Vacancy

[ This was written several days ago and held for posting pending some level of resolution to the issues involved. Things are better now; I may write about some of that at some point. ]




I think the phrasing "hard limit" may have something to do with how much it hurts when one smashes through it.


I know that one of my responses to pain, to damage, is dissociation. It's an ongoing wrestling match in my head, at times, to deal with things that distress me, because there's this layer of protective detachment to get through before one can even begin to deal with the problem, and I'm too tired to figure out how to fight with it enough that it will let go.

So there's this void there, where there should be warmth.

And there's a void in one of the places that I would turn to in distress, for comfort, for support, if it weren't for the fact that there's a hole there where it ought to be, where that protection has pulled out the connections.

And that makes it that much the worse, the wanting to reach and the feeling of hands-passing-through-shadow, unable to get there; it's almost enough to cause a freakout all on its own, even without the hurt. Even though I know that once I'm safe enough, healed enough, to unravel the detachment, to find all the places things connect, to be okay again, I will be able to have that back, there's still the screaming, flailing panic: what if it's lost? What if it's gone? What if I can't find it again? I used to say "better at respecting my boundaries than I am", and get the loop of the mistake, the reminder, the several reminders after that, the push, and finally the return to what was only edge, so I didn't break entire until after, and have the agitated wail of having tried to defend my boundaries from someone who had never truly threatened them before, having tried, not knowing how to let go after having not entirely succeeded.

I fall back on protocol, almost robotically. I can't feel it right now, but I fall back on it, doing as I'm told perhaps in the hope that it'll shake me into a place where it brings me joy again. Perhaps because I don't want to break it more than shoving it into the curtained part of my mind where I can't reach it already does. I hear comments that would inspire me into anticipatory acts of service, extracting the request from the statement, and logic them through until I come up with that response on pure familiarity of thought, not because of the driving emotion.


The awful thing about damage to trust is the way one has to start trusting again to fix it. But can't get theah from heah, as is said among my people. And this is said, and ... there's the little wailing self that says, "I sat down when you asked me to. I leaned on you. I let you touch my throat. I fumbled through to the halting explanation that I could make. That's all I got. If you want more bridge, you have to build it from your side, because it's fighting every moment I don't pull away, right now, and my head is still against your shoulder. That's as much victory as I can do on my own right now."


"Mine." It was not stated as a question, but there was that tremulous edge, the hint of almost rising tone, that brought it up to the edge of being there.

"I want to be." I do. I think I do.

I don't remember how.