You can’t.

~~~

Life is a funny bastard. Sometimes funny-haha, sometimes just cruel. Guess it depends on where you’re standing. If you’re zoomed out, or right up close.

My friend’s Mum tried to kill herself on Monday. That’s a lot. It’s a very confusing mix of emotions. The ‘how could she!?’ pleas for answers. She did it on the night of his birthday, which just shows you how not in her right mind she is.

I have been visiting her once a week for a few weeks now. Each time I offer a little gift to her. I share some stories about my own inner turmoil. There is something in her that resists taking the steps towards healing.

I am utterly depleted. I go to another Ayahuasca “retreat” tomorrow. I was really looking forward to it. I have been making great strides in my healing journey and accessing parts of myself that I didn’t know existed. In Parts of Self work, this is called Exiles. My Protectors are very good at their job. Pushing down the feelings. Keeping them down and away from access to my mind. Add to that the disconnect that happened to me to sever the mind-body connection. My mind and body are like teenage siblings who utterly hate each other, untrusting of the other, blaming the other for the mess we are in. In Sweat Lodge, in a difficult moment, I put one hand on my head and the other on my heart and tried reasoning with them. Telling them that I had grown up. I wasn’t the little girl I once was that they were protecting. Well, since that experience, my mind and body have been showing me how I very much am that little girl I vehemently denied I was. So I guess, joke’s on me.

I listen to my mind and body a lot more these days. Tuning in. Observing, noticing, taking small action because of what I learn. So the lead up to this ceremony has been building quite a lot of momentum. Like water storing behind the dam after heavy rains. There have been some temporary, short-term pressure releases. I think they are prepping for the dam to explode. At least that’s how Little Kate thinks it’s going to go.

Then today I had Tools for Trauma therapy group class. It was on Relationships. Damn, what a heavy session. I was making so many connections in the class. They talked about Gaslighting, which I have never really identified with. The term seemed so foreign to me. I have been accused by an ex-friend of gaslighting. I believe she was using me as a scapegoat for her feeling bad or guilty about what I was saying. Just coz you feel bad from someone else saying something, does not make it gaslighting. No, apparently it needs to be a conscious choice. My intention was never to make her feel bad, I was simply explaining the source of my overwhelm to her. Some who is closed off and can’t access those feelings themselves, or have a healthy relationship with their own emotions, cannot and will not hold space for yours.

Damn, that was a punch in my stomach when I heard that. I had childhood memories come back to me, in conjunction with my processing from yesterday’s therapy session too. Telling someone who I thought loved me that I was being abused and them not only denying the love and attention I needed at that time, but instead telling me I was lying. Literally denying my reality. My truth was so farfetched for them, it couldn’t possibly be true. In the therapy session, my hips start aching again, along with my lower back, mid back, shoulders and neck. Mainly on my left side, but truthfully both sides. Right normally means your father’s side, btw.

I realised the emotional depth that I possess is not normal. So when somebody else does not possess that, I notice. I notice, and have this belief that I am too much. I try cutting off that depth of self, deny that part of me, which in turn creates inner turmoil. Then I perform in this way that gets love from the other person. Which, honestly, I love doing *IF* I get love return. If I don’t get that love I desire, this giving to others at the expense of myself breeds resentment. Then I go to my default of cutting out everyone. Coz isolation fights the unkind, right? Yeah, isolation in prison exists for a reason, and it ain’t to make the prisoner feel good. So yeah, uncovering that cycle was huge for me. To have the mental gymnastic working out in my brain at the same time this physical pain was being released was pretty cool to experience from an objective point of view. In past lives of myself, this would have been destabilising. I also noticed my appetite increase significantly and also my restlessness, my desire to run, escape, be as far as possible. Oh, and I got my checking out feature back again. I worked really hard to try to steady myself.

Then I went to a support group for people who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse. I didn’t feel ready to do it. Actually, looking back, I felt ready. I just didn’t like the unknown factor of what to expect. That is a lack of control core wound, which I have recently identified needs a lot of work done. That wound is weeping still. There is good parts of that type of wound, like I am very good at planning things, organising people (just not myself, yet). So when I heal this lack of control wound, I will end up with special added bonus features to help me in my life. I just can’t access those while it’s weeping.

I might say that I went to this support group nonchalantly, sure. I am downplaying how hard it was for me to muster the courage to go to it. We can do things when we are not ready for them. We can. I let go of my ideals of how I was supposed to look, act and behave in that group. I closed my eyes for a lot of it. Rested my head on the couch a lot. I didn’t care what I looked like. I cared that I was there when my shame was trying to keep me from actioning what needed to be done.

~~~

How can you help someone who doesn’t want to be helped? You can lead by example. You can do hard things. You can share your true feelings with safe people. You can journal. You must affix your own oxygen mask first. Tell them that you love them too.

~~~

If you can’t tell, I started reading Good Old Neon by David Foster Wallace. Whatever your feelings towards him are, try separate the man from the art. He has a love for long sentences which I had become self conscious about. It is nice to let that flow within me. Let go of that notion. He rambles and goes all over the place, much what it’s like to live in my head. I do imagine this piece is but a few seconds of silence in a meeting, like he talks about in the text. I got onto him because of an apparent relationship with Mary Karr. I can’t remember how I got that piece of information. I am writing my own memoir and enjoyed Karr’s book on memoir writing. Probably the first book in a long time that I actually enjoyed. I think I was on a Reddit forum at the library when looking up her book again and discovered they dated and both wrote about each other in their art. I am curious about that. I had attempted to watch the DFW movie, though got disengaged and never finished. Not the fault of the movie, just my own inner happenings. Then onto another Reddit forum to find out what order, or what piece of art I should read first. I collected my notes and then found a copy of Good Old Neon, which is an excerpt from his short story book called Oblivion. It’s pretty good ramblings to me. It’s inspiring that you can be different and still be published.