My first post on this forum way back in November was me freaking out that I couldn't talk to my partner.  Over six months later, I'm still working on talking to my partner.  As some one of you know, I have hired a relationship coach who's been helping me through my SUPER HIGH anxiety and DEADLY fear of conflict and confrontation, so hopefully, this bloody talk actually happens one day.   

I had something of a revelation a couple of nights ago.  I've said before I'm afraid of coming off as a traitor and causing him to suffer, which is true, but I realized the real reason I'm terrified of this confrontation is that I'm afraid of pain.  I realize that by being honest, I'm going to be removing my masks and defenses, and I'm going to lay my vulnerable heart before him, and there's a hell of a good chance it's going to get the sh*t kicked out of it.  Or worse, tossed aside and treated as if it was not worth being pissed on even if it was on fire. 

I'm really bad with dealing with huge negative emotions.   Rejection, grief, devastation at a grand scale is something I'm terrified of dealing with.  

Remember this post I wrote about Matt Kahn's "God, I hope __________ doesn't happen?"  (https://www.dailystrength.org/group/codependency/discussion/guilt-betrayal-and-clean-hands)  I guess my ___________ is now, "God, I hope I don't lay bare and vulnerable my beating heart and have it either ripped to shreds or rejected.  God, I  hope I don't have to deal with huge negative emotions."   

Matt Kahn made a brilliant point.  He said, why don't we want ___________ to happen?  Because it will cause us pain.  But people who are afraid of ______________ happening are already in pain.  

That is very true.  I'm already feeling rejected, bereaved, jealous, resentful, and guilty.  Sure, they're not the huge negative emotions I'm pretty sure are going to come with having my actual heart kicked opened, but this relentless undercurrent of suffering is its own hell.  

I was looking into flipping the "God, I hope _______________ doesn't happen" to "God, I hope ___________ does happen."  I've done twice in my journal, once in March and once just a week ago.  Both times I got panicky when I wrote something like, "God, I hope he does hate me and think I'm POS."  I remember writing that down and automatically saying, "oh god, That can’t happen!”

I tried it again a couple of nights ago after I had my revelation, and it felt much better, so here it is.

"God, I hope I ruin his life.  I hope he hates me.  I hope he wants to tear me limb from limb.  I hope he freezes me out and tells me what a waste of his time I've been.  God, I hope I feel like I'm dying.  I hope I feel like every cell of me in screaming in agony.  I hope I get the wind knocked out of me from the pain.  I hope it hurts like hell." 

For the first time, I didn't have a panic attack when I wrote that out.  Oh, I know I'm going to have a panic attack before I talk to him, but at least writing that out didn't lead me to hysterics.  

So about that revelation I had, I was reading some old stories I wrote decades ago, and I was reminded by how much I used to love "trainwreck relationships."  I've kicked myself for it because I deprived myself a chance for a healthy, loving relationship just because I thought trainwrecks were sexy or something.  I thought that phrase from Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, "Our love is not a victory march, it's a cold and it's a broken hallejuh" was so romantic.  Idiot younger me.  I shoved all my old stories aside and actually went through a phrase where I wanted to erased that old self of mine that I decided was immature and stupid.  I blamed my idiot younger self for why I'm such a loser in my middle age. 

Well, I re-read my stories for the first time in years and, folks, they were GOOD.  I forgotten how beautiful trainwrecks can be.  My younger self was wiser than I realized.  It reminded me why I love Greek and Shakespearean tragadies.  I love comedies (especially Shakespeare's comedies) and happy endings and sparkly stories, but I forgotten that there was incredible beauty in suffering and pain.  Dude, the cartharsis that comes at the end of King Lear or Hamlet or Oedipus Rex (and dare I say, one of the stories I wrote), it reminded that one of the thing that makes great art is finding the beauty in those huge negative emotions I'm so afraid of.  Matt Kahn talked about a superstate, where one experiences two opposite emotion at the same time, like being in so much pain but also feeling so alive because of the depth of the emotion.  As he said, "I feel terrible, but I never felt more in my body."  He also talked about having your ________ happen and you're in a lot of pain from it, but you're also feeling a liberating profound sense of relief.  To me, that’s similar to cartharsis, and that sounds like art.  

Yes, it would suck if he hates me and said I caused him to suffer and wasted his time, but there's a strange twisted beauty to the fact that I did leave an impression on him.  Good or bad, I left my mark.  Rejection is beyond painful, but isn't it beautiful that I can survive something as terrible as the longing and heartbreak from comes from rejection?  Feeling like every cell of me in screaming in agony, having the wind knocked out of me from the pain, hurting like hell, they are terrible emotions, but man, how human is it to feel that deeply?  How does it connect us to the history of deep pain that the humans before us experience?  How profound is it that love can turn to hate?  How alive can one feel when they feel like they're dying?  

There is beauty to be found in those huge negative emotions.    

But dude, I'm terrified of feeling negative emotions deeply.  I'm like a raw open nerve who's constantly trying to avoid being pinched, so I throw on defenses after defenses on and procrastinate and avoid and slither away from.  And in doing so, I think I alienated myself.  Someone once told me that pain alienates people and there's a lot truth to that.  Pain makes us pull away and sometimes makes other people pull away from us.  But pain doesn't have to always alienate us.  Sometimes it connects us to other people in pain, to our past as a human race trying to find its place on this planet, and now I realize, it can connect us to ourselves.    

Before I told myself I had to have this confrontation for my honor and my self-respect, which is still true.  Now I see a reason that's more revelant to my personality - it's an excellent opportunity to experience being vulnerable for the first time in my life (omg, cue panic attack) and to see the beauty in big emotions and perhaps finally connect to myself.    

Don't get me wrong.  I'll probably still be too afraid to go through with it (right now the chances are 50/50), but what a shame that would be for the art-and-beauty-lover in me, to lose out on this opportunity to truly experience the art and cartharsis of big painful emotions.  

(BTW, if anyone is worried I still want a trainwreck relationship, no, I would like a healthy relationship where I could be myself and have the other person be loving and caring towards to me.  The trainwreck I'm talking about here is having the _______________ that I'm so afraid of happening happen.)