The worst part about being emotionally competent and cognizant of the mental health issues you suffer from is that your brain can't shut off the part of itself that understands that the other part of your brain is being irrational. It's as though you're consistently invalidating yourself because there's a part of you that's suffering and you know that you're suffering, but the rational voice is telling you to calm down. Whether it's minuscule and insignificant, the smallest inconvenience or the easiest blip in a perfect day, or life altering, soul shattering and downright crushing, there is no shutting down the part of yourself that understands emotional regulation and compartmentalization.
It's hard to want to cry, to even need to cry, but that tiny voice has iron shackles on your control, and tells you to bottle it up, shove it down, and relax. Breathe. Understand that life goes on and things will be okay, and there's no need to overreact. But what do you do when it goes on excessively...day in and day out, there's no escape from your own mind that's entirely too sentient of its own ins and outs? How do you stop yourself from both saving and sacrificing yourself at the same time?
They say your emotions need an outlet, but you're aware that your only outlet is to not have an outlet. You bottle it up, let the carbonation of anger, anxiety, fear, sadness, despair dissipate, and you watch in real time as you shove it down. Again. And again. And again. Because that's all you can do. How can you benefit from therapy when you understand the techniques, the tactics, and have even mastered them, but it's doing nothing more than exacerbating the problem?
You're too self aware. You're too in tune with everything, you're too used to understanding how to protect yourself by placing each emotion in its own space, its own box, and never letting it go. Those shackles of control are made of diamond; impossible to break, but impossible to let go of. You hold onto them for both yourself and others, because you've been strong. You always have, you always will be, and there's never a moment where you can show anyone else.
Weakness is not reminiscent of the eldest daughter. The perfect employee. The helpful soul. The ideal citizen. It's not who we are, and it's why we will compartmentalize. We will never show our friends, our families, our lovers, our partners the ugly insides of a girl who's too complete to be broken, but too broken to understand that the diamond shards of her iron shackles are cutting her, too.
