Demons attack

Hmmm, tough days in the past. Demons attack. And…. they have been warded off by a hell of a good Bach Remedy mix and a visit to the GP :-). Life is strange. Hypochondria is a bitch. And, well, since I wrote most of this post one day and now continued I have added this sentence to it in hindsight: it’s a funny post. Real Feeling style, but I’m not sure if there is anything in here that can be of help to anyone. Not sure why I’m writing this disclaimer. I think I am a bit afraid that you’ll think I am batshit crazy. Well, I felt I was. Demons, demons, demons.

I’m under pressure for 3 things: 1 year anniversary coming up and my fear of ‘well, you have been sober but you have not improved one bit in your life’. The other thing is ‘if I can not drink for a year, I am not an addict’ and from there on somewhere the realisation that I really am addicted dropped into my mind. I’m thinking that part of this ‘I can do this’ behaviour has been to prove myself, but possibly more the outside world, that I’m not addicted. Keeping up appearances is big in me. Slowly now the realisation is sinking in and shit do I hate it. Walking around with this timebomb, in a world that breeds addicts and there is very little place to hide from the insanity of the outside world. The 19 bags of empty bottles friend stayed over the other night. He knows about me having had to stop drinking, then goes on advertising the beers he is going to drink before he gets to my place and when I move away because I’m full in this alcohol breeze he’s like ‘I didn’t drink a lot’.
‘Smells different to me.’

There was meanness in that. I’m guessing I’m still doing the addict thing where we (i!) tend to point at others who are worse in order to try to get away with our (my!) own behaviour. Nasty. But ha! he deserved it. I do not appreciate my meanness though, it is not within control.

Back to the original post: Again, it is about my transfer of life’s issues to imagined diseases. This time I was having an imagined heart attack. My left shoulder and arm are hurting, sometimes badly, from tendon infections and the pain and my general stress cause tension which seeps into my arm all the way up to the tips of my fingers sometimes. And because of the stress I can’t read or look up what I would need to do heal it.

Obviously… the tendon infection is NOT enough for me, I was thinking…. this pain was masking an upcoming heart attack. I can wake up at night and panick floods me but I don’t realise that. My thinking brain is not on even though it acts as if it is while listing all these signs and totally agreeing with me rationally about the panick situation. When I stay in bed the whole world falls apart in my imagination and I am totally taken in by this horror. The second I sit up right I realise that I am in some kind of weird dunno what. I don’t know a lot of people who have this, but my brother has it too.

So, obviously I did not die the night before last. But the morning was not funny either. Yesterday I was at the bookstore and we threw a I-Tjing on my situation which pointed at hexagram 44. Depending on what book you read it is about addiction (surprise!), or at least the darkness that suddenly pops up again after having been driven away. Or…. innocent signs which are actually signs of a serious disease. And then I trew 44 AGAIN the next morning which is a change in I believe 1 in 4096. So obviously I was about to die of this awful disease (and disregarded the rest of the whole thing which suited me well because it was about man and forward women).

I am very sure that I am EXACTLY where I need to be – apart from the fact that I am not moving in the world as you know it, not doing the work and money things which would be very logical. Events are unfolding and I am walking a scary path but I do think that it is my path – however uncomfortable. Brené Brown’s book has helped me to unveil some of the shame that shrouded my awareness. From there on things unfolded, literally; for days I felt like being surrounded by a big waterlily that kept unfolding its leaves. And so the world, my history kept unfolding itself, situations because reappeared in a different light and again, my history was re-written. That is powerful stuff, and exhausting. And strange, because there is this tendency to think that what was in the past, can not change. It is my experience that it can.

With that experience I got into another ‘world’ – not sure how to call it. I touched upon it earlier in a post. People speak of different worlds and I never understood that, but by now I have come to get a feel of it. It has something to do with what one believes to be reality. I have been moving in something I call a shaman type of reality with the flower of energy unfolding and unfolding and unfolding into eternity. Like this photo, but standing and continuously. I wonder how my ‘mind’ (?) comes up with these things.

The other day in conversation with the book store man I felt this energy donutty thing like below. What I felt included my feet but slightly. And what it did is take energetic knowledge from the outside, internalize it, transform it and externalize it. It was a sort of energetic knowledge exchange thing. It is ‘easy’ to speak simple true words and ‘easy’ to understand in that mode. I just googled ‘energy donut’ and later added chakra, finally found ‘torus’ – that’s what the donut is called. 🙂 I wish I knew somebody who could tell me what it is all about.

