No skin.

[kiya]

Pregnancy, emotional state, etc.


Right now I feel like I have no skin.

This has been a slowly developing thing over the last few weeks, and I think the transformation is complete. I'm pretty sure that it relates to the pregnancy -- that I'm vulnerable enough from the body-transformation and the relaxin (can't really walk well today) and the need to take care of the even more vulnerable life I'm nurturing that I need to be supersensitive to things in my environment that are potentially risky to me.

But I feel like I have no skin. Skin is there as this big respiratory-excretory thing, and to keep dust and stuff out of my muscle fibers, and there's this persistent layer of grit and nuisance rattling around in me at the moment, because I have no skin. Everything gets to me; everything is too loud. My sense of boundaries is both amorphous and intensely, painfully sensitive, because no skin.

Twelve hours without hearing from a partner has me borderline-depressive, because the not-presence is so loud, it doesn't even get under my skin, because there's nothing for it to get under.

Being in this state and contemplating the upcoming training weekend finally resolved me on the fact that I cannot pursue training right now in a healthy way, that attempting to do so would be subordinating myself to thing-I-want-to-pursue.

All kinds of little niggling things are so much larger, right now. Like the discussions I've been watching about how women need to be careful about what sort of sexuality they allow themselves to have, for fear that it might give someone ideas. Or this post, which was pretty great (as I think I read it as it was meant) until I read the comments (which left me feeling like a Martian, rebruised around the assault trauma, and angry, depending). Or bits of damage from old discarded friendships surfacing again after years. Or fretting about friends in distress that I don't understand. Or, y'know, my mother will be here in an hour or two. All kinds of little niggling things that are grit in my flesh.

There isn't a moment where I don't feel like I need to be cleansing, washing away, making kala, because this hypersensitivity has me noticing everything. It's overwhelming. I don't know how far back I need to pull to balance out and make the senses clearable, or whether I need to regroup and be where I am and let the pebble-strikes drive me to grow new skin.

Comments

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Meh. Am sorry. If helpful, sounds like snake with newly shed skin?

[tzeenj.livejournal.com]

yeah- you've got the hypervigilant-mommy thing going on, plus you're pumped with enough extra biochemistry to make severe PMS look like a walk in the park. Its been interesting and educational to actually be living with Claudia throughout the entire pregnancy this time, rather than just visiting every month and living with her for the last two months, seeing everything first-hand all the way through for the first time.

Of course, I also know that my saying the obvious in my typical cold-and-unfeeling manner actually doesn't help in any way...

Esoterically, I'd say aura-visualization and regular performance of some LBRP variant can help. Also cultivating the ability to stop and do pranayama whenever you feel a flare=up coming on (but remembering to do that's the hardest part).

and get hugs whenever possible.

[beloitst.livejournal.com]

I read the post you linked to, and jeebus -- I don't even know how to begin to process that one. So I'm not surprised the comments got to you.

Good luck nesting.

[labrys6.livejournal.com]

It was a good post. It hits the high points of women's nightmares. And yes, the comments are right....too little is expected of men. And too much is expected of women. It is not a wonder you feel skinned alive...plunged to deep in memory and feeling not only your own, but of so many women.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

The comments on that post should be stressful to any sane person at the best of times.

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

Not sure what would help, but that sounds a lot like what we folks with fibro go through. Especially the loud. Everything is loud sometimes.

*hug*

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

<Hugs>

I didn't read all of the comments to that post, but yes, I thought it was very powerful, questioning basic assumptions that we're all trapped in.