QC

I don't know how to do it, but I know it's much too hard to do alone. The whole concept of "personal growth" is based on a kind of individualism that is actually also part of the problem. We do this together or not at all.

I feel anxious and embarrassed as I write the above. I've been mostly avoiding social contact the last two months. I've been feeling sick and hopeless and exhausted and small. I worry I've been a bad friend and I'm letting people down.

Last year I thought I had all this feelings stuff figured out. I thought I knew what to do. I thought I was listening to and trusting the wisest part of myself. And then it all fell apart, a little over a year ago.

I've been afraid to talk about the details; the very short, painfully incomplete version is that I learned that someone I trusted was hurting me and people I cared about, and I also learned that I was hurting someone I cared about, in ways I hadn't recognized or understood.

That paralyzed me. I felt guilty, ashamed, disoriented, betrayed. I lost trust in myself. I didn't know what to do. I didn't do much. I shut down emotionally. And, that experience taught me things I desperately needed to know, and I can sometimes manage to be grateful for it.

My heart and my gut hurt thinking about what to write next. I've been holding this for a year and I still don't know what to do with it. I still feel guilty. I still don't know how to trust myself, not really.

What I suspect is that I spent the last several years running on fear, and I spent most of last year running on hope. Hope felt a lot better. It felt incredible! But it turns out hope has all of the same problems as fear.

The shape of my hope was this: all I have to do is this feelings stuff, and then people will love me. And then I won't feel so alone. And then everything will finally be okay.