt terrified. Then, he told me to try and touch that fear, and see where it was coming from - and I touched it - and she / it was loud and clear - at which point it was as if I was forcibly ejected from my own body.

He probed me futher - and it all came up -

It doesnt matter what I do. It doesn't matter what I achieve. Planning a future - dreaming of a future won't matter, because no matter how successful it may be, I will lose it, it will be taken away from me, and I will never be loved - I will never find home - I will always fail and I will always be alone.

He tried to ask me where this was coming from, my mother - my family - etc. He didnt seem to quite grasp it when I was telling him that this was coming from me.

And of course, there is no science involved in seeing "where" this comes from. In my quest to win love I became an overachiever, vain, ambitious, manipulative, successful, overly sexual - I have tried every approach, every book, every form of therapy. I have put needles in my face, invested in the finest cosmetics, achived artistic and intellectual success, ran away from home, moved a million miles away... and not one thing has brought me to a home where I am safe, and loved, and wanted. Frequently my successes have done nothing but drive people away (in the definitive experience, my mothers jealousy of me caused her to attempt to kill me).

So - what good is it to plan a future, what good is it to want anything at all, when ultimately, I will lose what I have gained, and what I most want - to belong - is something that I really don't believe I will ever have? It is this wanting, this striving that has put me where I am right now, and hope seems to be the most dangerous place for me to ever be.

The worst of this, under the fear, under the anguish, under the desire to want and gain something - is a certain knowledge that I really have touched on an exhistential truth. Nothing we do really matters. We cannot gain love. We cannot earn it. Ultimately we are all alone, and it is all essentially hopeless.

I do not know how to proceed forward with this knowledge. Imperanance is the nature of life - security is an illusion, and everything we gain we lose. Existance is ultimately pointless.

For those of you who have read this far - no, I am not suicidal (thats pointless too...) But - right now, I am hopeless.

As to what I want? I want happily ever after. I want to fall in love - and have it last the rest of my mortal days. I want to make art, and travel, and have enough money to be comfortable. But - I thought I had those things... and I lost them all.

I want to feel joy, to feel safe, to feel loved. I want companions, and love, and comfort - I want a home, with people who adore me. I have, of course, my beloved son - but even that I will lose. It is the nature of things.

So - yes. I am in a dark night of the soul. I have lost all faith. I have lost all hope. I am alone, and abadoned, and deeply alienated. I sit in a state of barely contained terror. And there really is nothing to be done. Nothing at all. There is no rescue, no escape - and I really have no idea what happens next.

I will meditate. I will eat and sleep. I will read. I will work. I will continue writing. I will sit with these feelings. I will put one foot in front of the other, because there really is nothing else to do.