And the day before yesterday, or earlier, I lost it and slowly the world started to drop away beneath my feet. I remember somebody writing about tectonic plates shifting. Mine fell one after the next and left me floating in a Matrix sort of reality where all this, dunno, info I used to base my life on was falling away from me. Like seeing your life fly past you but not just in front and in big things but in tiny things and all around like a curtain of little pieces of information endlessly dropping, dropping, dropping. Still, I don’t know what the heck is going on only that this is what is supposed to happen even though it is very uncomfortable.

Another uncomfortable experience: feeling / experiencing the world as such that the flesh is falling of my face and my bones, again, continuously. I’m thinking I need a shaman to tell me stuff. The book store man was in a dark, dark, dark, dark mood so not accessible for any insights on this. He is in a bad place, very much like I was last year and I realise again and again that this so-called ‘falling in love’ has NOTHING to do with anybodies reality but being a projection of my longing for belonging. I don’t know anything about him. Which is/was a good learning experience all in all. Bit dark, bit hopeless, bit sickening with all the longing going on. Bit irritating to be doing the transfer of addictions but… a learning experience. Sigh.

And then I could not take it anymore and this heart attack thing came up. Damn! I even saw a Netflix movie (The proposal) where the grandmother was faking a heart attack. Talk about synchronicity….

Uncomfortable stuff which pops up and….. leaves. I wish somebody could tell me what is going on. And on the other hand, I don’t really want to pay too much attention to it because it very much feels like going crazy. I know I’m not crazy, I’m an airplane. 😀

So, I took a whole bunch of Bach remedies in order to get myself sorted out. Panick mix:

Larch: for faking illnesses in order to escape growing or growing pains.
Mimulus: for extreme fear of specific things like illnesses.
Rock Rose: for, well, against, panick
Aspen: for fear experiences which are based sort of outside the body in the, dunno, I call it the in between, and in this case the place where the scary ghosts hang out, not the angels.
Scleranthus: for 10.001 impressions and not knowing what the hell is going on.
Agrimonie: the addict remedy, for not wanting to look at what is really going on
Chicory: for claiming or wanting to claim, for being the person who nobody would like to help.
Start of Bethlehem: for tiny, medium or big trauma.
Clematis: for being unreal
Chestnut bud: for NOT LEARNING WHAT I SHOULD BE LEARNING.

That’s quite a mix, all in all a quarter tea spoon of drops of alcohol in a pint of water which I kept on filling up after I had a few sips. Did the alcohol bother me? No. Bach remedies are (still?/again) in the medicine compartment in my head so there is no drink link. I cuddled the cat and she backed away though and looked frightened and as if she tried to remember what and why.

The GP congratulated me on being sober for 11 months plus. She also told me that she thought I carried too much and that my shoulder pain was part of that. She said: ‘What you did is very good, and looking at how it worked out I think it is a very good way for you to work it all out yourself. But it seems like it is time to learn to accept help because your body is telling you that you can not bear it anymore.’

‘What therapy do you think I should take?
‘No, health stuff. Don’t go there, go do something enjoyable. You just told me you can’t read your homeopathy books anymore, back away from worrying and do something you like. And learn to ask for help. This conversation we are having is a step in that. You do not look like the person who would be given help spontaneously, you have this closed ‘I can do it all by myself thing’ over you. Work on that.’
‘I caaaahaaaaaaaaaaant…. snif, snif.’
‘Why not?’
‘People will blackmail me into doing stuff I don’t want.’

If there is anything about me which makes me easy to help it is that I’m always honest(like). Wonder what my therapist (Hi! 🙂 ) would say about that. And this answer actually looks VERY much like a control issue. Well, real help, the sort that is freely given and is not an ego thing of somebody is hard to come by. And I can’t even do it myself even though I have been at the receiving end of being forced into ‘help’ and know what not real help looks like. Maybe I should make it a subject or a post. 😀

I am happy that I quit. More so also because again I met with another bipolar person. They seem to come popping up out of nowhere in my life. Apart from thinking I have a heart attack I am afraid that I could be bipolar and the word bipolarity suddenly pops up everywhere. I have self diagnosed BP2, obviously. Well, it would explain A LOT. And then I decide that I do not care because I’m seeing the Ayurvedic doctor and Ayurveda says ‘bipolar is just another imbalance of the person’. How astute. 😀

Noticing how I always make a situation worse in my mind and continue thinking: pfiew, happy that I quit. Hypochondria, one day, one day I will have to look at that too. Not today, my arm is hurting. 😀

I take: Bach remedies and Ayurvedic stuff. Some chocolate but the larger quantities now make me nauseous which is totally unfair obviously.

