Rings around the moon.

So how did I call to Papa Legba? And I'm sticking to my belief... Only way to make sense. How else could I have been offered this gift of the river and the maze. After he was beaten up Days full of painful, hurtful revelations. I sat here, unable to think or move. For hours. Singing: ...Mr State Trooper .....Please don't stop me ........Please don't stop me.. Pleading with life, luck and fate to open the way for me. I wanted out. I wanted out so bad. And would I have taken it? If my phone had rung. If  As has now been said I heard the words "Please come!" No That is one thing I know about me... I don't let go until I'm sure. It's an ethics thing. I've done so many dumb stupid things in my past. I've learnt to stay still and think... Am I now sure? Sure that my husband really is intent on this being as bad as he has made it? That he really wants to alienate himself from us, his sons, from me? He has discovered who he thinks he really is...

Before I take my time and use 'focusing' to really ask myself what I am thinking, here is the top layer.  No contact protects me from gaslighting, his lack of authenticity. But it can't change the core problem between us.  Which is?  We never solved problems.  I just shifted things around in my head.  And kept believing that if I expressed what was wrong in the right way, he would would get it!  Then we could move on, repair through kindness, and eventually play with ideas and do something better.  Still sounds logical to me. Yet nothing was ever solved.  Because me, Mrs Try Harder made him, Mr Be Strong,  uncomfortable.  Translated at the level of his chosen culture, that of the Teflon cow (my blog, I don't have to be nice) this became the cliche: "You don't love the person I really am, because you want me to change. "  Me: yep, sure do.  I want you to stop pretending for a start.  Strangely enough I thought I was saying, "if you love me you will mov...

Siltane by Moonlight Benjamin Well, if I dare open my eyes, and I'd rather not, the road I'm on, behind and ahead of me is called Denial Drive. Denial Drive is a long road, so far twenty-five years long.  Many people walk it to their death. For me, it has been OK. Twenty-five years of avoiding the side streets. Avoiding / failing to connect with  darkly delicious, safe, outrageous emotional overwhelm.  I assumed it would come with that ice-cream van. Sweetness and delight... The one I heard in the distance. Sure it was there, Somewhere. Just not where I was. It was always possible. I knew it was possible. Ice cream vans turn up... I was happy to continue. In return for love. For protection. Hmmm... As this is my blog and my personal opinion I will continue.  My husband had 'the dark' in him. Did he? I couldn't reach into it. It was cold, distancing, switching off,  dialing down  anxiety.  Or it was the wrong frequency. I'd say a lack of presence, like...

"So it's been one year really"? Yes...because I don't think it really ended, getting beaten up by her husband wasn't them ending it. I don't think it's really ended now... "It sounds to me as if he's done" "What do you think of me for saying that"? That it hurts.  It's what my friends say.  What do I think? I know that they are on my side.. "You have some good friends, most friends say 'yeah well never liked him, he's a bastard..." Yeah, they've got my back. Not sure what to say now, above is a bit of my dialogue with my therapist. Friends have been through this stuff before, friends have seen a lot, and my friends really do 'have my back'. But me? I'm down and out, I'm grieving, been grieving in and out for a year. the process interrupted again and again by hope, and disrupted by lies. Going round Tesco's today was an ordeal, my whole married life flashing before my eyes. Wanting to cur...

Somewhere I have a recording. the sound of him riding away  to take his motorbike to the garage to be sold, for the motorbike had suddenly become dangerous. 25 years of riding. One minor accident without any injury Clearly motorbikes are lethal! Or was it guilt? That ride home where he accelerated hard. Twice. So hard I almost fell off...and he knew this.  He did it twice. I was a screaming, crying wreck when I got home... I felt that he'd tried to kill me... I had only been on that bike once, it was brand new, he'd asked his dad for the money just before he died. I assumed that the bike was contaminated by this  association  between. But I don't know, it's getting less, not more clear. There was a powerful myth in his family that granddad had been badly injured in a motorbike accident. Yet when we asked it turned out that the bike was a peddle bike - and there was something to do with a milk float? But his granddad had been fine, just bruised ribs. So what's going ...

