Gordian Garden Brain

up again. 02:40 pdt this time. We fly to ON today, Carly's wedding. All my sisters and brothers together, we do have many laughs while we also overwhelm each other, all of our childhood fears and ways show up. But simply seeing them all is good.

Sluggish, tired from my garden marathon yesterday, it certainly felt like I got a lot done, and Ken made me supper, delish. He was happy to see me outside doing stuff. He's a sweet man. He worries about me, I worry about him, together we try to sustain each other whilst surrounded (threatened) by chaos. We are headed to the BVI, i've never been, feels pretty extravagant but it will be amazing. Snorkelling! I think that must be a Dr. Suess word.

I know he's very discouraged about my sadness (etc), he feels sad too, it's been very hard on him. He works so hard to help me, to help us. I hope he'll be ok.

It was good to be outside yesterday and the day before. Digging in the dirt, I dug up the 2 killer Butterfly bushes (big hole, must get more dirt), all the shastas are gone, yeesh. The roots systems on these plants are incredible (I know there's allegory here somewhere). Some plants are so aggressive others so fragile. They can be so delicate above ground, but like icebergs, their true natures lie deep below the surface. Weeds, plants I don't call weeds, incredible networking, some share their space better than others. Some I can recognize their roots and their shoots, the process of growth, gaining footholds, flowering (even!) learning as I go, blindly really. I found gloves that fit my cocktail weenie fingers so I'm getting less ground-in dirt but I miss the feel of it.

Maybe the stories, the memories, the people are ensnarled in my brain garden. It took a long time to dig out that last butterfly, but it was what I wanted to do, so i just kept going. Fell over a few times (honestly I think my centre of gravity is in my forehead) I am a topple-y beast. Love shovels, love digging, it's like a birthright. So this could be the example for the work I need to do. The longer I wait, the more entangled the memories become, the more they start to rise to the surface, the more they crowd out the things I value as life-sustaining. The more entrenched they become the more Gordian the extraction.

Well, time to be off.

Take care everyone.

Math

Wide awake, in the dead of night as it were. 0345 hrs PDT.

Sometimes I just wake up, not sure. I was dreaming, nothing too bizarre content-wise. I went to a funeral last week, and there were some pictures of her. In one she was standing in the middle of a labyrinth and it was just like the one at Homewood, so i was thinking about Homewood and my adventures there. Didn't talk a lot, I was very reactive and angry and I was in there being a rescuer, trying to help, sometimes I did, sometimes not. It's so confusing. remembering Bunny, hoping she made it. What can really help put us on a healing path? I often find myself in a state of waiting, what for not sure. For real life to begin? Expecting so much of other people, perfection, for them never to hurt me. For perfect understanding. I expect such of myself, and of course fall short, self-damnation ensues. So I direct this nasty navel-gazing outwards and find the betrayal I seek. I will always let myself down, so others must too.

It's probably not helpful to watch shows like B.O.B. with PTSD in every episode. And this fascination with all things morbid, hoping for disaster - does this mean normalcy to me? I think it must - I seek it out. I seem to thrive when others are in distress. Perhaps it is an illusion of thriving. I kinda hope so cause the answer to that equation marks me as outside comfy - and human - parameters.

Sometimes i feel i've an old soul, then soulless. I sat in that church completely mystified really. I was astounded at the presence of such faith - I know everyone doubts, or at least I imagine this happens. A church is so big filled with symbols I just do not believe in. And I sit there in a state of incredulity, such a written in stone state of unwillingness. I don't see it as a closed mind, simply a questioning one, except that I have moved beyond questioning whether there is a god. I just don't think there is. What is interesting is that I find evidence of the external presence, the extended aura if you will, of people. There is much untapped about our corporeal selves, I see it as our individual electrical fields, our magnetic resonance. Electricity runs, or tends to run, on the outer edges of a conductor. Our bodies are electrical, we are conductors of same. We just haven't caught up with the science of it, although I am pleased to read of increasing collaborations between biology and psychiatry - so much for that mind/body dualism eh Rene? I am much more enthralled with your math foci.

Love math. Love its apparent certainty.

Time for a Poem - and made-up words

I see a therapist

I talk

she listens

She appears to get the gist

Analyzing dreams

the night terrors that cling

trying to find the incongruous thing, in a mass of incongruity

therapy is not remotely new

to me

guilt persists

as does memory

dreams rife with metaphor

"oh no" says my brain

"I won't even make this easy.