I need: rest

I want: ha, it all to be over and things to be easy

3 Things: this post, nice chat with the book store man online today, insights, lots of insights, and napping on the balcony in the sun. And of course a long walk along the beach with a new friend but I’m not sure if I can reply the friendship because I am a little bit afraid of her.

On discipline: well, needing to find discipline has sent me all over the place. I am guessing part of my condemnation of not being able to find discipline is driving the demons. Ooh, when laying in bed and being utterly scared, suddenly the fears got a face and a body, like on thangka’s. That was cool because it made me realise that it were demons / fears / things which can be dealt with one way or the other, on day or the other.

Still I have no clue of where I’m heading but I still do think I’m doing what should be done. Which is weird because it has been the other way around all my life. Knowing exactly where I was heading but still feeling that what I did was wrong. Hmmm, food for thought.

Hope you found something in it. Still feel I need to apologize for another ‘out there’ post. Well, this is how my process goes. That’s what I document. It is strange. I never thought I would walk this path. But I do. It is strange to me too but it feels appropriate.

‘My sweater is on backwards and inside out… and you say how appropriate.’

Project sober Feeling.

I have found what I was looking for

When I became sober it was my wish to get out of the state of addiction and become clear, transparent. To be who I am and not carry along these layers of shame, guilt, pain and misunderstanding of Life. As in such, becoming sober is a part of the path I (want to) walk. I was not sure where and how it would ‘fit into’ or ‘latch onto’ anything existing in this world but I had a vision of it: I wanted to become my core what I now call Self which I had seen in an ayahuasca ceremony. I want(ed) to learn to back away from my reactionist behaviour and not let old emotions, experiences stand in the way of a beginners mind / transparency. Not let old, unprocessed stuff colour new experiences.

Up to now I had not found where in this world I could find anything which could tell me about this road or this place. Up to today. 🙂 An internet search dropped this into my lap.

Vairagya

Fundamentally, Sushumna is attribute-less, it has no quality of its own. It is like empty space. If there is empty space, you can create anything you want. Once energies enter into Sushumna, we say you attain to Vairagya. “Raga,” means color. “Vairag,” means no color, you have become transparent. If you have become transparent, if what is behind you is red, you turn red too. If what is behind you is blue, you turn blue too. If what is behind you is yellow, you turn yellow too. You are unprejudiced. Wherever you are, you become a part of that, but nothing sticks to you. Only if you are like this, only if you are in a state of Vairag, then you will dare to explore all dimensions of life when you live here.

This is what I want. Long road 🙂 but finally an entrance into this matter that I did not have to come up with by myself. And well, a long road but as I noticed in sobriety: every step is one and baby steps are good.

Reading ‘The gifts of imperfection’ now teaches me a lot. I read about 20 pages a day – which, for me is sufficient when dealing with this kind of matter which in me looks to not only change my knowledge, my feelings, my memories and ideas but also my cells, my DNA. One of the things I learned is that now is exactly the time to read it. I had to let go of an overload of shame and sense of lack of worth before I could take this in. I feel the book is bringing me peace. 🙂 A word I would have never thought to find in this blog.

During the reading of the book I relive situations which have caused me pain and shame and also in which I shamed others. I am strong enough to look at them now without loosing my right to exist or feeling a need to drink away my feelings. The disappearing of the layers of shame make room for space and clarity, I feel I can breathe better and experience my body better. This morning I lay on my balcony in the sun and after reading something which resonated deeply with me I visualised myself standing up and suddenly became aware of tension and ‘charge’ I hold in several of my chakra’s – that was awesome. I have read my Anodea Judith book on chakra’s but have rarely actually experienced them. It is nice to learn how to look and feel more clearly now the mist that shame causes starts to lift.

Another thing I found was this post on the Hawaiian art of healing. It really resonates with me.

