Warning: Anatomically Correct Memory

My body keeps my oral history. Or better, lingual or (warning overused word approaching) metaphysical??Well. Body memories are dogged, I have worked very hard to dis-connect from my body (or maybe that was just an autopilot thing) but sometimes, they launch. usually in my genital area. I'll never be certain why. I have some ideas, but never certainty. Sometimes its oddly reassuring because if this is what I was dealt as a toddler (for some reason I'm thinking 2-3 yrs) then it explains everything about me. The lack of boundaries, the passiveness, the weak joints (oh yes, I put up as big a struggle as my little self could). Knees, Hips, Shoulders, all have made their presence known over the years. When one is held down, one fights, one fights, one fights...then stops because it doesn't work. Doesn't work. The promiscuity. The LACK OF SELF ESTEEM. The GHOST PRESENCE. I fought - my body confirms I did, but no one noticed = I don't exist, because if I did, someone would have noticed and helped me, right??can't change that. Can't know. can't know in a way I can comprehend and put to rest. My body is trying to help me, I guess. Some sort of reenactment where I get the chance to experience without the danger, a kind of self-EMDR (does this work?). Except that I fight again, i think STOP STOP, I push with all my might, I  remain terrified. Terror is my invisibility cloak. I wear it everyday, no ones sees. It's molten, it's fused to my skin. Physical intimacy fraught with dread. I have been robbed of so much. Many, so many of us, robbed of life before we even know we are alive. There's no pawn shop with serial numbers of our souls. We cannot reclaim.I live with this mystery. It is coloured outside of the lines. So my art is as well. And my alarm system is in on.

A Picture is Worth...etc.

Couldn't recall if I'd posted this before.
A little of me - a little of others.

Weathering Emotional Umbrellas...

Emotions travel in packs. They set upon you from all dimensions. When I was working I called emotions like anger an "umbrella" emotion because there were so many more different feelings wrapped up in it, but anger is the societally accepted label. Frustration is another one, discouragement, sadness, helplessness, etc. Spectrum feelings. No feeling exists in a vacuum. No feeling exists on its own.  It's a sociological phenomenon as well as psychological.

Whatever, I had a thought last night and though I could write about it, I haven't written in a long time. I feel reluctant to write now, I know it helps me detox yet it's a struggle to let myself succumb to writing about them. It's twisted that way, I know I need a ventilation system. So just write Kel, be in the moment and reach inwards, there is always something to say if i just keep at it. it doesn't matter if it is relevant to anyone else, yet I hope it is. I feel so alone, and I self-isolate, so it's an chicken and egg thing too.

We are conceived in a group, we develop inside another person, we don't start out in  this world being alone, we are never alone and yet loneliness can assail us. Neglect, deprivation in all their forms. I get hurt so I stay away. I crave acceptance yet dread the idea of feeling un-special. This is a relentless battle I imagine  everyone struggles with, how do we give our uniqueness and similarities a balance of attention and nourishment??

Treating different people the same ways gets different outcomes. However we are influenced - biologically, organically, socially, etc., equality of opportunity does not guarantee equity. How do I celebrate rather than denigrate my self. What are the real character flaws, which are the imagined ones?

Anyhow, I am feeling uninspired writing wise. Bye.

Puppy Love

Too much traffic in my head. Things darting in and out like angry rabbits, memories, feelings, judgments taking little nips at me then skittering away. Some don't dart, some sink in their damning maws and draw  blood. My puppy is in my head. Not so surprisingly I suppose, he has become a clear window through which to see - even more glaringly - how passive and frightened I am. all the time. Although the intent was for him to be my dog as therapy as nonjudgmental role model for me, but in 3 short wks I am not alpha - K. is -  and I am not assertive enough. I have so much fear, and puppy reads me rather well. I try to be the calm assertive Dog Whisperer advises, but I am neither. It's not his fault. I watch my partner with him and there is this easy strength (although he gets frustrated too), he plays with the dog in a way I realize I have no clue about. I don't know how to play. I feel threatened  and he reads. I feel uncertain and he reads. Such a little scholar. He is beautiful and lovely and likes my company but clearly sees K as the one to go to. So my little lonely self feels abandoned.

