CAUTION: The following post may be disturbing to some readers.

FINDING “ SELF” – Yes…coming home to the Heart

First documented on March 1st, 2006

“Trying to find myself” … not a meaningless phrase from the ‘70s…no…literally trying to rediscover who I used to be [and who I was meant to be when that zygote first found it’s way down to planet earth] …before life’s experiences shaped me on a cellular level (i.e. as bad experiences touched me my body was affected at a cellular level). I realize now that I have not necessarily being “trying to recapture my youth”, because I am actually fairly content with who I am, in this moment. But I am trying to discover who I once was, before I was changed.

I AM trying to recapture that energy, that essence that joy and exuberance, that attitude that I see in this photo that was slowly and insidiously beaten out of me by an accumulation of negative and traumatic events. .. ..

...the first one occuring shortly after my father died...

Knowing the father was gone, and the mother was away at work... the monster slithered over our threshold, invading our family. Being careful not to slam the screen door, he stole into the kitchen, knowing that he would find his tender prey alone on those hot summer days…..

… he almost succeed in destroying me…because for a long long time I was “not myself”, and as I write this I realize that it is no wonder my family did not want to be around me.. They did not recognize me after what he did to me! They did not know what he did to me…because I did not know how to tell them…they could only wonder at my strange behaviour, (coming home to find me hiding in the huge laundry hamper) my temper tantrums, my surly grins, no longer the sweet, bright and shiny joy-filled playful child they once knew, they now confronted a dull little monster…

….darkness and dankness surrounded her, the soul smothered, the light in her eyes instantly snuffed out…and the fear…no one to blame but the monster who lurked outside, watching, as the others left the house…waiting until his prey was all alone. With all the stealth of a cat burglar he stole into the sultry still kitchen and only the creak of the screen door warned of his presence – too late…

Then, years and years of darkness – the mind crippled by fear, the body struggles to survive, driven only by sheer animal instinct, the autonomic system driving it like a locomotive – slow and heavy, relentless, mindless… the sympathetic nervous system locked into high gear, fragmented by periods of darkness and turmoil and tears.

The mother moans: “Oh where oh where has my little darling gone?”…not knowing the truth…not knowing that the person she thinks of as a friend has stolen her little girl away…and left this crazy husk in her place…

Angry tears, sad tears, bitter tears. And silence. Deadly silence and terror. Waiting and wondering. Caught up in a hailstorm of madness, with only glimpses of sanity…the child was shattered, pieces of soul scattered, broken shards of heart strewn about the universe …

…like an automaton programmed to perform its mindless tasks…left right left right, one two three step turn, on and on , on and on.

The clocks tick, the seasons change, but the frantic dance remains the same.

Cook, clean, sweep, “perform”,…cook, clean, sweep, weep, “perform”…weep, grin, march,; march through life’s agenda…the intrinsic self lost, ah but not forgotten, buried somewhere in this body as it changes into a teenager, then a woman…as the years go by…the lost woman wanders around in despair, - dancing, cackling, doing doing doing, keeping busy, “getting on with life”, running running, and wildly dancing to someone else’s tune - - yet somehow knowing she has to find her way home….home to herself…knowing that somewhere there is a beautiful sensitive creative being living beneath the damaged cells…how to purge the dis-ease that has created its insidious havoc in this once beautiful child of the universe?

…to be continued…