Gravitational Pull and the Moon

"That's an amazingly astute observation. I couldn't have said it better myself."

"Yeah, but like — just because I can reach that conclusion logically doesn’t mean I can feel it. You know? Like my emotions are on the other side of the planet from me. No, they're on the fucking moon, and I'm here, and my logic means nothing at all because I can't get myself to feel what I know, and there's no oxygen where my emotions live, and I'm suffocating."

"Okay. That's okay. But we need to go deeper."

"Deeper?"

"Your separation from your feelings didn't happen last year. This goes back. When you were a child, who took care of your emotional safety?"

"I — my emotional safety?"

"When something happened that made your feelings too big to hold, did you have a person to help you carry them?"

"It's okay if the answer is no. Your parents may have been good about physical security and still struggled to provide the emotional care you needed. It's okay to say that."

"I don't remember ever going to anyone with help for my emotions. Not parents, not even friends. I remember feeling a lot and crying often and then being shamed for having such big emotions over such small things. And then I remember not crying anymore."

"You were taught that you were too much, and so you sent your emotions into space to become less."

"Yes. Yes, I think that's right."

"So, this is a habit, one you created as a child."

"Yes."

"Which means this journey we're about to go on is going to be hard and long. You're rewiring a lifetime."

"Oh."

"It's not going to be pleasant. It's certainly not going to be easy. You'll feel a lot worse before you feel better. But you will eventually feel better, and it will make all the difference in your life if you're willing to put in the work. Do you still want that?"

"I don't remember a lot of my childhood. Is that going to make this even harder?"

"You won't necessarily be uncovering all the traumas of your childhood. I'm not saying that's fully required. But some, yes. You'll have to confront things your brain maybe never wanted you to see."

"But if I can't remember. At all. If it never resurfaces."

"I think it likely will. That's why this is going to be a difficult trek. But we can work around things you don't remember."

"You know this logically. You've told it to yourself over and over, and I'm sure you think your brain knowing it is enough but let me say. The hurt that people caused you in your life is not okay and is not your fault. You're nodding because again, logically, you get that. But I don't think you emotionally have ever accepted that. It was never your fault and it was never okay for people to hurt you. Ever."

"You're always so good at masking that even I have a hard time knowing your emotional state at any given time, but just then, I think that was the closest I've seen to a crack in the mask. You looked — hmm, a bit lost and confused, like trying to emotionally compute that it wasn't your fault forced you into the dark. That's okay, that's good."

"I think maybe the moon got a bit closer for a moment."