As sleep, naps and rest elude me I search for ways to rest myself, ways to release the demons, memories of us, memories of her, worries, sorrows, they all create a wall of sorts for me on a daily basis, if I can get through the wall I can be at peace but they join hands, in this attempt to keep me in this place.
Resting at home, in another attempt to recharge, I lay in my quiet studio, it’s only me and the pup. The heat is on and my sleep music is to aid my restless soul. I get up a few times, thinking “what’s the use, I just cannot rest” and then I remember something that worked, imagining myself walking through the fields, what field? The one from the movie Gladiator, when he dies, I am not sure if this is symbolic for me but I picture walking and feeling the tall grass through my fingers. This isn’t working. I imagine something I love doing, being around water, so I am on a beach, feeling the water through my toes and I decide to float, allowing myself to let go I guess, something I have not yet tried in these attempts, so I float and can feel my blonde hair around my head, breath, and I start to feel at ease and my body shakes, that shake before you fall asleep, then I think of sharks, here I am make-believe floating in make-believe water and I freak out because of sharks. This isn’t working.
The floating generated something, I begin to feel vulnerable and more at ease. Imagine floating, in an old familiar place, the pool in my childhood backyard. Floating in that pool somehow, recalling the games, the diving board, looking at all of the potato bugs crawling around under the deck (a different life under there I felt). The tall trees that divided us from the Schwimmers, the slide…jaws (the pool cleaner device) and then tears, so many emotions flooding me and I cannot stop, or rather I know I can but I feel something move within me and I let go, completely. This is working. So many emotions flood me as I attempt to relax, pray and let whatever is happening just happen, which is SO HARD for me. I cry and cry and the memories of that home choke me, misty the cat dying as I watched in the shed above the deck, swimming to the bottom on the deep end and testing how long I could hold my breath, hanging from the diving board, again saving bugs that would climb to their doom, all those potatoes bugs!
This is trauma, I had a wonderful childhood, but my parents both worked all the time to afford that house. My mother was so traumatized from her abusive home life as a child, I don’t think she ever told me she loved me. So many of these things shaped who I am, my struggles, my dependency, my fear of abandonment, rejection, and somehow I have manifested and created a relationship history that includes me pushing away, then the cheating partners just couldn’t helo themselves it seems, and me in misery….then press repeat, too many times. I should add that after this ‘experience’ and I will call it that, it felt spiritual, I fell asleep for two hours and had the most amazing dreams.
“Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.”
― Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
