After a very torturous session, I ran crying into the woods, punched a tree, and talked to a worm which talked back, scaring me a lot that I murdered some nearby ants, got a confusing erection, and had a realization: What I used to be experiencing, this madness and mania, was just like what Julia was going through — intrusive thoughts becoming dominant, crowding out every thing else.
I felt this not intellectually but emotionally, how terrified and lonely she have to be and the way spectacularly I used to be failing her. Which meant I used to be able to rather more empathy than I noticed.
I went back to the meditation hall and started actually listening to the teachers, resolving to stop hiding from the unpleasant things looping in my mind.
The following six days were still awful but productive. The retreat was about changing among the stories I had begun telling myself in childhood, and one in a post office queue. I’m not a narcissist, although I do know the right way to think like one, something that began after I was a shy and sensitive child in an environment that didn’t value those things. Feeling an excessive amount of, I started telling myself I felt little.
Similarly, if people don’t such as you, you’ll be able to determine they’re either right or mistaken. Repeat a lie often enough and also you’ll begin to imagine in its truth. But these were decisions, just like the selection I’d made to turn out to be a memoirist — intentionally making my life small and self-centered. Decisions that made me an emotionally unavailable partner and would make me the identical form of father, if I were lucky enough to have that probability.
Back in the true world, I did numerous apologizing and took a break from work, not wanting to jot down about happier times until we had made this one, even childless, pretty much as good because it might be. Then, after we had given up hope, we found ourselves in one more doctor’s office, after I.V.F. treatment, sobbing with joy, seeing the primary snowy glimpses of our daughter on the tiny screen.
