The land of no self-hate – Episode 12 ‘rock-bottom and becoming help-ready’

Life has been tough. Tougher than I can handle or maybe tougher than chocolate can handle :-). I have let myself slip to the bottom of the pit and stayed there too long. I have been lying to my friends and family about how I feel because I did not want to be confronted with myself. I kept on saying “I am ok” or “I don’t want to talk about it.” while inside I was dying. I lost faith in myself, my life, my future. Everything was very dark.

I don’t want to lose my friends. And I know about the untrue friends and the true friend, but the energy unload which happens when I really let go is BIG. I do not think it is not suitable for friendship relations.

A new truth I found is that I have lived with adjusting myself all of my life. Adjusting what I say, adjusting what I feel, what I think, to fit in. And then followed the hiding and drinking away what could not be transformed otherwise. 😦 Obviously that is a sick system and not sustainable. 😦 So there I was, another much-needed rock bottom again – the emotional one.

This Tuesday I had to visit the doctor who determines whether I need to look for a job or are entitled to further financial government support. She was rather persistent in finding out how bad things were. Her repeated questioning brought me to places I hope to never visit again, though that might be a wish that will not be granted. I was crying and shaking all over. I knew things were bad, I had no idea it was this bad. New memories of my early youth, teenage time and young adulthood have been popping up off late and it is tough; mostly, dark experiences which then feel so overwhelmingly real in the here and now that it is baffling. I assume it is a side effect of quitting drinking and not having tasks on hand which propel my thoughts into the future.

I tell so much lies about how I feel in daily life and adjust myself to the outside world that I have shut myself down totally. I deliberately place cheerful and silly Facebook post and comments with quick responses and smiling emojis to (try to) make sure nobody thinks I have changed.

I notice I build another me at quite an emotional distance from where I actually am. That is what addiction is to me and it is SO DESTRUCTIVE. It is like I am trying to build a several story house but in order to deal with technical issues and difficulties in the design, I shift the coordinates for everything to avoid having to solve stuff or think about what is going on. I do this for all the plumbing, electricity, for every room and for every layer of the building. Now the rooms do no stack onto each other or on the founding even, the plumbing does not connect from room to room or story to story, planks from the stairs are missing, the sewage system is dysfunctional because not placed at the tap or toilet points, the light shines in places where the floor does not exist and the roof lies on its back in the garden. It is how I feel energetically and it is NOT WORKING!!!

I guess telling others all is OK is not working either. The doctor was a good mirror. She indirectly ordered me to go into therapy; if I do not improve within a few months she was obliged to take action. In that she hinted at ordering me into therapy involuntarily because of danger to self – or shut down the funds. As threats go, these are quite effective.

Today I had a GP visit – for the record, this appointment was based on a talk I had with my administrative guy to whom I could not keep up appearances – the mask fell of and he stimulated me to make changes.

I found out I have the idea that nobody understands how I am wired. I have the idea that if I tell how I feel everybody thinks I am crazy. Maybe I am, to a lot. But not to everybody and not to myself although I fear to have experienced pre-psychotic episodes off late where I started to doubt the existence of the world. Yeah, funny, in a not funny way. Pressure in my mind went up so big that I could not deal anymore. In order to deal something had to give: it was me or the world, I decided the world was not real and I could walk through walls if I felt like it. Scary shit. And while my mind is telling me of this new order I KNOW it is not correct but shit the pressure is high. Not advisable.

But it is always darkest before dawn and a lot happened for the good in the last several days. I came home from the doctor’s and made myself an extremely healthy salad. Taking care of myself with a last resort of force, but I did it. The next 2 days I battled the darkness like I battled quitting drinking in the first days; actually using willpower to stop negative thinking and pull it out by its roots. Again and again I find that if I do that, I feel better. Yeah: “duh?!” but ah, difficult when depression has drawn its tracks into the mental state and thinking.

BUT I DID IT!!!! I’m not there yet obviously but I made a start to turn things around. The chocolate is still there but the vegetables are back on the menu big time, so is hope, love for myself and so are the Bach remedies (a type of ‘homeopathy’ / energetic ‘medicine’ to promote happiness and emotional health) I chose something to give me hope, settle the crazy, deal with shock.

In the last months I have sorted my problems into several categories and I found that these are big. The last two days I realised that, as with drinking, I just (?) need to work out what is the problem and where I can find help. My issues are big, but not insurmountable. Or so she said upfront ;-).

In the below paragraphs I write about what I think makes it difficult for me to exist in this world. Please note that I am aware there are billions of people who are worse off than I am. Many of them amongst readers of this blog. But that does not mean I can cope with what I am in this world. 😦 The toughening up I did led me into drinking so I guess there is something I did and do not understand. Please note this is my own analyses, I should be open to the possibility that things are not as I think they are in order not to close off any learning opportunities. But for now this is it.

What makes my issues, the PTSS, the VTS (vanishing twin syndrome), the high IQ, the hypersensitivity, I am clair-ish sentient 😉 difficult is the mix with the addiction; the not wanting to be here and experience what is. That makes it impossible for me to build on anything – that goes for anything: I can not hold on to anything, not to money, not to a job, not to a partner, not to a thought. Only to not drinking actually. 🙂

The Vanishing Twin Syndrome (losing my twin brother in the womb and actually remember that as a very traumatic experience) which leads to a lot but mostly caused my eternal ‘not wanting to be here on this earth’, a big part of my PTSS, the clear sentience and the hypersensitivity. I also believe this openness somehow set me on a path of finding difficulties in the field of sexual abuse. But that might ‘just’ be coincidental. It made me vulnerable to not feeling worthy of being alive: I had already caused somebodies’ death before I was born. No wonder I have no right to be happy and be me.

Because of the hole in my energy system where my brother used to be I am open to all kinds of energies. I feel I am not connected to this body, to this human shape, I am connected to everything non-material.

His death was so overwhelming that it broke my natural defenses and threw me out of my core. I have not been able to repair this. I need to learn to close myself off in order to make myself feel safe in this world and actually want to be here, to fully incarnate. Currently I am like a sender/receiver with no on and off button and no ability to distinguish between incoming and outgoing. I never know where I end and the other begins. Makes for great sex though, when all is well. Learning to deal with this will hopefully help me to close myself off instead going into hiding or being aggressive, tactless, nasty to others when I feel unsafe.

I am thinking my hypersensitivity is caused by the VTS but has been worsened by the abuse of alcohol, sugar and other addictions which stress out my system and make it vulnerable – not only energetically but also chemically. Over the years I have become hypersensitive to chemical smells and coffee for instance. When my neighbours drink coffee my bowels start doing their bowel thing and I need to go to the toilet.

Next there is PTSS from the VT experience and (sexual) abuse, mother with cancer, father with Aspergers and his religious fixation on the apocalypse. We had a stressful home situation with continuous fighting and passive aggressiveness dripping off the walls. My parents with their structural sexual abuse issues, their continuous financial issues (while they were never out of money! btw) were not able to do their parenting job because of their own mental and physical states; mom’s cancer and their addictions and their own traumas.

Finally there is me being intellectually gifted – which is difficult to say because it sounds arrogant and ha! it does not keep me from being stupid. Intelligence and being streetwise/smart are NOT related :-D. But I guess being best of class for many years of my life puts me in the gifted category. I followed an online course on the subject and I the teacher mentioned that being gifted comes with specific disadvantages as not feeling understood and having difficulty to connect with what is ‘normal’. Also: the inability to connect intelectually actually made and makes people (me!) feel stupid and incapable because others do/did not understand me. Through the years though I have learned to connect to people over the human factor. Which is good, and way more useful in life but it leaves me unsatisfied in working some stuff out and somehow people do not help me with stuff because they think I can manage myself. Not true.

One of the happenings which send me spinning a few weeks ago is finding out my gifted, primary school friend had killed herself, leaving 2 kids behind. We always competed over the best school results. She was very creative and very skilled in that area, she studied to be an architect.

Being gifted does combine badly with my anxiety. In work situations I use my giftedness to oversee processes and all the tiny details which make the business clock tick. In combination with my anxiety and perfection I focus on the things which go wrong. It is a useful trait for a Quality/Safety Manager but it causes continuous anxiety and it is a bad way of using gifts. Also: it freaks out colleagues to see bears on every spot of every road.

