This wound is smarting

I’m adding an astrological note at the beginning of this blog to put what I explore here in an astro context.

On June 11, in four days we have an exact square between Mars in Gemini and Chiron in Pisces.  The following interpretation of this transit is from Evolving Door Astrology:

It may be time to confront issues in your life that involve how/why you get hurt by others, how you yourself hurt others, and how healing can take place in either of these situations. Your awareness of this may due to a conflict in your life, but this can be a valuable learning experience for you, more-so than usual. Part of the problem may be that you need to tread your own path but are avoiding this for whatever reasons – perhaps circumstances compel you to satisfy others’ expectations, or perhaps you are still struggling to muster the courage to find and walk your own path. Whatever the reasons, this transit may give you a push that will help to steer you in a healing direction, possibly by showing you how and why the path you have been on does not lead to where you want to go. If you start to feel overwhelmed, take some time out from the stress to get re-centered and grounded.

Its been a while since that wound in me throbbed so powerfully and so deeply.  I am aware of being on the war path regarding earlier injuries that were not addressed that simmer away inside me and cause me pain, pain that I then want to pass back and bring to the attention of those who had a part to play in causing the pain in an attempt to get it recognised and resolved.  But what I meet is negation, denial.

This quest ends in heart ache and tears every time, especially when I am engaged in a dance with those to whom apology would be an admission of an error that their own insensitivity, ignorance, pride or hubris wont allow.

Thinking about it this morning I was seeing how ironical it is that the person from whom I am longing for recognition or apology themselves went through something really similar, endured the same frustration yet lacks the capacity to see that the very thing that hurt them is what they are doing to me.

And it leads me to a place of complete powerlessness.  There is absolutely nothing I can do to address the pain as the people I go to are invested in running at the first sight of pain, of any admission that pain my exists and is real.  Is it that it makes them feel small and powerless?  That they have no solution?  The solution would be in the accepting of the existence of things they don’t understand and so hoping for that acceptance is doomed to be yet another source of angst and wounding.

Its seems that for many of the past 13 years I have been involved in a doomed quest for recognition by people who would rather turn to drugs than engage with a genuine feeling.  So why am I continuing to repeat the same thing over and over and over again?  Its a well known indication of insanity, doing the same thing over and over while hoping for a different result.  And yet, this is what I have done.

Today I am very conscious of the twists and turns of perception and thought that occur as I grapple with very deep conflicts in my closest personal relationships.  I see that I am caught up in my own view and have been accused of not seeing the other person’s pain or point of view when in fact I have and do but the fact is that they are projecting their own behaviour onto me.

I awoke with the refrain of two songs on my mind the first.  “I wont back down”, the second “love is stronger than pride”.  What is the cost of holding onto our own view, of not extending ourselves into the other persons?  We cant love them if we cant see their point of view and we struggle to feel any love coming from them if they refuse to see ours.  We are both wanting what the other person will not give.

This isn’t what happened with my mother yesterday, I was ready to acknowledge her pain as I often do but that is rarely reciprocated.  “I never meant to hurt you”, she said to me.  But the fact is she hurt me deeply.  What would I have liked her to say?  “Even though I didn’t mean to hurt you, I am sorry that I did even if it was due to my own unconsciousness?”.   Dream on! Some words come to me that a therapist said to me years ago.  “Its hard, Deborah but maybe to find peace you are going to need to accept the limits of their capacity and recognise the flaw is in them, not in you.  Like when Jesus said, while hanging on the cross “forgive them father for they know not what they do.” ”

I’m still struggling with this and I know I wont find peace until I give up the entire struggle.  Forgiveness seems too high a price to pay at the moment.  So I am back smack bang in the middle of Chiron unhealed wound territory.

In order to find peace I need a shift of focus but at the moment I am a bit like a dog with a bone. I don’t quite want to let it go.  I have to accept this wound will probably always be here, sometimes throbbing and smarting in the harsh light of attention.  Sometimes faded into the background and drowned out due to focus on more nurturing things.

This morning I called a family friend who I had hoped to share some of yesterday’s tangle with.  Turns out the people involved in the hurting were all getting together today to go on a lovely outing.  I am ashamed to say I hung up the phone.  I was so livid.  Then I stepped outside of myself and questioned why?  I saw the silliness of my reaction but also its validity too.

I guess there are always at least several perspectives we can look at things from.  Resentment over not being recognised and included smarted but blocked the awareness that I can still have a nurturing day alone and do something lovely for myself.  I was still bloody hurt though and there are lessons in this.  Wake up Deborah!

Its seems my North Node / South Node dance between the first and seventh houses often sets up these kind of conundrums.  Why couldn’t I be happy they were having a lovely day together?  Because they had hurt me by yet again by not including me and just ignoring my pain.  This group of three in the past had treated me like I was from another planet when really deep grief came up just over six months ago.  There was no way they were going to stand by me and support me while I went through it, as far as they were concerned it was mucking up their peace.

I guess in time I am just going to have to accept that the world does not revolve around me.  I question my own narcissism in the hopes I have to be recognised and treated with caring, empathy and respect. And then, soon things in my own mind turn against me and I become the difficult person my mother accused me of being yesterday when I tried to address past hurts with her.  The wound then gets driven more deeply in as I spend time alone thinking about it, I turn and turn the entire mess around and around in attempts to extract meaning from which arises an even bigger mess.

And yet hidden within that mess is also an understanding and truth which I seem to be denying and covering over with the tangled skeins of the Gordian knot I am attempting to unravel.

Maybe what is coming out if this is an insight into the duality of love and hate.  Two sides of the one coin.  Probably apt for the strong Gemini influence around at present.

Its now nearly mid day.  I have not touched a drop of liquid or food.  My feet are freezing as I have been so caught up in this that I could not bear to stop to put on slippers.

I’ll send it out now.  A missive into cyberspace, a lonesome arrow searching for a target.

And the truth is how well do we really know people.  How much of our knowing of them is based on assumptions.  I know that I can go through swings and roundabouts inside my own mind trying to figure out what is motivating others, when really I could just have the courage to front up and ask, to try and sort it out.

This morning I did this with my brother.  I was feeling resentful that he hadn’t called me in a long time, that when other family members were struggling he was so far away and could not help.  That resentment was blocking me off from making contact in order to share and gain the support I needed in such a difficult situation.  I called him a little while ago and got off my chest a lot of things I have been struggling with inwardly.  I came to see in the course of the conversation that a lot of the assumptions I had made about him were actually off base.

My brother is actually a really lovely guy.  He is just very focused in a particular area of life and experience that doesn’t open him up much to communicating with others.  And yet once I made the effort to communicate with him he was more than willing to share about certain things I had longed to know and understand for some time.  It had to start with me.