Ho’oponopono professes that we are all connected beings and if we see something wrong, it is a part of us that has brought us to that particular event/situation. Any event in our life is brought to us through our own vibrations.

In earlier times, if one person behaved criminally then the whole family, clan and village felt they were responsible for that behaviour. Hoʻoponopono was communicated by the village and it was addressed to the ultimate Spirit and Gaia. The heart of the mantra was – “We are responsible.”ho’oponopono mantra “We are sorry.” “Please forgive us.”

I have, from childhood onwards, looked at behaviour of people and wondered why there are so many hurt people and nobody helps them. We let children grow up in dirty slums with no place to play, no money for good food, worse, only money for poisonous fastfood and when it is ‘too late’ and the negativity of their surroundings has caught on to them we shame them, punish them and put them in jail for stealing, using drugs and other ‘criminal’ acts. I always wonder: who is the criminal here? To me it seems we have build a society where there is a definite lower class who carries the burdens of our (?) ‘success’. We do that worldwide by exploiting factory workers in Asia, Africa, we do that within countries where we allow beggars and junks to live in the nastiest circumstances, we allow that in classes, where the kid with the poor clothes and the snotty nose is the scape goat. Wealth creates a definite upper class of haves which lives on the have nots and… is ok with that. And the inbetweens keep striving and striving. The Hawaiian healing system says we, as a tribe need to take responsibility there otherwise we don’t heal. I’m thinking that is true.

I believe this concept of leaching on the weak was present in my family too. Now the curtains start to lift I truly experience how we preyed on my mother. In order to describe the relation between my mother and father I once said; ‘There are people who get cancer, and there are people whom you get cancer from.’ However harsh it sounds, looking back now, with shame lifting and being able to look at what different energy flows we had in our house I am guessing it comes very close to the truth. I am sorry mama, I am so sorry.

And… this is one side of the truth. Getting off track but mentioning it here for later reference: my mother did what my therapist calles ‘subjugation and resistance’. Not sure if he said that about her, it’s just a principle many women, people, live in: first ‘voluntarily’ subjugate to another and from there on…. fight against it! I have it too in relations to men, I feel I use as a way to keep me safe. ‘If I don’t stand up for my rights I will not be seen and not be shot down.’ (raped that is) And then in the relation suck and tease and fight because the subjugation is ‘not really my thing’. Touching on a deep fear here: I fear when I show Worthiness, when being a woman, which is pretty much a given, I will be raped. I think that was true for the environment I grew up in. Not sure though, truth has become something with many faces.

Yes, truth, truth… would come in handy. I am thinking lately that truth is relative to the world we live in and the position from which we look at things. Yeah, yeah, I know, I am 45 and I should have gotten to that point a little earlier possibly :-). I’m getting there… it is just that I don’t want to seem to let go of too many securities all at once. Truth sort of feels like a jar filled with skittles; some people only look at the orange, others only at the green ones and when speaking about their world they speak their orange and green truth. Like I used to think that all men are assholes.

And then there is this:

And then there is this, the different bodies where the use of plaster to heal a broken leg is smart in the physical body but the astral body has totally no use for it.

And then there are all the different worlds people live in, physically but also emotionally and spiritually. I wish I could map it out to understand it better. I could not find a photo to accompany it, it has to do with different planes too. I feel I do a lot of shifts through these worlds and modes and perceptions but I have no overview. It will come.

So, yes, I got of track here, funny to notice that this is another new ‘first time’ that I really start to consider editing a post to keep it more concise and understandable. I’m guessing that this thought pops up because I start to belong to myself a little more and that makes me feel like I don’t fit out and that makes me able to dare to fit in by editing. I am guessing my not editing is, next to not restricting myself in what I write, also a (sometimes not so nice) protest against the world. Yeah, the whole world of course. ;-).

I’ve lost track of where I am with this post but I need to leave so here’s a quick end:

I am happy that I quit, realising now the necessity. Also needing to do my desensitization training more because there is a power inside building up towards the 1 year anniversary which I find difficult. It’s this ‘if I can do it one year without, I might as well….. drink again.’ And it is coming at me from a whole lot of different angles currently, mainly mental things, not longing things.

I need: eh, to go on with what I do AND work on work together. Now I still have money to be able to choose.

I want: to have enough money to be able to settle in this confusing time where I am actually not confused but the world seems more confused to me. It is disturbing and I don’t know anymore where I fit in. Even though I fit into myself better and better.

