Living As All of Me

[NarcKiddo]

I'm so happy you had such a wonderful and uplifting time at camp, and that you found so many kindred spirits to enjoy it with.

 

[Hope67]

Hi HannahOne,
Wow, that's great that you enjoyed your trip to that Camp.   

[sanmagic7]

all of the above, hannah1.  yay!  love and hugs

[HannahOne]

Yeah!

I was so depressed for a few years. Understandably. Went through *. Reactivated all my trauma. Couldn't move.

Coming out of it I need energy. Energy infusions. Where's that going to come from? The sun. Moving. Music. Animals. People. Parties. LIFE.

The more I MOVE the more options for movement I have, the deeper I can go, the lower LOL, the higher I can jump, the more I can reach, the sillier the better, sassy, shy, sexy, serious, sashay, shimmy, street, the more ways I have to express All of Me and to be here now, the more I'm alive the happier I am that I survived...

Dancing my way through the day......

It's not having what you want
It's wanting what you got

Maybe something's wrong with you
That makes you act the way you do

but I'm gonna soak up the sun
I've got no one to blame
Every time I feel lame, I'm looking up

I'm gonna soak up the sun
I'm gonna tell everyone to lighten up

I'm still the king of me
I'm lookin up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji0NHUaoefU

[zen_racer]

I'm smiling about that song now. 

I relate a little too much to being depressed.  I think I got out of it before with massive amounts of dissociation.

I'm glad that it sounds like you're still in a better place since camp.  I'm also happy you survived.

 

[sanmagic7]

The more I MOVE the more options for movement I have, the deeper I can go, the lower LOL, the higher I can jump, the more I can reach, the sillier the better, sassy, shy, sexy, serious, sashay, shimmy, street, the more ways I have to express All of Me and to be here now, the more I'm alive the happier I am that I survived...

love this, hannah1.  you go!  love and hugs

[HannahOne]

Sometimes each day is as a thousand years. Time moves so slowly.

It's a useful adaptation. I can slow time down and buy a lot of time. I have time to figure out what to do, how to intervene and shift the direction of events. I can almost freeze events, to consider, to analyze. A cool hack.

It can also be exhausting. The days never end. I look at the clock and it hasn't even been one minute. I resolve not to look at the clock for at least fifteen minutes. I look at the clock. It hasn't even been a minute again.

TW: abuse

I always stuck with my father. Big and strong, knew so much. I thought.

Stayed away from my mother. The dead hand. Pick up the hand, drop it. No response. No there there. She wasn't dead. Only sleeping. Sleeping really hard. Too hard to be aware of my presence. I snuck out, invisible. Leaned against the wall. Became the wall. Until my father came home. When there'd be food. Among other things. But food. I wanted food.

One is still much easier to talk about than the other. To think about. To be aware of.

In the very long days, in the five minutes that move so slowly it seems I have enough time to complete a PhD and serve five prison terms, I become aware of it: There's no there there. It's a physical feeling, longing. Then, I'm the wall.

If I can slow things down, I have more room to work. What's going on here? What's up with being a wall? I have parts that are furious. That won't forgive me for not being what I promised I'd become, not doing .... more. Not delivering. I argue back, I delivered! For Frank's sake I got the degrees, jobs, house, family, car.... But of course it's not about the stuff. It's the price they paid that they're furious about.

I'm sorry, I say. It was a bad deal. But it was the only deal on offer.

What do I feel right before I become the wall?

It's hard to know, because immediately these other parts step in, the achievers, the doers, the taskmasters, the managers, ranting and raving and criticizing me relentlessly for not currently being CEO of something or other.

Right before I become the wall, I make contact with what I was staying away from. The place where there is no there there.

Everything begs a question. Why? How come? WHY? To analyze, to change the course of events. I did it, once. Many times. As a child it was an easy trick. It seemed I was the one making the adults do the things I didn't want them to do, or I was the one stopping them from giving me what I wanted.

Now I'm old and I forget the trick. Hocus pocus? Hippety hoppity? Stitch and stash? No magic words, what's the answer? I question what is the cancer that needed to be cut out? What in my life now is toxic, growing outside its place, unregulated?

Or from the other side: what space is cancer trying to fill? What should be in that space?

These are dangerous thoughts because it can lead to victim blaming, spiritual bypassing, and other stupidity. Cancer just happens. Psychologizing it won't help. Yet the logic of punishment is so compelling, beads I can't stop turning. I'm compelled to keep wondering what I am being punished for, what I did wrong, what I need to change in order to change the flow of events.

It's why time is moving so slowly. A part of me is doing the trick to buy me time.

Time keeps moving at its regular rate for everyone else. There is no trick. And more time isn't going to help me analyze these events. I'm due for an MRI. Overdue. Voicemails piling up. Voicemailbox full. Now the phone just rings. I count the rings until they stop.

There's no there here, either, apparently. 

Outside, time moves. You can feel time moving in the movement of the leaves. The animals keep time, the squirrels are aware of the shadows and the birds know when to sing and when to silence, the worms know when it's safe to emerge and when to burrow deeper.

Animals know no punishment, only do what needs doing, and refrain from all excess. The crow sits in the rehab, hunching his shoulders, pacing, avoiding eye contact. I rip the heads off exactly forty mealworms and put the jar in his cage. He is served one headless super worm. The super worm does not want me to remove its head. I am more persistent than he, although then I have to sit on the floor with my head between my knees.

Parts of me will always want to punish me. Will never expel all their rage over a bad deal done decades ago. Not because they didn't get what was promised, although they didn't entirely, couldn't possibly. Seven year olds don't know what it takes to be CEO. But because of what it cost them. integrity? A moral injury to go along with the other repairs, a stitch in time saves nine. An unspeakable loss.

Of course, she was already gone, deep in dreamland no one could wake her from, even my kiss powerless. I wisely traded what I didn't have, so why now complain I lost what never was? No there there to lose, kiddo. Unlike Daddy-o, who's right there, with food.

Lately I feel imprisoned, but it's myself that am the walls. Is the crow in a cage because he is being punished? Was he wrong to collide with a car? Or was he just himself, a being in space and time, in the wrong place at the wrong time?

He's in the cage to recover, to keep predators out, to keep him within reach of my jar of worms. If only we can keep the wildness in him while he heals. If only we can refrain from speaking in his presence, resist the urge to hand feed, to touch, to name him Harry and sing him songs, to stare. If only we can be invisible, just part of the walls, so he can occupy his rightful space.

What wildness is there left in me? What has not been punished out? What of me has not been habituated to the ways of others' whims? What of me does not salivate when the bell is rung? What of me still hunches, paces, resettles my shoulder blades on my ribs? What of me was always beyond punishment? Is there anything of me that did not take the deal?

I can't find any. All that's left is the parts that took the deal, that slowed time down to analyze, that saw the weakness in the trap and skipped right through it... I guess that's a wild thing to do. Left half of me behind to do it. But got free.

That's the calculus of the wild, and I can't second-guess it. I did what I did. Wrong place, wrong time. Back then the walls were not a punishment. They were a path. The only place I could occupy, then.

Now, to find my rightful place. To let time move again.