My GP does not call my breakdown a rock-bottom but uses the word T-junction. 🙂 Not taking action will lead to darkness, despair and death. Taking action can lead to light. I choose the light because in the darkness of where I was I realised that underneath all of it I like myself.

My GP gave me a few names of therapists, I am to investigate by myself and I come back next week to make a decision with her and sign up somewhere.

I am happy that I quit. Seeing how much I loathed myself when I drank I think I would not be able to bear being alive right now if I would be drinking. Not a positive choice, but a much-needed one. 🙂

The hug-buddy is back. We did not speak about what happened (NEW). After having been asked by the tax service to pay back 4500 euros (half of my savings). I was aware of their claim on my, and I do have the money, but the real thing was a bit more real than I had imagined. I only found out a few days later that they would also be GIVING me 5000 euros for another reason so I’m going 500 plus iso 4500 minus. Realising how extremely stressful these money issues are I suddenly felt ashamed about my harsh judgement of him. We hugged it back to ok. 🙂 I guess some day we will talk.

These days I will be sorting out my issues further and trying to find places and people whom I think can help me with these. For all those who have tried EMD or EFT: there seems to be no organisation without it anymore so I guess that will be on the menu. 🙂

Now is bedtime, tomorrow is another day. I look forward to sorting stuff out and cleaning up this emotional mess. 🙂 I have a lot to give and to live for, if I allow myself to be me.

I am grateful for the people and professionals I have been meeting this last week.

Thank you for hanging in there and reading this rather unedited, dark process of me unaddicting. I want to become clear, transparent and I want to become me. To feel safe to be me. To not be afraid of me. I also want to understand the energetic ways of life. I want to love and be loved.

Wishing you a nice sober experiences.

xx, Feeling

The land of no self-hate – Episode 11

Last weeks have been dark and then some insight popped up. Right now I would word that as: ‘The darkness is liveable, it is the running away which causes the pain.” I eh, hahahaha…. hmmm…. see some connections with life and excessive drinking here….

Writing this and finding out that I took a 48 year D-tour to find out that ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” or in Dutch:

Een mens lijdt dikwijls ‘t meest,
door ‘t lijden dat hij vreest.
Doch dat nooit op komt dagen.
Zo heeft hij meer te dragen,
dan God te dragen geeft.

Which roughly translates into: Often people suffer from fear of situations which will never occur anyway. That is how people suffer more than God/The Universe has given them to bear.

Currently I am trying to sustain this insight which means practising being in the now and accepting what is. I am practising this with my mind but it seems my system is wired to be continuously stressed out. Guess that did not surprise you. It does surprise me however. The more I find out about myself the more I understand why I once thought drinking was a good ‘solution’. This continuous state of stress is pretty nasty. I can truly not remember the last time I was relaxed for say, half a day. It must have been some holiday in the ’90.

Today is my 3 year, 11 month sober monthyversary. I have discovered much in this time. I chose this my blog name because I realised I used alcohol to not feel. So in order to get sober I thought I might as well dive into my feelings. Hahahaa….. sigh. Gheghegheghe…. sigh…. Don’t wish too hard, it might come true 😉

I can tell you now: people (i?) have many layers. And layers can be approached from different angles at different times while I am in different ‘states’ of being. What I am trying to learn now is no different from ‘being in the moment’, from ‘breathe, relax and drink water’ from practising ‘what are your hopes, your fears and your expectations’, from ‘taking Life at Life’s terms’. 🙂 Nothing different from ‘feeling my way back into life’. Not different from ‘trying to not judge’. And you know, sometimes all of these insights come together at one point and then it all falls apart again for me to rebuild and leave out what does not work. I guess for some it might seem I am going in cirlces. I guess for some parts I am but I am not ready to find any help and also I feel that I really really need to find out what I am like, inside, without interference. Well, in other words again: not ready for help.

So, many layers, different moments, situations, attitudes all to be explored and currently active is my attempt to accept the darkest darkness which I know up to now. Not running for it. Not fighting it. Not blaming myself for it – just having a look at it without judgement. Experiencing how I want to run away from what is happening inside, how I grab my new phone to start playing a game, how I read a book to forget what is bothering me, how I eat, watch Netflix – so much running. Constantly informing myself ‘this is me’, ‘this is me too’, ‘this is ok’, ‘it is ok to feel this’, ‘no need to run, you have lived through this before’, ‘this is me too’.

I have set my phone timer every 15 minutes to remind me to check if I am still on track. Time and time again I am amazed at how much energy goes into fear and worrying. Having said that…. I have several letters laying about here which need to be opened. I suspect invoices.

Other subject; the hug-buddy dropped by yesterday, informing me that he has lied about 2 things. He still works his second job and does not play sports when in the evening hours.  He lied deliberately because he saw me lifting an eyebrow when he mentioned the 2nd job. Next to his way too tiring 45 to sometimes 50 hours a week job he has added another 2-3 hours a day of food delivery to his watch. I know this is pretty normal in the USA where a lot of people with a 40 hour job in services can not even make a living wages. But it is not normal in The Netherlands. I know how tired he is daily and his health is failing but he keeps on adding responsibilities to his life which wear him out. Also, the tax system in the Netherlands is progressive, so with way more work he is only going to gain a little more but he is not aware of that. I informed him of that earlier. And together that was enough to make him lie. He said he had quit the job. I was happy about that and thought nothing more of it. When, in the evening we connect online and I enquire after his day he lies and says he has been sporting with his roomies.

Why? We are not even in a relation where I have the power to demand anything of him. Also, he seemingly does not have the idea he can speak to me, even about the small stuff. What about the big stuff? What if he had, say a VD? Or, well, why lie all together? I just wonder what somebody’s interior is made off if they feel they can not speak to me about this. He speaks about every big and tiny shame he has about sex, it is sort of unload of shame whenever we meet. Me being witness to his pain helps him process stuff and it helps me process mine. So why oh why lie about something so, so tiny?

The hug-buddy has financial issues because he has financial obligations to his estranged wife, his kid and the family in his homeland. It is very strange to, with my Dutch / Western culture, run into this family blackmail system they are all involved in. And the hug-budy gives way, and gives way, and gives way to all the blackmail in his family because ‘first born and only son’ – all these things which have totally lost their meaning in our society and are therefore difficult for me to understand. Worse: they make me angry because I see it as a prison they all create for each other. But that is not my business and when he enquires after this I speak from that place in space where I know it is not my business and where I am aware of the cultural differences and my lack of family ties on top of that.

I was thinking I dealt with that ok-ish but now I am confused. The ‘shame one another into the group’ culture seems to have gotten into his spine. I guess it is naive to think some years of appreciating the (relative) freedom of the West would magically change his make-up. This recent issue makes it look like dodging issues which ‘women’ present is his favorite way of not dealing with stuff and not being present to the woman in front of him. While trying to speak with him about why he lied he kept on interrupting me, did not listen, kept on inserting the words ‘women are like that’ in  and in the ‘conversation’ and in the end did not find anything I said of any importance and left.

I seem to be not a person, I am ‘one of the women’ and because of that whatever I say is not really important. My final conclusion is that he lied because he thought I would make a scene and chuck him out (wot?!) if he did not quit his extra job. Looking at it from a very dark point I would say he just wanted to keep his proverbial foot in the proverbial door.

Oh F! I’m angry. And as a logical decision I shut my emotional doors and threw him out of the tiny corner in my heart. I am getting way too well exercised in chucking people out of my heart. And then again… why be around people who are not willing to communicate and see me as a person worth speaking with. Not speaking to, speaking with.

And haha, the day before this happened I signed up at a dating site for outings in the city.  It is not a datingsite per se, it is more for outings, however some people do mention how they are tall, skinny and blond so I guess they are looking to date-date. I would like to visit some exhibitions, theater, musea and movies with others, male or female. While writing here I am making an appointment with another guy just because I am angry. Geez how childish is that. 5 Minutes later the other guy wants to meet along the highway – with airco. Nope. Not happening ‘along the highway’ = motel. I proposed a forest. And hahah, I can’t even say: “My way or the high way!” Ghegheghe….

Need to get out of this mode. This is not how I want to deal with people or myself. The my way or the high way joke says it all. I do not want to meet another person who diminishes me to boobs and ass only.

