Today’s posts aren’t in any kind of order. I write a lot more than I post and this one was from yesterday. The critic often reminds me a lot of what I write is just for me and at times its verbal diatribe, its the working out of inner processes and then the critic doesn’t want it posted to bore other’s senseless or remind them how self obsessed I am. But followers that’s the critic for you and the way he is (yes, my critic is male and I call him Mr A!) Anyway I am going to post this anyway. Not to say the critic is all wrong by the way!
What a day. I have moved through so many feelings and states today. Dusk will be soon with us and Jasper is looking longingly out of the lounge room window as he does on the rainy days when we don’t get out. Today for the first day in ages I stayed in my PJ’s until about 3 pm. I didn’t eat until later and I watched part of a movie in between writing and crying and thinking and dreaming and doing a bit of house work.
I am aware of all the back forward, in out, wrong right swings my mind is doing at present. At one moment I am aware of the pain in my heart over losses that I feel has immobilised me locked me away from others and sometimes shut them out. At another I am aware that my pain needed a witness and on this score I was let down. I then got to reading one of my old diaries from the before my husband and I separated and I see how I was struggling with a lot of dis-satisfaction and thoughts of leaving him. I was also writing all the time, withdrawing deeply into my inner world, exchanging deep emails with a good friend who was very interested in similar things to me such as dreams, astrology symbology, writing and evolutionary history as well as the battle between love and hate love and fear that was raging at that time around the outset of America’s decision to invade Iraq and look for weapons of mass destruction.
I wrote in my journal that I had been crying over a news story in which it told of how the spine of a young child was shattered by enemy fire. I had then had a dream of a crustacean with a shattered spine and I was starting to explore how the illness of my sister had had such a powerful effect but I was trying to do all of this in isolation in a place where I should not at that time have been living.
Anyway then I got a bit of a fit of the blues about how my ‘life is going nowhere’. Fact is I had an interior day and when negative brooding thoughts like this come to visit its better to not engage too much. I just made a cup of tea. I am feeling a little guilty about not walking the dog but today I don’t feel like going out at all. It was a huge few days after my nephew’s visit with his family, which really brings up the past. I was so aware of how powerfully I get pulled on by this traumatic past and how little of my energy is actually in present time. I have not heard back from his brother after two attempts to call and I cried about that : tears of actual acceptance, which felt good. Sometimes the best thing to do is let go and move on. Sadly its not what I have done for most of the past 10 years and at the moment I am seeing the cost of that. I am seeing how it is frustrating for others. But the truth is I have had a lot of grief and loss. It is not something to ‘move on’ from easily.
As my therapist often points out the work I am doing in therapy is about a mid life process of reckoning with the past that takes time. Its just that next year I am anxious to find a way to externalise in my life more. I want to be out and interacting with other people, just not sure in what avenue and then even as I write that I am aware that as an introvert I will always be primed to turn within. Self acceptance is so important, as we can so often judge ourselves and hear inner voices telling us we are not good enough which limits us and limits our life. I am sick of limitations at present.
Well Sun, you are now peeping your head out from around the corner. It is time to relax for now. Mercury retrograde really pulled me deep inside today. I am glad I was able to answer the call. All in all its been lovely to have a day to just stay home with me after those intense days where I was so heavily pulled upon by the outer world and be by myself at home.
Emerging From The Dark Night 