Fractured and fracturing times

I am sure so many feel themselves lost in current times.. I just read post from someone on this. Then there are others, firmly on their path that know the way forward and how to live, in many ways I do envy them even as I know I do not like that concept of envy, the truth is at times I resent deeply the painful way my life has unfolded.

But then I contemplate after reading a part in Beverly Engel’s book The Nice Girl Syndrom her take on us women being raised to be polite, and compliant, to feel we do not have the right to hurt or ‘upset’ others if that then means denying our own happiness and my entire being honestly aches.. I see so much of myself in this. Sadly lately I see just how lost I really was while at the same time being filled with bluster and bravado and big gestures at times (as a defense), thinking I knew the answers and what was right and wrong in things going down.. Then I have to check myself.

Sometimes as I often share, the antidote is just to get into present time and get my body moving and it can also depend on whether or not the sun is out… yesterday I noticed after an unusually late sleep in following a catch up with old school friends that as soon as I got out into the sun after eating and chatting for a long time on Facebook messenger with a friend that the sunlight made changes to the cells inside my body. It also occurs to me while writing this that on a metaphorical level, growing up for so many years felt like a long, soggy and wet rainy day, where it was impossible to find happiness, secure in feeling alive, engaged honest mirroring and connection or even a sense of solid ground. A strong sense of self or any sense of what my life might mean seemed to be denied me as did my ability to believe I could in any way learn to take power and control over it, to move it forward in a positive and healthy new direction..

Instead I swung from here to there after all of those earlier traumas hit me, finally ending up in Sydney in a job I hated, living with a house full of people who only related through drugs, alcohol and partying and how empty that proved to be to me when I finally got sober in 1993 after marrying my husband.

We were together 11 years and have been apart for nearly 18 now, so to think that it was almost 30 years ago that we met seems astounding to me because at the age of 60 lately my sense of time seems so warped.

Add to all of these thoughts and realizations flooding around me currently, that the dramatic events occurring around the globe and the fact that there are those claiming that the truth of what is really happening in the Ukraine (as well as the conditions leading up to this present invasion’) is being denied or lied about by mainstream media and it all gets even more confusing.. What is it that is ‘true’? What can we place our faith in? Who are the villians and who are the victors? And doesn’t that all just rest upon who holds the most control and will to power or demonstrates the greatest power of agency over the ‘accepted’ narrative at the time not to mention the convoluted motivations for so called ‘good’ or ‘ill’?

Lately I just have to turn off the news.. Lately I have to sit with loneliness at times and then try to figure out what to do to take good care of myself in the midst of it. Lately I am not sleeping the best or I am falling to sleep and waking up at the strangest times, my body wracked with confusing sensations and symptoms its at times difficult to understand and which tend to keep me trapped in breathless loops, contortions, spins or battles.

So to make some kind of pathway through it.. I sit down at my laptop and write.. but in the midst of this is just an aching sadness that at times never seems to end.

The truth is I cannot change my past of trauma and unfulfilled life, at times I honestly feel so deeply inadequate and ashamed and then at others I recognize just how strong I have been to endure.. Lately I am even considering that medication might help me.. Last night I was awake 2 hours and had to take a panadol to settle myself down and as soon as I did I noticed the edge was taken off of the symptoms.. The truth is seeing what medication did to my older sister terrified me so much I swore never to take it.. but these days I am just not so sure.. I keep trying my nature cure, gazing out on green, noticing the amazing textures and landscapes of the old trees that stand so silently and watchfully in my local park. This brings me calm… if only for a time, eases my sense of lostness and fracture which after all is only a story in my head based on the accumulation of emotional pain I carried and carry from the multi generational history and my earlier experiences that monopolizes me some days.