brace yourself for the woo

I’m ba-ack!  …and it ain’t to tell the shingles story (yet).  Maybe on Wednesday?

Instead it’s to muse on inner children and connectedness and all that other delicious stuff.  Shall we begin?

I haven’t been feeling very safe in the world lately.  And I didn’t quite realize that until I spent most of the last two weeks in a very self-centered (in a good way), self-contained bubble of home life.  While at home: I did not get bored.  I did not get antsy.  I did not feel the urge to get out and adventure.  Nope–I was perfectly content to move back and forth between the couch, bed, toilet, and bathtub and use my attention for eating, journaling, movie watching, and sleeping.

The few times I left home I was confronted very quickly with the reality that the world is a tough place for me to exist in.  First, all the readily available snacks contain one or more form of corn and dairy which make me hurt and feel crazy.  Second, the sun is really bright and hot and I burn easily.  Third, people and the machines they’ve made are really loud and I have hyper sensitive hearing.  I could go on…

I relished in the excuse of having a painful, serious illness and stayed home.

And felt safe there.

The excuse started to wear off as the rash crusted over and the scabs had mostly fallen off (either of their own accord or by my gently nudging them–I’m a picker-ew, but aw-yeah also).  Sunday my little family ventured out to a Pet Expo at the Fairgrounds that sucked the life out of me.  My body reacted to the freeway traffic with a stomach ache.  The 30 minute line to exit the highway and park left me feeling like my world was coming to an end.  Again, I could go on…  It doesn’t really matter what happened there, what matters is what happened next.

Darkness.  When I looked inside I saw nothing because my view was obscured by darkness.  I couldn’t feel any love or see any hope or feel any excitement.  There was nothing.  And nothing doesn’t feel good.  Today at work I was distracted from the darkness by trying to catch up on all that I’d missed.  In my car on the way home, standing in front of stove making dinner, tossing laundry in the dryer, I was face to face with the darkness again.

the front of the card says "this birthday card is for people who don't believe in Unicorns"  tee-hee
the front of the card says “this birthday card is for people who don’t believe in Unicorns” tee-hee

It said: the world isn’t safe.  stay inside.  don’t talk to anyone.  don’t do anything.  don’t connect with people–ew!  they’ll just hurt you.  you’re too sensitive.  loneliness is better than rejection.

And another part of me said: you feel lonely?

yes.

do you know why?

I haven’t really connected with anyone for a while.  i’ve been going within to do some work on me… i don’t have time for friends.  i have all this responsibility and i don’t have enough time for myself…  nothing will ever change…  i’m just going to have to be lonely until I’m a millionaire (you know, that old gig)

do you think it might help to try connecting with someone?

maybe.

why don’t you try it?

ok.

And then I opened a unicorn birthday card from my BFF (it’s not my birthday) that had come in the mail.  I shared my thoughts on something in my online mom’s group.  I wished an adored family member a happy birthday…  and I felt a lot less scared.  I stepped out into the world a little bit and no one threw tomatoes at me.  In fact, they welcomed me with open arms!  (why was I surprised?  darkness is a wack-ass place, that’s why)

here’s the woo you’ve been bracing yourself for (sorry it always takes me so long to get here): I am realizing/seeing/experiencing that everyone I have ever been (and maybe those I haven’t been yet) is still inside me.  Every age.  Every self.  They are ALL there.  They all have some influence on my life.  They contribute to my feelings, my impulses, my judgments… my experiences are their experiences.  And lately I’ve been getting acquainted with many of them, and my awareness of them has scared the shit out of me… Because along with learning that they exist I am learning that I haven’t put much into place to protect them from the things that harm them (I think people call them boundaries or something like that…)

The story of the last couple weeks (in list form) has been:
1. Meet a bunch of my inner children/selves
2. Realize how vulnerable they all are
3. Judge them for a variety of reasons (namely that they are too “needy”)
4. Believe the people who tell me I’m lovable enough to decide to let them out anyway
5. Become convinced immediately after that they are not, in fact, lovable parts of me
6. Build a brick wall around them
7. Sit in the loneliness that comes both from separating myself from them and separating all of them from all of you
8. Realize that’s not working very well
9. Starting building each of them a little home with a gate that either they or I can open (depending on their level of maturity) and start letting them out one at a time to play with friends and experience love and come back home to recharge and get some love from the momma and poppa selves who live inside too
10. Feel better about life

Voila.

2 Replies to “brace yourself for the woo”

  1. Hang in there Kate. I just had another surgery last Wednesday. Come to find out, when you lose weight, it screws everything else up. 4 months to the day from my surgery in December, I had to have a hysterectomy (which is really a good thing in the long run). Hang in there. If you ever need to chat, well i am off work for a month….lol

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