I just chatted with the hug-buddy on how I felt about what he did. He replied with patting himself on the shoulder for not lying anymore but telling me. Hmmm… that is not what I had hoped for. What about ‘Sorry’? Sorry has not shown up in this conversation yet. Why chat? Because I am so angry that I can not even be near him and he contacted me. Sigh.

My phone alarm goes off very 15 minutes telling me ‘this is me too’.  Every 15 minutes I am acutely aware of my emotions and hahaha, they are quite powerful. I do not think it is a good idea to be thrown around by emotions which is why I have to get to know them. Light and dark. Fuckerthefuckerthefuckfuckfuck.

Haaaa… that’s better.

Ok! I am HAPPY THAT I QUIT!!! I guess this is it. This is me. This is how I walk this earth. I do not have to run from everything because frankly; running has become too tiring. Running internally for what I do not want to accept actually makes me fearful and depressed. I am here where I prefer the real shit instead of the running way, self invented school sick depression shit. And no, I do not say that I think this is true for other depressed people. At this moment, from where I stand now and how I look upon the things unfolding this is true for me. It is actually pretty relaxing to realise ‘this is me’. It is not ‘that I am’ – which is a term from the spiritual teachings world but I am currently looking at the system of e-motions – the things which set me in motion. I have some unpacking, cleaning up and settling down to do. 🙂

Coming to the end of this post I realise this acceptance is part of learning to love myself, of self acceptance so I changed the blog header to the self-love series. Being witness to what is inside of me, being witness to my emotional body.

Obviously I am not sure if I want to be / react in the reactive way I am but I am learning. Progress, perfection can wait. The egg timer is a good idea, again.

Wishing you a nice, happy sober day/evening. 🙂

xx, Feeling

Coping well with a crate of empty beer bottles, some shame, some darkness and some understanding of the internal Universe.

Yesterday a friend and I returned a crate of empty beer bottles which had been on my balcony for over 4 years. As I live on the 4th floor without an elevator I used to drink from cans but… at some point, 4 years ago I was trying to quit and then favo beer came on sale in the bottles. I promised myself that it would not be so bad if I just moderated. Well, I guess you know how that works out…  Some 4 years and 2 days later….  I FINALLY got to bringing it back. 🙂 It has 4 euro deposit money so obviously I wanted to cash that.

All this time of not drinking I had been hesitant to bring the bottles back. At first the rattling of bottles in a crate ignited thoughts of drinking. Later it brought back specific memories of what I call our ‘drunken nest’  at home. My dad, brother, friends and I would drink bottled beer on a summer evening at a campfire. I won’t go romanticising this because the truth was that I was already addicted then and the family dysfunctional partially because of the use of alcohol. Looking back now I realise that both my parents had ‘the gene’ even though they never got into it to the max. My father did for a few years when he studied but that finished off his study and he had to move back to his teetotaler parents so that sorted that.

That is the thing with drinking while having a family: it is not only the person who drinks who is affected, it is everybody. When drinking my mother was not available, not for normal conversation, not for connecting, everything was ‘dealt’ with quickly and in an irritated manner. She made clear that we came between her and her drink, or as she would phrase it: “the only moment of the day I have to myself”.  A lot of the issues I could have used help with as a teenager, like sexual assault where not spoken off because she was already irritated when I mentioned something simple as school stuff. That is what she taught us; alcohol is more important than you are. And in my twisted and already addicted mind that read: drinking = solving problems.

When my dad drank he would become even more convinced of himself and start orating for 3 hours on end on dark subjects nobody was interested in like doomsday and the end of times. Hmm, orating for 3 hours… how does that sound familiar? If anybody protested, specifically when my mother protested, he would lash out like trying to win the first price for bullying.  After that we would all smooth it over with more booze. Flush the tension away.

Mike from the blog ‘dharmaholic‘ spoke about having a family and drinking a few days ago in an interesting post and the shame based family:

For your information, here are some of the things Bradshaw (edit: writer of the book ‘Healing The Shame That Binds You’ about shame, shame based families and addiction) speaks about parent modeling and why shame-based parents have little ability in these matters.

‘Modeling includes how to be a man or a woman; how to relate intimately to another person; how to acknowledge and express emotions; how to fight fairly; how to have physical, emotional, and intellectual boundaries; how to communicate;how to cope and survive life’s unending problems; how to be self-disciplined; and how to love oneself and another. Shame-based parents cannot do any of these”.

That was how my parents failed to be present to my brother and I, to themselves, to eachother and to family and the few friends they had; because of their drinking and their fights with themselves and the fights between them. 😦

The tv-series Patrick Melrose (addicty trying to get clean and trying to deal with his past of abuse) is on in The Netherlands. Obviously my parents were not quite as far away from me as his and the abuse did not come from within the family – but what is very familiar is that undertone of dread. continuous insecurity, fearing I, my integrity, would be attacked, abused. In early childhood I could ‘get over things’ and ‘forget about them’ but the older I grew and the more incidents added on the more I would freeze. And from early puberty onwards I was continuously in a fight/flight/freeze….. and drink mode.

Ok, well, back to the crate on the balcony. I had cleaned the balcony but the crate was staring at me. Earlier I thought keeping it was a good idea to remind me of my stupidity and all the wrongs I had done. I mentioned this to  friend who came by and she said: if you do not dare to do it alone, let’s go take it to the store together. We did. 🙂 While walking I spoke about the sound being a trigger. She mentioned that it triggered her to drink cola because it reminded her of bottles of cola. 🙂 That is about focusing on not continuously fighting the old, but replacing our behaviour with new behaviour. In this case that would be drinking cola which I will not – but the sound could be from apple juice or water bottles too. Good changes. 🙂

Also: now I am able to detect what was going on and how this crate calls up memories, guilt and self-hate. In the last 4 years I have also developed some form of self-worth to realise that the hurt coming with the memories and my own judgement is not so much ‘what I deserve’ but more ‘what I learned to do to myself’. I realise guilt is a suitable emotion when applied in moderation in the correct situation. However feeling guilty, always, about everything, about being alive is not a sustainable way of living – so to say. 😉

For me shame is a big issue and finding back my voice, my right to live and right to protect myself, my right to be safe is difficult. So many damaged my physical and emotional  integrity to rid themselves of their own feelings of shame through aggressive sexual acts against me. Sexual abuse was the key ingredient of my parents marriage with daily doses of forced sex. That layer of vile acts seeped through the family and poisoned everbodies’ mind, heart, soul and energy system.

So yeah, shame is something to work on for me. And I am guessing at some point in my life it would be nice to be free of reproaching my parents for letting me down. Hell, not reproaching parents for having kids and thinking they can keep them safe while my mother actually knew their marriage would be a destructive one, would be nice. And yes, I know this is twisted thinking but that is a part within which is fucked up badly. I decided that I would never have kids because I would not want to do to anybody what my parents did to me / did not do for me. Everybody kept on and keeps on saying ‘but they were trying their best’. But if unleashing ones own shame on kids is the best… I don’t want to walk down that road. And knowing I was addicted to alcohol: what did I have to offer? Continuation of damaged genes and sick coping mechanisms?

Back to the crate: 3 Years and 10 months sober I do not have to ‘keep up appearances’ and then buckle under the weight of shame and self-hate only to drink again. I am now able to voice my worries to a friend who comforts me and helps me out in a practical way: walk with me to the store, be present to my discomfort. And I am able to accept that just as it is without feeling inferior. I can thank her for that without feeling stupid and not suitable to live.