I take: Ayurveda pills, really enjoying them. Ayurveda diet which currently is: no yoghurt, no banana, apples and pears only cooked (good breakfast! :-)), vegetables only cooked, cheese is ok but no or little meat. I do sometimes have chocolate but ha! I am actually looking at the quantity I am eating and considering eating less and acting upon it. No difficultly. And… no promises. I saw a photo of me yesterday with some tiny kids. I was appalled by my enormity. Need to find a healthy way to deal with that.

3 Things: 1 The gifts of imperfection book, 2 The system that ‘failure’ helps me to sort important stuff out and grow. I’m thinking if I had not worked out what is in the posts of today and the one before I would only be getting sicker and sicker. 3&4 My bravery to look at all the issues and my ability to hold my own space while doing so.

Discipline: still in the phase of doing things the whole day. Netflixing and Facebooking only in lunchtime. This morning I even started to plan some stuff while being in bed (NEW!!!) and my plan for tonight is to go to bed early and break the 1:30 am I’m doing these days. Let’s see. 🙂

Hope you have a nice day/evening. Thank you for reading and being with me on this journey. 🙂 ❤

xx, Feeling

On shame and the difference between longing and belonging

Currently reading Brené Brown her book ‘The gifts of imperfection’ – liking it, the Feeling way. I’m thinking it is a good book, and… finding too that she does not totally own what she’s writing. But, ghegheghe…. I am learning to deal with that. 😀 Starting to realise here that my perfectionism is nothing but a transfer of my own unsolved issues with shame, with not being good enough. And because I do not feel comfortable with (this aspect in) myself I feel that I need to point out other people’s inability to meet The Standard. ‘You are not good enough too! How dare you take your place in this world!’ What to say? Glad I now start to see how the dynamics work. Not happy about it yet, still in the learning phase, a little healing is happening here and there, it is a lot to process.

Opening my eyes to the shame I carry also opens up my eyes to how it got there and how this carry over system of parent to child works. Biologically very logic that we as a species carry over what we have learned of life to children. But not pretty when it comes to shame. I also remember fights with my mother where I refused to accept the shame she wanted to give to me.

Which brings me to this energetic / emotional system inside me I have been wondering about for a long time. People tend to say I am very open and therefore easy to speak with People tend to tell me very private things easily. But I sometimes think that my openness is a sham. I did not know how it worked but now I do. Part of it is a defence meganism: by opening up showing that I am no threat. Part of it is what I call ‘creating a mist’: by speaking about intimate things which are almost close to my heart I keep people focussed on that. But I never show what is behind that; the shame, the feeling of unworthiness, the feeling that I do not belong. Nowhere. I even cultivate the not belonging in my life, even here in my sober blog. I have this believe I have the weirdest sobriety blog around. Which in itself is not a problem, but the way, the intentions with which I set it up and use it as a shield is. I do that with everything. To cover up the not belonging inside. I feel like I turn myself inside out in order to hide the nothingness inside of that.

Belonging :-). I don’t know, it is not within. Never has been. Well yes, it has been in my ayahuasca experiences – but that is eh, real but not daily. My mother favored my older brother till the age of 30 or so. It was common knowledge, my brother even apologized to me about it :-(. He also told me to make less of a fuss too, so she would like me better. I guess I have been fighting for the right to be liked while making a fuss all my life. Children, well, even my cat, can have this ‘how much do you love me?’ behaviour where they test boundaries to see if the love is true. I don’t know if any of that was visible then. There was a lot of aggression in me too because I felt my needs were not met.

I feel my parents have been comparing me to my brother since the first second I was born. I was born as I do everything: stuck at first, wanting to coming out with my head the wrong way up as my brother had done. Then I drew back (is that even possible?), turned and was born in 3 contractions. Screaming so angrily like my mother had never, in all her years of childcare in hospitals, ever seen or heard a baby screaming. I guess that set the tone. My father said ‘Wooow, this one is very different’ and fainted.

That story has been repeated to me from a very young age. I never felt comfortable with it. I even made up that it was not true and that I was adopted. My brother and I spoke about that. We were sure he was real and I was adopted. We decided that based on how my mother related to me even though my brother could most likely remember that I was born and my mother had had a big belly. Kids and their thinking.

