One of the things that really brings me joy about my dog Jasper is how he never holds back how he really feels about things. I just got in late from therapy with a new bag of dog food and as soon as he saw it he just did his happy dance and raced around like a maniac. (Well not really but you know what I mean, there is something even wrong with the expression!) I was thinking how much joy it brings me to see him when his heart is full and he runs up to greet people or dashes off happily engaged in one of his many jaunts to catch any kind of bird in the vicinity, a quest that is bound to fail time after time, but never stops him trying anyway.
Spaniels are hunters and its natural he may want to retrieve a bird. I remember my absolute horror and dismay when I came home one day to see he had deposited a bird carcass on the front doorstep, minus quiet a few feathers. I had to race the bird to the vet as it was still marginally alive and I was crying, part of me was horrified completely but this what a dog is designed to do. And if I love my dog I need to let him do what he needs to do within limits, I just am grateful when he doesn’t manage to catch too many birds as seeing that one so hurt really did terrible things to me and it felt darkly ominous that day.
Thinking about the word enthusiasm, as I was called to do just before logging on to write this, apparently (and I read this somewhere a long time ago) the meaning of that word is ‘to be filled with God’ which I would see as another way of saying full of vital unimpeded life force. Brene Brown in her talks on shame and vulnerability also speaks a lot about the concepts of wholeheartedness and foreboding joy. It can be difficult for those of us who suffer from past experiences and fear of loss and being fully alive to stay open to the impermanence of life and relationships, fully opening our hearts to the joys of love and connection. According to Brene that also makes us feel incredibly vulnerable.
I have just started Michael Singer’s book The Untethered Soul and in it he also speaks a lot about the vital energy within us that can be impeded by blockages which exit where and when we damn up the flow of life energy and love and longing and zest for life. Its something Mark Wolynn also addresses in his book and work on carried multi generational trauma.
I get that shot of feeling alive and full of joy after my Thursday sessions with my therapist Kat. I had two bad traumas this week with the bank and a friend of my mother who invalidates me a fair bit so I really needed my session today to get straight again. I also have a lot of anxiety and guilt around my sister who has gone back into hospital this week. When my mother’s friend told me that my sister’s son had been in touch with her and not me I felt very left out and confused. Did he not have an idea I too, was worried about his Mum? I didn’t call to speak to him because he is away on business at the moment, but what came up today was how he and his wife shut my sister out when they judged her in cohoots with my Mum to be ‘in mania’ back in 2012. They had her involuntarily committed by tricking her into meeting then hijacked her and took her to the psyche ward down in Melbourne. A year later my sister tried to take her life after suffering yet more invalidation abuse at the hands of family I don’t want to go into here.
I have been a witness to all of this. I saw my sister bloated and pinned to the bed after the suicide attempt in 2013. I know there was a lot of mixed up stuff going on due to her enmeshment with my mother who was still living at that time. My sister actually asked me on Monday what she thought I felt about what she was going through. I told her I thought she had been invalidated by pretty much everyone and no one much seemed to be really able to meet her in the place she was. I don’t offer this kind of feedback unless it is asked for.
I told Kat today that I really don’t want to be visiting the hospital much right now. Through every other hospitalisation I have fronted up to give all the support I could but I am getting worn down by it all to be honest. I am scared that I will be seen as a ‘bad’ sister if I don’t support her but to be honest I truly cannot support fully the medication pathway she is going down that does not provide in depth psychotherapy. I know my sister will not go down that route and that is her choice. I know she is where she needs to be, not out on her own having to take care of everything we all need to manage when living alone with past trauma, anxiety or depression, for its too much for her right now facing all she is with her second stage of breast cancer treatment.
I have chosen my pathway and she is choosing hers and each is valid. But never the less I feel helpless because I personally see my sister getting more and more ‘lost’ at times. I will probably feel like visiting in a while, I could never cut my sister loose totally, but I find it harder and harder to meet her in that dark space lately.
I have shared here with complete honesty the place it reduces me to, feelings of powerlessness and such such deep sadness and teh last time I spoke I felt my sister drowning and holding onto my arm I extended and it felt like I was going to drown too, I JUST DONT WANT TO ANYMORE. I REALLY REALLY WANT TO LIVE AND CHOOSE HAPPINESS DESPITE ALL OF THE HORROR TRAUMA AND PAIN I HAVE WITNESSED IN MY LIFE.
So for the moment I would rather be living in that happy full of joy place and boundless enthusiasm that my best friend, Jasper inhabits. I am not denying the sadness and terrible trauma as well as the repression of our familial past, but the fact is, I just don’t want to live there in that dead and sucky vortex full time any more.
Emerging From The Dark Night 