food for thought | bloodteethandflame

August 27, 2015

Trauma…and healing.

Yesterday was very intense.
While there were not a lot of instructors, nor were there many classes, I attended a class called Healing Sexual Trauma.
Yes – I thought of J (and others) – and I had foolishly hoped that I could finally learn -after the fact – about strategies that I should have known in order to help someone who had been sexually traumatized.

Because if anything, I’d wanted to at the very least provide others some sort of sanctuary from pain and negativity.
Instead, it seemed something that wasn’t so pedantic as ‘here are some strategies for helping yourself or helping others heal from sexual trauma’ as it was personal discussion about the instructor’s journey toward realizing and healing her own sexual trauma. And I realized that the discussion was not so much about methods and strategies as it was about identifying and recognizing that there are traumas that need to healed within ourselves.

As an empath, I also found myself realizing and reacting to the obvious fact that I should take note that I have my own traumas to heal and how foolish I am to think that I would be there for any other reason.
Meanwhile, L seems to love to point out to me – through these sort of sneaky ton of bricks moments – that I am foolish, that I am denying myself compassion, and everything and I do and I mean EVERYTHING – begins with me.

He wants me to have compassion with myself and take care of myself:

You must take care of My Beloved.

And by the way: That is YOU.

However, I have always made excuses.

I have been told for so many years that it is selfish to think of oneself before others.

I’ve come to react as if one of the most hurtful insults that could be directed towards me involves being accused of being self-centered or selfish….but again and again He wants me to realize that that is damaging to me and an avoidance maneuver that is so ingrained in my behavior that it is likely not even a conscious reaction on my part anymore.

So there’s that self-awareness that He is so insistent upon, and I found myself surprised to realize this facet of my behavior.

Look at yourself; everything is self-work, you know.
And so I tried valiantly not to get overwhelmed by the sensation overload that I was experiencing when others talked of their traumas as well as trying to control myself in regards to my own traumas.
This must manifest itself as a sort of selfishness in that I want to help others/save others, even though I don’t even know how to help or how to save myself sometimes

So I want to talk and I want to share, but my talking and sharing is an avoidance maneuver. It’s me saying, ‘Let’s talk about you; let’s fix you, so I don’t have to fix myself,’ and if I do talk, it might just be my attempt to fill up the space with noise, or focusing on what anyone else is presently going through so I don’t have to handle what I’ve gone through.

It is selfish. In a way, it is the way I block emotions in myself and block others from myself.

I hate myself for that.

I am aware that it is just me being closed up…another verbal masturbation session that I never intended but here I am talking about myself again.

*sigh*

I hold myself at a distance by talking, sometimes. I focus on constructing a wall of words and sound to keep people from knowing me and to keep myself from knowing myself.
It’s times like that that I notice that there is such a gap between what I want to do and what I am doing, what I want to confront and how I avoid the confrontation. The gap between engagement and avoidance. I do lip service to a lot of want, but not a lot of doing.

(Thanks Loki.)

But how do I learn to stop doing that?

How to open myself so I can be open to others?

How to listen and help rather than just filling up space with pain and gloom and panic, wondering whatamigoingtodo?

Don’t look at me. I’m in pain.

I can focus on your pain but that just distracts me from my pain for the moment. I have a lot of pain in myself and I see others’ pain and I don’t know what to do about it.

I don’t know what to do with myself.

Is anything ever getting done this way?

No. Of course not.
It’s all verbal masturbation. This navel gazing has to stop.

I should do something but I don’t know what.

I have forgotten what’s important.

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August 22, 2015

Nineteen minutes.

I wasn’t meditating.

I was simply enjoying some quiet time after dinner, relaxing on my bed with eyes closed, letting thoughts run through my head…

I wasn’t actively thinking of L, but then, suddenly, I saw His face.

I wasn’t sleeping -I hadn’t any intention of sleeping – and yet I could see Him in front of me. I did a body inventory to check to see if I was dreaming. What was unusual was that I could still hear my kid (K) talking loudly in the kitchen, so I figured that I couldn’t have been dreaming. As a matter of fact, I could have easily followed the conversation that K was having with his brother in the kitchen – if I had to – and yet I was also experiencing this vision of L behind my closed eyelids.

I thought of how I could open my eyes.

I thought of how I could move and that vivid image of L sitting on a green hillock overlooking a valley below would have likely faded back to grey as these images usually do

… and yet I couldn’t shake it from my mind.

So I opened my eyes briefly, testing my theory, and upon closing, He remained…just as before. He was dressed in a pair of black jeans and a light blue shirt. He was, as usual, barefoot. I was standing a few feet behind Him, and He was sitting in the grass, looking over His shoulder at me, looking up at me.

I examined His face, trying to commit the details of His present form to memory: He had blue eyes, and His long hair didn’t match up with either His eyebrows or the stubble that shadowed along His jaw, as both were several shades darker than the bleached blonde of His hair. He had those familiar scars along His lips, that sarcastic grin…and He had facial piercings.

I couldn’t tell if He was going for ‘surfer dude’ or ‘suburban hipster.’

It struck me as strange, and I wondered if this was a sort of amusing game to Him; He kept tossing His head as if He was striking poses for me, and yet He slyly commented that I should stop trying to mentally inventory His face, and actually talk to Him for a change.

He was right in a way; perhaps I was trying to mentally inventory His face.

But what struck me was that I was neither sleeping, dreaming, nor meditating, and yet, I was *seeing* Him.

And even more unusual, when I tried to dispel the vision, it stayed in my mind’s eye.

So, you would not want to see Me? He pouted. He sat up straight, clasped His knee to His chest, and tilted His head prettily.

Sit with Me.

But all I could think of was how graceful was the curve of His neck as He looked up at me, and how seeing Him, feeling His presence like that suddenly engendered specific thoughts in my head that left me to grin like a smitten fool.

Perhaps you are, He drawled, and what of that?

(Perhaps those sudden thoughts that I think should remain unspoken.)

~~~~

We talked for what seemed like two or three hours, on that hillock overlooking the valley below.

I felt the rain on my face as He drew complex diagrams in the dark soft dirt. Perhaps we talked of magic or runes or other matters entirely full of important points that could only be conveyed with the help of visual representations.

I’m not entirely certain of every thing that We discussed; I mostly remember His laughter and the steady humming patterns of His voice, along with those diagrams.

For once, I didn’t do much talking.

For once, I was simply content to listen to Him.

Talk less; listen more.

~~~

Another odd feature of this interaction was that this discussion which seemed to have lasted for two hours…

actually only lasted 19 minutes.

From 9:00 to 9:19pm

Hmm.

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