Written 2011:
i meet with a grad student who tells me
not to take split-level poetry because all the under-grads write about is date
rape – so i don’t tell him about the drunken carride from two strangers, later
finding an earring twisted into my shirt, or being turned away from four Korean
hospitals because rape is not an emergency.
i read an article on how to snag a
man which suggests that women think about something naughty when out because
women won’t pick up on it, but the men will – so, i imagine licking pre-cum
from a cock, which provides a lascivious revolt against public decorum and not
undamp panties.
but, in the unwalled house of my
memory, these situations sometimes mix – and the salt sours, the armor
rebuilds, and the currency of reality cripples.
In Bernie Siegel’s book, Love, Medicine, and Miracles, he reports that his research has shown that most cancer patients have suffered a
significant breach in trust at an early age.
“I will slice your face with a
razor blade/
and watch your smile fade.”
- The couplet I often recite in my head when I’m feeling
cornered, scared, and angry.
I informed you a little while ago that it seems like
repairing my relationship with intimacy, trust, and sex is probably back on the
agenda. Yesterday, after my work at my shamanic journey group, this was made
pretty apparent.
And luckily, one of my great friends in attendance told me
afterward that our mutual friend is having a hugely positive experience with a
therapist/healer around similar issues. I plan to contact her today.
In fact, I’d referred the same friend to my own “intuitive” (read:
psychic), and it’s just humorous to me that me and this group of women have
this rolodex of woo-woo witchy healer folks. And damned, if I’m not grateful
for it.
For those unfamiliar, shamanic journeying (according to my
novice understanding) is pretty much an intense meditation, but there’s a drum,
the sound of which is purported to help induce a dream-like state—it’s like a
guided meditation, where instead of listening to someone’s voice tell you to
follow down a path in the forest, you sort of follow the drum, and make your
own path through the forest. I’ve been journeying for years now, and find it to
be one of the best and quickest ways to access internal information—however
uncomfortable that information may be.
Yesterday’s overall message was that I have to repair my
relationship to trust. Yuck.
It’s like trust for me is a broken port, and until it’s repaired,
there will be glitches and sparks and melted fuses.
The thing about sexual trauma is this: you want to show
people (the right people) the wound, you want to share about it, you want to
exorcise it, you want to talk about it in order to heal from it, to release it and move on from it. You want to
expose it to fresh air so that it heals instead of festers. You want to bring
it into the sun and let the forces at work do their magic to create something
beautiful out of something horrifying.
And yet.
Because of the nature of sexual trauma as a secret, and the prevalence of people dismissing it as exaggeration… You also
don’t want to share about it. You are ashamed to bring it out, to tell anyone,
to share about it. You feel that to mention it is to invite revulsion,
rejection, dismissal. And perhaps, you have experience to back up that fear,
and so you remain locked up tight with it, and it will continue to burn a hole
in your heart.
The longer you hold onto it, the more painful it becomes,
until it becomes something so immense in your heart and head that you can’t
imagine that you can actually share it with other people, because it will
overwhelm everyone, including yourself.
This, is why god made therapists. Healers. And friends with
rolodexes.
The arrows toward healing this next came from “going in” to
my meditation with questions about my recent fatigue. Over the last month or
so, I’ve been so fucking tired, and my western and eastern doctors can’t figure
it out, except that my eastern doc said, “You’re energy center is depleted.”
Well, yeah. But why?
The information I got last night was that I have been
fighting this, this knowledge, these experiences, this anger, this sorrow, …
well, for years. I’ve been avoiding it for just as long. I’ve been fighting
dealing with it, but it’s there. Believe you me, apparently, it’s there. And
somehow my awareness has cracked open about it. Somehow, I am aware that I am
exhausted from this fight, from this constant battle to suppress, dominate, and
deny.
Some veil has lifted, some curtain shifted, and I am finally
able to experience the exhaustion.
And if I want to get healthy, then I have to heal it. And if
I want to heal it…--well, as I mentioned earlier, I’m more than a little
ambivalent about doing so.
First things first. Call my friend who’s working with
someone. Get that info.
Second thing? Ensure that I approach and treat myself with
the most radiant compassion and care that I can muster, cuz,
We’re gonna need a bigger boat.
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