Struggling to stay afloat

I have felt waves knocking me over so often in my life in metaphorical sense. A few weeks ago my therapist likened growing up in my family to getting caught in a rip. There is a sense I struggled in so many ways as I see from a longer range perspective now how much I was affected by all the trauma and lack of attention or emotional neglect in my family. I struggled to be seen mostly and responded to and that is what got triggered today on my walk with Jasper. In the area I take him I don’t always need a lead as we usually walk along happily alongside each other but when he got to the oval today he just took off on me and it was such a struggle for me to get moving after breakfast and the gardener coming that it was about 12 by the time we got out anyways.

I really needed to walk (and had to push myself) as I was feeling in such a dark space and so inundated this morning so I did the long walk around the oval and went and lay down on the grass expecting Jasper to come back. I am sure he saw me sitting there and later calling to him but eventually he just started to head back through the underpass towards the child’s play area we usually sit at. I ran after him calling him while he ignored me but before I could catch up with him I literally collapsed to my knees crying. I was in a similar space yesterday. What was coming up was how for most of my life I have felt such a long way off from community, relationships, as sense of belonging and as though I am never seen or heard.

No matter how hard I tried I could not get anyone to notice me and I have been then denied or pushed into things by family such as my house while my true needs wants seemed to be irrelevant. Other’s needs always seem to take precedence. It has got to the point that I am even pushing Scott away at present and today I just broke down crying cuddling the soft blue teddy he sent to me for my birthday. A week ago he said to me that if I cant help him anymore with coming home just to cuddle the bear and think of him.

Anyway I did manage a walk today and the breakdown into tears with Jasper showed me something important in my inner world. I probably will carry these sad feelings for the rest of my life but at least I am noticing them and the way my inner child feeels. I am just feeling a little stuck in my inner world today. I live alone and don’t see many people. This kind of isolation worked for a while but what I am realising lately is that it is not fully sustainable. My body hurts a lot at times from the loneliness and things stay trapped inside me when I am not connected to others.

After Mum died Scott offered me that daily care and connection of someone caring for me when no one else did, not even family. My sister just went down the rabbit hole (in the words of my therapist) my brother shifted the entire focus to financial matters and seemed to be relieved to escape off to America so has not to have to be too close. Who knows maybe it all been meant to be this way. We cannot always be close to family but sadly I notice myself holding off from contacting them too and particularly my sister when she really needs support with this latest cancer scare.

I haven’t managed any lunch yet. I am struggling to keep up my eating routine this week and the fact is autumn is on the way so its really an hour earlier here as daylight savings is extended until April 9 this year. When the days start to close in circadian rhythms tend to change, that is what I am noticing. Its not light until after 7 am now (which is really 6 am) and I am back to spending an hour or more awake during the middle of the night after a period in which I was finally sleeping through before my sister’s cancer scare.

The truth is I never made an independent life apart from my family, I was pulled back my an undertow of unmet need and longing and illusions kept me in thrall for far too long. But there was also an ancestral need for re-connection shown by the Neptune in Scorpio in my birth chart Sextile Virgo and trine to Chiron in Pisces that was part of that.

I just seem to be foundering in very deep seas at present. Everything about my house seems to be pulling upon me to day and almost pulling me under. Its like I am trying to surface in wild seas and struggling. I know Mercury will be travelling backwards for another 15 days…. so others may be feeling this as well. Maybe I just need to surrender and go with it (because it occurs to me that during the retrograde things get loosened and dislodged from the unconscious which don’t become fully apparent for some weeks. Insights emerge slowly during Mercury retrograde periods). I have no definite answers yet.

The best I felt today was at the end of the walk sitting under the trees feeling the cooling comfort of the breeze touching my skin after shedding tears and being reunited with Jasper. Nature and animals give me comfort but sometimes they don’t seem enough to sustain my life, maybe I am just in a low space today. It was a relief to get home and write this. Writing helps me at least keep afloat or provides some kind of container for me on the tough days.