We are a being seeking shape. The energy of the world – or the shape created by all our interacting energies, can force shape on us by defining the space in which we can exist. If we are passive, we will be conforming in nature, shaped by outside forces. But if the shape allowed, differs from the desired outward expression of our being, we will feel constrained, not ourselves.
The compassion of dreams
Fear: the master of illusion and delusion. When you turn round to face him, he dissolves in such unexpected ways.
There was a hiatus in the violence – in fact it was a permanent stoppage, but I couldn’t know that at the time. I had knelt on the carpet in the front room and shouted at myself, repeatedly – he is never going to change, he is never going to change, he is never going to change – what are you going to do about it? I had banged my fists on the floor, I had rocked myself back and forward, as though I needed my whole body, not just my mind, to accept this unacceptable fact. Pinned down by fear, rendered powerless, what could I possibly do?.
I dreamed: I dreamed he came towards me, his face murderous. Suddenly I was so much bigger than him, he was just a small child, and I was a mother figure. I saw his pain and reached out to comfort him. He was a lost child and I had a power. I had the power of compassion.
Don’t linger on the event horizon
Abuse in life is not something that you get over – it is something that you dilute. It is ever present with you. You cannot leave it behind, you can only accept it and allow it. It is a black hole in the universe of yourself, but it does not devour your universe, it is a natural part of it. However, if you linger too long at its event horizon, it will eventually suck you in and destroy you.
A Foreign Land
When I look back, I do not recognise myself. The young woman is a foreign land, she moves among mountains in dark gorges unknown in my open landscape. In what way am I her? What connects us? I do not identify with her, perhaps because I do not choose to. Far easier to identify and find myself in Berlin’s laughing eyes and summer sun. But undoubtedly she has helped to shape the container I now find myself in. Her landscape is a place I take great care not to wander into now, but the experience of it provokes not the darkness, but the light that was needed to dispel it: compassion and love in particular.
The Phone Call
Memory may iron out the pain, giving things a uniform blandness, but somewhere within, the capacity to relive exists to bring back the past with a lucidity that can overwhelm and transport you back into itself.
There was a phone call, seven years after the last time I was punched. I am standing at the bottom of the stairs. The walls are green and the paintwork is white, and I have the phone in my hand and am standing next to the small window. It is daylight. The conversation is not going the way he wants it to – he wants something and I say no. I have turned to face down the short hallway and he loses it and threatens me directly. What is happening to me is not a conglomerate memory of the hundreds of abusive phone calls threatening to kick my fucking head in, neither is it a memory of any specific moment. It is a memory of a state of being.
Suddenly I am drowning in a world of prickling grey fear, it is as though I have shingles and every nerve ending is alive and alarmed. It is a flush of adrenaline pumped hyper-awareness. There is a chilling realisation, that I lived my life enveloped in a smog of fear, day in, day out, for years on end. I cannot comprehend how I managed to do that. In the split second before I answer him and he backs down, I realise I am no longer afraid to stand square and to act amidst that fear. When I put down the phone I know, not that he will never hit me again, he might: no, I know something far more important, I know that neither his, nor anyone else’s violence, has the power to rule me.
An Introduction
Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I find myself surprised by joy, and looking back at some of the bleakness in my life, I am musing on how it has happened. I found that I was writing pieces with no intended purpose, and, wondering what to do with them, a blog came to mind.
So to start off with, this blog will be a series of short pieces reflecting on my life and experiences – what it may transmute into, who knows. I have no hidden agenda, no religious or political message to push. The pieces are not therapeutic writing, nor are they the usual memoir/autobiographical stuff. They are musings about how joy comes out of pain, how memory is a fickle friend and how surprising wealth is hidden within clear sight.
If you read the posts and get something out of them, then they have served their purpose. If they help you make sense of your world or sustain some hope within you, when you are in a hard place, then I am happy that I have written them.
Salatheel 