Destructive Defaults

I am afraid of the silence.
I have tried to write about this and my writings are scrambled and nonsensical. So I will be straight and blunt.
I am afraid of the silence because that is when images of guns releasing the pressure in my head or bottles worth of pills sliding down my throat start to invade. They are not invited quests and I do not entertain them but somehow they are my default again. It has been so many years...
It is different with age and experience. I used to see my self falling and landing into freedom from everything as my body broke apart. Still there is something romantic about that image.
At one point in my life I would find myself fighting sudden urges to self destruct, like the desire to turn my wheel sharply sending my car crashing into the cement barrier while traveling high speeds on the freeway. I am not sure when or why that phase was but I am glad it was not too intense and did not last too terribly long... Oh, yeah I am pretty sure that was the phase when we had no insurance but this symptom was concerning enough I decided to be a lab rat in a depression medication related study. I liked the psychiatrist. He said he would have liked to have been a fly on the wall of my home. I think that would probably be pretty boring, really one would need to be a fly on the wall of my brain. That is where it would be interesting. I'd like to be the fly on the wall of other peoples brains. How fascinating would that be!
Sometimes my husband tries to convince me that most people aren't nearly as... interesting... but I am not convinced.
I digress. which is fine, because that is often how I steer away from that default of destruction.
I don't know why it is.
Why I had a suicidal default.
But I was able to recognize those thoughts as imposters and symptoms. It is a tell tell sing and a symptom of something being terribly off. Maybe it is a way that deep mental and emotional pains manifest themselves? I don't know. I am not sure that I care to know. I have gotten to the bottom of it before and I will again, but some off the pain one has to feel to get out of it is the same pain that gives it power. I am not quite sure I am ready to handle that pain in all of its glory so I am not sure that I want to get to the bottom of it just yet.
I can say that on the day that I thought I was doing well to have let things go and not think or try to solve was the day that those thoughts started gaining momentum fast. It was frustrating and annoying. I had to go to bed to get it to stop.
But I see that I cannot let go just yet. I am not in an entirely safe place yet.

Church

I have a lot more drafts lately.
That is reflective of the insecurities that come with "sanity"
hah
I like the image of me walking across a no trespassing marked snow-covered field in my skirt and slightly heeled knee-high boots and then walking through the neighborhood with my jacket hanging half-down and my right-foot now calked sideways as I awkwardly limp home better than I like the image of me sitting in church with a constant stream of tears running down my cheeks.
It took a bit of courage to leave, as I knew this would draw some attention, but I could not get the tears to stop, no matter my thoughts of the good people I loved there.
I tried to go to church today to be a supportive member of my family. Maybe I also had some thoughts of returning to "normalcy."
But as I entered the chapel the tears came without my consent. Not even sure why. I did not want to grapple with the why so I tried to just let it be whatever it was, without paying it much mind, but they just came more.
I don't want to be a god.
I don't want to feel like my value only lies in my being a wife and mother.
But those weren't what seemed to be causing these tears.
These good people were reflective of the good people that put me in a sled and bounced me across the snow covered field back to a car parked in the middle of a nice neighborhood, with plenty of nice people, with phones. Then drove me home. They likely did more damage.
These good people are reflective of my parents that had so much going on with our large family and their own personal plights, that wanted to believe in miraculous recoveries so much that head injury was the overlooked element in my own struggles, though they were the units who held all of the power to get me medically guided help me and to help me understand how this may have been a contributing factor to my own struggles.
I see that they didn't understand. That they were both very broken in their own ways. And I have no malice.
But ...this place of worship causes me confusion and pain.

These were not my thoughts there. I was trying to focus on the good there, to live in the moment, to do the things that would stop the tears. but they just kept coming

I feel the need to listen to my body
to my intuition
and to forces outside of myself that are greater than I am
I am trying to find that balance
I am not finding it there (at church)
It is not a safe place for me right now
Maybe I needed that confirmed. I am okay to not go.

The tears stopped and I was able to even laugh about my plight as I walked home, limping on my ankle that was injured in the same car accident that caused the concussion which has brought so much of this past life to light again.
The ankle is getting progressively worse as I try to return more and more to my valued ways of living.
It was an injury that was overlooked due to the more pressing matters of my head. It is now the injury that is holding me back from some of the things I need most; Structure, routine exercise, a regular job, my snowboarding job and even sleep on occasions...
It is holding me back because to be rid of the pain it will require surgery or me settling for a different lifestyle and the irony or paradox of it is, had the injury been addressed initially it very well could have healed with minimal intervention -without surgery.
So many connections
and so many parallels