Mouse or Monster?

If a tan falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to see it…

I swear, I’m tan. But in the bundled-up hoodies, hats, and gloves, you may never know it. I change so quickly from pajamas into outfits, that even I have a hard time noticing! So I have occasionally flashed my belly at myself in the mirror just to confirm it ;)

I’m getting mentally and physically prepared to go back into the hospital tonight for Chemo Round 4 out of 5. This means a week of inpatient hospital stay, a week of very interrupted sleep. As the saying goes, The hospital is no place for a sick person.

That said, how grateful am I to have the health care and coverage that I do. Infinitely. The care that I’ve gotten has been stellar, even when they wake me at 1am to take my blood pressure.

As to the retreat. Well, unsurprisingly, I’ve been asked to work on what I was asked to work on last year -- and didn't. Asked to work on that which I don’t really want to, haven’t really wanted to, and which has enabled and allowed me to stay stuck. Cancer, the disease of stuckness, perhaps.

Last year, it was indicated that in order to move forward in my life, I need to address my sexual trauma. Now, who will willingly walk into that miasma?

Unless they have to.

Unless they have cancer, the ticking clock that says, Lady, deal with this now, because life is short.

Some of what keeps me so quiet and averse to working on or through this particular slice of experience is that I quantify my trauma as not that severe, not that bad, not as bad as plenty I’ve heard, so why talk about it, address it, voice it, validate it?  There are plenty of women (and men) who have far worse stuff to parse through, so why should I take any time to address my own?

It’s like saying, I don’t need to eat because there are people who are hungrier than me. – That doesn’t really compute, does it.

I need to eat, regardless. And I need to work through this regardless, even though I feel ashamed that it’s “not big enough” trauma. It’s so ridiculous, how my brain concocts ways to keep me stuck.

I had some intense meditation experiences this weekend at the retreat. I won’t recount them, but I will say that I was presented very visually and viscerally with what my aversion to this work has done to me emotionally; what the part of me looks like that has been cut off, that I have cut off. It’s scary, honestly. How deprived and deranged that part of me, my sexuality, my femininity has become. How unreachable she has become.

When we think about sexuality, we can think about creativity. About that same center as bringing forth Life in all its manifestations. It’s not just about sex, about procreation – it’s about creation in all its forms. It’s about, to me, confidence, competence, adventure, expression. Manifestation.

With this part of me so disconnected, so alienated, it isn’t a wonder that I find my life stuck, myself stuck. To consider the “false start at life,” the “failure to launch” in which I seem to find myself.

I don’t want to look at this, this accumulation of years of negative experiences around sex and sexuality. It’s frightening. It feels like it’s bigger than I even know, and so I’m terrified to even lift the lid. So, some of what I did this weekend was to seek and find help, an internal guide that can and will help me to navigate these waters. Also -- back on earth! -- a friend at the retreat suggested some human resources that I will follow up on. So, I’m gathering the internal and the external support.

I do have the experience of feeling frightened of something, of something I think is so big, and it turns out, on investigation, on finally walking into it, that it is not so scary at all. That it is just the shadow cast by a mouse. Perhaps this will end up like that, but I won’t know unless I begin.

I don’t feel the desire to begin. And I may never. But, I must. There is an imperative now that there was not last year, and so, I will begin anyway. Because mouse or monster, I don’t need to be living like this.