Trigger happy. I am in my head rending, churning out as much evidence as it can, elucidating failures. I am feeling rather starkers (yes, naked and raving). There are much worse things in the world than to have a constant reminder of my doormat-self. I'm trying to escape but this overriding (or underpinning - either way I'm surrounded) sense of  doom does tend to shred one. Dispirited are us. I have black and white positions, fear and attack. I just want it to go away, I want to stop feeling so bad inside. I'm becoming more and more convinced that it's just not gonna happen. So bleak so spare this inner terrain,  I am a miracle of lichen surviving under harsh conditions. How does a mind (using the term loosely) get this way, I mean it's a rhetorical question as I believe I have some pretty good ideas about that, but it's crying out from within, I just don't want to hurt anymore, is it too much to ask? I didn't ask for it so someone something please take it away. Have I been so awful that i am meant to feel punished and unliveable, I have not earned a life so it would seem. Yet I am here, awash in this excreta. Increta really, it's inside and it's all been said, felt thought before. I am by no means charting new waters here, and so I feel ashamed to ask for so much. So much. Don't I have enough all ready? But I'm going through some motions, others I am not even trying. I'm not living my own life, someone else should have been given this chance, I appear to be wasting mine away. I wrestle with writing all this down in public, I rationalise by saying I can put my thoughts down quicker and not miss so much in my efforts to houseclean, yet I know I also want to be seen, and loved. I don't love me though. Others profess too but it rolls off like rain over oil. There's nothing worth loving in here I whisper. Give your love where it will do some good.

I pop my pills and there is less edge, but it's still looming out there, very close, willing me to just go, slip over. I'm still here, so something is keeping me going, but I'm not happy about it. Ha. ha.

The long line of the let down

I am so restless and anxious right now. I am trying not to eat  or play solitaire or anything else that won't really help. We have a new puppy and he is a beautiful dog and it is a good and positive addition to our tiny family. So I know I a thankful for him, yet I also feel that somehow this new positive element in my life overrides any permission to feel shitty. And i do. Feel shitty. I can look aside and say  it's jet lag, it's new vulnerable life as puppy, family grief (always there as a low-grade electrical current, just the other side of pleasant), feeling demands to be a good pet carer of-er. Billions of people have had and continue to successfully have pets, one or many. Some of these billions even successfully raise children. So where is this lack of self-faith. My brain says I'll never know "why", although I could hazard some sharp guesses, with these revelations there lingers an aftertaste of doubt, spoiling, tainting the fleeting good feeling. So fleeting it never actually got to the good part.

I feel competitive with this puppy - how ill is that? I have been trying to give myself and pup time outs. It seems to help. we just had a nice gentle quiet time together. I am so afraid of harming him, damaging him in any way. His spirit is so bold, so boundless. So brave, he seeks out, he  examines - I can see him learning. It is fascinating. I envy this. It is hard to detect evidence of self-learning. again, the verge of tears WTF. The cruelty of depression is how mystified it leaves me. all I know is this heaviness, unease, unassailable. I feel it is wrong. I know it is wrong. It has been said countless times that how I feel is normal for my experiences, yet there is no commensurate balm. I remain unassuaged. For now. (SAY! wasn't that hopeful???)

It's many triggers.

I am tired.

I have a new responsibility that I dread/anticipate failing.

Family is always searing. How many times can a heart break?

The long line of the let down shuffle forward, there is no escape from their bleak grief. The guilt. My guilt.

I want to make everything better for everyone. How's that for goal setting?

I think this is why I stopped writing emails. Good for those who can soldier on. I wonder if i ever have.

I feel untested still, yet endlessly tested, ahhhhhhhh, paradox thy blade cuts twice.

