New Skin

I realized the other day why I’m miserable right now. Why it feels so much worse, when I thought things were getting better. I realized it when I was walking out of the store and into the parking lot to my car. Out of nowhere, with no prompts beyond pushing my cart in front of me, was the voice inside my head “You’re such a piece of shit.” What the hell? Where did that come from? It wasn’t social anxiety or situational angst or any of the things I have learned to deal with. It was just a random shot from nowhere.

I had been weeping in my psychiatrist’s office just a few days before, miserable because my neutral state is flat misery. Left to fall into a state of rest, I am bone-tired in spirit. I was crying because I was afraid this is all I have to look forward to. He asked if he needed to change something, if I was — consciously or not — trying to tell him that he wasn’t being effective. I was baffled by the suggestion, because I know I create my own misery. It didn’t compute.

I know now why I’m so miserable. I can hear the voice. All this work, this digging into feelings of grief and self-pity and self-doubt, it’s made that voice audible to me again. In self-defense I had pushed it so far down that I couldn’t hear it anymore. I did whatever I could to not hear it: sleeping, eating, numbing myself through each day. I’ve struggled to let my guard down, to try to heal, and it’s working. But it also means I can hear that voice, and it is vicious.

Instead of making me feel worse, realizing what was going on gave me an enormous sense of relief. All of a sudden I knew what this was, this endless discomfort: I’m growing new skin. I’ve been peeling off the rotten bandages that cover up my wounds but also keep them from healing. I am exposed and raw, nerves on fire and sensitive to every breeze. This is horribly uncomfortable and frightening.

I am exhausted, but I have now the tiniest glimmer of hope because I know something I didn’t know before.

I can grow new skin.

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