Seeing the innocence within and without

I woke with a start from a dream nightmare just as the phone beeped with a text from Scott at 7 am this morning. In the dream I dreamt he turned on me accusing me of all kinds of things and then the hoped for union that we are working towards was destroyed utterly and I was texting him back in such a state. I then woke to find his texts of love and lay there as I usually do most mornings with fear/shock/trauma imprints pumping through my chest. However today I was more conscious of it, in a way I was not before as I felt the entire shock charge of the ongoing trauma cycle I have lived in for over 40 years now. I thought of similar fear dreams I have had when in other relationships and how closeness or intimacy could often be so torn apart by either my reactions or fears or those of my partner and in the past I never had sufficient maturity to know really how to deal with these to bring soothing reconnection and calm. And often I lived with highly reactive partners too so things would rapidly escalate.

I just lay there and let myself breathe and drink in the peace of a fresh clear autumn morning. I have been thinking about my Dad and Mum a lot with my sister coming out of hospital yesterday following her second cancer surgery. What I felt was all the love they had but could not really show and all the love they did not have from parents growing up in such hard times during the depression. I did some breathing while resting in bed and ran myself a bath. In the bath I just looked at my body. I saw the cut just above my pubis where I had an operation at 23 when I fell pregnant to my then boyfriend and the corpus luteum ruptured giving me severe abdominal pain. At that stage I had had two other terminations of pregnancy all under cover but as this rupture made the situation dangerous and I was taken (or rather had to drive myself to emergency in the middle of the night as my partner would not wake up) it was recommended I have another termination. Its the only one my Mum supported me through.

I thought too of all my poor old body has had to endure in this life and of the many times I have driven it so very hard. I thought of all the reactive things I have done running in fear and fright and flight as reactions causing even more trauma in the process and I understood at a far deeper level much as I have blamed others I was the one in the driver’s seat. I say my husband didn’t want to support my therapy and that was true, he didn’t like me feeling my buried pain and so I ran. I need not blame myself there were contributing factors over years. Suffice to say we separated and I sustained a serious head injury on the first anniversary which I have still not fully recovered from.

In the bath I just hugged my body and gave love to it. I thought of the guilt I am carrying over not helping my mother the day she fell down those stairs at my sister’s place and as I cried I forgave myself for that too. I did my best at the time, it was probably not good enough and my sister’s illness was her own and it made me scared echoing as it did my older sister’s trauma and breakdown and eventual diagnosis with manic depression (the older term for modern day so called bi polar illness.)

As I got out of the bath I looked into the eyes of my five year old child. I have the same picture taped on my bathroom mirror now that my Dad had tucked away in his licence bi fold with the Dutch Delft medallion. I saw the innocence within me, the cheeky impish smile, the beauty, the hope and I told my inner child how precious she is to me and how loved. I thought too of everyone else who was once a child, innocent and wide awake and vulnerable, especially my Mum and Dad. Then I sat on the side of my bed and thanked my Higher Power for all she has carried me through over these past painful years of sickness, ongoing mental illness in my family and death.

On a bright note the army is going to help Scott to get back home soon. He doesn’t have to borrow all that money any more. They are going to let him pay it from his account that was frozen within a few days of arriving home in the States. I just need to come up with a small amount which will be paid back immediately. But even that is not really cause for my sense of spiritual awakening and peace at the moment, although it helps. Rather it is the love I feel all around me today and the deeper sense of forgiveness. I am under no illusions. Damaged adults do damage others and they need to be held to account, but once they too were just innocent kids who were forced or forced themselves to make the wrong choices. Really there own healing is up to them. If they hurt me it hurts and I need to do everything to not let that hurt lodged too deeply inside of me by repetitive rumination and just realise too long ago they lost touch with the innocent loving child inside too.

My dream of fear showed me this morning how absolutely everything I think affects my life. I can either choose fear and project horror movies on big screens all around me. When I do that all is fear, everyone is guilty including myself, life seems unsafe and unsupportive, others are out to get me or do me wrong or misunderstand, truth can get twisted by unconscious fear projection movies from the past.

Truth is often others WILL MISUNDERSTAND ME but the truth is they are not me, so how can they always understand? They don’t know my past, they just often project their own experience onto me, as I can do sometimes too if I don’t take the cotton wool out of my ears and put it in my mouth when necessary. The most important thing is that I understand myself and make the best effort to understand where others are coming from, even when they too lash out in fear projecting their own guilty dream onto me.

And even more important is for me to dream a dream of love, because sure as hell if that is what I project it is what is going to come back to me, if I keep projecting fear then everyone loses and hope dies a slow death every morning with each negative fearful thought I continue to nourish.