Realisations

I had these realisations today after injuring my foot in the middle of a digestive panic attack following doing a lot of work and writing on my self love and assertiveness issues and a visit from the gardener which often triggers me: Please know as a child I got severely injured due to parental neglect in these ways.

My arm was pulled out of my socket when I wanted a ball at the shop Mum would not buy for me so she pulled my arm out of my shoulder socket.. I was also often restrained in a harness, this happened around the age of 3.

I suffered third degree burns when I stepped into a scalding bucket of water Mum had near where i was drawing on a caravan holiday. I lost a lot of the skin on that foot.. I am not sure if it was the one injured yesterday.

I had a fish hook wedged in the webbing between my big and second toe that Dad left lying on the seagrass matting at our first coast house, and then had to agonizingly pull out.

I cut myself badly on the left wrist trying to break a window in frustration as I forgot to put the latch key back on the latch I must have been about 13 when I got that injury. I had to run to the neighbors and be taken to casualty where i got 30 stitches.

At 17 I nearly died in a massive car smash up…. I lost teeth, lacerated my tongue and broke several bones and had major cuts to my legs. I could not walk for 3 months being confined to a bed. After getting out of hospital in 1979 I got no counselling and started to self medicate with alcohol.. In four months after that my sister had an aneurysm and Mum and Dad had to go to the hospital each night for months..Both catastrophes must have been so hard on them. They did not deliberately mean to cause harm, which has made not blaming myself even harder.

These are the realisations I had.

My family could not accept or embrace me as I carried too much of our family shadow. My pain or anger or grief was too much of a reminder of things they did not understand, or could not bear to face when I began to unthaw my trauma at about 6 years of sobriety.. Coming home in 2001 made me isolate more as I knew then what a mistake it had been to abandon therapy but still I needed to link with my family, staying overseas at that point although ancestral would have just continued the painful trauma of my ancestors.. That said I am now mostly alienated from family, after struggling to be close I gave up last year in about September. I tried to be close to my brother but he seems determined to paint me as a loose cannon for trying to express my feelings. I am very angry about that but now see carrying that will only hurt me and its the small child in him that got injured that so often is defended against by a hostile hyper rational critical parent that gets projected on me .

Due to the pattern of neglect and not learning to love, respect and care for myself I looked for what I missed from emotionally unable men.. It was probably not their job, but empathy was rarely shown me.. I may also have struggled at times to show them empathy due to my wounds. In the midst of that I could not accept their non acceptance and then tried to bend myself out of shape

As a child I learned to enter my inner world like a lot of empaths and those of us with high sensitivity. Music gave me a container on lonely afternoons after school, eating and addictions then came to fill in the gap as well, increasingly from the age of 14.

The following songs spoke to me so deeply at that age.. this Carpenter’s song speaks of trying to face “a world of strangers were I don’t belong” It was also the way I felt in the world, and when I got into AA I heard a similar thing, but it was not down to us being ‘bad’ but being neglected and not learning positive and healthy was to self nurture.. We also were encouraged not to look to fill our needs but be extra understanding of others, which is good on one level, but can be bad on another if we never got to develop a healthy ego and develop good strong boundaries not based around lashing out due to low emotional intelligence in hurt.

I now see I was a carrier for so much. I feel I am intelligent, deep and perceptive, I can own these qualities now but at times I fear I also need to learn skills to relate in a more human way. At times it may feel like I take refuge in my head, in this way on some level I can identify with the character of Don in Australian author Graeme Simsion’s book The Rosie Effect Don has trauma in his background and was the one who left the family behind, I am only getting to this part of the book. So he relates in a very distant way to others and does not have a clue how to get close and in touch with his emotions, he uses logic until he meets Rosie who is the complete opposite but also carries abandonment having been born to woman who used a sperm donor and would not reveal the identity of the father to Rosie. Don and Rosie bond over this but in time Don comes to know what love is, I am not through it all yet but I think in the end he is going to understand the limits of logic.

I do feel deeply but like many adult children often my feelings have been a mystery to me.. No where is this more true than about anger and protest.. As the Sun in Aries now moves into my eighth house (that part of our astrology chart that shows what is hidden in our shadow from ancestral themes.. the three water houses all rule this on some level, the fourth, the eighth and the twelfth.) I am getting more clarity over how angry and powerless I felt (Mars Saturn Moon conjunction in the sixth house of body) over my past. I stayed in a victim role and some times still can as taking back my power often feels too dangerous. Now as an adult I must own all of this, there is no place to run and hide..

For some reason when the gardener comes I get triggered yesterday after writing that piece on protest I ate two slices of bread and then had an attack in which after being pulled around for the second time (the first happened when he is here using all of his noisy machines and keeping his head down to stay completely detached) I stood on the metal insert to my computer charger and put a hole in the bottom of the soul of my left foot.. The left foot is the feminine side.. After this I was scared but I was determined not to let this injury derail me.. I suffered a similar injury going over on the ankle of the right foot after some very upsetting experiences with emotional abuse and invalidation from my sister around my Mum’s 90th birthday where she tried to smear me behind my back to her sons and my older sisters sons, something my older sister’s third boy told me and she then tried to deny and turn back on me.. Due to the fact I am coming to know they abused me and feel real anger about it and no longer try to be the good girl and suck it up maybe finally I will be breaking free of the enmeshment of that strong Sun Mercury Venus Jupiter square to natal Neptune in Scorpio in the third house of siblings.. Mum sadly had no siblings and longed for them, in our ancestral family there were far too many siblings, 16 in all of which 2 died.

I have managed the injury okay today.. I did sleep and the following meditation helped me.. I no longer want my deep fear of my true feelings to derail me from being alive. At the same time, to always act on old painful or unintegrated childhood feelings and fears keeps us trapped, really badly trapped.. This is what I allowed and now must tru to find a way to change. . For far too long I have allowed myself to be killed off even from within myself. But lately I can no longer continue to contribute to this soul murder.