Movement is life : (yet) more reflections

I feel better after getting Jasper and I out for a walk, it was hard to do it today and I really had to push myself, somehow I got trapped by my painful symptoms today and it may have been the trigger of seeing my sister, with the echoes of all those visits to my other sister in her later years when she was practically bed ridden. The tragedy of this fate of being locked up in our body is with me so often and I think of how I was stuck in that hospital bed with a pin through my leg for 101 days. It is very close to the anniversary of my near death crash in early September 1979. Many would say ‘but that was years ago’, still when I feel the sap rising in spring the echoes of how I got crushed and nearly killed and trapped in that car with cuts and lost teeth and a torn tongue is with me and by a crazy twist of fate it happened very close to my father’s 59th birthday. And the trauma repeated with another major head injury on the first anniversary of my ex husband walking out on me because I was ‘too sad’.

I had a flashback a moment ago of seeing my Mum’s dead body rigid and unmoving with all the life departed and of how she struggled on the final night to stand up with the assistance of the male nurse and I. She said with a lot of anxiety “I have to get going” and its interesting that she died on the day my ancestors set sail for New Zealand from Cornwall, 12 December. A case of cycles within cycles maybe?

I was looking at a photo of my older sister who died in 2014 just before my walk taken with me and her younger son. I see how puffed up her face was from all the meds and I think of how she would wince and grunt as she tried to shift her body battered body around in her care home bed. I know I should probably not dwell on these memories now, but perhaps they make sense of my own deep fears of entrapment and my fears for my other sister who is doing very very limited movement and seems so stuck in an emotional dead land. I get to the point where I am frozen with a cascade of inner body sensations and its like I am pinned in place, but the truth is I COULD MOVE IF I EXERCISED MY WILL and I just wonder why that seems so hard for me to do at times.

I really beat myself up today about my failure to take more steps to engage in life, my arms are aching as I type this so maybe I should not be going over it. I cry with the way I get beaten up from inside by this horrible force and with Kat gone I struggle alone with it. The man I spoke to on the phone today was so kind and kept affirming my strength in the face of adversity. I am crying now. Why the hell am I SO DARN HARD ON MYSELF? When I am like this I do feel my dead loved ones very close to me. I had a call from my deceased sister’s third son today and it was his youngest son’s birthday and I did not even remember it and I felt so bad about it. Our family is so split apart and distant at times and I know I could do more but never the less it was good to chat. I can tell him what is going on with Sue and he understands though he cannot really offer much other support.

Anyway Jasper and I got out for a lovely walk and then sat in the car at the markets listening to more of Stan Grant reading Australia Day. I have been invited to see Tex Perkins tonight at the Playhouse with an old friend and the tickets are free. I realise at times how my friends often give so much more to me in terms of these kind of gifts even if its infrequent and I am grateful for it, while a part of me would also just love a quiet night in with Jasper. I was thinking today that maybe we all have these conflicting parts of us inside us that vie for supremacy.

In the chapter Stan is reading from at the moment he talks about how limiting and restrictive the category of colour or race can be and how its much less clearly defined than just ‘black’ or ‘white’. (Cue Michael Jackson!!) I was thinking how a lot of categorisation is like this. We try to label others or label ourselves, we identify our identity with things that speak only partially to the totality or complexity of who we are. We wear labels for experiences and states of mind that come and go or dog us into infinity but can also shift if we make some creative changes or movements.

At times though its nice to forget all about it and just go walk by the lake with your dog and then lay on the bank slowly breathing into nature while your dog sits by you with a big smile on his face. To be honest those times are the times in my life I feel the freest of all. Out there in the Great Out Doors (G.O.D.) I feel closer to the part of my deep spirit that is freer and less defined than my mind or the minds of others would define it. And that is when I am grateful for the power of movement to get myself there, because moving my body helps me get more into present time and lessens the power of my mind to at times hold me captive within all kinds of self imposed repetitive feed back loops and limitations.