Coming up to the anniversary of my accident this year is so intense with body memories. People often think trauma is ‘all in the mind’ and they forget how our body holds those memories at a cellular and instinctive vibrational charge level of high impact physical trauma and how it can set both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems at odds with each other, in a way that can be so challenging to manage and seemingly impossible for many to understand.
The shift of season here to spring with lengthening days sucks me back and the fact my accident coincided with both Father’s Day as well as my Dad’s 59th birthday in 1979 considering all of his Venus issues. I just get swept back in body memory and flooded while also being spun around the cadeucus of personal and ancestral re-membering.
It also occurred to me when I woke around 4.30 experiencing the swing and snap and toss of the second crash in June 2005 and feeling all those manifold symptoms collescing around my brain stem at the back of my neck that Dad went back into hospital in 1984 on the day I got out 5 years later. Over those 5 years he underwent so much stress not just my near death but my sister Judy’s a few months later, her long stint in a coma and mine in traction, then a host of stress over finances and money borrowed that landed him in hot water. It must have been such a tough time for both he and Mum, maybe he shut down on me later when I was struggling to find my feet (around 1981) out of confusion and overwhelm forbidding me reconnecting to complete my education degree.
It is also on my mind that last time we spoke my sister mentioned father’s day, we never got to grieve over or share the emotions around his loss as a family, Mum sent me away a short time after he died then I moved to Sydney on my return to Oz 2 and a half years later. One thing my brother did though was encourage my Mum to come and visit me and my friend Sue in London in the following year after Dad died.. Mum and I ended up travelling to Holland, Italy and France in 1985 but nothing was spoken of and it must have been so challenging for Mum to go back to Holland after my Dad died, she was sent there in around 1951 with my older sister and brother while Dad remained in the Dutch East Indies alone..
After two and a half years away overseas I did return home to Oz to find my Mum was remarrying (something she admitted later was in haste and to save face) I moved to Sydney then to get away from all of the pain (unconsciously) and my God parents thankfully gave me some support for the first six months. Thank God for my Godfather who was Dad’s best friend, I keep a pair of knee socks that he used to wear that my God mother gave me after he died.. I keep them close with a photo of him taken with me on my wedding day, since Dad was not there to give me away and I wanted him rather than my brother to do it which may have been sad for my brother..
My second oldest sister often connected with me in the Sydney years as best she could when she was still involved in the fashion shops when she came to Sydney on fashion buying trips and she would always make time to take me out for a meal but one time during my active increasingly escalating drinking days she saw me sitting in the gutter chatting to some people at a nearby pug in the early hours on the way to the airport to catch a flight home.. the following day she rang and blasted and shamed me and accused me of living ‘a double life’ I felt so hurt by it so distanced from. At that time (1988 or 1989). I was so so alone, and so exiled from my inner self and meaningful intimate human relationships all my so called’friends’ were heavy drinkers and everything revolved around ‘partying; although I did hold down a high level job as a political personal assistant that was not where my heart lay..
One of my older friends did stay in touch during those years and after a particularly painful time of breakdown for me due to my alcoholism and unresolved issues I was open with her, she did try to encourage me to get help towards the end in 1992 but then she also used the tough love approach and said she would have nothing to do with me if I did not stop drinking, at that stage I wanted to but I did not know how and I did not trust her much any more. If you have a friend you want to help stop drinking for GODS SAKE DONT MAKE THREATS TO LEAVE THEM WHEN THEY ARE DRINKING DUE TO ATTACHMENT ISSUES OR WOUNDS ANYWAY!!!
I managed to get sober in the following year. I met Jonathan, I made a starter attempt at therapy in 1992 but that failed when my therapist a man had to go to hospital I used all kinds of excuses for stopping therapy and it was not until I got a deal of sobriety under my belt that I realized what a trigger of my abandonment issues around my Dad and his untimely death and emotional distance that was.. Later I did reconnect with Brian and he was such a good help to me when I ended up in complete isolation at the coast and caught up with my ex partner who was so emotionally abusive from 2006 to 2010.
It must be very important for me to give all of this a voice today. . As I said in a brief post yesterday the head and mouth symptoms in therapy yesterday were acute. I lost two more teeth a few years ago and had to consent to wearing a denture. I lost a crown a year or so ago after another extraction which then did not get followed up to due to Covid hitting us hard in March.. the next follow up I finally scheduled for this week also got cancelled due to us hitting another intense period of lock down due to the dire situation with Covid Delta strain in nearby New South Wales. I permanently struggle to digest with so few teeth and always worry I will die due to drinking coffee, only though I only have one weak cup a day.. such is the fear of Complex PTSD!
Anyway today I got back to sleep after that storm and then it was hard to get up.. I am talking to Scott again who is getting help from the JAG legal team to sort this issue with the money the US military are holding up of mine.. As some of you know I started innocently trying to help him in 2018 and it got blocked about four or five times.. the story is long winded and one day it may make a good movie, but I hit my limit and should have respected it a long time ago so no more help.. He swears by selling his car and truck back in the States he will have enough to pay back a reduced refund of the pre-deployment payment back they gave him for his next scheduled tour in Iraq.. I just go into a frenzy any time money or help is ever mentioned now and he is in a lot of remorse but due to his strong Sun Mars Venus Uranus signature he kept pushing and pushing me and he knows I am very very angry about it but then my dilemma is that none of it may have been deliberate so as you can imagine its difficult in my head at times and I do go through so many storms and feelings around this My therapist and I believe my unconscious chose him for a good reason!.
On a bright note I received calls from three people I like this week, only one was a call back and that took her 3 or more weeks but since this family friend was moving I understood, she is the only daughter of my God father Uncle Piet who I loved like a father.. I have memories of him SEEING ME IN A WAY I NEVER WAS.. When he would visit when I was young he would always take on good look at me and say with a smile “Holy smoke you’ve grown!” Even typing that now brings a good feeling to me as well as a smile to my face.. He also helped me to find the lost bluebird of happiness when it fell off the locket that his soon to be daughter in law gave me as a present for being flower girl for her and my God father’s oldest son Paul.. That was such a confusing time in a big world of adults so much older than me and it followed my brother Gary’s wedding the year before.. I wore the same dress with wide blue sash.. These memories stay with me and it seems metaphorical to have lost the blue bird of happiness.. my life was to go on to be filled with so much of others trauma and unhappiness as well as my own as I battled with all of the wild seas around and within.
it helps to write today.. It is 2021 now not 1979 or 1969 but I still time travel back there.. last night was full of dreams where I had to meet a friend but got waylaid then forgot the time of meeting in one dream an old boss of mine I worked for just before I got sober was in the dream that was also some kind of message as when he sold the business he wanted me to take it over but I was getting married and I was also not sober yet.. Today in the bath I thought of how my life might have been if i was willing to step into a leadership role like that but my Mars was still not strong enough. As it was in that year 1993 I was working with two girls in recovery a few years later I ran into one of them at one of my first meetings of AA or the first in which I shared with so much fear.. She was wearing a striped top, that much I remember.. these are the ghosts of my former selves, that phases of my life on the journey to re – member and re collect the fractured torn about fragmented shattered pieces of my trauma life. I must not shame the attempt to do it in a public way as attention seeking.. it is far more than that its an attempt to bring myself out of the shadows and into real life as i work to come to terms with the full brunt of a past that has been nothing short of soul numbing and body shattering.
Emerging From The Dark Night 