the leaves feel heavy…

The leaves are weighed down.  Droplets covering every space available.  Each leaf is hanging low, and the branches even lower.  Somehow, it seems fitting.  As if the trees are also feeling every emotion that I am feeling.  The sky dark and gloomy, the ground soaked.  Today is full of sadness and the earth feels it too.

I have taken a hiatus from drinking, but I wonder if maybe this is a mistake.  The only time I can cry is if I have had a few, and now, all the emotions that I feel are just sitting in my chest. I want to get them out. I am squinting my eyes, trying to cry, but nothing comes bubbling out of me.

Another glance outside, and the rain is pouring out of the sky.  Where are my tears? Why won’t they come?  I feel like a good cry would do me good, but it won’t show through my face.  I guess I could get up.  The thought drains me.  Matthew is laying beside me, the whisper of breath that is forced through a machine, along tubing and through a clear mask attached to his face.  I take comfort in the sound, even though I hate the machine and what it means.

This week has been so full of emotion, I just want it to end.  But my daydreaming and memories won’t subside.  Eyes that are full of sadness and despair. Stories that are full of pain.  Moments that are so intense, I wonder why I paid to sit there and listen to them.

I thought going to sleep would rid me of all this emotion, but it hasn’t.  Instead, I wake up stiff and unyielding.  The memories are flooding through me.

I went to a therapist.  I suppose it was time.  He listens, he tells even more stories. I am not sure I can listen to anymore stories, but I do. I sit with a smile on my face, listening to him as he tries to help me find the lesson in all of this.  I nod my head, but inside, the emotions are still piling up. Surely, I will break and begin to cry, right?  I don’t need wine to break down my defenses, do I?

Then I remember.

I have spent a lifetime acting. I have settled, I have smiled, and I have done what is expected.  Of course I need something to break down my walls and let the emotions flood through.  Instead, I do not reach for the bottle.  There has to be a way to feel without alcohol or drugs… I am a con-jumbled mess today. Nothing seems to make sense.

The anti-depressants are doing their job, a little too well.  They keep me from expressing too much.  All the emotion is in there, but there is something keeping me from letting them all out.

I remember what the therapist said yesterday. He says I am, “Accepting.”

This stops me.

A new word is added to a list of adjectives to describe me.

I have never heard this word as a description of me before.

He is right..but he is also so very wrong.

I am accepting…of everyone I meet. I am full of understanding, and compassion because I know that there is always a “why.”  I know that if I search hard enough, I will see “why” someone behaves the way they do.  Often, they are heartbreaking reasons.  So I will accept each and every person who crosses my path, because it is not my place to judge.

But he is also wrong..

I am not accepting of myself.

I cannot accept these emotions inside of me. I am angry that they are there and I cannot get them to go away.  I cannot push them down, and I cannot get them out.  They just build upon each other, and it is tiring, and it is heavy.

I cannot accept or forgive myself.  Every memory suddenly feels as if I am the leaf, and those droplets are weighing on me, and I am bowing from the pressure of it all.

I do not know how to find acceptance in who I am.

Instead of pondering this..I will lay here, looking out at the dark sky, full of rain drops. I will look at the leaves and the branches and imagine myself hanging low from the weight of all of these thoughts that have nowhere to go.

I wonder if I can find acceptance in all of this…