III by Psychic Guilt Anger didn't last long. Sadness today. But not as extreme.

Well one day and one morning written off. Paralyzing despair. My friend, the one who knows how to torch cars (!) - amazing who you meet when training to be a counseller - called me. I listened to myself as I spoke to her and... Clearly no contact with him is better. A part of me is asking, what happened?  Why has all this come to me.  A hundred and one answers compete for my attention, and I'm not picking up. Because no matter why or what nothing changes. All I can do is manage it. At the moment I'm heading into a white hot, coruscating super nova of pure rage.  It's a good sign when Trent Rezner turns up. [Though this video isn't Rezner, it is a brilliant cover, well worth taking seriously.] Basically my credo is things can be repaired. This is how I got through Josh's psychosis, how I wrote my assignments with him interrupting me to tell me about the CIA or Satan every minute. I know that anything can attempted with love and intelligence, joy and daring. I feel ab...

Live Session by Vinnum Sabbathi On Saturday I said 'no contact from me'  ...and please, no contact from you unless it is about repairing our marriage. I wrote it out and put the letter into the post pox. Last night a text: "I know you are not OK, but are you OK?" I didn't reply. There was a knock at the door, and I just said to him the truth "I was OK until your text..." and then I began the oh so familiar descent into the pure hell of total abandonment, despair and really, if I could just die now, I'd die... I suppose the letter hadn't got there...so I wrote it again. To be honest the letter says more, about money, about me.. But this is the heart of it.

I don't have the energy to 'expect the best and prepare for the worst'.  I don't expect the best, 0% hope, no possibility of better. He was just playing along when he answered my texts with kisses, when he held my hand. It felt like more gaslighting, more inauthentic bullshit. When he came out with me, he must have known that I was trying so hard to make things OK, fighting against my panic and fear with every bit of courage and trust I have? So, there is no best. What is the worst? Grief is the worst.  What preparation can there be for something like this? Well yes, you and I will never be the first or last to experience the terrific dislocation and sense of dismemberment losing someone causes. We are never alone, even if the answer is just a recording somewhere. Other people have left us answers.  But my experience is that grief comes in waves - there are now days in-between each wave -  and a grief day will be very bad. Yet I've noticed that the day after a grief...

Every time I felt that I knew, and dared a question I was told to 'drop it!' or given reassurance that felt empty. The small details that pointed towards truth, like myriad compass needles embedded in his attitude, my feelings, possibly her scent even.  Were telling me the truth. But I was told No...always no. Lies told, not to make me feel guilty.  He said. He told lies to 'protect me'. He said... Didn't I see how stressed he was, how tired, how hard everything was... And "I'm still here aren't I"  Yet I believe that his intention was a variety of kindness. Wrapped in blame.  And... This is where it gets nasty. I was to blame because I would be upset.  Today was the last time. Enough. I chose to call this process out.  It is not gaslighting exactly but it has the same slippery feel. Close enough, too close... He had left two weeks ago with an ambiguous, "I'll do my dad's house up and sell it and then we will see". So today I as...

Long baths and chocolate?  No, self care is seeking to find ways to automatically face the unfacable, accept the unacceptable and then to just float past it all.  So far the tools that have helped me are, Gendlin's focusing technique, and Eckhart Tolle's dropping thought, letting past and future go, and focusing on now. They are far from automatic, they are not natural or simple, but they are powerful.  An example.  I see him once a week for a meal.  Today he asked me if I miss him!  So nothing triggering there right?  Latter I asked him the same.  He snorted!  I couldn't even evaluate the snort, was it a 'don't be stupid, if I tell you the truth you will cry and make a scene '?  Well that is my interpretation. Right or wrong, no way to know.  Gendlin's focusing is about asking myself questions. Feeling the subtle textures and images of my emotions, giving them words and then playing the words back to myself, listening for that clic...