Those are a lot of changes. 🙂 I am not in AA but seeing how my developments go I can see how they touch upon the 12 steps. 🙂 And indeed, how resentment is an important part of me and it hinders me. But I can not step past the deliberate hurt they caused me, for putting me in harm’s way on purpose, for not listening when I expressed abuse. For sending me back into social situations in which I had been abused. For not believing me when telling them my brother was egging the abusers on. For not believing me my brother pulled a knife at me. For disbelieving everything I said from that point onwards because ‘he would not do such stuff’. Well. He did. And they did. And while I was losing myself and almost soiled myself my mother was looking sincere but not fully. I never understood until I learned about micro-expressions; that explained the glimpses of joy combined with power and sex. Vile. She was smiling at me and experiencing lust when sending me back into the crowd with luring, lusting and grabbing guys willing to go to any length to get some action – there was no protecting me. Because drinking. Because my misery made her feel less alone? I do not know. She had been perverted and now it was my turn. That is what families are about: handing down experiences. Unfortunately that counts for the darker ones too. 😦 Patrick Melrose is very explicit about not wanting to live in this system himself and at the same time behaves exactly the same way his father did. 😦

That’s the thing isn’t it: we all think we will be there for kids, friends, nephews, nieces, family,  colleagues, neighbours when they want to express something awful and need help. But the reality is: as long as we do not look at our own pain and darkness, kids, friends, nephews, nieces, family, collegues, neighbours turn into people who are uncomfortable to be around with after they have been hurt. Typically kids who have been abused or bullied will not ‘just cry’ so others can feel sorry for them and comfort them. They have been touched by the shame of the abuser and therefore do not feel the right to cry anymore. They whine, become silent, they can become aggressive or withdraw and stumble over their own feet exactly when others ‘need’ them to be inspirational and show off. And if they can not perform beautifully on Sundays at grandma’s, at school or at football, at least don’t be a whining embarrassment. I cried, I begged, I moaned, I sabotaged and I got dismissed by my parents for whining so they send me back into the lion’s pit. I learned I had no value.

“You are an embarrassment, I am ashamed of you.” actually means: “Your behaviour touches something in me I can not carry, and I dislike you for reminding me of the shame, guilt, self-loathing I have inside.” That is how transfer works. I have shame, you remind me of it, I need to lash out so I can feel better, you feel worse and now you carry my shame.

The other way around: I am thinking, when experiencing discomfort like shame and unworthiness in dealing with somebody, especially kids, it is extremely important to be aware of what is going on and what is carried over, what does not want to be seen, what has no right to exist. Alcohol and other drugs prevents parents, teachers, therapists from doing that because addiction is a shame fueled misunderstanding of life.

In the last months I ended up in a dark depression and allowed myself to go into my underdog mode. Rock bottom will be the solid bottom on which I rebuild my life – I hope ;-). I will sink and sink till I let go of the attachment to destructive patterns. Knowing that I let go. I cut out everybody who did not exactly believe me as I experienced my life and speak about it. No matter how much I moan I expect people to listen and if they don’t they can get out of my life. I had to do that to make space for me to believe me, to take myself seriously, to take back room in myself to experience. Moaning only happens when people do not take their own pain seriously. Moaning is a structure of squeezing a non-existent pimple right next to a giant white head. I was going to not dismiss myself too, upfront. Not going to set boundaries to experiencing the damage which has been done. Not going to slightly change my story or leave stuff out to make people accept it.

My dreams looked and felt like this vid, that person. “The monsters are running wild inside of me. I am faded. So lost. I am faded.”

 

It was informative. The utter darkness of not wanting to live, not being able to be social, not taking care of me; it was dark. Days filled with planning on how to take my life. How will I make sure the right people take care of the cat and will keep her. How will I make sure they do not suspect that I’m not going on a holiday. Dark. Some days in I realised I was wanting myself out of my body constantly. Do you recognise that?

Also, I had changed the security settings to my blog and I had to type in the name to this blog every time I wanted to read something. I realised that I was not feeling my way back into life. I was pushing myself away from experiencing what was going on but making a ‘kill the ego’ solution to it by wanting to die. As I was laying in my bed anyway I dove into what was.

I can tell you, the running for the darkness and going into suicide thinking is dark. What is behind that within me is dark too but there is a difference. Behind it is destruction. It is natural. It is Thanatos. The Universe has 2 main powers: one is life and the other is death. You can call it light and darkness, yin and yang, whatever. One is expanding, the other is subtracting. The one can not live without the other. The substracting balances the growth. It is that which brings order to the chaos so the growth can follow a sustainable path, not grow wild, not overgrow itself. It sets boundaries to that without boundaries, which is infinite, which is unlimited. I dread endings. Every ending has an atmosphere of my brother dying. I dread boundaries and limits. I ‘chose’ an addiction which I thought helped me to avoid all of that – only to find that the alcohol in the end limited me. Which is correct. That is how Life is.

The darkness  is where I do not want to be, I relate this back to the suffering in the womb when my brother died. And funny; I realised that me backing away from this energy to quit building, to make sensible choices instead of wanting it all, makes it impossible for me to fulfill any project or actually achieve something in life because I dread the ending of it. The energy connected to ‘being done’ is for me connected with terror and death. So I back away.

And obviously, in backing away I do not accept life on life’s terms and get unbalanced. 😦 Just Universal laws. The darkness, it is real. It is part of Life. It is natural. I feel I have gotten an extra leg to walk on, like parts in my body have re-integrated with experiencing this darkness within. The suicidal thinking is another darkness, one with ‘opinions’ and ‘wants and needs’, an ego created darkness. The darkness of Life, as I experienced it then is just what it is: destruction. Not personal. Not focussed on the ego. Overwhelming and powerful but true and clear. Quite a relieve actually.

The last month has been about falling apart, looking at all the pieces and the glue which kept them together. Most of the glue is/was not so much a life force but it consists of freeze. Frozen emotions, frozen processes, blocked paths through life. Funny how that what I fear ‘the darkness’ actually ends up building my system itself and preventing the opposite ‘Life’ to happen. Which is… exactly how I think it works. I wanted to find freedom in alcohol while I found enslavement. I wanted financial freedom while I found that depletes my funds :-). I wanted to live without boundaries while I found that means that indeed I reach nothing. I want to explain stuff and bury people in words.

Living Life on life’s terms. 🙂 I have made a big step and while I thought I stepped into the darkness I stepped into freedom. Not kaboom Light, but well, relieve, understanding of the workings of me. Experiencing internal freedom, you know; when you understand stuff and feel your DNA change. 🙂

One of the characteristics of people with a vanishing twin is that they can not finish stuff. Their energy is in the start of a project and then…. pfffff…. they seem to lose interest, fall into pits nobody else would fall in, digress (like now ;-)) find another subject which is way more interesting. I have that. It looks like something which could be just ‘solved’ with improving my moral. But that is not how it works. Like addiction is not a moral disease, my running for the darkness which I connect to endings is not a moral failing either – it is a structural design mistake of my energetic system, or a solution my system made up to deal with the trauma. It would however be very nice to sort of get a grip on my life. 😉 Fix it. Quick! 😀 Getting there.

Some days I can eat well which means 2 home-made meals a day. Sleep well, which by now means going to bed before 02:00 (waaaaay to late for me). Read some, currently the Artemis Fowl series again. I clean the house before visits from friends and the hug-budy which means at least weekly cleaning. He is a cosy, sexy comfort but even after 7 months I do not want to engage into a full sex act. It is actually quite interesting to do all the other things which normally fade out of a relation. When was the last time you spend 4 hours hugging, talking, tickling, massaging and well, some more sexually oriented frolicking?

I am starting to notice differences between us which I am not sure we can or I want to bridge. Also I am not sure if being friends with benefits is a good thing for my dysfunctional heart. Sometimes it only teaches my heart to be more dysfunctional; loving is ok, receiving is impossible. Addict trait; don’t touch me. My heart is shut.

Workwise I am still lost on what and where. The social security people have put me at the bottom of the pile. I guess this is because I start crying every time they ask a question…. sigh, how will I ever be ‘normal’ again? I just don’t know what I want. I want a simple job in a safe environment. But the simple jobs don’t seem to come with safe environments until I find some stability within myself. Having stepped in the darkness behind my own ‘made-up’ darkness is a good thing. However, I do not know how many layers this onion has. And if I need to peel them all to be able to function again at my level of education. Or maybe, maybe, the level at which I am supposed to function is not equal to my emotional intelligence or stress control and maybe I never will. I am going to ask the social security if they can help find out what I want and can do, where my strengths and weaknesses are. Writing short posts is not one of them ;-).

