Co-existing awareness

Before I turn off my computer for several days, and even though I am in a hurry to get on the road, I felt the desire to make a note of my thoughts.

What comes to say is that in my city it is a superb  afternoon, which comes after a little rain last night, a great relief, and prior to that, a very dangerously hot day.

As I tend to my garden, Confidoring the aphids off the new plantings, aware of the peace and quiet in my garden, a few hours away are horrendous fires, forcing thousands of stranded and isolated people onto a pier and perhaps later into the water. The fires in this state are out of control. Already people have lost their lives and many homes have burned.

In fact, our holiday home may well burn too. Most of my family are currently overseas, but even if they were here, the roads are closed and it would be suicide to attempt to get to the property. It is in the lap of the Gods.

My younger self would have found this deeply disturbing and worrying. Today, I am philosophical. Bad things happen to good people every day and I have no story around the fact that it shouldn't happen. It is happening and there is no reason it shouldn't happen to me in the same way that it may happen to anyone. It is eerie. The calm before the the storm perhaps, but I am at peace with this.

Lately, I have become less optimistic about the state of the planet. It's possible we won't be here as long as we think. Certainly, we can't take for granted what we once did, but maybe that's the wake up call; to stop being complacent and to start being more mindful about everything.

I have become far more comfortable with the idea that I am not in control. Oh sure, I can't stop loving things in their place and feeling good when I am on top of the details of life. But, I recognize I can't make every post a winner, and nor should every post be a winner.

I've been more or less alone now for a few days. I can feel the magic of alone time, and silence, weave its magic on me, like it did for me earlier in the year when I was fortunate enough to be on retreat in India.

Silence quite naturally restores us back to our natural selves; not bogged down in anxiety and thinking, but free to let the mind wander in a 'no thinking' sort of way. My goodness, how I love that!

I get in the car now and go down to visit my mother. Will she trigger me; will I feel an intense tightness in my chest, a number of times during the visit? I think this is inevitable.

Perhaps the answer lies in not having a story around that either. It's not an easy time for me with her, although I will do my best to make it as pleasant as possible, for both of us.

It's not the relationship I'd like it to be, that's for sure, but I can't do anything about that either. I can make it as good as it can be, but 63 years later I recognize that there are reasons why it became problematic for me (thought not at all for her). And, that's just the way it is.

What's really important to note here, I believe, is that life is this weird experience of good and bad happening at the one very moment. Yes, my holiday house is in peril and at the very least the surrounding land is burning, and yet, in this moment I feel an abiding peace with the fact that today on this planet there is both good and bad happening; that no matter how bad it is gets, there is good. You might say this mindset is a co-exising awareness. Like people, the situation is never all bad.

Recuperation

A dozen years younger, I could never have predicted that my sexuality would change with me; that I would feel as I do today. In another dozen years, should I live so long, I feel certain that the situation will be vastly different than what it is today. We are in constant change in fact, flowing along, sometimes moving so automatically and steadily that we are unaware of the change, until it boldly demands our attention.

As a young girl, I had certain fantasies that dominated my mind as I drifted off to sleep, and when I woke. To some extent, they have endured. I see them for what they are now, with the benefit of hindsight, and talking in the past few months with a very good older psychologist.

They were bound in fear. I will probably never know why I was so fearful as a child. It probably related to growing up in a hotel where there wasn’t much security for me. As well, and most importantly, I think it related to a sense that I needed to be ‘good’. To be in trouble seemed as bad as it could get. 

The fantasies related to people, both men and women, who were stern, punishing and quite uncaring and unloving. I do still have those fantasies today but only around orgasm. It’s a quick route from one to the other and sometimes I succumb to them, even though I wish the fantasies were different. I wish I could completely outgrow them, but so far, no luck.

Of course, any reader of old here knows that I dabbled in power exchange and BDSM. This lasted for some years with much passion and pleasure afforded.

It wasn’t always as I had hoped. It’s remarkably tricky to align sexuality with another person when the sexuality is on the margins. If you read relationship advice it’s generally for those in the middle of the curve and the rest of us have to more or less make it up as we go, or adjust, and experiment, and yes, change for the other.

I’m unquestionably a quiet living person. Without doubt, I was attracted to the opposite of me. As a quiet living person and a non-competitor, I was attracted to the more aggressive and competitive man.

