Dear Journal,

We’re rapidly navigating some treacherous territory. Jane asked again, “what is really bothering you though?” I stared at the wall and after a few minutes spoke, “I don’t know…"

"Have you always felt this way during season changes?” Jane asked. As a wave of sadness and existentialism enveloped my body, I spoke, “it was so cold.” I remember my hands and feet blue in hue from the cold. My room was slightly underground, and the ground in the winter became frosty and frigid. I was essentially in a fridge all winter as the days grew shorter and my studies ramped up. I remember trying to write and hold my pencil during those days. Rigid fingers make for rigid writings… but I grew accustomed to the cold. I would wear shorts year round. Perhaps as a way to brag and say, “you don’t know the cold I know…” I think that’s what the tattoos on my fingers are. It’s a signal, “you don’t know what I’ve been through.” “You couldn’t possibly know my pain…” Very emo, I know, but it really feels like that. I’m approaching 30 and I still feel that way.

I was on the metro this morning and saw a kid leaning his head on (what seemed to be) his older brother’s shoulder. It reminded me of my two triplet sisters and myself in the back seat of the car. All pressed together, resting our heads on each other’s shoulders when the car rides were long or after a late night at band concerts or soccer games.

I told Jane, “I think touch is really important to me.” I don’t really remember a time I didn’t have regular touch until my adult life. After Christiana left, it was very lonely. I didn’t know how to strike up a non-platonic conversation with a girl. I didn’t know how to be a bro and do the cool handshake thing that guys do… I didn’t know how to playfully throw my shoulder against someone else’s while we were walking. I didn’t know how to make contact with others. It was later in my life that I started going to concerts alone. I would listen to very hard EDM and enter the mosh pit as a small, 5’8”, 155lb computer scientist. I was not the type that seemed to need touch, I suppose. I was a nerd… right?

It’s unfortunate to straddle such opposite spaces. When I dance, others don’t know where it’s coming from. When I dance, if I’m in the right mood, the world melts away. When I dance, I reconnect with a body that froze in time and space decades prior. Trauma, as they say, is locked within the body and to heal we need to release the inner tension.

Jane said my dream from the previous journal entry could mean, “look, I’m spilling my guts here, what else is there to say!” But that’s not the problem either, Jane says. It’s not my wife working long hours. It’s the nights my mother and father worked long hours. It’s when my parents had no time for me. It’s when I sat in that cold room to do my homework. Although it’s unhealthy to request my wife work less because I feel abandoned, it’s fair for a child to request their parents be home before dinner…

I suppose I’m not a child anymore and it doesn’t matter if my wife comes home early or not. I can make my own food. I can make my own fun.

I hate myself because I felt like the world abandoned me. I hate myself because I interpreted my pain as hatred against me. I hate myself because at a very young age I learned I was helpless. That I have no control over my father leaving to train soldiers. This was the start of my sleeping issues. I would shut down and sleep as a coping mechanism.

Fuck Dr Cardin… I told him there was something wrong with me… I told my doctor what I was supposed to say - I fall asleep all the time and I can’t control it. Please help me. I really don’t like doctors… I’ve been to a dozen or more specialists, not a single one helped me. I went to a therapist and they knew rather immediately what was wrong. A woman who didn’t go to med school or cut open cadavers read a paragraph I wrote about my life and knew I needed to talk. God, I just hate our systems so much sometimes. All that said, I’m sure he’s a decent doctor, but he really left me behind. Why didn’t he know my life, why didn’t he know I needed a therapist… he was my pediatrician. He was supposed to help me. He was supposed to help me heal. He dismissed my complaints. He dismissed me. Do I hate doctors because of him or the other dozen…

In any case, I need to keep exploring this space. Observe the loneliness, don’t pick at it. Observe, don’t pick. Observe, don’t pick. No touch, just watch. No touch, just watch. No touch, just watch.

Sincerely,
Alex