February 3, 2010

I don't know where to go from here.
I don't know how to process the information I'm given.
I don't know how to ask for help on questions in a book nobody else has read.
No matter how many times you tell me Tripp asks 'really good questions,' it doesn't make them any less impossible to answer. In fact, each time I fail, I get more frustrated and it just gets harder.

I can't find a middle ground on the emotional spectrum. I'm either switched off (intentionally numb, or helplessly paralyzed), or I'm a sobbing, hysterical basketcase. Either way, in silence or tears, I can't make myself understood. And both ways, I'm wasting everybody's time.

I'm three weeks into this Tripp book, and I can't coherently tell you a single thing I've read or learned. You know how sometimes the words just start lighting up on the page? Everything seems relevant, there aren't enough highlighters in the world... Well, this is the opposite. Nothing lately seems to sink in. There's not a mark on any page of any book I'm reading. It just bounces off.

I can't seem to make any connections. When I read or listen to something, even if it seems vaguely relevant in the moment, I can't remember what it was 15 minutes later. And if I think about it too hard, I just end up crying. I don't even know what I'm supposed to get out of this, or even what I want to get out of this, anymore. It's just a big confusing jumbled mess.

I don't understand Ryan, and I did understand Christian, so what the hell are we doing? Marilyn is trying so hard to translate between us, but counseling through a translator seems ludicrous. What Christian saw as me not being able to hear him anymore, I saw as me finally really engaging, no longer hiding my frustrations but trying to plow through them, to actively make progress. And it totally backfired, and now I feel like I've lost my counselor, and that my friend is giving up on me.

I don't know what else I'm supposed to give up. I don't know what I'm still hanging onto that I'm not supposed to. From here it seems like I've willingly handed over everything that hadn't already been forcibly taken from me – and I'm praying, and I'm repenting – and still I'm apparently doing it wrong. Yes, I get that 'hiding in my room' is not the solution, but what is? How am I supposed to talk about things I don't understand with someone who doesn't understand me? Or answer questions I don't know the answers to?