Around my 30ish birthday she suddenly came up to me saying something that bugged me for a long time: ‘I was reading a book and the mother had to choose what baby she would keep and what baby she would give away. I have always thought that if I had to choose I would choose your brother but now I think I would choose you. Not that I think I ever have to, but just so you know.’ How is that for an awkward ‘apology’?

Did it make me feel good? No, it freaked me out. First because in my ideal world parents don’t even THINK about having to choose between children – it sounded more like secret wishful thinking than anything else. And secondly because it proved that my mother had been favouring one of us and that was another reason for my ideal world to fall apart: mothers are not supposed to favour children. Life is not safe if mothers start favoring children. And thirdly because it proved that the person she favored was not me and I did not want that to be true but she made it true. I did say ‘thank you’.

Funny how one can be adult but when it comes to mother-child stuff I assume the child roll immediately. No questions asked.

Belonging. I started to mix it up with longing by the time I turned 14, 15. I’m guessing now I was quick to fall in love because I did not find I belonged in my family and wanted personal and physical connection to reassure me. Two days ago I dreamed of waking up in a farmhouse in the night, I was alone in the house. It was cold and pouring rain outside but I walked out to the barn where there was a campfire with family and friends who I knew were having (too much) drinks. While in the rain I noticed I carried a large empty wineglass and a teddy bear. The wineglass was to get drunk so I would not feel the difference between me and the others anymore. I guess in there is, for me, a very important piece of information on the energetic systems  behind my drinking behaviour. I also carried a teddy bear, that was because I was so very lonely. I was ashamed of the teddy bear, ashamed of feeling lonely because it told me (tells me) that I was (am) not good enough to be connected, to belong.

I also noticed this effect of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ in the drinking when it came to my father. My father has Aspergers syndrome which is one of the different autistic constitutions where the person is very brainy, mainly very technical with an immense control of language but has no social skills nor awareness of emotions in themselves nor others. He was pretty powerful in his presence and denying anything human that got in his way. In order for me to exist I had to not be there emotionally. We used to drink to excess together. My mother would hate that and we would laugh. Nauseating.

The night I had the dream my father had been checking my Linkedin profile. That feels uncomfortable. Does mean that he probably is up and about after the cerebral hemorrhage he had last year. We have not been in contact for 7 years now. It still scares me that he is sort of out there and interested. I feel I have no skills to deal with him. I feel sucked into his power immediately, even over a distance, even now he is most possibly a doddering old man. There is a reason I do not see him; I can not deal with it.

On mixing up longing and belonging: I am starting to see now how, and with what intention and intensity I throw this net of projections and hopes over the book store man and claim that it is love. I feel I’m almost there in letting go. 🙂 Good. I would like to be free but I can’t do that on willpower. As with alcohol, I need to do it on knowledge, insight in how and where and when it connects to me. I am happy that I have the time to work out these carry over feelings. Did I tell you he and I sort of ‘agreed’ on doing that as long as I kept ‘the biology’ out of the conversation? Which I understood as: ‘No sending of sexual messages, verbally or non-verbally, energetically.’ (What is the last conversation you had with your book store man?)

Ooh, I am very happy for this blog where I can just pfffffllllll spill all of that out….. Ghegheghe… on book store man, I have been cleaning my book shelfs and brought some 2nd hand books to the young book store man and also to the old. Traded for a beautiful book of Pema Chödrön a.o. He had a friend of 76 and they are both very much into health food, like: no wheat, eco only, nuts and avocado’s and vegetables, no sugar, no meat, no dairy. We went shopping for food and I laughed my head off. Two grandpa’s, both with more stamina and more speed in their walks than I, discussing what to eat and what not and what for. Part of which had to do with weight control!!! Gheghegheghe… I did not dare to put anything in my basket. The book store man saw than and started giggling. Ghegheghe, a tiny, 50 kilo 72-year-old with long grey hair and a long grey beard and bright blue eyes giggling.

