Scrambled : thoughts and emotions arising

It was hard waking up today.. I felt my body in a very strange configuration, had been awake in the middle of the night trying to push things through my system, at times it is like I am back in the car struggling to breathe, or back in the family system trying to live and be my true self and not be inundated by other people’s ‘stuff’.

I managed to get into the bath but when I went to get dressed I took a lovely grey cardigan of my Mum’s out of the cupboard to put on only to find it had been chewn into by moths and this just started up a massive inner attack upon myself by the critic. I loved this grey cardigan it is very soft and wearing it sometimes reminds me of Mum, now it is ruined and this is yet more evidence of how untogether and scrambled I am and how often when I get something or other it does not take much time for it to be ‘ruined’ (but even editing this back I see this only happens sometimes.. not ALL OF THE TIME.. I AM SURE THE CRITIC WAS JUST GLOBALISING THIS MORNING ; THE MIND IS SO POWERFUL.

In one way all of this is laughable : seeing myself attacking myself over this but it was something that came up in therapy yesterday, how Mum could fly into a rage at mess or just go totally ballistic cleaning the place and how brutal it could feel at times. I cried a lot about it just a moment ago as this is one of the consequences of my past I see I am powerless over. But I also see myself battling hard for some kind of control amidst all of these out of control forces. I have read that there is a strong connection between perfectionism and panic attacks.. it seems to bear out this truth. I also felt sad to have ruined something my Mum loved and took such care of but this is part of life.

I said I would contact the caretaker at my sister’s place to arrange a key to take care of her plants while she is unwell but it took him ages to get back to me and according to him my sister already has lost a few sets of keys.. it made the whole thing more complicated.. I am happy to do it but sometimes I think of all I did to care for family and feel so upset at how hard it made my life at times.. I am conscious of wanting to be in touch with the part of me that is hopeful and can get moving and on that note despite forecast rain I am so glad I pushed Jasper and on onto our nature walk today as we got a blessing of sunlight breaking through clouds along the way which felt like a gift from heaven.

I heard a lot of comforting inner guidance on my walk.. the inner voice was saying to trust the refreshment I feel in nature, the coming to life and the blowing away of stagnant energy a walk brings, things inside my body have felt painful lately and lots of grief has been emerging for me.. I use music in this way to touch base with those feelings. Last night I listened to the Carpenters.. there is a time for this and a time to take action and get moving, which has been hard with the paralysis and inertia my PTSD condition so often evokes.

I know that the listening of music takes me into my soul but somehow its associated too with my lonely inner child of the past. When I used to come home to an empty house every day after school often I would sit down in our formal lounge room we rarely used and listen to either Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, the Carpenters, or Credence Clearwater Revival (a band my sister loved) on that note I noticed a fellow blogger shared a songline post on the tune I Can See Clearly Now The Rain is Gone on Sunday and CCR did a version of that song which always resonates for me with a depth of feeling of hope you can feel after a particuarly painful time of emerging feelings has risen up for you, or after you have faced a tough challenge such as the death of a loved one and moved through some of your grief.

I think I need to accept that I will always be happy and sad.. but sadly sometimes it just feels easier to be the later.. but that sad place can be a lot about a lost past, a place associated not with the present moment and clarity but with the past of disempowerment or loneliness and paralysis I lived inside and could not struggle to break free of, even being drawn back when my husband and I were on the brink of trying to create a new present overseas.

At times for me time alone is not lonely it is special and full of attunement, like on our bush walk today. At others I long for company or just to be with the comfort of another caring human. As a child for me so often no one was there…so that state became all too familiar to me, to the extent that even when I married my husband I found it hard to extend my life and home to his sister who, at that time, was living in Australia too. Kat said to me yesterday that I did the best I could at the time.

As a sensitive child or felt and observed a lot, I did learn to stand back especially in a far older family who a lot of the time just revolved around their own needs and businesses… I felt unseen a lot of the time…I see my sister who is struggling now, also in many ways remained trapped in that lost child role of the third sibling and was tightly bonded and enmeshed with mother.. she had to witness both my older sister and I nearly die all within 6 months of each other.. At that time she was pregnant with her oldest son and the shock of my older sister’s aneurysm in February 1980 actually precipitated Ryan’s birth..

I was thinking yesterday that maybe it is my inner child that still longs to ‘heal’ her older siblings. I stayed close to Judy and sacrificed what made me happy to do that.. I can never get back the years I lost in making such a sacrifice and when I did try to break away I ended up having the head injury anyway and felt too unsupported over seas.. There is just SO MUCH ABOUT MY PAST I CANNOT CHANGE. It really hurts to see the decisions I made that failed to bring me happiness, but I have to face the truth and not lie to myself. I cannot bring healing to anyone else.. it is just not the way of things.. each of us must do our own inner work..

And much as I care for Scott I grapple with the issue of having to do all the work to help him get free. taking on that responsibility him over that long 2 year period was not been fair on me and he always says this now. But even as I write this I know deep inside the longing to be connected body to body and not being able too just keeps repeating the very oldest of ancestral wounds. I see this longing in my sister to be treasured too, but sadly the hard work of individuation so often means we must first learn to find and treasure our true self… to let go of the roles and all of the false beliefs that convinced us that in some way we are just not adequate or lovable as we are.