I phoned him to say... Lets just go out. It was afternoon. We went around the streets, I held his hand. He took my hand in his when I let go. I couldn't rate this. No way to rate any of this. The psychic separator code was on at full strength in my mind. Note anxious, catastrophic thinking and focus on now. Feel the air, feel the ground under me, feel gravity. My aim, to absorb the anxiety - his -  and get through it. My way of fighting is to show that we are good together by being it.

Suddenly I find myself in the most Goth of Gothic tales. A theory that fits, yet doesn't resolve. The idea that failure to grieve can leave the bereaved compelled to.... Reanimated the dead.  To this end, sacrifice your life, sacrifice who and what you are. Descending into total unconsciousness become the dead.  Wow... Where do I fit in here? I am part of the sacrifice, or rather I'm supposed be. Yet I refuse to run, I refused to be shocked into oblivion. Instead I loved and cried and would not say goodbye..  Where do I fit in? Staying out of this katabasis makes sense. It feels like possession, it feels scripty and no sanity.  Doing what I'm doing, responding with love and kindness, and as if none of the bad stuff counts is the path of integrity, for me anyway.  Meanwhile this really is the best opportunity I've ever had to finally get to grips with the pain. That pain of abandonment that is always lurking in my shadow, the pain other people eventually embody f...

You may have got that I'm not accepting it? It is an integrity thing.  And my rational mind says it isn't 2% it is more like 0.2 %. Even so I'm not accepting that our marriage is over.  I know what he did, I know what he has said. I do believe that he wants a relationship with her. Even if he doesn't, I believe he doesn't want to be with me. I do feel as if I'm riven through with rusty swords, several of which he actively chose to stab me with. I have to crawl my way out of this, seeking help from those who will stand by me. The many, many strong and good people who will help. This is sanity? Yes, because I'm looking at my inner mirror, seeking to become the person I prefer myself to be. Looking at things in the context of life and death. And the sacred. I should have done this from the first, heaven knows I've been told this by the best teachers, I knelt before Ato Rinpoche and took Bodhisattva vow. And my knowledge was swept away in a hope and fear tsu...

Highly Deadly Black Tarantula by Teeth Of The Sea Nothing works faster than music... I am thinking about antidepressants, this is for me a part of the clinging to any bit of floating wreckage syndrome.  Anyway no! I'm using Eckart Tolle's theories about swamping the brain with commands to create awareness of now. He doesn't describe it in those terms, he describes an active choice to allow pain, and to amplify present reality. Feel pain and focus on the inherent goodness of being alive, at the same time.  It always comes down to the Gom Jabbar, or allowing myself to sit in the middle of a room every sense impression describes as on fire; specifically I'm sitting on a chair that is on fire, surrounded by flames and feeling the excruciating agony whilst at the same time telling myself it is an illusion, because there isn't any way to get off the chair. Psychological suffering in Tolle's system is externalized as the pain body , as if it is a parasitic entity th...

I've watched a lot of YouTube videos. Obviously. I feel like I'm drowning, I cling for dear life to anything that promises me a way out of Hell! The question that came to me today (I'm sitting on a wall as I write this, on my way to the shops) is: what could I have known, if I'd used first principals derived from physiology? Answer : everything has to become calm. So far so good.  I was convinced that I could only get to calm through openness and acceptance.  Sounds logical.  I wanted him to make me feel OK. Yep, that's where it starts to go wrong  And when he didn't - feel OK - I became louder and my heart, mind, soul, body and spirit felt drenched in acid. What I could have known is, the advice that talks about openness and acceptance comes from a tradition in which this makes sense. Basically a Christian perspective. Also people may be invested in getting you to watch their videos and a slightly confessional, punitive theory is quite honestly addictive,  Beca...