Realizations

I have had a couple of realizations in the past week.  

First,  I now realize that I have been fairly spacey since my therapy group retreat three weeks ago.       I think that my processing of the trauma around my dad at the retreat brought me into a place I've never been before.   I am letting myself go into the feelings about him.   I am letting myself feel more wounded than I have before.   And as these feelings come up I have a traditional coping mechanism that kicks in.   That is,  I "check out".   I have been trying to connect to other people,  my wife,  my step-daughter,  people at work.   But I am feeling pretty checked out.

I think it's because I am letting some of the trauma from my childhood  into my experience more.   It feels pretty shitty.   But it also feels good to be acknowledging these true feelings,  shitty or not.   Along with this realization is the acknowledgement that I have spent my whole life trying to keep these experiences at arms length.   They deeply affect who I am but I fear facing them.   During my twenties and most of my thirties I was able to, more or less,  go on my happy way and pretend like they were somehow not part of me.   

Then,  a few years ago all of the "stuff" from my childhood started pressing in on me.   I became more and more affected by the baggage I had been successfully ignoring all these years.   I came to realize that I was going to have to go "through" the stuff in order to get to the second part of my life.   If I chose not to do this work I had the sense that I would stay at the same level of personal evolution that I'm currently at,  and that life would probably get harder for me.   

So now I am in the thick of it.   At least,  that's what it feel like.   All of the scary shit I've been carrying on my back since I was six years old I am now talking about and trying to process.   And so,  at some level,  I am re-experiencing the trauma.   I go "up and out",  I "check out",  I get dreamy and fuzzy headed.    I feel sad.

The second realization  is that I am still in relationship with my dad.   It struck me the other night as I was coming home from work,  "I am still in relationship with him."   This idea hit me like a flash of light.    My dad died in 1983 by his own hand.   I was fourteen.   I had not seen him in eight years.   I was very bonded with him when I was little but then I grew up without him.      I never really  grieved his exiting my life and I never grieved his death.   I was too busy coping with my life as it was.   My mom took me to a few sessions with a psychologist when I was seven but I don't think I processed anything at all, really.   I was a little clam who had shut his shell very tight and was not going to let go.   It did not feel safe to do so.

Since my twenties I have been very interested in spirituality.   I have a very strong sense that life does not begin at birth and that it does not end with death.   This has been an established belief of mine for about seventeen years now.   I have had experiences with my grandparents and my aunt,  a strong sense that I was still in relationship with them even though they had passed the threshold.    I did not have a sense that they were "gone".    They were present to me in a different way.

Somehow I have excepted my dad in seeing myself being in relationship with someone beyond the threshold.   It's hard to blame me for doing so.   He chose to abandon me and had only the most minimal contact with me in the years before his death.    The manner of his death was deeply disturbing.   I have every reason to be very pissed off at him.   And yet,  the "flash" I had the other night made me wonder if I might give his being more attention.    For my own benefit.

See,  as I explained to my therapy group the other night,  the signature of him and of my mom are strong in my life.   They both fizzled out of their careers at about the age I am now.   I was influenced by their experience and there is something inside of me that "wants" to spiral down in similar fashion.   Obviously,  it is not my higher self that would want such a thing.   It is the part of me which is self-destructive.   

I recognize that voice as one which tells me I am not good enough.   The voice berates me for being somewhat of a hermit.    It tells me that if I get something crappy in life it's because I'm not worth any more than that.   It tells me that I should be happy my life's not worse,  and that it could get worse any time.   It's not a nice voice.   

Luckily,  I am on to its tricks the vast majority of the time.   I tell myself that because something happened to my parents doesn't mean that I have to repeat the pattern.    I listen to the bit about being a hermit and,  rather than see myself as "less-than"  use it as an opportunity to reach out to others.    I see my life as blessed in so many ways.

My dad's exiting my life, his death,  and how he died have left  deep psychic scars on me.    It often feels to me like a gaping hole in who I am in the world.   I feel weakened by the facts of his life and how they interact with mine.  I feel unsure of myself.  The path he led which ended with suicide was deeply sad and confusing.   The arguments of the lower self won the day.   That has imprinted on me.    What is my path through that gnarled,  dark and lonely wood?

I wish I could work it out with my dad and reach some kind of resolution around it.   That's not really possible.   But I can light a candle on his birthday.   And think about his good side.   And acknowledge him as an important person for my life.   I am thinking that it may help me to work through the deep and lasting pain I carry with me.   

Spirituality is the torch I carry with me in these woods.  I know that I have the courage to face what's in the dark,  in my facet of the darkness.  My courage now and my ability to keep moving my process forward is what gives me hope.    I will come through this journey a changed man.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben