Each truth weighed me down with a psychic gunk that hunched me over and screamed redemption. Because I now hated Sven, I tried focusing on that emotion instead, but there was more important work to do--seven years of it--like unraveling myself from myself enough to hold my head up, walk with joy, smile with ease, feel free. Really, I met him so he could break my heart and leave me in the dark; then I unwillingly followed that darkness into myself with the road map he left behind. He always asked me to show him my dragons so he could kill them, but instead he led me to them, and I killed them myself.
It wasn’t that I had not admitted to myself the cruelty of my childhood, molestation of an uncle, or victimization of a narcissistic mother; it was more like I thought I had run far and away from the pain of my past when all I really did was burrow so deep in it my thoughts and actions became a strange, distant cousin I constantly recoiled at running into, like the night Sven and I had had sex in Amsterdam: the awkward, horrible night of sex I took the blame for:“Not feminine enough, soft enough...," I said to myself when in all actuality his sexual issues reflected mine.
Sven promised to marry me and take me to Scandinavia, but instead I ended up alone in Stephen King's version of a dark Maine, which was how I felt, so I cried, raged, slept. When I got sick of wallowing in self-pity, I hiked; watched movies about love by greats like Carne, Kurasawa; and read Dickinson, Thoreau, John Donohue, Don Miguel Ruiz, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Olivia St. Claire, Betsy Prioleau, Ram Dass, Jack Kornfield, Suzuki. Then I started exploring all the behaviors and impulses I found uncomfortable, the ones that didn' allow me to be the woman I wanted to be, the ones that my relationship with Sven brought to the surface like why I feared speaking my truth, loving my body, admitting the wrongs done to me as a child. Of course, my victimization stemmed from a traumatic childhood but they had now taken on other life forms, behavioral patterns, hidden content that I could not see well. For example, my inability to speak my truth was rooted in my inability to admit my feelings so that I would psychically choke anytime someone hurt me preferring instead to be the familiar victim of a familiar cruelty rather than the woman who stated her boundaries, spoke them out loud, and never apologized for where those boundaries started and ended.
My therapy for self-love also included long hot baths. In the water, I felt the lines of my strong thighs, soft arms, oval face; walked naked around my apartment; took nude pictures and studied them until I accepted my curves, rolls, muscles, beauty; re-learned pleasuring myself; and meditated to practice compassion for myself and others and forgiveness for my mother, father, uncle, ex-husband, Sven, self.
The other day I had an epiphany about Sven, who I had not thought about in a while. It was spring in Maine, and on my walk around town I was enjoying the yellow daffodils and baby maple leaves fallen on the sidewalk when I realized that in the moments we were together I was supposed to believe in the bright blue of his adoring eyes, jerky stop of his masculine walk, and boyish ways he said he needed me, and then let it go and forever love the essence of those moments--like I was now doing.
No comments:
Post a Comment