Post 526 in this blog. 🙂 I am happy that I quit. I realise that my happiness is something of an ‘obligatory’ thing. I do not experience a lot of happiness lately, more ‘relieve’ from the darkness. That does not count in my daily practise for ‘being happy that I quit’ but there is no other experience currently. I do resent drinking. My SIL was eating an oven dish with mushrooms in a wine-cheese sauce. I had forgotten about the wine and took a small bite. MG. Tastes like cheese vomit. Brrrr…. People with alcohol breath smell like they swallowed cleaning agent. So no, not in the danger zone but it worries me that I do not ‘repair’ more quickly. And then again: I have gotten a big dose of the darkness and this comes back layer after layer. These last weeks have changed a lot. I hope when the next bout of depression comes a long I am brave enough to really feel into it again. 🙂

Wishing you a good sober night/day.

xx, Feeling

Now I am allowed to exist, what is next?

A few weeks ago I wrote about having found a, well, basic believe that I have a right to exist. Feeling that. Not only knowing it but really feeling it. And that is GOOD.

The rest is a long post on how I get thrown about by ups and downs, what I am learning and what not. I am having the shittiest time of my life but still think 2018 is a fantastic year. :-D. On the verge of a breakthrough every day. If it weren’t for me I would be fantastic already. 😉

So what is next? Next is: overwhelming selfhate and overwhelming self-love and sometimes switching from the one to the other in seconds. Not sure how it works but I’m thinking my system does not want to let go of my old habit. Also, it looks like the selfhate has found an object (me) to focus on. Sometimes I get dragged into it, sometimes it is like a passing train: as long as I don’t stand on the tracks I’m ok. It is funny, not sure how to describe it but my daily me is angry at my daily me. And then there is the part which is watching this happening. And the difference between my daily me and my Self is getting clearer. That is good. Hopefully I will get to learn that all this emotional feeling stuff is information. And information only,  from where I stand there is no particular need to get lost in it unless…. the lessons are not learned. And that’s when the shit hits the fan.

Life has been difficult, I am really struggling to keep structure in my life. Ha, not even the struggle is working. 😦 My house is ok-ish and so are the contacts to the outside world but my eating habits are bad and I have let go of admin. Which means that I do not open e-mail or post from the organisation which will, or will not give me money for not begin employed / sick leave. Guessing they will not give it when I do not reply. The inability to live to somebodies rules still gives me extreme panick attacks followed by a strong urge to not live. And then comes this inner voice: “It is ok Feeling, you do not have to be able to do everything. You do no have to be perfect, you have been here before, it is obvious that you can not do this. Yes it is strange in other peoples eyes. Yes it is in no comparison to whatever you can do but could you possibly face the fact (ooooh, panick) that you are not able to do this on your own? You keep on saying that you will do it ‘tomorrow’. But have you not seen this behaviour before?”

“Nah! This is different! I will really open all the post tomorrow!”. Or so I said for 7 days. And it is still tomorrow. 🙂

I believe that until I deal with the what I call my destructive treats, it will shift from subject to subject to subject no matter what. Either it is alcohol (self destruction in a bottle), sugar (selfdestruction in a bar of chocolate), Netflix, internet, procrastinating, not living up to my full potential (assuming this sometimes worn out life has a potential – and also: I sometimes believe that I have, not sure what and how, but I have).

Strange things are happening. Not all of it is my own doing. The woman I met on FB and gave me an energetic healing a few weeks ago asked me this morning how I have been the last days. I told her I had been really bad and then ‘poof’ it was very good. We spoke about that.

I know this is going to sound crazy and I am not sure how and where I stand in this but… the FB group sort of fell apart and the woman whom I befriended online has left the old group she had started due to unrest between the 5 moderators. And she started a new group. Obviously that causes mayhem in the beginning. I kept out of it because, well, I’ve got nothing to add but I followed the woman to her new, more exclusive group. Since then all hell broke loose in my life: darkness like clouds rolling over me, through me, as being in a maelstrom of darkness. I really had the idea that even I could not be THAT black. Hell like never before, worse than rock-bottom earlier. And I had little energy left to do anything but watch and be amazed where the F! all of this was taking me. Or, well, as it felt; where I was swept away to.

And then ‘poof’ it was all gone from one second to the other. No darkness, no dark feelings, no wish to jump of the building just, peace. And internal voices telling me I was ok.

So this morning the woman came onto the chat asking me how I had been the past days and if I knew voodoo. I said: ‘Very bad, had no clue what came over me. And then it was gone, as sudden as it came.’ Well, she said: I am checking with all the members because one of the former group ladies practises voodoo and it seems like she is attacking the new group members.

Now, I am sceptic. But I really think this might have been exactly what was happening. Or not. I don’t know. Anyway, very educative it is because the darkness within, mine or not, does bring me to my knees where I have to accept that I can not do stuff on my own. How non addict that acceptance would be :-D. And also, by learning the opposite of the bad energies; the love, the peace, the acceptance teaches me that there is a choice. That I have a choice. And so I continue on the path I have been walking, and fall off on a daily, hourly, minutely (is that a word?) base; of practicing not being unhappy. Practising not being sad. And with writing that I see that I must make a change there because I should be practising to be happy possibly, and not the ‘not being sad’. It is the same with drinking: practising ‘not drinking’ leads to tension, resistance, misery and finally drinking. Practising ‘being happy that I quit’ leads to not drinking. 🙂

In short, ok, not so short: now I am allowed to exist next thing that pops up is selfhate. Obviously because not it can not float freely anymore because there is an internal boundary that says: “Hey, what are you hating at. I AM here.” Because there is a right to live now, the selfhate becomes very obvious. And on the other hand self-love and compassion are introduced by ‘just’ somebody I met on the web. I have reservations there, I am normally not so keen on associating with people who have friends that bring trouble. But I can not let go (yet) and also: could it be that perceived hate by others is just myself masking my own self hatred? Not sure, but I will proceed with caution.  Possibly making sure I love myself would be a good place to start recognising hatred from others. 🙂

Time to read the book Lucy recommended about self-hatred. And time to do my admin. Tomorrow I will call them. 😉

More and more I notice that if I do not do what is good for me I end up feeling bad. From putting on socks when having cold feet (which I often forget when I dislike myself) to eating the wrong things. Self destruction knows so many ways. Self love too. I feel I have almost 50 years of (self)conditioning to work ‘against’ in a society where hatred against people and specifically against women is big business.

But I exist. So I seem to have a purpose.

Funny, how the feeling of ‘being able to exist’ and possibly having a purpose (existing + future + embedded in this world) takes a few seconds to turns into feeling unworthy again and from there to the other side of feeling that I must have a greater purpose than others if it feels this good. How addicty to go from high to low or from low to high while staying in the middle with acceptance that all people have the right to exist is difficult. 🙂 How the conditioning of judging immediately brings me away from the beautiful, peaceful experience I was having.

Why do I write this down? I have read other people’s blogs, very few as direct, dark and, if I may say ‘strange’ as mine. I don’t bake cakes. I write this down because THIS IS HOW MY LIFE IS – how I experience it. I have an addictive personality, that means that I prefer not to like to experience and live life as it is. That I want to a spiritual bypass of life by redesigning my experiences with substances and addictive behaviour.  And it is not working.

]I did not have the spiritual strength to set that right so alcohol happened. And then life happens and rock-bottom comes along to break down all that was wrongly put together in order to rebuild again from there. Hitting rock-bottom is a very natural process and a solid foundation. And as long as I do not listen to hints of life, I’ll keep on hitting it. 🙂

Spring is coming 🙂 I’m gonna check it out. 🙂

I am happy that I do not drink alcohol anymore. I find my travels interesting but very tiresome. I wish I had more stamina to actually stick to things. But I also see how letting go of judgments on how I should be (sereen, peaceful) and what I should do (yoga, cake baking, running) helps me to let go of the layers which for me are associated with that: judgement and the need for perfection. I am experiencing improvements.

But it could also be like ending up in the gutter and then trying to prove to the world I can still love me. 😀 Dunno :-). As of yet I am financially still 6-10 months away from the gutter so this leaves me some time to float.

I’m off, I hope you get something from this post. If nothing else than the comfortable feeling that you are way more structured 😉 and how not doing the right thing like structuring ones life leads to unstructure.

xx, Feeling

Feeling comfortable to be me

My last post was about darkness, I have been introduced to light and am liking it! A lot has happened since. This starts of dark but hang in there. 🙂

A while ago I was totally submerged in the horror of reliving the death of my twin brother in many aspects of the daily life. And when I finally decided not to go into that subject again because ‘no use – only painful’ I met a guy in the train who, within 5 minutes started talking about vanishing twins, dead sister, dead mother. Yup. Sigh. I really, really can’t believe my own life so now and then, but it happened.

