Intense

I had intense nosebleeds today, they were very frightening and went on for some time as a reaction to something I was driven to do out of guilt and shame. I feel sad even to write those words but the truth needs to be expressed. I seem to be the one trying to compensate for the pain of a very dysfunctional family that I never caused in the first place. And I am seeing all kinds of things today. How hard it has been to break away to my own life. How hard it was not to long for all I never got and keep transferring that longing onto new relationships. Not that there is anything at all wrong with having longed for love, attention, care and concern from your family of origin. That said with it being Mum’s birthday yesterday I know hard she tried and how painful it would have been for her to see me running from pillar to post, especially around the time my marriage ended. I see that running off overseas was not a good way to go about it and as a repeat of the time following my father’ death and in time I sustained a massive head injury, but even when I started my first serious therapy in 1999 in the UK early dreams showed me in a white white room surrounded by bloodstained walls. And I now know there was a lot of violence in my Mum’s multigenerational legacy and she carried the imprints of it.

This week I have had to listen to two nephews telling me of being put in casualty by their brother. This is the brother that lashed out at me last week and it was helpful to talk to his third brother today and get more of the background. At the moment I just feel so sad for my older nephew. I feel his pain and the distance he maintains from family trauma. I remember how he broke down out at dinner on the last visit when the issue of finding his mother at age 12 collapsed on the floor after an aneurysm came up. I saw how my sister tried to shut his emotional expression down at that times, but that is understandable too knowing this is how she copes. I saw how his wife struggles with certain things.

For myself what is on my mind today is the way I came back home in 2006 after the head injury and of the dark times that still lay before me in a new relationship and with ‘Scott’. It was so refreshing to meet a very lovely man yesterday who was labelled bi polar too only to later be told he had Complex PTSD, maybe life drew us together at this particular point for understanding. He spoke of the critical role shut down emotions caused for him with the trauma and of how his mother, sadly cut him out of his life. He had some intense lashing out episodes which are understandable if you know the history and he said that he finds a lot of help from Buddhism these days. The lashing out ended as soon as he got validation and a more accurate ‘diagnosis’.

For myself I know how important it is to understand anger and lashing out in the context of invalidation. There is something about the soul in us that must be known and something about the spirit in us that must express in order to go free in this life and if we have to burn up for a time to burn clean a path to our own personal truth then we must. No matter if others judge or label us or act in subtly patronising ways. It is something my third nephew and I were discussing this morning at length.

Hearing of these painful incidents though does something to my energy body. I know there is a part of me that needs to be free of this family curse now. I don’t want judgement, toxic criticism or emotional violence in my life these days. I want to find peace even through acknowledging where violence was a legitimate response at times to deep suffering. Saturdays are never easy for me with the head trauma and I had a very very tough one today. I dozed in the chair after losing so much blood this morning and has to force myself to eat lunch a short while ago.

Good things are happening in my life but sometimes past darkness seems to eclipse everything, its stormy windy and very very hot today, an ominous kind of heat that seems to be sucking the life out of things. I am grateful for the quiet stillness of my house at present. I am grateful for a new friend to reach out to. I am grateful for my blog and those who reach out to me here.

I lived that traumatic past but I no longer want it to eclipse my future. I know that if I can accept it and face it then I can move forward, we gain nothing shutting the door on things that need to be faced in order to be made peace with, if we run away in fear we don’t always win, although there is much to be said for self preservation. In time and with work our souls show us the right way to go and the right way to be as free as we can be of that intense, painful traumatic past.