Contraction, blockages and the winter kingdom.

Sometimes I am not entirely sure where my poems arise from, but like all art I realise upon reflection they come from both the unconscious and the Self. To me the Self brings imagination and dreams to us. The Self has been the witness to our entire journey and past, it is connected to life and death and hopes and dreams and longings and where these intersect with ‘life’ and others, all of those external things we don’t have much control over. Through our poetry or our art a part of us often tries to reassemble these scattered or torn fragments and threads, piecing or weaving them into some thing symbolic and meaningful.

Some schools of thought say we choose our parents.. I don’t really believe that. I believe we are a continuation of a life stream of ancestors, but with an individual solar purpose in life and that astrology shows a lot of the dynamics.. This is a view I am forming only later in life as I get insights into my own and my siblings, parents and ancestors life and as the realisation of the prophetic nature and deep meaning of dreams that came to me at critical turning points interweave, showing me psychic truths of my inner life and childhood.

Today, prompted by a comment from a valued reader I recalled a dream I once I dreamed in which I was living in a cold dark house with snow all around and the only one to bear witness to the truth and struggle was my Dad’s best friend and my Godfather, Uncle Piet. In the dream we were in the kitchen looking out at all the frost and snow and he was validating all of my pain.

At this point in my life I was sober some years and my Godfather was the only one (apart from my therapist) who validated why and how in such an emotionally constricted family with so little emotional nurture my addictions and personal struggles came about.. In his final years he even came to hate my mother for certain things in the way she treated me, as it was he and my Godmother who stepped in to support me when I was being emotionally abused in a relationship in my early 30s and had fallen pregnant for the third time.. That said he had is own issues of mother loss.

In that dream of the ice kingdom of my childhood I felt how it was for me to have my energy frozen or contracted and today I had a battle with the garden hose.. for some reason water was not flowing through it and I still don’t know why but this theme of blockage or stopping the flow of water (emotions) and forward flowing nourishing life energy is echoing in other things around the house.. I got another blockage to my bathroom sink and toilet fixed a week ago as Mercury was slowing to go direct in a water sign.. Today I had water burst out of the garden tap with a gust of pressure and spray all over my clothes, I then got an anger/frustration/panic attack at all the ways I have been blocked or had my life energy constricted or cut down..

I had to put a lead on Jasper to get him out for our walk this morning which was late due to the gardener coming and the struggle with the hose… I was determined to get him to a green space and have some play time in nature. Was listening to an interview with a medical doctor, yesterday, on how green spaces reduce anxiety and illness, some of you may have heard of the concept of ‘forest bathing’, I bought a little book of meditations on it some time last year.. In warmth and nature and sunlight my contractions ease.. I can breathe, I feel free and I can move, I am not longer 17 years old and trapped in a hospital bed I cannot get free of struggling to stand on one leg as the other is pinned right through the bones beneath the right knee for months and months in traction.

Who knows, perhaps such an injury had a purpose, that of pushing me inwards and separating me from my school buddies.. To date I don’t have an easy time of flow in my relationships and the severings from mates occurred in an ongoing pattern, even after these crucial three and a half months in hospital. Each time I tried to come back to reconnect something blocked me and I was forced out on my own again..Have just seen so many relationships come and go and have never known that soft cosy resting place of support and love that even my sister got in the hospital over the past years of Mum passing, or when she was able to and stay with Nana in her cosy home while I slept on a stretcher bed at the base of Mum and Dads in that cold big house on concrete floors under construction in the dead of winter with no heating.

My therapist often says it was as if I got shot out of a cannon after Dad died in 1985, addictions had entered the picture and on my travels I did bond with others, but only for a while, it would always end up with me on my own in hard circumstances and when I tried to come home in 1987 Mum told me there was no place for me as she was remarrying, it was then that Uncle Piet and his wife, Aunty Jo stepped in to help me… But I was soon living in another emotionally cold house with a bunch of party animals and addicts, even though I held down a top level job for the next 3 years.

The sense of aloneness and contraction of my Saturn Mars Moon often makes me so fearful of others… I know in the house of our childhood there was not much emotional connection, holding, gentleness, tenderness or comfort.. just rules, punishment and having to do the right thing and make sure we didn’t stop working hard and keeping everything perfect, clean and stain free… so I carry that terrible fear that soon something ugly, or shameful or deeply unacceptable will burst out of me that will make others run in fear…..and if it does I will only be judged… The wound that I carried for so long could not be articulated, only acted out in a world that could only judge me and lead me to judge myself remorselessly for being me and daring to be my true self or come alive.

I just had the thought after returning from our walk and spending some time with a family friend who is no longer judging me but showing empathy and care, that anxiety and expressive life energy are very similar in nature.. What happens then to those of us who come to fear our very liveliness and true self? Who end up turning against ourselves and others as killers on some level? And are not addictions, in some way, attempts both to grab for life while attempting to take the edge off how painful and fucking frightening it can sometimes feel to risk coming fully alive?

I don’t want to fear being alive any more.. I don’t want to kill myself off. I don’t want to live in a contracted, ice kingdom, but to know that was the reality of my past on a psychological and mythic level, does help me…I see it very clearly today and I felt it in my body yesterday I just felt cold and knew I had to get myself out of my solitary house to the shopping centre in order to fill my body with something warm while looking at and rubbing shoulders with my human family from whom I for so long, sought isolation all due to fear… This is all just being revealed to me today…

I noticed that on the weekend after I was vulnerable with Chahir and we really connected from a deeply authentic place of love and fun, I pulled myself back.. I didn’t make myself available to talk as much and last night he asked me where I had been.. It truly was not fully conscious, the injury to my finger had hurt and it was throbbing all the time, I had all the pressure texts from Scott and had to unpack it all in therapy on Monday… Also on Saturday night I let myself come fully alive with my sister, dancing and not really connecting to two younger guys who where a bit under the weather and then latched onto two other women who seemed more able to relate….I walked away from that feeling so inadequate, ugly, gangly, and flawed again but I now see it wasn’t happening and that also authentic connections cannot be forced…. .also I relate better from a deeper place and yet sometimes the pain of connecting is hard too, finally getting what we missed all along brings up the repressed pain of not getting it or being hurt by others.

Maybe this post does not make a lot of sense, maybe it doesn’t flow brilliantly but this today is my attempt to articulate what isolation has meant to me and how it has dogged my life. I value the comments and feedback I get here when others feel me in this space, or my poetry resonates on some level.. It isimportant for humans to be ‘got’….for only in being got do things become fully real in relationship….and only from a place of feeling for and into another human being does that happen, only when we take the risk to let it flow and be real and see what happens, trying our best to release those fears and restrictions, both conscious and unconscious that so often limit us survivors of childhood trauma and emotional invalidation or neglect do we come fully alive… Maybe I will always carry fear of life, but at least today I get out there and keep facing it when I can, fears and all.. Tough at that feels on the painful, frustrating or constricted days its worth it to feel the full truth of being alive.