Regret might be the worst emotion to encounter in the getting-out-and-healing process. When you stare down the years--nearly two entire decades in the prime of life--it can cut deep along the soul lines. The years seemingly wasted that wash over the deadened bits like the tide, dragging your rag doll soul out to drown.
I did nearly drown in regret. Sometimes I'm not sure how I didn't.
But the sick feeling of wanting to rewind time, going back to give your younger self a few keynotes about how things actually are and will be. The after of how it strikes you when time slips through your fingers and life sneaks past.
Regret is birthed in the polarity of your disparate emotions. Regret is birthed in the incomprehensibility of the worst thing and the best thing in your life somehow ending up fucking each other and have a child that is your life. Strange bedfellows.
Somehow he is quite literally the worst thing that ever happened to me. And, somehow he is quite literally the best thing that ever happened to me.
Both of these things are somehow simultaneously true for me and so the question remains, what the hell do you do with that?
Saturday, May 30, 2020
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
the Revolution
There are things I'm grateful for and then there are things that I basically cannot express enough of my gratitude for. These things extend so far beyond my ability to be grateful for them--that I almost don't know how to describe them. Things that literally revolutionized everything. Lately, I've been mulling over those things. Which relevant pieces essentially revolutionized everything? That is the question I have been pondering, as of late.
First, there was a listener. A revolutionary priest. A grizzly, bearded, long-haired tatted, F-bomb dropping priest. Prolly goes without saying but not your typical rigid-religiosity-instilling-personhood-bashing-priest. No. A listener--and that's relevant. A priest with (in fact) something on par with turning-water-into-wine miraculous listening skills where I could bump into myself somewhere on the bookshelves near the magic-eight-ball Jesus in his office.
I remember the startled feeling of not being interrupted. I remember the long pauses. Half the time, I would interrupt myself. Only then would he speak.
I hadn't had that experience in seventeen years. Always talked over. Always repeating myself because the narcissist never actually heard anything I said, except way back in the beginning when it was something akin to ammunition to later use against me way down the road. But I didn't know that then.
So a bad-ass listener. Key.
That and the screaming dreams was how I started to wake up in my own life.
That was how I started to arm myself for the hellish battle of escaping the Matrix that I didn't know that I was about to undertake.
For something like a solid year he--the Priest--listened while I unloaded--verbal diarrhea for hours every single week. It seemed endless once the Dam broke and uncontrollably the water ran. Sometimes the literal waters ran. Sometimes I gut wrenchingly sobbed for most (all) of the appointment. I had no idea that I needed a place to park my sorrow. Hell, I didn't even know that there was so much unattended sorrow underneath. I had so effectively walled myself off from it that I didn't even know it was there. And certainly, didn't know it was mine.
I think he did know it was mine. He had a sixth sense about those sorts of things. Shaman-esque.
He would do what priests ought to do, but most don't or won't, and just hold space. That is something that should be taught in Priest 101. He could endlessly hold space like nobody's business. And finally then I could breathe. It was one of the only places in my life I could actually breathe freely. But I didn't even know that--that I needed a place to breathe--cause I wasn't really breathing elsewhere.
I started to notice that. I started to notice that I was breathing mostly in his office. I also started to notice that I was not breathing when I was around my ex the narcissist. I started to toss and turn a little bit in my narc induced sleep.
And so that was how the revolution started.
There were others who joined the cause. Others who listened. Others who pointed things out. Others who oh-so-directly spoke into my life. Others who helped imagine a way out.
But his bad-ass listening skills are like none other. The root of the revolution. The revolution would not have ever existed without them.
A string of therapists were certainly helpful. Important. But if I can point to only one person--one significant person that made the revolutionary difference--the person that single-handedly triggered the rebellion--it was this one human who listened like I was the only person left on the planet to be listened to, like there wasn't anyone else, like judging other people about weird things they think or do didn't even exist. And that in a nutshell is how and why I escaped.
First, there was a listener. A revolutionary priest. A grizzly, bearded, long-haired tatted, F-bomb dropping priest. Prolly goes without saying but not your typical rigid-religiosity-instilling-personhood-bashing-priest. No. A listener--and that's relevant. A priest with (in fact) something on par with turning-water-into-wine miraculous listening skills where I could bump into myself somewhere on the bookshelves near the magic-eight-ball Jesus in his office.
I remember the startled feeling of not being interrupted. I remember the long pauses. Half the time, I would interrupt myself. Only then would he speak.
I hadn't had that experience in seventeen years. Always talked over. Always repeating myself because the narcissist never actually heard anything I said, except way back in the beginning when it was something akin to ammunition to later use against me way down the road. But I didn't know that then.
So a bad-ass listener. Key.
That and the screaming dreams was how I started to wake up in my own life.
That was how I started to arm myself for the hellish battle of escaping the Matrix that I didn't know that I was about to undertake.
For something like a solid year he--the Priest--listened while I unloaded--verbal diarrhea for hours every single week. It seemed endless once the Dam broke and uncontrollably the water ran. Sometimes the literal waters ran. Sometimes I gut wrenchingly sobbed for most (all) of the appointment. I had no idea that I needed a place to park my sorrow. Hell, I didn't even know that there was so much unattended sorrow underneath. I had so effectively walled myself off from it that I didn't even know it was there. And certainly, didn't know it was mine.
I think he did know it was mine. He had a sixth sense about those sorts of things. Shaman-esque.
He would do what priests ought to do, but most don't or won't, and just hold space. That is something that should be taught in Priest 101. He could endlessly hold space like nobody's business. And finally then I could breathe. It was one of the only places in my life I could actually breathe freely. But I didn't even know that--that I needed a place to breathe--cause I wasn't really breathing elsewhere.
I started to notice that. I started to notice that I was breathing mostly in his office. I also started to notice that I was not breathing when I was around my ex the narcissist. I started to toss and turn a little bit in my narc induced sleep.
And so that was how the revolution started.
There were others who joined the cause. Others who listened. Others who pointed things out. Others who oh-so-directly spoke into my life. Others who helped imagine a way out.
But his bad-ass listening skills are like none other. The root of the revolution. The revolution would not have ever existed without them.
A string of therapists were certainly helpful. Important. But if I can point to only one person--one significant person that made the revolutionary difference--the person that single-handedly triggered the rebellion--it was this one human who listened like I was the only person left on the planet to be listened to, like there wasn't anyone else, like judging other people about weird things they think or do didn't even exist. And that in a nutshell is how and why I escaped.
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