April 4th
Well, the Easter is almost over. I spend most of the day with my family as always on this holiday. Food was really great, but I am not feeling that well, well — I am overstuffed from all that eating… We found time around noon to have a small car trip and a short walk which was nice to burn some excess calories. But — overall I don’t think I enjoyed that time with them and that day as a whole.
I don’t celebrate Easter in any religious way (my family doesn’t as well). Mostly it’s about tradition, spending time together and eating. And that’s where my problem is — it seems that all holidays where we have a family gathering is not about being there together, talking and relaxing — it has become a chore, where first a lot of food has to be prepared and then consumed. I hardly even talked to anybody today, everybody was talking loudly trying to be heard and putting their point across — there were a couple of times that I could stand that cacophony of voices (and my family can be very loud) from all directions. My head started to hurt, I just wanted to get away and spend some time alone.
I didn’t say anything to them about it though, and why not ? — I am nor sure, I guess I didn’t want to make a scene or make somebody feel hurt, especially during the holiday. I know I have to work on my assertiveness, and today I didn’t — and now I don’t feel good about it. I’ve noticed that when it comes to my family I am not confident to state my feeling and my point of view and inform them about my needs. Again, why? What is stopping me? I worked on that in my therapy and I thought that I can handle it, and apparently I cannot. It might be that I want everybody to have only good and positive thought about me, so I guess I keep quiet thinking that if I say something I might offend somebody. And that’s no good — I need to take care of my feelings, emotions and needs first. If they don’t agree — so what? At least I should have made my problems with the whole situation clear for them. Nobody can read my mind and if I don’t say what is on my mind they won’t know it. Communication — that the very important point I learned in my therapy, and it seems that I am forgetting about it. Or maybe it’s the fact that Adam is going back to London in a couple of days and family situation and dynamics will go back to normal (Adam is a very self-absorbed person and needs to be in the center of attention all the time), so there is no need to do anything now, just endure until Thursday… Anyway — my family and its internal dynamics is a subject that I was putting aside in my weekly therapy sessions with Ada (I didn’t think I was ready for it), but now I am sure that we should start exploring that. And we will, starting next session.
