bloodteethandflame

A life in threes

Tag: hard truths

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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April 24, 2015

Allow.

‘There is a secret about human love that is commonly overlooked: receiving it is much more scary and threatening than giving it.   How many times in your life have you been unable to let in someone’s love, or pushed it away?  Much as we proclaim the wish to be truly loved, we are often afraid of that, and find it difficult to open to love or let it all the way in.’

John Welwood

~~~

He said:

‘Is it so difficult?

And so I will tell you again what you must do: 

Open up to love. 

Just love.

Let love consume you.  

Let love engulf you in its joy.

You must trust in your love.

You must allow love to take hold of you.

You must allow yourself to feel.

You must forgive yourself and allow yourself 

Love without condition,

Love without attachments,

Love without goals,

Love without agendas.

You must love for the sake of love.

Don’t you see?

You must allow yourself to be taken by joy.

Release yourself to love.  Surrender yourself to joy.

You must not fear being open.

You must open up to love.’

~~~

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February 5, 2015

Come break me down.

 

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July 20, 2014

Month for Loki, Day 10: A Dream

I had a dream wherein He spoke to me and said that there were three things that I should work on…
And then I had another dream that got in the way of the memory of the first dream.

~~~

That second dream – the one that got in the way of my memory – was about taking V to court in Plainsville, NY (but I think that it was supposed to be Plattsville)…and we had an older daughter who was kinda difficult to handle because she was so angry, and I couldn’t get her to calm down.

But she was there because she had testified in my favor, and the judge ended up siding with me.

I don’t know what that meant.

~~~
But the first dream, Loki talked with me, but I could not remember what I was supposed to work on.
So when I awoke, K told me that He told zir to tell me that I should work on:

Trust, loyalty…. and forgetting.
But K wouldn’t say what that was in regards to.

Stay loyal to what?

Forget about what?

K said that zie was told that I could figure it out.

~~~
And then I remembered something:  Loyalty had something to do with the poly thing: that I should stop the behavior of having sex with certain people.

He said that He wanted to choose, and it showed a disrespect of Him or lack of loyalty to Him, to have situations with certain people.

And I remember Him showing me, in images rather than words, to whom He was referring.

He was saddened by something in my behavior, similar to some dreams I’d had before wherein He would say that I knew how to listen and/or do, but that I just didn’t want to.
That made me sad, too.
And the forgetting concerns the past, of letting the past go… of not letting the past keep me from moving forward towards what is changing.

 

You are changing, He said, and I am pleased with you.  Don’t stop.  Don’t relent.

 

I know what that means.

 

But I am anxious.

 

I know what He is talking about.

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July 6, 2014

Month for Loki, Day 6: Five words.

Y’know, this would have been a better post for yesterday — since yesterday was the 5th and all – but, ah well, I saw this article posted again today.

 

As if to remind me.

 

So, here we are.

 

And yes, I do believe that the writer of this article is correct.

I’d seen this life-changing statement that answered the endless plea that I had made to the Universe regarding What I Should Do several months ago – yes, I had seen the article before, you know – but I wasn’t ready to see any of my relationships in this statement of just 5 words:

Only stay where you’re valued.

Yes.  That’s it.   Simple yet powerful, if you think about it.

There were no complex quizzes, no lists of questions that I should be asking myself when I thought about ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ or any of the other fence-sitting navel-gazing sort of circular musing that I am famous for engaging in at 4 AM while lying awake with insomnia.

This article asks one to consider just one very vital aspect of any relationship – especially personal relationships – and that is to think about the concept of value.

Not  ‘Are you needed?‘

Not ‘Are you happy?‘

Not ‘Are you paid attention to?’

or even

‘Am I loved?’

Or any of the other variations on the theme of  that last one that a worried brain who questions the status of their relationship can come to at 4 AM.

Why?

Because, if you follow along the premise as presented in the article, if you are valued in a relationship, and you value those who are in a relationship with you*, then all those other questions answer themselves.

(*Psst: hey, even if the relationship is with yourself, *this statement still works*.  Kinda sneaky ton of bricks, isn’t it?)

Seriously.

Go read it.

~~~

And with that, on the sixth day, I say,

Hail, Loki.

Thank You for the reminder, my Sweetest Friend ❤

 

 

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October 1, 2013

I’m in a weird place. In my head.

People are calling me, people are texting me.

People are concerned for me.

They are sweet, kind, understanding.  They ask me how I feel; how I am doing.

