Hello MJ,
One of my favorite questions is "why", or maybe I should say it's one of my least favorite questions.
Why do I drink obsessively? Why do I need to medicate myself with drugs? Nicotine? Iced cream? The occasions leading to empty sexual encounters/intimacy? I wish I could just go through life as if this questions mattered no more or less than the others, "what when where how", but in reality it does, and keeps on thrusting itself into my consciousness nagging for resolution simply for the sheer result of mental physical emotion spiritual balance and integrity. I think that this is what I've come to associate mostly with happiness.
I've managed to make up a lot of answers, which then produced more questions, but at least it got me through.
If what you are feeling is a result of a realization that the thing you're seeking is no longer providing the desired results, then I call that PROGRESS brother. You are asking because you're tired of this phase. You are ready to have the answer, and it is already inside you. Keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking and the door will be opened. It is already opening, in that you are able to recognize that you are needing a different emotional response to these encounters than you previously anticipated and enjoyed.
This is just a perhaps: You are being beckoned thru the fire. It hurts cause it feels like something is in the process of losing you, but really, you are in the process of losing it. Such allurements are losing their delicious appeal for you, and you are responding in kind. Since coming here, you are experiencing a healing in parts of you that you may not even be aware as yet, and your current crisis is just a glimpse of this. You are no longer willing to continue to choose these behaviors, because in doing so, you know that you are allowing the abuser to exert his power over you again and again.
In a way MJ, I think as survivors of victimization, that this is our destiny, to wrestle with this devil for the rest of our lives. That's hard to accept, but necessary.
For myself, I came to see the incidences of self-medication in any form, whether they consumptive, or just reflected, are nothing more than an attempt to relive the first moment in my life when I was taken so casually by the hand and led into the world of foreplay, orgasm. Since this happened at a time when I was not ready to comprehend them with my own level of understanding, I became interrupted, stuck, sort of like the arm of a record player being stuck in a scratch, and my life became a quest to daily revisit the moment by trying to recapture the events. My life became a daily attempt to further complicate what was meant by my abuser to be merely some matter-of fact , hit and run rape.
Eventually, through asking that dreaded question "why", i found I was able to unravel my mystery, and then was able to relive the moment as a grown up, with my own power, and I rewrote the script and said emphatically "NO" and changed the course of events, or at least how I perceived them. Then I was able to imagine that when I woke up the next day, I was a different person, the person I was supposed to be. Then I imagine how that person went on to live a free, full life unencumbered by the daily shame, terror, guilt that kept me tethered to that one moment in the past. [I was only able to do this because I had confronted, in real life, the key players who kept me scared silent all of the years--doing this was part of the way I needed to have my particular brand of "why" answered.]
I am sorry if I bored you with these blatherings, but even if they only helped us keep our mind off the pain for a few minutes, then I guess it can't be all bad.
Please be kind to yourself as you struggle. How you are chosing to get your needs met is not a moral issue, So guilt and shame have little purpose here, except to keep you from becoming in danger of bodily, emotional, spiritual physical harm [disease]. Keep at it brother; what you are feeling is part of the plan. You are making progress. Stay connected to us, and it won't feel so alone.
Peace,
Ron