Doug Supple - Musician, Human Being

A very gentle soul and friend died on Thurs night after a long duel with prostate cancer. He was our lighting guy and a wonderful singer and guitarist. He ran countless jams and always had a kind word, no matter what. He was quirky and funny and generous, he was unswervingly upbeat. There was a community fundraiser for him last year while he was in round two of Chemo and he had lost so much weight, but he never lost his beautiful genuine self. Our little valley has suffered a great loss.
Sleep well Douglas, may your pain be finally
gone

What about MY Dark Matter? plus Robert A. Lowe aka Lichens

Very moving for me, very long (17 minutes), but I found quite worth it. I hear it as a soul gathering courage and reaching out meeting like-souls and reverberating around itself. I love music and the power of the voice, the language that we can all understand.

The snow is falling again, we have almost 4 inches, and it is beautiful. The element that turned the word blanket into a verb! Although I think our culture today allows for the "verbification" of pretty much any and every word.

I love to sing, I have been in a few bands and choirs over the years. Most recently a Pink Floyd Tribute Band called All in All (www.allinall.ca/). We covered all of their songs from the mid 60's to The Division Bell (1994 I think). I got to sing a part of The Great Gig In the Sky, we even put about 10 videos on Youtube. Great Gig was a wondrous experience because there are no words. As the subject matter is one's death, the song is about putting sounds to the feelings one might have whilst pondering death. So every time I got to sing it, it allowed me to channel my rage, my grief out to the audience. While I have definitely received many less than flattering reviews, I always felt cleansed after singing. Detoxed a bit. As if the song were the leeches through which I bled out my despair. In my worst times, I stopped listening to music, I didn't laugh, indeed seeing/hearing others laugh left me mystified.

Yesterday was therapist day, started off okay just discussing the week's events and the puppy (of course!), even brought in my crackberry to show her some pics, however, me being new to the technology, the images remained unviewed. Oh well. Then I went on to describe an encounter I had had with a man busking downtown, he was still wearing a poppy so I thanked him for the music and asked him if he was a veteran.

Suffice to say, bad idea (for me anyway). Tragic story ensued (well d-uh Kel). He seemed to want to talk though, and I tried to listen and then I needed to excuse myself and walk away. I could barely tell Maura (my psych) about it. I cried so hard, words choking out of me wanting to tell, couldn't look at her, I closed my eyes. I guess the story was a lightning rod for every other sadness I had witnessed - mine or another's. It is astonishing to me how completely my sadness and shame take over, suffusing my entire body, and I played cat, closing my eyes in an effort to hide. Part of me understands how the mind can work in these ways, yet my heart is so full to breaking, the proverbial lump in the throat - with me even now. I wonder if therapy is just retraumatising, or instead does it serve to tweeze out my psychological splinters? Some pain in the extraction, some lingering pre and post inflammation, then a gradual cessation of all. What differs is I cannot see the site of the extraction (or the entrance for that matter). There is no where on my body to place it. No map. No GPS. My body is surely storing these memories, I have no doubt, in the U-store that is my brain. I guess there are just many remaining, all jockeying for position, wanting to be seen and heard before they will stop haunting. Isn't this the theory behind ghosts? We are here, despite ourselves sometimes, and we call out in various ways (sometimes encoded and or incomprehensible barely detectable). The catch of being acknowledged. Wanting it, but fearful of the consequences real or imagined. And I am supposed to have faith that these are real and my emotions understandably hyperboled, I am supposed to have faith. How does one have faith when those things which seemed faith-worthy in the past have proven unworthy?

Yep, an emotional GPS would be fantastic. I mean this says a lot about what is considered important in our culture. We have devices to tell us where we are in our car or on foot, devices to connect us to other devices ad infinitum. Soon we will have no need of hardware. So much money, so many brilliant minds dedicated to unravelling the mysteries of space travel, launching thousands of satellites into orbit, detecting the most inner working of atoms and matter, billions maybe trillions spent on the Hadron Collider (and concomitant t-shirts). Yesterday they "successfully" smashed two beams of protons together, falling on the heels of their "successful creation" of a mini black hole Nov 8th). I want someone to detect the whereabouts and characteristics of MY dark matter, spend some money and minds on that, assholes!

Until we get the gist on ourselves, we have little hope of replenishing our planet.