I don’t know.

I called V this morning, and it felt weird, and he dodged a lot.

I don’t know what to think.

It makes me sad, it makes me worried.

Things are still the same in the situation – we both talk calmly, but there’s an underlying tension.

He and I talked for close to an hour, but  it seemed to go nowhere, no matter how long we talked, no matter what was said.

I feel calm, and feel OK…but then I get overwhelmed with emotion.

It feels like a mindfuck.

And not in a good way.

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September 30, 2013

So much for being Polyamorous.

Remember way back in the year when I wrote my thoughts here about polyamory and communication?  About how the three rules of polyamory are:

1. Communication

2. Communication

3. Communication

Well, I just got off the phone with my husband’s girlfriend of 7 months, and she tells me that my husband of 20 years is in love with her and she with him.  And that he has told her that he can’t imagine life without her, and various other surprising revelations about his feelings for her, and the fabric of their relationship.

It has come to my attention that he has been not just downplaying, but outright lying to both of us about being honest with each of us

He has told her that he informed me recently (as of a month ago) that he’s in love with her, and that I am aware of the depth of his feelings for her.  She informs me that she thought that I knew that she has been staying at his D.C apartment on weekends, and that he takes her to lunch every weekday, and dinner three times a week.  She informed me that he gave her a key to his apartment a month ago so that she can come and go as she pleases, and he insisted to her that I was aware of this.   He gives her money, buys her groceries, clothing, and pays for her prescriptions and pays some of her bills. He insists to her that I am aware of all of that, too.

Surprising revelations because my husband has always downplayed his feelings for her when communicating about their relationship with me.

As a matter of fact, he has been insisting to me that he isn’t in love with her, and that he could never be in love with her; it is that she is in love with him.

He has insisted on multiple occasions that their relationship won’t last forever, that they fight too much, and he could walk away at any time.

He tells me that they only see each other a few times a week, if that, and that he has ‘never paid for anything significant’ for her.

He told me last week that their relationship is not nearly serious enough (and never will be, IHO) to give her a key to his apartment, but if it ever goes that far, he insists that he would tell me.

He lost his wedding ring two weeks ago.

She apologized, saying that he lost it while over her house. She has looked everywhere, but cannot find it.

He hasn’t informed me yet.

Yes.

My husband lost his wedding ring, and he hasn’t told me.

He has been so antsy and dodging and has avoided talking to me at any great length for about a week and a half now.

~~~

She called me up tonight because he has been avoiding her, since they had an argument this past Friday night.

She said that she’d started to suspect that he hadn’t told me anything, because she’s been noticing him ignoring phone calls from me when they are together, and overheard him lie to me several times while on the phone with me (the lie being that he’d insist that he was working late and was too busy to talk, and yet, he was out with her, eating dinner, or sitting in her apartment.)

When she confronted him, he became upset, and insisted that he’d been nothing but honest with the both of us, and yet she’d witnessed him lying to me several times, as well as he consistently kept dodging her questions about why he felt the need to lie if he had REALLY told me everything.

So what was he lying to her about if he’d so readily lie to me? — was her concern.

She wanted to call me — with a ‘if you won’t tell her, I will tell her’ sort of threat — and he begged her, with tears in his eyes, not to do so.

So she told him to fuck off, that she hadn’t any time for that sort of dishonesty if he refused to tell the truth to her, or to me.

So she called me to find out what he had told me, and what did I know about the situation?

Did I know about the extent of his feelings?

Did I know that they were in love?

Did I know about the key to his apartment?

Did I know that not a day goes by wherein they do not see each other at least some portion of the day?

Did I know that he had planned to fly her and her daughter down to FL for the holidays for two weeks in November (Thanksgiving) and two weeks in December (Christmas), and intended to put them up in a hotel, all expenses paid?

Did I know that he’d lost his wedding ring?

No….no no no no no..and no.

Evidently there is a lot that he hasn’t told me.   Evidently there is a lot that I didn’t know about the situation.

But I know that he’s been doing a lot of gaslighting…and a lot of projecting on me.

He has claimed that my anxiety about the instability of our marriage is unfounded.   He has accused me of being crazy, of being distrustful, of being angry, of mistreating him, of having no respect for him, or for our marriage.

I am hurt.  I am sad.  I know that I should be angry.

Instead, I feel sick.

I feel like such a fool.  An ignorant, ridiculous fool.

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