He was connected to a Facebook group and I signed up too. The ladies who run the group call themselves ‘lightworkers’ and are into all kinds of spiritual corners which I have never visited. Subjects include Reiki, Tarot, chakras, healing with stones and all kinds of energy transfer. And even though I myself practise these or am knowledgable in some of these areas I usually do not interact with other because too much carnival and ‘Twin soul? Had one, he died, now move along.’

I was in the group for several weeks when the leading lady signed me up for a healing. They do these with several women. One sends in a recent photo and the three ladies concentrate on you and work out what is energetically awry and try to heal that. Her signing me up was a little forceful but I am happy I (reluctantly) complied. At the said time I was in front of my computer trying to see if I could notice anything going on. The lady I had chatted with was alone. Well, imagination or not, I did feel stuff. I felt somebody zooming in on me energetically, then stepping back in a sort of fright and then frantically starting to take away all the boundaries I have around me. Ha! Get to know me…: “Don’t think you can take away my boundaries like that! I’ll fight to keep my protection, even if it kills me!” 😉 Which I then realised was pretty counterproductive. Things were already set in motion and I experiences a breakdown of this layer of dirt and old memories I carry around. I wrote about this in one of my early posts where I see myself as a caddis; an underwater larvae which builds a little house for himself by glueing pieces of dirt together. I do that with bad experiences and painful memories. Well, I felt she was breaking that down. I resisted out of reflex and in this fight for power turned nauseous and started throwing up. One of those days; crying so badly my eyes bulge out, not able to breathe through my nose due to total blockage, shaking all over and hanging over the toilet for a good 10 minutes. After which….. I felt really relaxed and at peace with the world….. something with darkness before the light. 🙂

We chatted on Facebook about what had happened. Days later I got a new invite for a new healing with three ladies. The first one replied to my photo with comments about being angry – I have this resting bitch face and ha, I have anger. So yeah in reply to a “Let go, let go.” I can only say: “I was born this way. I am sorry. If I had any skills or way to not be angry, I would.” Which obviously I did not tell her. 🙂

The second lady spoke about my defences being high, heart ache and soul loss, being totally disconnected from the world. And, the theme for me being ‘detachment’. Gosh ;-).Detachment is good for the spirit, it is the path to enlightenment so they say and it is very lonely and very hard because the intention I am born with is to either attach, cling even or, in other moments; totally disconnect in a not always healthy way. She mentioned that. She mentioned me having issues with ‘being’ with taking the right to exist. I read that and all of the darkness and despair I had been trying to contain flooded over me and 2 women asked me what happened because they felt utter misery.

Again the layers around me started shaking and I could feel the pieces of dirt the cadis collected fall apart and I was ok with that. I cried, I puked, I shook and then I bathed in light and universal love like I was in heaven. 🙂 “No sense of belonging in this world.” Yup, that would be me. And then I found it. 🙂

Together they lifted the darkness and I could see that it was not all me. I could see that I attach myself to it but that I do not have to. That I can learn not to attach to misery and darkness. Sort of uncomfortable in saying that a big part of it is like addiction and can be unlearned. It was very nice to be without the weight of the darkness. I am not sure when was the last time I was like that. Possibly in an Ayahuasca session. So… good stuff 😉

During this session I found my energetic place in my heart where I dare to exist. Where I take my place in life and am ok with that, ok with me. Like they kept on saying: you have the right to be here, you are allowed to be here, you are allowed to be alive. Things look so much different from there, well, here. No whining, just doing, no condemning of me, peace. So much more energy!!!! 🙂 ❤ ❤ ❤ And like I did with alcohol: when dark thoughts come up I try to see where they connect to me and cut them loose. Not sure how to explain that: it is like I am a cylinder and there are all kinds of energetic things connected to me, some like wires, some like spider webs, some like dark clouds, some are close, others are far away, some are clear and others are hidden, hiding even, or i.o.w. I don’t want to be aware of them. And then I visualise cutting threads, removing spiderwebs, dissolving clouds and experiencing and cutting away all the perceived advantage I thought I had from them and then staying in the moment where I live without these energy things. Breathing. 🙂 I am whole.

I am thinking this experience of attachment to darkness and how not to attach is important. Knowing me I will forget because life comes along and basically I am lazy and do not want to do this extra step I need to take. Ooh God,  give me the strength to take care of me. To do what I know I need to do; headbutt that next bear on the path and continue fearlessly. Because I can. It is my stressed out being, my being stressed out, my spiritual misshapenness, laziness which keeps me tired and whining and whining and tired and it withholds me. A big part of me prefers to feel sorry over doing what I need to do. My bottom dog. I fear growing, I fear the stepping into nothingness but clinging to the past, to darkness left me in the dark nothingness.  I do not dare to love because ‘love’ meant sexual abuse in our family but I do not have to walk that same path. But I do not have to look back, I do not live in the past. I live now. Ha! Which now I come to realise are the exact words of my hugbuddy. 🙂

I feel comfortable being me now. I realise that this might take some training. Hmmm, pfff, don’t feel like that. I will take the being comfortable RIGHT NOW! 🙂 No more stalling! Much better decision. 🙂 ❤ ❤ ❤

Different subject but related: days before this all happened I had an experience which I find worthy of noting down; a friend of mine is throwing a wedding party, several years after the date and all our mutual friends had received an invite – except I. I was upset. I had not seen that coming. For days I struggled with the idea that my life was such a dark mess that I started to loose friends. I actually internally agreed that there were little benefits to quitting drinking if I did not work on the underlying causes. And because I (find that I) do not (do this enough) I still find myself in this dark mess. I agreed that there was no use in living anymore because I did not have the energy to fight another fight. And then I realised that I had based all of this on assumption. I had no clue as to why this friend would disinvite me (is that a word?). I made several up and then got in such a painful situation that I could not do anything but cut myself lose totally from all connection.

That was another one of those Feeling things: Not sure what parts of me did so, guessing a big part of it was ego; I got so suppressed, caught, locked up in the darkness that I could not deal anymore and I internally twisted, spun and broke all energetic connection to the world. It was a reflex. First thing I thought: “I have done this before.” I have done this when I was born, I have done this with some relationships, I have done this with memories I wanted to forget, I have also done this with alcohol. I was born in a funny way; like my brother I was going to come out face upward and had been stuck in the start of the birth canal for several days and during labor, and then I worked myself loose (impossible so they say) and twisted around (impossible so they say) to be projectile born into this world in 3 pushes. Screaming mad with raw survival aggression.

Ok, long story longer: I could have contacted my friend, I did not, I was feeling too low. I realised that it is initially painful but educative to learn that my friendship with her seemed more important than her friendship to me. Which is ok, things happen. A week later we see each other and I was totally ok in my disconnected world, being able to genuinely love again. And she asked me if I had received her card because they had tried a different mail service and several people had not. 😉

Different subject: I have been uncluttering my house since the first of February. I throw out (bring to the give away store) as many items as there are days in the month. Today is the 21st so I should take out 21 things. I list them all and share them in a Facebook group. It feels great. And strangely enough I can actually let go of stuff I had been hanging on for years.

I upped my Iodine intake and feel loads better. Funny enough in homeopathy Iodine is related to letting go of old trauma. Hey! 😉

It sort of sounds like I am learning to let go. 🙂 Tadaaa!

Concerning the project I have sent to the business contest: they mentioned they had not received it. I continued working on it and noticed that I need more inner rest to be able to deal with all the issues coming up. Part of the project is an online community and I realised that I get engaged into right-fighting online too easily. Tried to change that. Did not work. Maybe in the future.

The social service people just called and they want to meet me to discuss my unemployment. At one point I applied for benefits but I did not continue because feeling bad and dark and I could not deal with the pressure of having to apply for a job while not knowing where to go with my life. Also, I could attempt to apply but it would force processes and I would be lying to the employer, to the benefit people and to me. That feels like putting back layers on the onion I am trying to peel off. It did not feel good and I had no energy to set it right inside. Next week they want me to come by. I told him I was in no state to apply for jobs and hence would wave my rights. He said: “We are here to help.” I guess I could use some help. As long as it is without attachments. 😀 😉

Pffff, all that darkness. Don’t want to go there anymore. The sun has been shining for about 7 days now! Yay!!!

