bloodteethandflame

A life in threes

Category: personal

A confession.

I would like to admit that I have been rather antisocial lately.

One might even go as far as to say that I am on the edge of being too irritable for human interaction specifically.

(Some might be tempted to blame that super-moon in Pisces that just occurred.  I remember reading something yesterday about how a ‘moon in Pisces’ causes increased emotional tension and whatnot.  Color me not surprised.)

That would go a long way in explaining why I’ve found myself in these conversations with others that occur despite the fact that I have been desperately trying to avoid conversation, much less interaction lately.

Hel, it is more than likely that I have been avoiding interactions with others so that I may avoid the possibility of conflict and/or tension.

And it is exactly at times like these

He will often say things  just to bait me into verbal sparring.

But this time He did it slyly with a compliment.

Me:  (says knee-jerk cranky, judgmental thing concerning politics)

Him: Wow.  That’s…interesting and a bit extreme.  Do you care to explain your position?

Me: No.  I’m cranky.  Too irritated to explain.  I’m just being judgmental. *flushes a little, looks away*

Him: Well, Heathir, if I were to judge you like that, then I would just have to…. love you for everything you do.

Me: Wait.  What?

(Meanwhile, whilst typing this out, Autocorrect kept changing the above text to ‘ I would just have to… fuck you for everything you do‘ O.o)

Mindfsckery…with compliments, no less.

 

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.

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.

 

 

 

Song for You

I had just returned from walking my dog, and I sat down at the computer to check the Book of Faces to see that Lori – friend of mine – posted a link to this video:

Now, Lori might not know how much I have always loved the original of this song, as it was penned by Leon Russell, but to realize that there’s a version sung by Ray Charles makes it even sweeter.

Thank you, Lori.

You’ve no idea how much I love – and needed – to hear such sweetness today.

Big things, little things.

Well, it’s been a mix this last week or so, but I got through.

(Because, you see, I’ve got a 100% success rate of getting through increments of several days….and so do you!)

Here are some big things:

– Broken appliances were fixed!

– Personal computer was upgraded to Windows 10!

– Connections were made between seemingly unrelated doxas!

And most important of all…

-Barring that one creepy hang-up call I received on Thursday afternoon,  I had a quiet and blissfully uneventful weekend.

And here are some little things:

– My new ankle bracelet broke for the third time this week.  Either I don’t know how to make an ankle bracelet properly, or…I dunno, I really don’t know how to make an ankle bracelet properly.

-School is getting ready to start up again.  Where did my lovely summer go?

– I perfected my barbecue sauce recipe.  🙂

 

 

Month for Loki, Day 30: Delivery.

Three years ago, my older son and I purchased a silkscreen array for making t-shirts.

He and I learned the silk-screening process, and we made a few casefuls of t-shirts for different events.  The t-shirt designs that he makes are created mostly for skateboarding and music events, while the designs that I’ve created are produced as needed/ordered for kink and Pagan events.

I like creating t-shirts, and it’s always a conversation starter to have a one of a kind t-shirt.

This is one of the projects that I am working on, and this is nothing more than a prototype design that I fed into the Custom Ink Lab the other day just to see how it would look before I go forward with making a screen for it.

laufeyjarsonmasonryfront   laufeyjarsonmasonryback

I’ve been working on designing a less traditional mason logo – that features Loki – but I’ve yet to create one that I’m satisfied with.

Hail Loki ❤

Month for Loki, Day 27: Social

So you’re a social drinker, eh?

Well, I know what that means; if you’re going to have a drink, then so shall I. 

-Peanut, renowned gadfly/theatre critic

~~~

If you have been following this blog for any length of time, you may have noticed that I am prone to social anxiety.  It is not something that I am proud of, but it is something that often affects my daily life.  As a result, I’ve developed many coping strategies and behaviors over the years.  Some of them are outward physically noticeable coping mechanisms that serve to help me function better when I find myself in anxiety-inducing situations, while others are inward psychological behaviors and patterns of thought-processing that help me through difficult mentally stressful situations.

However, I try as much as I can to function as normally as possible, but on a bad day, I am likely to avoid social interaction altogether.

Sometimes this desire to avoid social interaction will carry on for several days.

At times like that, I would almost welcome the chance to avoid.

But lately, more and more, I’ve been thrust into  situations that make me anxious, but I am left to find a way through somehow anyway.   These situations present themselves, and I am caught having to deal with exactly the sort of social situation that I’d more than likely rather avoid.

Today was just such a day.   I was informed this morning that two acquaintances of mine (whom I do not know very well at all) were planning on stopping by my home later in the afternoon.  Of course, I stressed about this, and was on edge all morning.  I’m almost ashamed to admit that I had been practically avoiding them socially for over a month, but things converged last night somehow, and it became obvious to me this morning that I didn’t have a good excuse to avoid them for very much longer.*

Besides, they were only planning to stop by for an hour or two.

I started to think that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

So I buried myself in the activity of tidying up the house.  I doubled up my dose on my anxiety meds (something I do with the OK of my physician, of course), and then I meditated and I exercised.

In short, I used every one of my physical coping strategies to prepare myself for that two hour window.

While I was out walking, I had an interesting moment of obvious pandoramancy, as this song came up twice in the music feed on my device:

Gods bless you, Frank Turner.

You seem to know exactly how I feel at times.

~~~

But then, you know what?

The situation with those visitors?

They never even showed up.

Perhaps tomorrow, they will…but I am ready to face them.

With a clean house and a clear, calm mind.

~~~

Hail Loki…for understanding the way I tend to be ❤

 

~~~

There’s a short circuit between my brain and my tongue, thus, “Leave me the fuck alone” comes out as “Well, maybe.  Sure.  I guess I can see your point.   – David Sedaris,  A Friend in the Ghetto; from Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls

 

 

 

Month for Loki, Day 25: Dodge.

[The previous post has been redacted]

 

I am just going to leave this here.

 

heith

Month for Loki, Day 24: Crafty.

Though I intended on posting about something else today, I spent a good portion of this evening trying a new weave while making friendship bracelets.

I’ve been wanting to do some new color schemes.

I’m really pleased with this one that I did while watching TV:

braceletcloseup braceletflat bracelettwist

The funny thing is, once I untaped the bracelet from the board, it twisted up.

I think that the twist looked rather interesting – and I would have gladly kept it twisted – but it just wasn’t long enough to fit on my wrist (or ankle) as I intended it to do.

Perhaps I will iron it down tomorrow.