Ooh, by the way, they are both old hippie addicts, heroine and alcohol. We spoke on recovery quite a lot. Very interesting. The friend of 76 ended up asking me if I were too critical to actually look at the possibility of taking him on as an intimate friend. I guess that was exactly how he phrased it. Both men are very sexual, must have to do with their diet, or because there is nothing left for them to do? Well, it makes him number 4 in a row of old guys ‘falling’ for me. There was a day, quite some months ago where I wished the Universe would help me find a wise man. Let this be a warning to you and I: BE SPECIFIC when you ask the universe for something. 😀

Is it a coincidence that this shows up in my life now? No, I think I still carry this concept of mixing up belonging and longing on the outside. My body of course is an abundance of Dutch glory, as the old book store man called it. Men tend to take that personally. Alexander Lowen says something like ‘the body is a manifestation of what happens inside’. My body type would belong to women who separate sex from love. That seems to create wide hips, heavy chest and a (well, relatively) small waist. I think it is (also) true. I feel like I use my sexuality as a shield. Daring people. Well, I guess that can be the next subject of study after shame.

There is something funny going on and I am going to put it out here because it puzzles me. Not seriously but still. When I got sober I realised that somewhere down the line, if I ever wanted to have sex again, I would need to start really slowly in order to not fall into old patterns/habits again. I was thinking: I might want to do a Tantra course like my friend did with her husband. A few weeks later I walked into the young book store man’s shop and after a customer had left with a tantra book he commented; ‘God, all these people getting stuck in tantra sex, trying to find liberation…. I will never ever do a tantra course.’

And the old book store man commented this week: I have not done tantra with my ex (he just broke up with her but they are still getting together – similarities all around) but I would really like to do that. How strange is that? I mean, these are people just saying things out of nowhere. It is not that I walk around with this big sign on my forehead saying ‘Tantra course!’

Ok, so I’m trying to deal with shame and kendeng! sex comes up and I am fending with it. Not elegant but I’m not going back to edit it because I think it is relevant. I do not know how yet and I sort of feel that I do not want to know either. :-D. Which, I have learned by now, means I had better sort it out.

I am happy-ish that I quit. I find things a little difficult these days. Specifically with my father and being thrown back in these ancient, almost tribal memories of the campfires we used to have, (be)longing and drinking. And I am sad about these memories, sad about the shame, the energy which is locked inside that and specifically sad about not belonging and feeling like the only options I have is to sort of hook up with an old geezer. Next, that tells me I am way too fucking fat and blaaah blaaah blaaaah, here I go again. Shame needs to be looked at. There is this repetitive pattern in my head telling me that the young guy does not want me because I am too fat and the old guys do want me because I am fat. I guess there is some work to be done. The thought of seriously paying attention to my weight has crossed my mind but I must make sure that this does not happen for the wrong reason. Rejection leads to shame in me, and to the feeling not to belong here. Losing weight does not solve that.

I need: to continue to look at and work out shame issues and possibly with somebody who can bear to listen to it too. Therapy time. And no, I will not risk my shame issues on those who can not bear it. I tried my SIL this week, that worked out to be an ‘adding insult to injury’ situation. 😦 Sigh.

I want: the whole world to be different so I don’t have to change. (Guessing that is not very likely to happen…)

I take: Ayurvedic pills and Mebendazol against parasites in my intestines. It makes me feel very lousy; I had the start of all the side-effects which are listed. That’s when I went to sleep to put my brain to rest so it could not come up with even stronger side-effects. I guess that is something I have learned in sobriety. 🙂 The hypochondria is still there but the dealing is getting a little better. 🙂

3 Things: picked up another beautiful book at a so manniest 2nd hand bookstore; Your child’s body language from Susan Quilliam. It is a photo book explaining what it is you see on the photo’s. They are real photo’s of real situations. The book tells me that there are other people in this world who also see what I see. I always thought I was strange about this. Maybe she is strange too. That is also possible. All that knowledge for Euro 1,50. Secondly I am happy for the nice bike tour with lunch and a book in the park I had today. And for writing this blog or maybe more for the discoveries I made.

On discipline: getting more insight on how I try to shame myself into good behaviour. Which I guess is why it is not working. There is one good thing about my procrastinating: it has brought me to go look for what is behind it, to learn to listen to shame. I’m just in the phase of cleaning up / gathering info so there is no real healing yet so I am not really happy about it yet but I guess that will come. 🙂

Guess that’s all for now. It is late night now. Thank you for reading this. Thank you for sticking with me when I try to sort out these things amongst which the book store man things which must bore you to death by now. Well, rephrase: must have bored you to death months ago. I think I’m getting where I want to go: get insight on my way, the systems of attachment.

Hope you have a nice evening / day.

xx, Feeling