For lots of reasons.

Having a bit of PTSD.  Financially I feel back in a stuck place and where I have to “hope” things work out.  And it was because I wouldn’t face reality.  Things are different this time.  I have billable work coming in and things will be fine.  It’s not the same thing.  But it feels like the same thing.  The reality is that I didn’t put enough away for my trip.  I came home to rent for a new office place, two trips, bills bills bills and oh some more bills.

This place is dark.

I also saw an old love.  And I am reeling.  He is in a bad place post a very recent break-up but it opened up a very vulnerable place and he said things I have always wanted him to say.  He didn’t say it to get back with me.  In fact, that’s not what he needs.  But he recognized things I wanted him to say for six years and it felt good to hear those things.  It felt so good, that I want him to call and invite me back over and tell me things again and again.  That I mattered to him and that I matter in general.  I know when he says these things it’s true.  He doesn’t say things lightly and he’s one of the few men, I trust what he says as he doesn’t give that praise and vulnerability often.

Unfortunately in the past he is such a drought of words that show I matter that I end up feeling like a beggar.

It makes me feel so vulnerable to think I need to hear that and when I look around I realize that where I lost my intimacy with Moni when she moved, I didn’t replace it with anything that really sates me.  And I’m not exactly looking for that again but to hear it and to crave it, makes me feel sad.   I have plenty of people in my life that I have intimacy at a friend level with but I hold it back until it bubbles out and then I’m shocked that I needed it and that it exists in general.  I find I believe that it’s not possible for me to find that in a romantic way because I don’t know know myself enough to know what I need.

He asked why I married my ex and I said because I was in Love.  With a capital L. I ignored red flags, and friends telling me to abort/abort and looked past traits that I thought I could fix.  What he was very good at was filling up that place that begs to hear I matter.  He was very good at telling me how wonderful and special and amazing I was.  It was like crack to me.  I felt so loved and heard and understood until slowly the blinders fell away and I realized those were just words.  Hollow words.  There wasn’t action to them.  There wasn’t movement.  It was just words to prop up my ego so that I would continue to put up with his behavior and his lack of integrity.  I fell for it for five years.  Until I was broken, literally on the ground, half dead.  Having gained 100 pounds and with all of my savings gone, my house ruined, friends and family wary and realizing I had married someone who could never love me because he didn’t love himself.  He didn’t even know how to do anything but lie to get what he wanted.  And I fell for it.

How do I ever believe people again.  Hell I pretty much went back straight to that pattern the first time I was given a chance.  How do I ever get to a place where I don’t want to fix a partner.  Or that I can accept that no one is perfect.  How can I trust anyone to have my back when every person I have known romantically has let me down.  EVERYONE of them.  Myself especially included.

Forgiveness and kindness to myself is something I have been really working hard at, but I come back from truly one of the most incredible trips of my life and I don’t like what I see again.  I went to Israel and saw and experienced an amazing world.  I truly loved every minute.  I wanted to be awake early and going and seeing and doing.  I fell asleep each night worn out in a happy way.  It was easy to be friendly and not sarcastic around people and share these wonderful experiences with my Mother.  I wasn’t feeling forced or weird or fake.  I was authentic and it was amazing.  I come back from the trip and I can’t get out of my mode.  I can’t stop feeling and what I am feeling is not great.  It’s overwhelmed and guilty and shame and alone and broke and everything around me is needing repair or fixing or help and I can’t do it.

I feel too much and not enough exactly in the same moment.