I have those days when my head barely feels above water, or I am swimming but there are waves very close to me breaking and almost threatening to pull me under, maybe I should just surrender to them instead of always trying to fight or rebel. I was reading in my book on Everyday Narcissism this morning about how our culture gets children to sacrifice their true impulses and needs and emotions pretty early on and the result is either compliance (so as not to lose love) or out and out rebellion against all rules and authority (which is not always wrong or counter productive, but IS sometimes.) It struck a chord with me as a bit of a rebeller which has served me well in some ways (my therapist credits this attitude with keeping me alive) but stymied me in other ways too.
I then was reading more of Rupert Thomson’s book where he tries to find out more about his mother’s death which happened when he was only 8 or so following the death of his father and explains how lost he was and how enmeshed with his father, turning himself out of shape to fill the wound for his father, of his mother’s loss. And the memories of her are sketchy at best and they disappear ‘like ink in water’ all he is left with is intimations and the deep deep foundering grief he really could not fully express but forms the context of some of his works of fiction, especially the book Katherine Carlyle I read just recently.
I found myself after drinking my coffee and reading about how someone criticised him for being so ‘lost’ wiping tears off my cheeks and my nose was dripping as I went to get my lunch supplies from the deli. I resonate with that ‘lostness’ and think of the long wilderness years following all the traumas from my near death accident in 1979 to my sisters aneurysm and psychosis 6 months later, her abandonment a suicide attempt in 1983 and my father’ death in early 1985. And the next 8 years of alcoholism and multiple terminations that followed as well as these later years trying to piece or stitch the broken fragments of my torn about self together.
I am powerless over all of this in some ways, as I can only have power to the extent of what I am conscious over and this is why people falsely judged addicts as ‘weak willed’ when nothing could be further from the truth, we just bear wounds we are not allowed to feel or so until we get sober and start the work of growing consciousness which is a deeply painful process that demands of us for recovery ‘rigorous honesty’.
I also have the decision weighing over my head of whether to cut things as far as bringing Scott home or get the final amount to him, its driving me almost insane with anger that I got myself into this situation in the first place all because I was not able to hold my own pain and just longed for someone real and embodied to come to share my life but the man who showed up is stuck in a hell of his own choice and its a mirror on some level for me and my trapped masculine. I haven’t fully had strong legs to stand on before this. I’m still addicted to sugar fixes too, its something I am really battling at the moment.
Writing always manages to put a bit of ground under my feet, I haven’t walked Jasper today, he didn’t want to go out before and often on therapy days I take him with me as he loves Kat’s office and we walk before that or I take him to the local oval near her after wards. Somehow I manage to meet both of our needs even thought when I come home to the house I feel its a mess and just reflects at times the level of my own emotional neglect and abandonment. But then I know Kat often tells me my perception of things alters depending on my mood and the activity of my relentless inner critic at that moment.
Anyway for what its worth that is where today finds me. Feeling like I am drowning at times in tears and sorrow for my past, and yet I know that in feeling this I will be able to surface and ride that wave if I just allow it to fill my lungs for a time and brush me forwards, perhaps a little bit closer to the shore and solid ground. I know this for sure feelings, and moods change and I just have to keep riding the tide while trusting in the ultimate benevolence of the flow.
Emerging From The Dark Night 