Shades of light and dark : today’s reflections

I had a shock last night after a day in which I really felt myself becoming free, having given away some more of Mum’s things and eating at earlier times, feeling I had energy to move forward while trying to integrate recent disappointments and reality checks with family, but then early last night some likes popped up on Facebook on a couple of my photos of Jasper and I, a Snoopy film cartoon I shared and a post on holding presence by Marianne Woodman and then a message appeared in Messenger from ‘Scott’. Those who have followed me for a while know who he is and I don’t want to elaborate much, he came into my lfe during the dark time after Mum died when my sister had gone almost catatonic with feelings and had to be put back into hospital several times by my brother who didn’t engage on anything except financial matters after telling literally over Mum’s dead body that I was ‘a loose cannon’ for confronting him for not helping one of my older sister’s sons when she was still alive and he and his family may have had a chance to move closer and heal our familial pattern of emotional disconnection.

All of this painful time is behind me now and during the time ‘Scott’ and I were constantly texting and communicating he gave me a lot, in terms of a connection at such a painful lonely time, however I soon started sending him money to get off deployment and it escalated. I broke contact finally last December when it was mucking me around too much and last night I didn’t want to reply but I did. He swears he only wants to send me documents to get all my money sent back to me and make thing right, claims he cannot live with himself, has no peace and is terribly lonely. I just told him I want the entire thing behind me now, but his reconnection meant my sleep was disturbed again between the hours of 1 and 3 am and that I woke with a start or rush of energy to hear my phone ping with yet three more notifications from him, probably just a sign I didn’t hold good boundaries.

This is all boundary stuff but it seems to have launched me into the deep grief and anger again this morning. I have been reading over old journals about past clashes due to anxious and painful attachments. I am remembering times my sister came to the coast to try to help me when Phil broke contact as I could not move out of my trauma state, despite the fact I was diligently pursuing therapy even though it meant a one hour journey each way. I broke that to go travelling with him so as not to lose him and we ended up breaking up anyway, on the trip I got stung all over by sea lice after he left me for hours in the heat to go fishing with mates. Just writing this makes me cry and hurt inside, it reminds me of all of the times we had to sit on that fucking boat of Dad’s bored out of our brains, just longing to ride the waves on the beach, my sisters used to jump ship and swim to shore but I was too young, I was just stuck there on that bloody boat hating it, or of all the other times when hurt or in trauma I was left alone with not one person to understand, take my hand, or give me a hug.

Today Scott’s texts where all about trusting in God and that he has a plan and that we must forgive and let go of resentment but the harder truth is that IF WE WERE HURT IT HURT.. IT FUCKING HURT : THIRD DEGREE BURNS HURT, A CUT ARM DUE TO BEINg LOCKED OUT OF THE HOUSE AFTER SCHOOL HURT, A FISH HOOK BURIED IN THE WEBBING OF SKIN BETWEEN TWO TOES HURT ; HAVING MY ARM PULLED OUT OF MY SOCKET AFTER BEING SWUNG AROUND FUCKING HURT AND BEING TICKLED AND OVERSTIMULATED AND LAUGHED AT WHEN I BEGGED FOR IT TO STOP HURT AND I READ THIS WEEK IS ACTUALLY A FORM OF SEXUAL ABUSE!!!!! AND HAVING TO WEAR A MEDIEVAL HEAD GEAR FOR NIGHTS ON HEAD TO CORRECT WHAT WERENT EVEN BAD TEETH FUCKING HURT SO MUCH AS DID NEARLY DYING AT 17.

There that shit is out of me now, but the truth is it still lives deep inside as body memory along with the trauma of all the violent orthodontic work and two smash ups in which I nearly died!!!