You're to be harrowed

and confounded"

"It's come from the very top"

Sigh

Not my best, when I start thesaurisizing (see post-title) I lose the mark (and, it would appear, the font).

It does help, to talk, but it also seems very indulgent. Yet I will listen, it was what I was best at, really hearing. A finely honed survival skill that served me in my efforts to serve others (wow, THAT sounded really phoney humble want to be a hero - I am revealed!).

I have always - and continue to - had fantasies about being a hero, about being famous. But here's the rub - if I ever was, I wouldn't believe it, cause I don't believe anything goodly to be attributable this soul that is moi - hero by accident.

Ok, I don't like this. Bye

11 yrs is nothing and Warning - Bad language (plus swearing)

Turns out I'm the authority figure who won't help. Yeesh. Talked about Kosovo today. 11 yrs later and the memories are so powerful. Trying to provide hope - or a reason for same - for those who still retain the capacity for hope (despite all evidence suggesting the contrary). Self-damning (what else) for my inaction, my sense of powerlessness in the large scheme of things (and it is a scheme, let me be clear). Just because I AM paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't out to get me - Ha!

Those fuckers killed the camp cat, hanged it (hung it??). Fuckers.

Just as I am the only one able to help myself, it would seem that I can also let myself down - who knew? What a relief.

The scraps of positive that linger - having a beer with the engineers. I hate beer but it felt like an honour to me. Being asked to play cards with them and their short-one-card deck. Precious. Feeling connected, connected in the midst of insanity and quicksand. Desperate clinging. No help in sight. Succumbing together - some comfort there. At least we do not agonize alone. Let's laugh while there is still time, let's be goofy while there is still time. Let us wonder at the coloured sky, while there is still time. Let us wonder.

Nice day

A new day, up earlyish off to see my therapist, I wonder sometimes if it helps, but then she listens and her carpet absorbs my leavings, so sun shining, road trip then costco, hiding in masses of consumerism.

Up, up and away!!

Warning: Graphic Freaky Dream Description (GFDD), Negating Negation and Toxic Cores

Been awhile. Life is assorted. Human bits and bites or those licorice allsorts thingys. Lots of odd dreams, as usual the ones of mixed military and school, all anxiety based: you know, can't get this done on time, late for this, missing that, wearing the wrong (insert standard clothing item here). But then really weird ones that I actually physically feel, that seems a new twist. There was one with a male stalker that my therapist said I should write about to discern the message kinda thing and I think the cops showing up (to my initial relief) then holding me while witnessing and not doing anything except restrain me - so people I think i can/should trust are not trustworthy, will see with their own eyes that there is harm being done and will still not act, will even stop me from doing anything to help. So that's messed up. A physical silencing. A willful abandonment - messed me up all day. Like a hangover, with out the fun of the previous evening of drunken oblivion. So then I dream about these horrible little insect creatures who burrow into my skin and leave long long antennae hairs that I pull on to remove them. And I feel the hairs as I draw from my body. Then the "head" of the creature as it comes out, it actually screams - one week later, I can still feel it. I realise the look of it was"inspired" by the sea lice that attach to the poor wild salmon. Later in the dream it's "just" the creature bodies, I am bursting them out of me like they were pimples. Is this some creeped out metaphor of telling my stories, my stories of other peoples stories? Feeling the pain of release, but then still feeling it, sounds a warning to me, just leave them there. Whether I tell or not the pain will never lessen, I'm going out on a limb here, but that's a tad discouraging. Catch-22 of the finest order really.

I read in the news about the gov't raising benefits for injured veterans, and i read all of the disparate comments. People who have anger towards the gov't for even having a military (I am one) let alone condoning and participating in a war action. Let your anger find its true target, it's not the individual solder, they are trying to do something worthy and honourable. I believe this. There are truly a wee minority of freaks. I served long enough to know this. And I still believe that people are essentially good, it is our default position. I feel torn, I don't want anyone getting hurt, alas I am not in charge and I do things that are hurtful and sad to say sometimes it is a choice I make, there being no other explanation for it, hurting someone else may grant me a nanosecond reprieve, may have me convinced it is a defense that I can rationalise but it's never worth it, in the end there is only guilt and shame and wishing desperately for words back. So I guess it's a segment of our human condition, we all screw up, we all seek to make amends and sometimes I just want to hide from everyone - convinced of my essential toxicity. I can only hurt, I cannot help.

I don't think I will ever feel like a good person, it's too fleeting. There is too much damage. There is no - well I was about to say no hope left, but that sounds very dramatic and silly. I have a gift for negating my negation. Yeehaw.