solar eclipse 4/30/22

today was the first real day of moderation i can say i’m proud of, so i’ll call it day 1.

recovery is a weird thing when you have non-specific compulsions, because defining abstinence is usually structured around more obvious boundaries. i think what i am realizing is that for myself, being free from feeling ruled by food or drugs or hair picking or anything else feels like frequent small moments of tiny, very calculated decisions. outlets for productive, soul-driven impulsivity and freedom are few as a covid mom, grad student, intern, homeowner, whatever. day-to-day realities are really not my strong suit in life and never have been. a large part of my spontaneous selfhood was lost when i became pregnant. i think in a weird way, one of the many contributors to my stuckness in patterns of acting out against myself have been due to the limitations of my current situation.

but in learning to appreciate the small things like stretching, or building legos with rory, or getting my monthly massage and then taking a 2 hour nap on a saturday while an eclipse comes to apex, i feel content today. i didn’t take any adderall, i didn’t eat any empty foods, i did some self-care and cleaned a whole lot. went to the dump by myself to get rid of 2.5 weeks of trash buildup and felt the catharsis and humble pressure releases of the mundane. casper just came and encroached on my spot (he’s the encroach roche) as part of our nightly routine. something in ryan’s laundry is loose and making clinking sounds in the dryer. my computer is at 9% and i feel glad to be writing without having to be on adhd meds.

we went to the grocery store and got some healthy foods. i won’t lie and say the main reason for wanting to eat well isn’t still motivated by egoic desire to look good in the eyes of others. but i also really, really want to feel better in my body. i had my second meeting with the somatic therapist yesterday and we did this bilateral stimulation exercise to release something from my neck that feels like it’s been stuck there for a really long time. i told her sometimes i’m afraid i have a brain tumor there bc it feels so hard. but the exercise did something in the way of awareness and patterned breathing to start me on the track of releasing these demons from my particles. and the massage therapist was great today. and i have PT every week going forward. and i’m really, really trying to feel better

embodiment and dissociation are trauma topics, and they’ve been coming up quite a lot recently in my new therapy and in reading Kalsched. some crazy mind-blowing moments as I read last night about traumatized people having dreams during adulthood of killing or brutally exiling children (like my dream about the porto potty kid), or children trying to murder you (like my dreams about multiple different children trying to kill me). I got shivers quite a lot last night while I read. it felt so vivid when those images came back to me. all my dreamscapes feel so vivid and alive in me still. the somatic exercise yesterday saw some old memories coming back as well, like of my build-a-bear emily I haven’t thought about in idk how many years. images of moments