During and just prior to my separation from my husband, I learned to compartmentalize. Before this happened, I never fully understood what the word meant. I heard Sydney say it again and again as she addressed the moral ramifications of being a spy, but I never got it.
Not that I’m a spy or anything.
Although, if I were, I don’t supposed I could tell you.
Let’s just say that now I get it. I know what it means to place a feeling in a box and put it away. If you were to pull it out again, it would be in the way of getting life done. Of living the way you needed to live in order to survive. In my case, caring for a newborn daughter, or avoiding crashing on my long commute, being at work, or simply eating. I wasn’t an expert that’s for sure because the box would bust open and I would feel so much of everything that the loss of emotional control was virtually unbearable.
An avid journal-writer, I even stopped writing because it would mean pulling out each box to examine its contents and I just couldn’t risk it.
Now, a year and a half later, my body is in complete rebellion. I don’t know if my IBS (or whatever it is) is being caused by the emotional trauma of my life up-ending itself. But, I can say for certain, that the act of pulling out and poking at all those little boxes is definitely making me feel better.
I write everyday–in my journal where prying eyes like yours will never go. I now exercise everyday–including yoga, which tonight was a brilliantly timed “open heart” session that made my chest ache for the first twenty minutes as all the muscles surrounding and protecting my heart were forced to release. I made my first ever appointment with a counselor–the act of simply making the appointment made me cry for twenty minutes.
I still believe there is an actual underlying physical cause to my uber gut-aches. But, in the meantime, I think I’m going to enjoy releasing my heart to live again. There is a brilliance that I have been living without. It will be nice to have it back.
This post almost moved me to tears, but I’m at work, so I gotta fight them back.
I was just telling my co-worker the other day about compartmentalization–when she remarked she didn’t know how I “did it all.”
Just know this post made this single mom think, and think hard, and might just motivate me to act a little, too. And if I don’t, I might just come back from time to time to read this post, in hopes it will spur some action from me. Because I have to do something.
Oh, wow. Lump in my throat, too.
That must’ve been really heart, caring a newborn on your own. I find it was depressing enough with my husband by my side…
You’re very brave, enjoy letting your heart live again…*hugs*
Compartmentalizing isn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as we’re open to transitioning properly from one thing to another. I find I do it to cope and focus on the task or event or time at hand. I think then, in ways, we find ways to weave it all together. Also, our mental state definitely has an impact on how we feel physically, whether it is a root cause or not of a physical ailment, it definitely can help us deal with it or feel better while going through something. Hang in there. (p.s. I love therapy)