I have been painting. Now I don’t know what to do with my life I might as well do the things which I have always wanted. A part of the Roy Lichtenstein collection is in Amsterdam right now and some friends and I went. We are arrogant enough to claim that “we can do that too”.  Bwaahahahaa….. been trying since. And that might very well be true, after you put hours and hours and hours in it to learning how to. 🙂 REALLY. I am really handy, I can do crafts, I can do a whole lot of hand-skill creative stuff way better than most people, but painting is partially a skill and partially an art. I am DELIGHTED with doing this in my livingroom and not getting anywhere with it. This is sooo freeing. I checked out some YouTube vids and started. No need to be able to do stuff because I realise I can not. Ha! Friend of mine does not believe me, we will be painting next week for a full day. Hihihihihihi…. She so did not believe me that she is planning on buying actual canvasses to try. Looking forward to this.

Not Lichtenstein, but very appropriate however insensitive it might seem. 🙂

I am happy that I quit. Not sure why. Saw a photo of me and it actually looks like I am still drinking like crazy. Wonder if that is because of the sugar (yes, fell of the sugar wagon, again…). Although directly after the 2nd healing I felt no need for it, there was nothing it could add. Maybe I should practice that feeling of wholeness till I get to the part where I feel that again.

Now I’m moving away from the screen and go do stuff. 🙂

Wishing you a wonderful hopefully sober time. ❤

xx, Feeling

 

 

 

When karma overran dharma

So…. the powers at work. Buckle up for a messy post. A little editing here: it is a dark post, but I am ok now. So you could save yourself some darkness and continue to the next post if you like. 😀

What’s it all about? I said goodbye to the bookstore man a few days ago. Thought it would give me peace not to be sent all over the place by his mood swings I do not understand. But ever since I have noticed that I seem to have the ability to outdo him in that. After 3 days of continuous crying, chocolate, fries and chips I’m trying to make heads and tails of it right now. Not really looking forward to learning what I have to learn. Lately I seem to do the mayor stuff by rock-bottom experiences, this does not feel any different.

On top of that I have my period. Worth mentioning? Well, yes, since it is the first real one with the hormonal inbalance in 5 years. This innerspring thing I have seems to have lost its charm. I was already wondering last week what was happening in my world when 5 different people around me started speaking of having periods while I was thinking ‘Gosh, I have not heard that word in years!’. But now I know; back are the nightmares, the pain, the darkness. I had forgotten about that. No vomiting, heart palpatations, freezing and sweating all over or fainting this time but shit, I so don’t want to go there anymore. I feel I can’t bear that now. It is too much. I feel like I’m drowning.

My glasses broke. New ones cost 400 euro’s if I’m to have a pair that suits my face. I have a non-European wide face with a non-European nose, it takes a lot of time trying to find one that actually makes me look ok and intelligent instead of fat and ugly.

My tooth broke, the one that has been fixed 3 times in the last months.

Gay marriage has been approved in the USA, in my not so humble opinion suspicously timed with fast tracking the TPP; one of the darkest trade deals since the Dutch introduced worldwide slavery. Things are falling apart, I am falling apart.

So, yeah, it feels like I’m back to square one. Destruction is big, again, images of knives circling my body, drawing blood in a destructive ritual to bleed me out. This scourge torturing my back. Haven’t seen those in a while. Dark places. I notice I get into trouble lately because I don’t speak with friends about my alcohol past and I feel I can’t explain what is going on without letting them in on what I would like to keep from them. Not sure anybody would understand anyhow. I only spoke with the store man about it and the nutritionist friend but she’s very busy. Well, my SIL knows – but she doesn’t know about darkness and she would be worried and scared so, well.

What happened? The store guy told me he quit using weed. I worried that was pretty early and then forced myself to stop having opinions and not making it my worry – I think it was ok-ish till then – apart from the point where I can’t stay out of it and actually have opinions And ultimately that seemed to be the whole point, well, my point. We spoke, all was fine-ish. Next day he posted something on Facebook, a list of photographs of everything what was bad and dark about this world. I think to know that place. I walked around there for years on and off since I was a teen and continuously during the months before I quit. I recognise / see it as the darkness leading up to the place where about 12 months ago I needed to decide ‘Do I want to live?’

The powerlessness, the incapacity, the whole world being dark; this place where light only seems to exist to illuminate all that is evil, illwrought, sickening and corrupt. Where happiness of other people hurts me and only proves their ignorance and well, general stupidity this world has no lack of. Yes, yes, I am familiar with arrogance as you may notice. And no I do not mean that for real, it’s a mood thing tainted by a more structural character failing. And yes I put it out here.

So, he was in a dark place and I went into this, what in hindsight looks like a familiar mode, I thought; ‘Let’s gear up and save this guy!’ (Don’t laugh, I am guessing by now most of you know this attitude to be the recipe for disaster.) I went over to the store. First, second or third sentence I heard was ‘I went to the coffee shop yesterday!!’ Not spoken like an fyi but more like a ‘and don’t you dare touch me!’ kind of thing. Well. If that is your deal, that is your deal…. Let’s see…. I thought of walking out immediately because I expect very little communication from somebody who’s fences are up so high but that would look like, I don’t know, reproaching? I worried, I think to know that place where things are sort of getting tight and thinking of wanting to quit and things not working out.

So I sat and listened to him spreading darkness with every sentence he spoke. He was trying to convince another friend of his of I don’t know what but it was bad. I was sitting in the store thinking ‘I should get out of here because he’s looking for a fight, picking them out of thin air and I am in no position to deal with this’.

Being me, I did not. I thought, as I have always thought; it is my fault, he probably felt pushed to quit by me and blabablablablaa. So… it is my responsibility to defuse this. I’m thinking my intention is not to only defuse but also to take the blame I guess… 😦 Looking back I have come to the conclusion that this has been my pattern all my life: I have thought that over my parents trying to verbally if not energetically kill each other, I’ve thought that in companies with people fighting. And I have always assumed it to be true; If they are angry it must be because I am bad. I should fix this. So I sat and let events take place till indeed things exploded, not without my help… :-/. Unfortunately or, more ‘of course’?

My cat takes another route: if I’m in a bad mood she goes out and does fun things on her own. 🙂

I wish there would be another layout to WordPress where I could write my version of what happened on the left, and on the right what I learned from it. It took me 3 days of crying and desperation to learn that what somebody else does is non of my business. I don’t need to help. I don’t need to inform. I don’t need to defuse. I don’t need to be a lightning rod. I don’t need to tell about the books I read. I don’t even need to tell my own story or my blog address for that matter. (According to the stats only one person from my country has been here and read 2 posts so I’m confident that he will not, especially now, show up and you know, I am past caring about me in this. I thought I could deal, I could not. This whole thing send me spinning. Not proud. Fucked up. (BSM: if you happen to read this let me know if you’re not ok reading this and I’ll dunno, I’ll see.)

I learned that part of my want to help is driven by this feeling of lack of worth and hence I need to fix and control the other. Yes, there is a part that hurts when somebody else hurts and me wanting to lessen that but I need to get rid of the forcefulness. Which I guess… is what my therapist has been saying for 20 years now. (Hi!) Not sure how to deal with it. Intention, intention, intention, it is all about intention. And then there is this point where I don’t want to realise that my intentions are not clear and clean. 😦 When karma overran dharma.

He said something like how I had put pressure on him but it all hit the truth button pretty hard so I went in a systems lock down and can not repeat now what was said. I experienced a freeze. Complete with the inability to move, to walk, even talk for a few seconds, bend my neck and well, all the other systems alarm that goes with it :-/.  I can’t remember having had a real systems lock down since I have been sober. It was overwhelming at first but I was more surprised by the intensity than anything else.

Funny enough I could actually look at it and experience it somewhat separately. Not sure how to verb it because I’ve been eating this feeling away ever since, not exactly something I appreciate storing in my memory. It is like chaos ready to destroy all that comes in its way. But I do remember thinking: ‘So this is where I was born.’