The fact is that as a young child I had NO CONTROL OVER WHAT WAS DONE TO MY BODY. Mum shared with me that after school my brother and sister’s would run in and push her out of the way to get to me, but when I grew up they went away and I was some form of nuisance, or else dragged on skiing holidays with my brother and his wife that made me cold and miserable. The truth is no one was tuning in to care about my needs or notice what I wanted or needed and so I learned over time to do the same while burying all the pain with alcohol, food or drugs. All of this made me feel I had no power or value or agency for my life. It may seem dumb to still not have worked my way out of it by age 58 but at 31 I got in to AA where they told me my defects were all my fault, a kind of moral failing, as was my anger and resentment, WHAT THE FUCK.

Sorry to be anti AA in this it gave me sobriety and a lot of good things and yes, we do have to work with anger and resentment to let it go in the end but what few people acknowledge is the depth of this inner process that must be worked through and how it is done. As abuse therapist Alice Miller has written, legitimate anger cannot be by passed on the path of emotional healing and forgiveness, its feeling and consequences to our tender bodies must be understood and worked through at a bodily NOT JUST AN INTELLECTUAL LEVEL All this in a society that does not recognise or condone anger or the power of somatic trauma that leads to illness and auto immune disease.

Anyway I told all this to Scott this morning. I told him I will not be pulled around any more.. he says he has no peace knowing what he put me through… he asked for help for something that was not my responsibility and I told him now, I just want to let it go. Get the money back after you finish deployment. It was a sad and sorry, if potentially necessary part of my journey of inner child healing as Uranus passed back and forward over my natal Mars Saturn Moon conjunction. The multi-generationally carried inner child pain of 5 generations.

Maybe God does have a plan, but if so, it is for me to heal, it is for me to have freedom, it is for me to let go of my heavy burden of misplaced responsibility and self condemnation for pain I never caused. In meditation in the shower today my higher power reminded me that Christ needed help three times to carry the Saturnian cross of the inheritance and burden of sin that was not his and that I likewise needed that help. HP then said the crucifixion is a necessary stage leading to rebirth which happens anyway as we head towards Easter and the ingress into Mars energy of Aries and the following full moon. We still have a month to pass through the solar waters of Pisces so my wound of separation is being triggered again.

The truth is that growing up I never got to have a self, value myself or fight for that self. I got drawn in sobriety toward new age beliefs that told me I ‘chose it all’ which is bunkum…..that I had to surrender my ego to find healing when the truth is the work I needed to do was to build up a healthy functioning ego that could contain the pain and help me develop a Self to then be able to lose the painful separated sense of Self in doing the things that bring me transcendent joy and healing such as writing poetry, dancing, meditating and connecting to the oneness in nature.

Thankfully today Jasper and I got out for a huge run around the oval.. The sun was out the but clouds began to build up after I got my morning coffee and drove with it to a quiet place beside a park. I am now back home and in my element…. today is my older sister’s birthday and I am taking her out for dinner tonight. I posted a post on Facebook to celebrate her and a lovely friend I met during those breakdown years after the Cambridge family I lodged with kicked me out for being ‘too sad’ led me to an ashram in Glastonbury saw it and told me her sister died of cancer on 19th February 23 years ago. I figured out last night by a weird case of synchronicity that it was when I was deep in the grief surrounding the break up of my own marriage that I met Christine. Wow!!! HP really does connect us for a reason. Even if its only for a season. And like the light and dark, seasons oscillate. We must always remember that truth on the pathway of consciousness raising, deep feeling and healing.

This morning I really stayed with my inner child and held her as she cried. I promised her I will never leave her alone in her pain again and I will stop trying so hard with people who seem determined not to see how vulnerable and in need of softness love and care I so often am. Scott often used to say to me you ‘you really need someone with you’. That was true, I don’t want to always be alone but the truth is that I also have someone to care for me inside and as I keep repeating over and over there are these lines that come from the film Pretty Woman that always resonate ; “I say what, I say when, I say who.” Yes, there will be a time to collapse boundaries when the time is right but there will also be a time to say NO ENOUGH.. I NEED MY WHOLENESS WITHIN AND MY DEEP INNER PLACE OF PEACE.