Because I’m Tired of Coping

I’m standing at my desk, tea going lukewarm because I forgot it exists again.

Which feels… relevant.

Because I keep doing this thing where something important is right in front of me, quietly waiting, and I just… don’t look at it. Or I look at it sideways. Or I rename it something more manageable. “Stress.” “Busy.” “Just a phase.” And then a therapist asks me, very simply, “Why do you want to see a therapist?”

And my brain goes, cool cool cool, let’s absolutely not answer that directly.

I think the honest answer is that there are too many tabs open. Not in the cute productivity way. More like the hardware is making that ominous humming noise and I’m pretending it’s fine.

There’s the divorce.

Which is not just a divorce, because of course it isn’t. It’s parenting. It’s co-parenting. It’s the ghost of decisions I made years ago still walking around in my house wearing different clothes. It’s conversations that never really end, they just… pause. And then resume at inconvenient times. Like 2:13 AM.

There’s the ex-partner.

Which feels like its own category. Because a relationship doesn’t just end and neatly file itself away under “past.” It lingers in habits. In reactions. In the way my nervous system perks up at certain tones of voice or certain silences. It’s not just what happened. It’s what my body thinks might happen again.

And then there’s the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Which sounds so… small. Like I should be able to fix it with a better calendar or fewer notifications. But it’s not that. It’s more like everything is happening at the same volume. Work. Kids. Identity. History. Future. All playing at once. No mute button.

I’ve been reading about Internal Family Systems.

Parts work. Which, on paper, sounds almost whimsical.

Like, oh, I have little inner characters, how charming. Except. They are not little. They are not quiet. They are not optional. They show up with opinions. LOUD opinions.

There’s a part of me that is very, very competent.

Gets things done. Handles logistics. Keeps the machine running. And then there’s a part that is exhausted by that competence. Which resents it. Which wants to lie down on the floor and opt out of being “the one who handles it.”

There’s a part that wants connection.

And a part that immediately distrusts it. There’s a part that wants to be seen. And a part that is absolutely convinced that being seen is dangerous.

And underneath all of that, there’s this belief.

Persistent. Quiet. Sticky. That I am broken. Not “I made mistakes.” Not “I’m working through things.” Broken. As in: something fundamental is wrong.

I don’t say that out loud very often.

Because it sounds dramatic. Because it sounds like something you’re supposed to have already healed. Because I can function. I can work. I can parent. I can show up. But the belief is still there, like background radiation. Low-level. Constant.

And I can trace it, which is almost more unsettling.

To childhood. To religion. To fear dressed up as morality. To moments that were too big for the version of me that experienced them. To things that happened that shouldn’t have. And things that didn’t happen that should have.

And cPTSD is such a clinical term.

It sounds neat. Contained. Like something you can point to on a chart. But living with it feels more like… echoes. Reactions that don’t match the moment. Intensity that arrives before context. A body that has already decided something is wrong before I’ve had time to think.

Depression is quieter.

It’s not always dramatic. Sometimes it’s just the absence of color. The absence of urgency. The absence of “why bother.”

Anxiety, on the other hand, is very enthusiastic.

It has ideas. Many ideas. Mostly about everything that could go wrong. Immediately. Simultaneously.

And then there’s gender.

Which is not a problem to solve, but it is something to understand. To express. To allow. And also something that intersects with everything else in ways I’m still mapping. Identity is not a static file. It’s more like a living document that keeps updating when I’m not looking.

“So why do I want to see a therapist?”

Because all of these things are happening at once. Because I can hold them. But holding them is not the same as processing them.

Because I don’t actually want to just “cope.” I’ve done a lot of coping. Coping is useful. Coping kept me here. But I think I want something else now.

I want to understand the system. Not just react to it. I want to know which part of me is speaking. And why.

And what it needs.

I want someone who can sit with me while I untangle the threads. Who isn’t inside the system. Who can notice patterns I can’t see because I’m too close to them.

I want to challenge the belief that I’m broken.

Not by arguing with it. But by understanding where it came from. And whether it still needs to be here.

I want to feel less like I’m bracing for impact. All the time.

And maybe, more quietly than all of that, I want to experience what it feels like to not do this alone.

Stromps just jumped onto the desk and is now investigating the tea like it personally offended her. Which feels like a good metaphor for parts work, actually.

Curiosity.
Suspicion.
Commitment to the bit.

I think I’ve been trying to self-therapize my way through this. Reading. Thinking. Noticing patterns. And it’s helped. It really has.

But there’s a difference between thinking about something and being with it. Between analyzing a system and being gently guided through it.

So maybe that’s the answer. Not a single reason. Not a clean list. But a constellation of things that keep pointing in the same direction.

Something here wants attention. Not emergency attention. Not crisis.

Just… care.

And I’m starting to wonder what happens if I actually give it that.