As someone who instinctively wanted to be succumbed, I was attracted to the type of man who enjoyed succumbing me.

It became not just a passion but an obsession and all the entries of the past here attest to that obsession.

I think it is a fair call to say that through psych sessions it has been well established that my childhood created a situation in adulthood where I could easily become enmeshed with a man. It’s an attachment problem. I was not securely attached with either parent. That can lead to attachment issues in relationships as adults as well, unfortunately. It’s like getting doubly punished.

When there is an attachment issue, conflict in the relationship can seem overwhelming. It’s an ideal set up for a sadist because without this secure attachment in childhood as one’s psychological backbone, the partner will do almost anything in order to gain approval.

I have, without doubt, got off on being dominated, but I don’t consider myself a masochist. I could be wrong. I suppose it depends on the definition. 

I don’t want to be hurt. Some pain, or discomfort, or some psychological dominance, like taking me places I may not at first want to go, can be very appealing ultimately – quite delicious. In my mind, that’s different to being hurt; like sad; distressed; a feeling of being unloved; a sense of distance.

I wonder if sometimes the wires get crossed about that. A sexually dominant person who is consistent – as in right across his (or her) life – may not understand the need for expressions of love and affection. It’s possible his (or her) brain works in a different way since love and affection are expressed so differently sexually.

If there are different modes of expression of sexuality is it not possible that there are different modes of expressing love and affection in words and actions? Perhaps there is even an inability to offer comfort in a way that is so natural to those whose sexual expression is more mainstream. In the same way as it is hard to get sexuality to align on the fringes perhaps it is just as hard to get the need for expression of feelings and emotions to align as well.

All relationships can go through tough patches but those on the fringe are particularly tricky through the years, I think, for these reasons and others.

Feelings and emotions evolve as we age and particularly so for people like me who may not have had the full component of feelings and emotions available to them as children. If you feel the need to be ‘good’ over your lifetime that’s going to cause issues and it’s going to have you susceptible to shame any time that people aren’t happy with you. It’s going to demand that other people have their way, and your needs are quite secondary to theirs. This is the way it has been. Don’t rock the boat.

Over this year, as I completed a course where I had to read books about emotions, I came to see that I had suppressed emotions. Emotions tumbled out after that. Anger, sadness, frustration – they came at me quite violently at first.

Masochism, particularly on the psychological domain, became as much of a ‘turn off’ as it had been a turn on. I complained bitterly to the psych about being spoken to harshly or out of turn at home. I could no longer tolerate rudeness. I wanted very much to be treated like an equal, with kindness, care and consideration. I wanted to be able to talk without people talking over me or raising their voice; with consideration.

I have struggled to feel at peace with my mother. With her zero awareness of the damage caused to me in childhood and the misery this has caused in adulthood, especially over the past year,  a conversation is and will always be impossible. The silver lining there is that my brother and I, each other’s witness, have become close. We have talked often this year and been able to make sense of our lives and the damage caused through these discussions.

My husband, aware of my trials, but perhaps not all the repercussions of the angst, tends to think that along with respect, patience and kindness, I need a little sexual dominance. Perhaps. I am not so sure. I can feel myself moving towards him, but it feels delicate. I am delicate.I want it to be organic. I don't ever want to be hurt again.

 I don’t want a dark place. I want very much to move towards light. I want to experience happiness as my default. To be honest, joy is only fleeting, but a part of my life. I adore to guide people in meditation. I love to be with my family. My grandson fills up my cup.

Mostly, I love to be alone. I come home in the afternoon with ingredients to make a meal from scratch, turn on some meditative music, and feel perfectly happy with my own company.

I don’t expect it to stay this way for all that long. At some stage, the healing process will be complete. I feel sure that instinctively I will know how to get back into life in a more complete way.

Right now, everything, my body and mind, tells me to take my time; walk, write, read, listen to music, garden, take yoga classes, sleep and meditate; teach others to meditate.

Years ago, people would recuperate from being unwell in sanitariums; laze about in the sun and drink cups of tea until their energy rose quite naturally. I am taking a leaf out of that book, as much as I can. 

I am happy to be writing again here. I waited until it felt right, and it does.