Coming Slow, But Speeding...

My Lover spoke and said to me, "Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves in heard in our land. The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me." --Song of Songs 2:10-13

Well, the ice is melting, and as a result, I had surer footing this morning than I have in some days. My morning walk to the train depot used to terrify me. I would walk quickly and nervously, expecting a demon to emerge from every alley or hidden door alcove; I was like the expendable, 3rd tier character in a horror film walking trough a graveyard on Halloween Night.

I have realized, more fully than I have in many years, that I have a lot more processing to do in order to exorcise my ghosts of shame, rejection, and self-loathing. I never wanted to be one of those chronically self-absorbed people who never gets beyond the psychoanalyst's couch (the ones who are in counseling for the sake of being in counseling; the ones for whom analysis becomes a kind of schtick--like any character Woody Allen ever played in his earlier films), who keeps blaming her parents, kids from gradeschool, and "The Man" for all of her character flaws. I didn't want to be that woman. I still don't.

I have intellectualized my past. I can even admit, now, that my fathers are not the only sources of pain for me. I also feel abandoned by my mother, and am angry at her for some things, like her inability to guide me or be a source of wisdom for me. Before two years ago, I honestly believed I had no issues with her. So, that is progress, right? I understand the affects of growing up in an abusive home--how it belittles the soul in increments, engenders hopelessness, and smears the psyche with confounding mixed messages. It is to yearn while simultaneously cursing the want for anything. I never knew any men that I felt safe loving, no men that I believed loved me, so I became my own man, in a matter of speaking. I tried to emulate what I perceived to be their winning detachment; to think like them, to amaze and wow them with how little I desired anything from them. Of course it didn't work. It just caused me to be hollowed out and bloodless, emotionally speaking.

I scratched the surface of all this in my first two stints of counseling. What a slap! The cumulative year and a half that I spent in counseling was such hard work! The thought that there is more to do pisses me off, so much more, because I have no idea where to start. I don't want grief to overwhelm me; I don't want to live alone with that throat-constricting monster dictating my days and nights. But he is at my heels like a patient stalker. There is this thing in every room with me, sitting with me on the train, a voice of howling wind in my head that listening to music on full blast cannot drown out.

Some days waiting for the bus I feel like I am about to dissolve into endless tears. No provocation except the hounding of memories, scenes and vignettes that fly up out of the cauldron of an empty minute, negative space, from someone else's gestures that place me squarely back in the eye of the storm.

I want to be in love this coming year. The path to love for me, I know now, is having it out with this bone-crushing anguish. And it is something no one can do for me, or with me. Christ's path to the cross was alienating. Past a certain point, all sorrow and suffering is personal and specific, and you have to walk the path of rock shards alone.