Soul Mosaic

A new dawn?

“Whatever it was that he saw in me that made him choose me – I was determined that part of me would NOT survive!”
My journal, July 22, 2018

If ever there was a statement that captured the self-hatred, blaming, and disgust that I felt toward me all through life, this was it.

I assumed it was me. I was wrong, somehow to blame, somehow responsible, contaminated with some trait that he couldn’t resist. I must have brought something to the table that caused this…and thus…it was my fault.

Or, even if I cut me some “slack” because, at least in the beginning, I was an infant, still, I was disgusted with myself. He had chosen me for this hell. So whatever it was that I possessed that drew him to me, I was going to PURGE it as soon as I could identify it.

Looking back, it’s a ridiculous idea…it wasn’t me at all. But given that he abused me right from infancy, it is a logical one. When bad things happen to young children, they assume they caused it and are to blame. They are still at that stage of thinking that everything is about them. So good or bad, it’s their fault. And on some deep and early emotional level within me, I carried that same message.

It was only now, in my late sixties, that a germ of a realization was dawning upon me and creeping into my consciousness…an idea I could finally FEEL, not just tell myself and try to believe it: Was it possible…that I was NEVER to blame? For any of it? That maybe it was about whatever he carried WITHIN HIM all along…

Pre-EMDR Journal notes — BRING IT ON, OLD MAN!

Before I relate the session experience, I need to take a moment to consider the question – Why rage?

Why did I carry white-hot rage toward my father?
And why did that need to be the first thing we tackled?

I will let the images do most of the talking here.

Who was he?

Probably best answered by the stories he shared with me on our weekend car rides, all of them disgusting or upsetting. Such as the one about abusing cats when he was a kid.

Unglued

In 1984, I was walking every night, trying not to kill myself. I had to start life all over again.
In 2008, I was afraid to get off the couch, and having an emotional breakdown. And again, I was having to start life over.

Both times, I was at the end of my rope, hanging by a thread, not wanting to be dead, but wondering what else there was in life, and if I had any value.

I was consumed by a level of anxiety I’d never experienced before. It was so bad, I was afraid to get out of bed in the morning — dreaded starting another day of pain. But I was too afraid to stay in bed. Yet I couldn’t wait for the day to be over so I could get back in bed, and when I did, I only felt safe on my stomach, propped up on elbows, watching the same video over and over again on a small portable player while Ed watched TV.

Almost every night for months, it was the Pixar movie, “A Bug’s Life.” It was safe, all the ants worked together, and there was nothing scary or provocative. And the best part, the part I wanted to be in, was the big sleeping chamber where all the ants rested, sleeping safely and comfortably in their little hammocks. It was snuggly, all of them there together, safe from any threats. Just the security of being there together with all of their friends. I so wished I could live with them.

“She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

Flannery O’Connor, story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

He woulda been a good man if…

It was that same book I was given by one of my elementary school nuns from her college English course. The one that opened my mind to the wide new world of literature. The one I drank up like it was water, and I was dying of thirst.

There was that one story in the book, though, by Flannery O’Connor, called “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” I was both repelled by it because of its violence and unwillingly, but powerfully drawn to it. I could never let it go. All my life, it gnawed at me, but I never knew why.

Priorities, “triage,” and setting up the “base camp”

For any successful team to operate, there must be an agreed-upon set of rules and priorities. And Ed and I were a team. So, during this “adult” phase, we had five priorities:

The new place

7/16/82

“As you can see, I’ve been remiss in my journal writing – 21 months. That last retreat (Nov 80) really did me in, and I just wanted to tune it all out for a long time. But since then I finally got up the guts to go to another retreat…a FEW of them actually. One-day retreats at a new place — The Cenacle in Middletown…”

Looking back, what a difference a place makes…though, maybe it was a difference in the person going to the new place that mattered, too? At the very least, the fact that I sought out a new retreat center in spite of how the previous one triggered me, implies that I was willing to trying again…fertile soil just waiting for the right seeds to be planted?

Either way…this became the turning point of my life. More on this, shortly…