In my dream last week the Anima comes and says, "Elaine has something to say to Marc". What do I want to say? I want to say that I'm so tired of my moaning and groaning and bellyaching about being stuck. You must be so tired of it too. I'm up to my neck in the muck and for an hour each Friday morning I start up a ladder that's there to get me out. It feels so right during that hour to start pulling myself up and out with help of course, but as soon as that hour's over, I resign myself back into it. I talk a lot about not wanting to be there, but I don't do anything about leaving. I've made my home there.
There was a time I can recall several months ago where I was finally felt I was getting out. The outwards signs of my upward mobility were showing. I had discovered the joys of consistent good sleep, of paying my bills on time, the little thrill I felt each time someone said "Are you losing some weight?" I was writing almost daily and sending some pieces up to the web site. I was being honest with myself and to the outside world, starting to bache a bit. I felt like I was about to graduate, to go over the top of the ladder and finally be out. Then I got an email one day out of the blue, well out of cyberspace if that's blue, from a man I'd gone to high school with. My first thought was that this was my graduation gift from the Animus. I'd done the work, I was doing the writing, I was feeling my feelings, and now I was presented with this man. It has been many many years since there has been any male presence in my life at all and I was delighted to have taste of it, well on my computer screen anyway. So the story I would have expected to write from that point on, was that having this new spark in my life, I'd double my efforts to prepare to have love in my life on the inside and on the outside, to lose the weight, to shape up a bit in anticipation of meeting him, that I'd write even more to work out my feelings and my thoughts on having romance or at the least some male companionship. I even took a little risk suggesting the possibility that we might meet. It as a tiny sentence in an email but it was a very big deal to me. The story doesn't go that way though, not at all. As we began to exchange emails, I began to slide back into the muck. And here I am now firmly encased once again. He has stopped emailing me now. I miss that little thrill I got from seeing a new message from him. I miss that little glow of a crush that I haven't felt in such a long time. But that little thrill was also enough to send me running for cover, sliding back down into this cesspool that I've made my nest.
Just as I use my overeating and my other list of flaws, like late nights, procrastination and sloth as a way to avoid life and feelings, I want to use them here in the same way. I want to write about my behavior instead of about what's causing it, about what's behind the behavior. Maybe I just don't really know what's behind it. It's pretty clear here that I'm afraid, very, very afraid, of even opening the door to a relationship, but why? It's not that I was ever betrayed and hurt so much that I had to completely avoid it. I started out avoiding it. Is it fear of losing control, fear of being vulnerable? But why? What's the control about anyway? Does it matter to know the why? Is it that I can't feel the love of the Animus in me? I know of that love and support in my head. There's proof of it in dreams over and over again. I have a sense of his protection, and feel so grateful for that, but I'm not feeling the connection now. I have in the past, and I know it's there but I'm just not getting it right now. Do I need to block it out so I can stay here in the muck? I sometimes see a little girl whose stamping here foot and saying "I will not do that." I guess that's me saying "I'm not leaving this shit and you can't make me." Why isn't she saying. 'You can't make me stay here, instead of you can't make me leave?"
So I don't have these answers yet. I may not even be asking the right questions yet, but I know at least this thing. I must get here to this place, to this writing space. I can only spend one hour a week with Marc, but I can spend plenty of time here, the precious time that I now let slip through my life, precious time so wasted. So I'm assigning myself this homework. Stop chasing my tail, around and around through the maze of my behavior and dig underneath it. I can only do that here.