Yes. I know. Not your ordinary day. I did not know the meaning of it yet until I had time to go home and think and feel things over. To me it is about the force of life, the creative chaos, the primordial soup, I’m guessing it’s the yin without the yang. The other day I was saying to a friend of mine: I wonder why I keep on meeting guys whose main issue is one with the destructive forces. Why? I guess I know now. I have an affinity with it. This is where I was born. Might be where everybody was born. Don’t know. I don’t know what it means but knowing it makes me able to stand upright while the powers (me? dunno) that be throw the shit at me that I have been going through the last days. Would be nice to ask the bookstore man, he would know where to look it up.

And while at the other side of the counter the store man was very angrily defending his general right to be (way over the top) angry I was thinking: I was created in chaos. I am drawn to the power in it. I am drawn to the ability to destruct. I am drawn to people who know that darkness – this is why we are speaking here. I did feel threatened (not in the physical sense btw) and I guess my life force responded, it blew me of my socks, internally. Of course internally. God forbid I would fall apart in front of somebody :-/, specifically if it had not been admitted that I was right (of course… 😦 ). We spoke, we worked things out but I also managed to exactly NOT say what I thought I should on how anger influences me.

I keep on meeting people who, like my mom, seem to come out of nowhere and ignite. And me walking on egg shells and if the shit hit the fan, try to defuse the situation by being the lightning rod. There is a thing, coming from that meeting I went home, cried about my mom a lot and realised how her moodiness has influenced me. There was a moment I could dissociate myself from the drama and look at it. And then came my period and it all became messy again.

Next morning we had a FB discussion over a picture of a young girl showing her privates to a young boy and saying ‘with this I am going to control your life’. I have, after years of hating men finally come to a point where I see that both men and women are fucked up by the stupidity of this societal ideas of oppression and sex and oppression by sex. And of course thus by our familiar and individual trauma’s. Good choice of words ‘fucked up’. :-D.

Well, whatever, things started of ok and suddenly seem to spin out of control because I made joke on ‘how things slow down at older age’. Got called ‘vulgar’ and I told him to bugger off. Literally. I realised I had gotten myself in a friendship with a person who, as a Jack out of the box, or, as my mom, comes out of some corner to jump at me all angry. 😦 And as hormone stimulated arguments go I deleted all FB contact, brought back my borrowed books and said; ‘With the process I am in I can not afford our friendship.’ and he replied with ‘You are always welcome here.’ Which I took as sincere, not meant to diss me.

And then I cried, over him, my mom, my dad, my inability to stay on my happy track, my moodswings, my process, the darkness in me, the darkness in this world and how fundamentally wrong I experience its mechanisms and our distance to what is natural. Well, the darkness that Gabor Maté speaks about. Why the pain? And I could not find any light. Feel like I’m about to hand in life’s notice. I don’t want to be me anymore in this world. (= Learning by rock-bottom but not doing the learning yet. 😦 )

How very dramatically period-like. And how very ‘With this I will rule your life / badly influence our connection’. But in another way. The day before our last subject of conversation was ‘what you speak about happens in real life’. He said no. I said yes-ish. I guess there is that too.

Aaah, and then I read A hangover free’s post on emotional maturity and I thought: I have not managed any of these yet. I slept and dreamed about drinking and how I did not care any more about being sober but still handed back the bottle because my back is against the wall and drinking will only make it worse. You know, Brad from a home without a roof threw in the towel. It hurts. End of the road said goodbye to her blog – I am guessing for the right reasons but still, I would wish it were different. I hate to stand by and not be able to help somebody who’s in pain but I can’t. I just can’t. Experiencing the bankruptcy of the help-concept I have lived in all my life and it is not pleasant. I need to take care of me now. I’m exactly where I need to be but it is a fucking dark place. I want to smash and break things. Need to find the light again. Tolstoy springs to mind.

I am not sure if I am happy that I quit. I would have not been alive if I had not. Somehow that looks very inviting right now, to not have to care. So again, learning by rock-bottom experiences. But not sure if I’m doing all the learning.

I take: chocolate, fries, chips and meat. Several days now and I don’t give a shit.

I need: stuff this.

I want: things to be easier. The cat is ill again. Bladder infection and sneezing. 😦 Actually, I would LOVE to do an ayahuasca ceremony on this subject of darkness and help, boundaries of that and anger. That is what I want.

3 Things; the sun was out so I slept on the balcony and got a little tan. Musqitoes bite but do not leave big marks anymore which I guess says something about heath. And I finally finished this post, took me 3 days and actually I am feeling better. Ghegheghe, I saw bookstore man number 2 this weekend, he’s at another shop. He’s 72, I sometimes take him fries from the market. He’s got no lower teeth so he eats the soft ones, I the harder ones. 🙂 He sees me walk in and says ‘What’s up with you? Love sick?’ ‘Well, something like it: friend sick. And I’m stuck.’ And then he hugged and kissed me and said: ‘Me too, me too. Everybody today.’ And we spoke about darkness, aggression, being stuck, alcohol (he did heroine and alcohol, now he does yoga and he paints) and relations and working out issues through relations. He’s a bit of a rascal, works out he has this 50 year old girl friend. Bookstore men. 🙂 ❤ 🙂

Must be funny for you to read this. If you were not surprised before you might now consider: do you ever speak with your book store man about love life and addictions? It seems I do. I’m building up this whole second life separate from my actual life where people whose last name, birthday, telephone number and address I don’t know, know way more about me than my friends. Sometimes it worries me. Sometimes I wonder; how is this different from the denial I was in when drinking? But also; I am friends with my regular friends because they walk in the clean world where life is easier. They have kept me sane these last years by being a reference, by not going down that trap of ‘drinking with inferiors’. And I have, over the years, said goodbye to all the heavy users/drinkers to make sure they would not weigh me down when I would need to get sober. Now I find I team up with people who did or do use because it is company where people need and look for personal development and the darkness can exist.

How did I get here? I’ve used Ctrl + to make the lettertype big on the screen but it gives me even less oversight over this post than earlier. Well, still not editing.

Sort of separate but I’m guessing also another motor in this unclear situation is this ego thing where I am attracted to knowledge and intelligence, secondly can’t stand that I know shit (which is not true but I think I don’t since I do not know Sanskrit or Chinese terms) and that makes me feel inferior, never good enough, meaningless, falling behind, useless. Sometimes I am ok with it and I can respect all the time and effort and specifically self-exploration that goes into the studies that the store man has done. And sometimes I feel shit and wanting to lash out. It twists my intentions.

And then there is the subject of sex which I am not willing to discuss but I guess it is part of the equation. Since day one I realised that I had difficulty with dealing with this friendship so there is a big no-go in the yearning and wanting. Also because I feel the yearning and wanting is impolite, specifically when somebody is in a relation or not interested. I am pretty sure he would feel this through the air anyhow – so, a no-go because impolite. We discussed it, came to the conclusion that for both it is there sometimes but it is not always important, nor looked for. It is only now that I told him to bugger off that I suddenly think that sex would be The Perfect Solution. 😀 (Sorry!) But he’s taken anyway. Or not, or is, or not, or, don’t know. Traffic light relation with his GF. And then there is the 1 year rule. So… Noticing now why the 1 year rule is important. I can’t even deal with friendship. And then there would be his 1 year rule to consider. So, no-go.

I need to deal with finances. Falling in love and storming towards a big rejection of somebody who is either in a relation or can have his pick from a shitload of interesting, educated, smart, beautiful, fresh, well-read, slim, succesful, healthy, yoga-ish, balanced, developed women who come walking in every day, speak his language, have travelled where he has been and (some of whom) lay themselves down at the coffee table is NOT a smart thing to do. 😦

Still, my heart (or karma?) says: ‘I recognise darkness, I smell power (issues), I feel limitlessness. Let’s check this out!!!!!’ 🙂 And there it goes happily bouncing out of its chest, messing up life and generally heading for disaster. A situation I, as a standard tend to mistake for love. 🙂  Sorry. 😦 Guess I’ve got some learning to do.

It is 03:24 here, night time. Time to go to bed. This must be my longest post every. I’ve learned a lot. Karma overran dharma. It is out of my system now. Hope by writing about it I did not put it in yours. And shit I do not have to worry about that. It is not my care. I do worry about privacy, not mine. Not sure how to deal.

Hope you have a nice day/evening. 🙂