If We Were Having Coffee Today ...
and you asked me how I’m doing. I would tell you the truth
That the past seven months have been a journey into the shape, colour and felt sense of what pain feels like in a body that has been releasing past futures. It oscillates, radiates and demands unequivocal surrender.
I would tell you that a day has not gone by when I find it physically taxing to walk, dance, & move through a yoga practice without raging, making deals and begging whoever might be listening for ease in an effort to find peace.
That to practice compassion in the depths of an asana practice that betrays me is too much of an ask. Then come the days & nights when I want to abandon my body, and find another, one that doesn’t stalk me with pain in all I do. The child in me wonders what have I done to deserve this. Why am I carrying the past this way in my body?
Then comes the desperate need to rip out, purge, and cut off the body part that is inflamed. I want to pummel it to see if another kind of pain will relieve the existing one. The push to test my capacity, to override pain by ignoring its presence leaves me in unutterable despair, it doesn’t help. The level of violence in that thinking is confronting. This is not who I am. Pain makes me into someone unrecognisable.
Yet, each day I show up, meeting what my body is protecting and guarding me against. Knowing it’s a response to hurt & trauma, a narrative unfolding from the past. In this present day, it’s a whispered memory provoked by a seemingly simple yoga asana or the physical act of walking.
I would also say to you traversing the world fettered with pain is a deep dive into the underworld. I wondered at times whether I would ever find my way out of this construct.
But then comes the emotional and mental pain of not managing to be me, the old me. The shame in seemingly always saying, I’m sore again, I can’t dance, walk, or practice yoga. Wanting to rise above and pretend that there is no suffering, I can’t do it.
To show up is, at times beyond my emotional and mental capacity. It wears down much of my resilience & to recognise this has been the stuff of acceptance, forgiveness & healing. Buzzwords that have no meaning when traversing a foreign landscape.
I am not who I was, no matter how much I try to recapture the one I was before pain arrived. It feels like my body is punishing me for something I don’t remember.
I have had to give all the past futures space to be grieved and let go. Some have brought me down on my knees sobbing, scrambling for release and understanding. I have tried hard not to blame or shame myself with spiritual gaslighting. To not fall into the aphorisms that get bandied about. “You must have needed to slow down” “it’s childhood wounding finding its way out” “karmic payback is a bitch” and the best one of all, “it’s meant to be.”
None of this is useful when charting the terrain of pain. Pain is a collection of nuanced emergent responses to an inner environment that is inflamed by life. Its unique cartography defies any kind of simple solution, especially when choosing to somatically heal the source. I have chosen to use medication ONLY when it’s beyond my at times fragile capacity to manage it.
I would also say
The shadows rise daily, closer to the surface and there are times when I feel so inflamed with it all that I want to lie down and give up. And yes, I know the difference between surrendering and giving up.
The pain asks of me to surrender to its voice, but giving up is a loss of hope. And that really isn’t me, until I am gripped again and the desire for it to all go away almost breaks me and my capacity to stay present and focused and I surrender again into the pain. Feeling lost and abandoned by all that I know about myself to heal.
It’s these times when I reach out, beyond myself for another to companion me safely through the barbs. To disentangle my complex thinking, to show me another way to manage, heal and release the distortions I am leaning into.
My husband reminded me of all I have been through in the past seven years. And for some moment I was astounded. Mainly because I thought that each event was given safe passage through my psyche & ultimately out of my body.
Staying true & positive is an art form when driven to the depths of one’s experience. Each somatic response to a life event brings with it a greek chorus of discordance. Many voices and little alignment for healing.
To write is to allow my unconscious to emerge and help me understand my subtle inner world. One way I can access it is by finding refuge in the simplicity of breathing into silence. Images, and recollections tumble through my fingers onto the page, often times I am surprised by what is scribbled there. To write is to emotionally heal past futures.
I am in pain because I inverted much of the past seven years in order to be of service, to keep a business running and the arrogant thought that could hold space for it all. But what is clear to me now is that the ways of managing came from my childhood and that most of these coping mechanisms were designed to keep working, stay silent and be productive.
These days there’s less pain, then there’s not. It’s that simple. There’s no rhyme nor reason, and for that fact alone I can find more grace in the in-between and be grateful for that which is.
Thanks for having coffee with me & listening.
Part Two on what is working coming soon …
Loving your writing and sharing of your thoughts Carol x
went to make coffee ...