weekends

Do you enjoy your weekends? Is it something you look forward to all week?

At my session yesterday after speaking with T we’ve come to the realization that weekends are hard for us. They definitely aren’t something ever looked forward to and actually tend to increase the amount of anxiety going on in life.

T thinks it’s because weekends lack stability and routine. Those two things have always felt necessary for survival. I told him that it’s during the weekends when it’s most often that we experience the feelings that we are going to die. And not by suicide, just that we feel so alone and vulnerable that it literally feels like we will die without someone to help us.

T says it’s because weekends also echo the environment I would have lived in as a child. I told T that I’m no longer a child but he says that the feelings don’t just magically disappear because we get older. He says lack of school routine with the youngest (we’re back to homeschooling), me trying to work from home plus being a parent, not getting any sleep or time to ourselves, coupled with the feelings from long ago, it’s no wonder that weekends feel so bad most of the time. There is just never a moment to unwind.

Thinking back, it was the weekends when we would all be home together, my parents, brother and I. It would have been the weekends I would have to deal with the volatility most of all. Sure, during the week I would be at my aunt’s house and vulnerable to the abuse of my cousins, but the weekends were so much different. It could be hours that I would be around my father and brother. And that meant hours spent hypervigilant and fearing for my life.

Weekends now also mean time away from T. He says that will also make things difficult for me because it will feel like being abandoned by him. Another factor in this is the feeling that I shouldn’t bother him on the weekends because that’s his time away from work (my feelings, not his thoughts or words at all).

So it’s another weekend and I feel anxious and tired and like I might actually die all alone. But unlike other weekends I’m starting to understand why it feels the way that it feels. Does that make things easier? Not exactly, but at least it’s something.